Organ music for the Third Sunday in Lent

Prelude
Agnus Dei – Frank Martin (1890-1974)

Postlude
Agnus Dei from Messe pour les Paroisses – François Couperin (1668-1733)

Today's organ music dwells on the theme of Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. We are familiar with this phrase in the Eucharist, where it is used as the prelude to our receiving communion: 'Jesus is the Lamb of God...' The pieces we will hear both come from music written for settings of the Agnus Dei movement in the Mass.

Frank Martin was born in Switzerland, the youngest son of a Calvinist pastor. Although he was interested in music from an early age, Martin did not come to formal music studies until he was in his early twenties. Martin's musical language has a mystical character, full of pulsing textures and dramatic power, which can be heard in his transcription for organ of the Agnus Dei from his Mass for Double-Choir. The Mass was composed between 1922 and 1926, during a time when Martin was looking back to the compositional methods of Josquin and Palestrina, and to the rhythmic influences of Indian music as well as contemporary jazz. The organ version of the Agnus Dei conveys this with the steady pulse of the accompaniment, which provides the ground for a melody that has a more jagged rhythmic shape. In many ways this is a musical counterpart to the stylised shape and line of a Byzantine icon, which offers a contemplative focus for the ear.

François Couperin, nicknamed le Grande, was the greatest of a dynasty of musicians who served as organist at the church of Saint-Gervais in the Marais district of Paris from 1656 to 1826. Couperin published his Livre d'Orgue in 1690, containing two sets of organ versets for the Mass, reflecting the different practices of celebrating the Mass in parishes and convents. Couperin’s organ music arose out of distinctive liturgical practices in France, where the plainchant of the Mass alternated each phrase between the choir and the organ. In practice, this meant that the choir would sing the first phrase of the chant and the organist would improvise a verset for the second phrase while the priest recited the text, and so on. This movement is a dialogue on the Grands Jeux, a combination of stops that emphasises the reed colours (stops with names such as trumpet or cromhorne) of the organ, and was intended to take the place of the third petition of the Agnus Dei. The music develops a simple theme to express the sentiment of the text – “Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world: grant us thy peace” – but in the dramatic effect of alternating episodes of quieter and stronger combinations of sound also reflects the influential fashions of music for the stage. With Couperin, we can enter the drama of the liturgy.

Organ music for the Second Sunday in Lent

Prelude
Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit [BWV 669] – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Christe, aller Welt Trost [BWV 670] – J.S. Bach

Postlude
Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist [BWV 671] – J.S. Bach

Today's organ music comes from the third of a series of volumes J.S. Bach published as Clavierübung (“Keyboard Practice”) in time for the Leipzig book fair at Michaelmas, 1739. The third volume is made up of a prelude and fugue, settings of the chorales for the Lutheran mass, and settings of chorales from the Catechism. One of the curiosities of this collection is that every chorale is set twice: once in a large-scale form using older techniques of counterpoint using two manuals and pedal, and then in a smaller setting using more modern idioms for manuals only. In the chorale settings we will hear today, Bach uses composition techniques such as cantus firmus, imitation, fugue, canon, and modal harmony, which look back to the music of Palestrina and Lassus. A further dimension of Clavierübung III is the constant use or evocation of the number three. We know that Bach was examined on the doctrine of the Trinity as part of the selection process that led to his appointment as Cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723.

The three settings of the Kyrie chorale are based on the plainsong Kyrie fons bonitatis (Mass II in the modern Kyriale Romanum). In Lutheran practice the Kyrie was sung as a trope, similar to the way the Kyrie is used as a form of confession today. These chorale settings addresses each person of the Trinity in turn, and this is represented musically through the migration of the cantus firmus through the texture. In Kyrie, Gott Vater the chorale can be heard in the uppermost voice, depicting the transcendent nature of God the Father as the first person of the Trinity. In Christe, aller Welt Trost the chorale moves to the tenor, a musical invocation to the middle person of the Trinity. The third chorale, Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist places the chorale in the pedals, depicting the third person of the Trinity present among the faithful. These chorale settings are in the key of E-flat major (a key with three flats), a further reference to the Trinity, and draw on compositional techniques and influences that looked to older influences, giving the pieces an air of eternity.

In another way, these chorale settings suggest that the divine movement is towards the hearer. We are invited to call on God in the expectation of God's mercy, and the hope of eternity.

Organ music for the First Sunday in Lent

Prelude
O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig [BWV 618] – J.S. Bach
O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross [BWV 622] – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Postlude
Christus, der uns selig macht [BWV 620] – J.S. Bach

Today's organ music comes from a collection called Orgelbüchlein (“Little Organ Book”), in which J.S. Bach composed a sequence of chorale preludes based on hymns for the liturgical year. Chorale preludes are a distinctive genre of organ music that arose out of improvisation practices where the organist embellished a hymn melody to express the sentiment of the text as the preparation for a congregation singing the hymn.

O Mencsh, bewein (“O man, weep for your great sin”) is one of Bach's most elaborate chorale preludes, with its sweeping upper voice and dramatic harmonic turn in the final bars. This piece expresses the pathos and tragedy of the human condition seen in the light of the cross. Albert Schweitzer described Bach's main musical idea in thus chorale prelude as a motif of grief, which has two characteristics: 'to depict lamentation of a noble kind [Bach] employs a sequence of notes tied in pairs; torturing grief is represented by a chromatic motive of five or six notes.' This chorale prelude is very chromatic, and uses musical gestures that would have pressed the organ tuning systems of Bach's day to their limits.

(Ignore the next few sentences if the intricacies of keyboard tuning seems like an impenetrable mystery! NB: The performance linked below was recorded on an instrument tuned to a baroque tuning system, where the intervals are distributed unequally through the octave. This means some intervals, such as thirds and fifths, are more in tune than in modern 'equal' tuning which allows us to play highly chromatic music without the discomfort of screaming dissonance -- but equally, it denies us a strong sense of key colour where this helps to underpin the musical rhetoric.)

Bach was a master of canon, a musical technique where a melody accompanies itself by having a second voice join in at an interval of time. Because it is a very strict form of composition, canon expresses obedience, and two chorale preludes today use canon to express differing types of obedience. O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig (“O Lamb of God, unstained”) presents the chorale melody in canon between the pedal and the middle voice of the manuals. The canon is at the fifth, a perfect interval that alludes to Jesus' close relationship with the Father. The first type of grief motif, depicting lamentation of a noble kind, is used to create an accompaniment for the canon. Christus, der uns selig macht (“Christ, who makes us blessed”) presents the chorale melody in canon between the top voice of the manual and the pedals. This is a commentary on the hymn text which presents our obedience to Christ: the leading voice is at the top of the texture, a musical depiction of divinity. The following voice is in the lowest extreme of the texture, the pedals, alluding to our following Christ.