Sunday August 17

A Recital by Aaron Patterson organ

A Recital by

Aaron Patterson, organ

BY Harlow Robinson

Considered one of the most important composers of the seventeenth century, Dietrich Buxtehude was also an accomplished organist who wrote a large body of music for the instrument. Born in Sweden when it was under Danish rule, Buxtehude spent most of his career in Lübeck in northern Germany. For J. S. Bach, and for many other composers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Buxtehude was a model and creative mentor. The story has often been told of how Bach walked 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude play. As Bach’s biographer Christoph Wolff writes, Buxtehude “signified a kind of father figure who anticipated the ideal of the autonomous composer, a category unheard of at the time.” He “exemplified the ideal type of the universal musician, balancing theory and practice.” Johannes Brahms was another one of Buxtehude’s admirers, and helped to publish a volume of his organ works in 1875 that included the Chaconne in E minor.

The form of the Ciaccona (Italian) or Chaconne (French) descended from a Spanish dance and became popular in keyboard pieces in Italy and South Germany around 1700. A kind of ostinato (a bass line that repeats throughout a composition), the Chaconne is often confused with the Passacaglia. In fact these are very similar, but the Chaconne treats the ostinato line more freely than does the Passacaglia, where it remains solely in the pedal throughout. In the E-minor Chaconne, the four-measure ground (the repeated bass figure) begins on the tonic of E minor and ends on the dominant of B, tracing a descending tetrachord. After appearing mostly in the pedals, the ground moves to the upper parts, where it undergoes rhythmic and harmonic transformations in extended variations, becoming increasingly chromatic and elaborate but never disappearing in the thick texture. A volley of rapid sixteenth-note runs brings the piece to a virtuosic close.

Bach wrote his Prelude and Fugue in C major (BWV 531) around the time of Buxtehude’s death. At the time only twenty-two years old, Bach was just beginning his career as an organist and composer. During his lifetime, in fact, Bach’s fame as an organist almost eclipsed his reputation as a composer, as indicated by the headline of his published obituary identifying him as “The World-Famous Organist.”

Bach’s most intense period of activity as an organist dates from the early part of his career, from 1703 to 1717, when he was employed in Arnstadt, Mülhausen, and Weimar, but he continued to perform and publish organ works throughout his life. In all, Bach wrote more than 200 works for the organ that synthesized his familiarity not only with the north German style of organ composition, but also with trends in Italian and French organ music.

In the very early Prelude and Fugue in C major, one can hear Bach trying out approaches to form and technique, and showing “a youthful exuberance that here and there borders on exaggeration,” as Christoph Wolff has written. Another Bach scholar, David Humphreys, points out that this early piece resembles a toccata, with “squat, stiffly contrasted canzona fugues in the north German tradition that Bach inherited from Buxtehude and others, embedded in contrasting sections in flamboyant toccata style.” Of particular interest is the Prelude, for pedal alone. Here and in the following fugue, there is very little chromaticism, the harmony staying firmly in C-major throughout, with vigorous non-stop sixteenth note runs full of energy and enthusiasm.

Of considerably greater sophistication and complexity is the Partita in D minor, BWV 1004, for solo violin, completed in Cöthen around 1720 as part of a set of three sonatas and three partitas. Less formally constructed than a sonata, the partita was a suite of dances or a set of variations.

The most celebrated of the Partita’s five movements is the last, the Chaconne, perhaps inspired in part by Buxtehude’s earlier example. A single four-bar phrase serves as the anchor for a vast structure of sixty-four variations—in 3/4 rhythm with weight on the dotted second beat—that give the soloist every opportunity to show off virtuoso tricks and artful phrasing. But this movement, constructed with mathematical precision in A-B-A form with the middle section in the parallel major key, offers much more than an exercise in technical display. Expressing feelings of grief and melancholy, it may in fact have been Bach’s musical memorial (a tombeau) to the passing of his wife, mother of seven of his children, who died while he was away on a trip.

Not surprisingly, the Chaconne has been arranged for many other instruments and ensembles, from flute to saxophone to marimba and piano. Both Brahms and Paul Wittgenstein transcribed it for left-hand piano, and Ferrucio Busoni for two-hand piano. William Thomas Best, a well-known organist and composer in his own right, arranged many of Bach’s works for organ, of which his version of the Chaconne is perhaps the best-known and most often performed.

