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World music CD DVD shop and Classic distribution
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ID: SIGCD028 (EAN: 635212002827) | 1 CD | DDD Ausgefolgt: 2000
- LABEL:
- Signum Records
- Kolektion:
- Organ Collection
- Subkolektion:
- Organ
- Komponisten:
- MASON, Alexander
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Interpreten:
- MASON, Alexander (organ)
- Andere Infos:
Programme Note
The art of musical improvisation is as old as music itself, and it makes the practice of reading from notated music-which in the West has happened for little more than a millennium-a relative newcomer to the repertoire of options available to the performing musician.
Despite the predominance of printed music, improvisation is all around us if we care to look; the organist playing before or after a church service and accompanying the psalm singing; the singer or instrumentalists ornamenting their lines in the repeated section of a baroque aria; the soloist playing a cadenza in the last movement of a concerto; the jazz band in a night club playing between their prepared numbers; the music students at school or college having an out of hours ‘jam session’.
We can only wonder at the sheer quantity of improvised music that has come and gone and is lost for ever, but equally we must marvel at the sheer inventiveness of human kind and take comfort in the amount of improvised music that is yet to come!
The invention of musical notation, codified by Guido d’Arezzo in the 11th century, was intended as an aide-mémoire to reduce the time it took boys and novice monks to learn the church’s enormous repertoire of plainchant. Notation meant that musical ideas could be worked out and captured for circulation; musical forms could now develop and the art of composition was born. Now, performers could submerse themselves in other musicians’ styles enabling their own musical development to be widened and accelerated.
Similarly, the late nineteenth century invention of audio recording equipment meant that not only could performing musicians now hear a wider variety of performance styles-be it on wax cylinder or digital compact disc-but improvised performances need not always be lost for ever. The availability of recordings of past masters’ organ improvisations, including those of Charles Tournemire, Maurice Duruflé and Pierre Cochereau, has undoubtedly affected today’s younger generation of organist improvisers.
Clues about improvisatory styles from the last millennium are to be found in contemporary notated works. Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517) left a number of mass settings for alternatim choir and organ and similar traditions developed throughout Renaissance Europe, including England, where in some institutions the organ would improvise alternate verses of the office hymns. Many of these ‘improvised’ verses were captured and copied by enthusiasts such as the famous sixteenth century organist Thomas Mulliner.
With the formation of concert societies in the 18th century, improvisation found a new secular audience. Handel entertained the crowds during the interval of his oratorio premieres in the 1730s and 40s by improvising at the organ and this style is clearly seen in the notated organ concerti which he published in response to great demand from his public.
In classical France the organ masses by de Grigny and Couperin are rare instances of a written-down ‘improvised’ tradition. Musical notation apart, further evidence of the nature of the tradition is found in a liturgical document of 1662: the Cérémonial des évęques outlines the soloistic role of the organist in the mass at the following key points: Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Elevation, Communion, and Sortie. These improvisations would have been substantial, while shorter improvisations would alternate with the choir’s singing of the ordinary chant.
Whilst the written-down improvisations of earlier times provide us with a stylised snapshot of the creativity of the time, the ‘stylus phantasticus’ of the 17th and 18th century North Germans was improvisatory by its very nature. Virtually all of J. S. Bach’s preludes and fugues display improvisatory characteristics clearly informed by his elder, Dietrich Buxtehude, whom he admired greatly and travelled long distances to hear. The great G minor fugue BWV 524 is thought to be a written-down improvisation, since the theme was given to applicants for the post of Hamburg Cathedral organist in 1725. On another occasion, Bach apparently improvised for half an hour on An den Wasserflüssen Babylon when unsuccessfully applying for the organist post at St Jacob’s, Hamburg, in 1720. (The successful candidate was required to pay the church authorities a hefty bribe, which Bach was not prepared to do.)
Until the end of the 19th century the organ course at the Paris Conservatoire was centred around improvisation. Widor’s professorship (1890-1937) saw a shift away from this position, but important additions to the 20th century repertoire are nevertheless improvisation based: the five Tournemire improvisations transcribed by Duruflé (1936); Dupré’s Symphonie-Passion (1921); Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecôte (1950); Bovet’s Trois Préludes Hambourgeois (1970-86); Rogg’s Partita sopra Nun freut euch (1976-95); and of course the improvisations of Cochereau transcribed by David Briggs, François Lombard and others. The art continues to flourish on the continent in the hands of such luminaries as Guy Bovet, Peter Planyavsky, Jos van der Kooy and Naji Hakim.
Why is it that the art of improvisation is seen as largely a continental skill with England being a poor relation? Whereas civic pride in Europe might manifest itself in the building of a splendid organ for the town hall or church, England’s musical heritage is vested in a choral tradition. The English choral tradition is, of course, second to none and must go a long way to explaining the English organ’s strong accompaniment qualities. The predominance of ‘repertoire’ training today means that most young English organists unwittingly turn their backs on what is after all the very life-blood of the repertoire. Perhaps the art has been marginalised by its inclusion in exams as a keyboard ‘test’ (along with harmonisation, transposition and score reading which are, of course, important skills). As a result, improvisation has been viewed, at best, as ‘polyfilla’ for a delayed liturgical procession or, at worst, an exam exercise.
However, in recent times the English art of improvisation has undergone a much-needed recovery championed by David Briggs, Wayne Marshall, Nigel Allcoat and others. Disciplined improvisation with form and structure is increasingly seen as an essential part of the organist’s ‘tool kit’. It is now more common for organ recitals to include an improvised item as part of the programme and many of the historic recordings of Cochereau’s improvisations are again available on disc.
The past 1000 years have yielded an incredible legacy of notated music but, as we have become aware of other cultures’ improvised musical traditions, attitudes to notated music have shifted. Take the creative procedures of jazz musicians, rock bands or the aleatory movement of the late 20th century, for example. There will always be a place for written music, but we must not be prisoners to it.
Alexander Mason, Alistair Dixon, August 2000
| MASON, Alexander | | | Variations Veni creator | | | 1. | Tutti | 0:49 | | | 2. | Cantus firmus | 0:39 | | | 3. | Scherzo | 0:26 | | | 4. | Canon à 2 | 1:16 | | | 5. | Dialoque | 0:35 | | | 6. | Trio | 0:55 | | | 7. | Fugato | 1:39 | | | 8. | Tierce en taille | 1:39 | | | 9. | Cornet de Grigny | 1:45 | | | 10. | Grand choeur | 4:22 | | | Messe de la Pentecôte | | | 11. | Introït | 6:40 | | | 12. | Offertoire | 4:14 | | | 13. | Elévation | 2:41 | | | 14. | Communion | 3:00 | | | 15. | Sortie | 5:22 | | | Machaut-fantaisie | | | 16. | Introduction | 2:52 | | | 17. | Scherzo | 2:40 | | | 18. | Adagio | 3:41 | | | 19. | Finale | 3:49 | | | Suite des Danses | | | 20. | March | 4:07 | | | 21. | Sicilienne | 4:16 | | | 22. | Bolero | 3:43 | | | 23. | Minuet-Waltz | 2:52 | | | 24. | Gigue alla Rumba | 3:48 | |
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