A Recital by Ken Cowan organ

A Recital by Ken Cowan, organ

By Matthew Mugmon

A sampling of acclaimed Canadian organist Ken Cowan’s recorded work reveals his mastery of a range of repertoire. Cowan, who studied at the Curtis Institute and Yale University and now directs the organ program at Rice University, tackles music from the Baroque to the contemporary period with a special focus on works of the Romantic period; such works are represented in this program by compositions of Camille Saint-Saëns and Edward Elgar. Cowan also looks back to the eighteenth century with compositions by Wolfgang Amadè Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. William Grant Still represents the twentieth century, while Rachel Laurin, Gunnar Idenstam, and Iain Farrington provide a glimpse into contemporary approaches to this centuries-old instrument.

Given Mozart’s association with the piano, it’s easy to forget his strong connection with the organ. He served as court organist in Salzburg starting in 1779, but moved to Vienna in 1781. It was in that city that he composed his Fantasia in F minor, K. 608, ten years later. As a fantasia, this work is wide-ranging and even symphonic in its variety. Its dramatic introduction suggests a French overture in its sequence of a stately (though thunderous) passage with dotted rhythms followed by a lively fugue, and then a return of the stately material. This perpetual motion section in an archaic style is more akin to Bach and Handel than the more songlike manner usually associated with Mozart’s music. But Mozart was simply demonstrating his facility with a vast array of musical approaches. The second section of the work, a sort of slow movement, is more familiarly Mozartean in its lyricism. In the form of a theme and variations, it picks up energy through ever-faster figurations as it proceeds toward a thrilling reprise of the roaring opening in the third and final section of the fantasia. This leads to a fast polyphonic passage, a brief return of the dotted-rhythm music, and a vigorous coda.

William Grant Still, another versatile musician, excelled as a multi-instrumentalist and an arranger, worked with Eubie Blake and W. C. Handy, and studied composition with George Whitefield Chadwick (himself an active organist) and Edgard Varèse; Still ultimately became, in 1931, the first African American figure to have a work, the Afro-American Symphony, performed by a major orchestra. Still’s career centered on Los Angeles from the mid-1930s, and among his few organ works is his Elegy, composed on a commission from Los Angeles-area chapters of the American Guild of Organists. True to its title, the work has a lament-like quality in its generally slow, quiet atmosphere. The melodic language recalls both spirituals and the blues, and short phrases perhaps suggest utterances in memory of a loved one. After a shattering climax about halfway through, the work returns to its initial sense of sorrow.

One of Mozart’s greatest admirers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a figure who was a contemporary of Still, was the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Widely known for his colorful (and educational) Carnival of the Animals, Saint-Saëns was also an acclaimed organist. Although he composed his celebrated—and haunting—Danse Macabre (1874) for orchestra, Ken Cowan demonstrates how the organ’s range of timbres creates a symphonic soundscape. The atmospheric start of Saint-Saëns colorful symphonic poem sets the stage for a number of unusual effects that evoke a kind of spooky Halloween dance: tritones (in the violin, suggesting the devil’s fiddle); a morbid chromatic descent (itself used as the main subject of a fugue); and a quotation of the Dies Irae (the piece of Gregorian Chant associated with the mass of the dead, and a favorite reference for Romantic composers). The work has been arranged multiple times for piano, including by Franz Liszt, but despite the piano’s high expressive potential, the variegated and massive sound of the organ more fully captures this raucous work’s theatrical sweep, from its booming climaxes to its surprisingly hushed conclusion.

The Canadian composer Rachel Laurin, much like Saint-Saëns, was distinguished as both a composer and organist. And although Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 for organ and orchestra is often called the Organ Symphony, the late nineteenth century in France saw an entire genre of veritable organ symphonies—pieces called symphonies but composed specifically for organ without orchestra. Laurin’s Symphonie No. 1, composed in 2002 and dedicated to the Canadian organist and composer Barrie Cabena and his wife, Sherri, resides in that tradition; Barrie died this past May, adding a special significance to this performance of the work. The symphony closes with the Toccata, providing an impressive, monumental final statement.

In their large-scale structure, organ symphonies like Laurin’s offer a reminder of Johann Sebastian Bach’s multipartite organ works, and specifically the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548—a work that has itself been likened to a symphony. The opening Prelude never relents in its constant rush of recurring ideas and in the wide variety of textures deployed. Of special note in the fugue are the intervals that widen chromatically in the main subject, as well as the passages in the long middle section in which the pedals are silent, lending those moments a kind of shimmering translucency.

Moving from the seventeenth again to the late nineteenth century, it was in 1880 at La Madeleine, the famed Parisian church, that the English composer Edward Elgar (like Still, a multi-instrumentalist) witnessed Saint-Saëns playing the organ. Elgar had a long history with that instrument; he followed his own father as organist at St. George’s Church in Worcester. His Sonata in G major, Opus 28, was one of his earlier works; he would soon after compose the works he is best known for, among them the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance marches, and the choral-orchestral work The Dream of Gerontius. Elgar dedicated the sonata to Charles Swinnerton Heap, a patron who played a significant role in Elgar’s early career. Its lyrical third movement, marked Andante espressivo, has the quality of a dirge, placing into relief its rhythmic variety and its tumultuous moments.

Among contemporary organist-composers, Gunnar Idenstam and Iain Farrington stand out in addition to Rachel Laurin. Idenstam hails from Sweden, and his 2002 album Cathedral Music is described on the musician’s website as “mixing the French cathedral music tradition with elements from rock.” The titles of various pieces refer to the Baroque and Classical traditions, including several toccatas as well as two colorful and at times mischievous scherzos, both connected with folk music; “polska” in the title of Scherzo: Polska refers to a Nordic dance genre. Farrington, a British musician, composed Live Wire in 2007. The work inventively alternates a boisterous theme with various energetic episodes. Idenstam and Farrington, as well as Laurin, have pushed the organ in new directions while at the same time keeping it firmly rooted in its past.

— © Matthew Mugmon