Herbert Howells was another renowned English composer and organist, best known for his music written for the Anglican church. Among his earliest compositions are the three Opus 32 Psalm Preludes, Set One, for organ, composed in 1915–16 during World War I. Excused from serving in the military because he suffered from Graves’s Disease, Howells paid tribute to those who were at the front with these three subdued, impressionistic and contemplative pieces, each one a musical response to a particular Biblical psalm verse.

The third takes its inspiration from the very familiar verse four of Psalm 23, whose message of overcoming adversity through faith was helpful for wartime: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

Organist Frederick Frostwick writes: “Howells clearly wishes to emphasize the idea of the relentless journey ‘though the valley of the shadow of death.’ A repeated-note ostinato pervades much of the piece and it is Howells’s only Psalm-Prelude to remain in the same time-signature throughout; the slow tempo and scarce texture of the opening present a bleak view. . . . The very first musical interval we hear is a descending semi-tone: the sigh of anguish and desperation. . . . The pacing ostinato never truly ceases and, indeed, is made prevalent by Howells in the closing bars, suggesting that the journey ‘though the valley of the shadow of death’ cannot be avoided; the tranquility surrounding the final bars, however, makes clear that God can make such a journey bearable, since ‘thy rod and thy staff they comfort me’.” Howells would write his second set of three Psalm Preludes in 1939, on the eve of another disastrous World War.

Like Howells, organist and composer John Ireland studied under Walter Parratt at the Royal College of Music. Originally composed for the National Brass Band Championship of Great Britain, his Downland Suite celebrates the quiet beauty of the English countryside, in this case Sussex Downs, part of South Down National Park. The oh-so-English second movement Elegy is reminiscent of similar episodes in the sedately sentimental music of Edward Elgar. English organist and composer Alec Rowley arranged the original brass-band piece for organ, one of many arrangements that have been made for various instruments and ensembles.

Called “the girl Gershwin” in the 1930s, American songwriter, composer, and pianist Dana Suesse cut a striking figure in New York musical life for decades. “You Oughta Be in Pictures,” her biggest hit song, with lyrics by Eddie Heyman, was released in 1934, recorded by Rudy Vallee and immediately adopted by the booming American film industry as an unofficial anthem. Suesse received serious classical training, with pianist Alexander Siloti in New York and legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She wrote a number of concert works for symphony orchestra and piano, and many pieces for piano solo that she recorded herself. A renowned Jazz pianist, she appeared in New York clubs and collaborated with leading Broadway composers.

Among her best-known piano pieces is the Scherzette or Whirligig, a short and playful virtuoso number with Jazz flavor that she wrote in 1956. After a short introduction in arpeggios, the right hand plays a series of three ascending chords in the A section, elaborated with off-beat accompaniment. In the B section, a new melody is introduced and briefly developed before the return of the A section. The two themes then combine in a flashy finish.

Aaron Patterson expands the sonic palette of the piece in his spacious and colorful arrangement for organ, which he has performed on the Wanamaker Organ in his hometown of Philadelphia (where he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music) and elsewhere. — © Harlow Robinson

Aaron Patterson is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, where he was the proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship and earned his master’s degree in organ performance under the tutelage of Paul Jacobs. He earned his bachelor’s degree as the Charles and Judith Freyer Annual Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied organ performance with Alan Morrison. He also received a certificate in harpsichord performance with Leon Schelhase. Mr. Patterson previously studied organ with Dennis Elwell and piano with Dolly Krasnopolsky. Mr. Patterson won first place at the 2017 Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition and the 2016 West Chester University International Organ Competition. He has also been a recipient of the Pogorzelski-Yankee Memorial Scholarship from the American Guild of Organists and the Bart Pitman Memorial Music Scholarship from the Delaware Valley Music Club. Mr. Patterson loves collaboration and has performed with orchestras, violinists, flutists, choirs, and other keyboardists. His performance venues include the Wanamaker Grand Court, where he is an assistant organist, Boardwalk Hall, and the Kimmel Center. Mr. Patterson is director of music at Cresheim Valley Church in Philadelphia. He formerly served as assistant organist at Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia) and organ scholar at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania.