The 2006

Robert Nash Memorial Lenten Recital Series

at

Calvary Episcopal Church

March 29 at 12:05 p.m.

MARGARET DICKINSON, ORGAN

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                  

 

                                  

 

 

 

 

 

Calvary Episcopal Church

821 South Fourth Street

Louisville, KY 40203

The Rev. J. Edward Morris, Rector

Melvin and Margaret Dickinson, Musicians

Telephone: 587-6011; Fax: 587-6012; email: calv821@aol.com;

e-mail and web:calvaryepiscopal.org

 

THE PROGRAM

The entire program consists of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, celebrating the 250th anniversary of his birth.

Fugue in g minor, K. 401

Trio (Fuga a tre) in G Major, K. 443

Andante in F Major, K. 616

Allegro in F Major, K. 594

Please hold the applause until the conclusion of the recital

 

A LETTER FROM MOZART TO HIS FATHER:

When I told Herr Stein I would like to play on the organ in his church, for the organ is what I liked most of all, he was very surprised and asked why a man like me, such a great clavier player, wanted to play an instrument which has no sweetness, no expression, no piano, and no forte, but which goes along sounding the same. THAT DOES NOT MEAN A THING! In my eyes and ears, the organ is the king of all instruments.

(Letter to his father from Augsburg, October 18, 1777)

There are many laudatory descriptions of Mozart’s organ playing. As early as 1762 (Mozart was born in 1756), Leopold Mozart writes about their visit to a church in Ybbs on the Danube, where our Wolfrl romped about on the organ and played so well that the Franciscan fathers and their guests left their dinner, raced to the choir, and were so amazed they almost died. Mozart was only eight when his father wrote that everyone thinks his organ playing is much better than his clavier playing. Mozart played on the most famous organs of his time, including organs in Versailles, Haarlem, Verona, Bologna, Strassbourg, and Dresden. At “Bach’s church” in Leipzig, the cantor Doles was quite carried away, and thought that J. S. Bach had come to life again!

An important piece of evidence concerning Mozart’s improvising and his manner of registration is provided by a report from Prague, where he played the organ in the Strahov Monastery so brilliantly that everyone stood there as though they had been turned to stone. The matter of improvising is important, for in the 18th century, organs were found almost exclusively in churches; and apart from occasional recitals, the organ was used in services to intone chant, accompany, and present preludes and postludes and interludes, most of which were improvised. The mass settings of the ordinary (Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, etc.) were sung by choirs and accompanied by orchestra. We have many extant mass settings by Mozart. The practice of organ improvisation, however, means that not many Mozart organ compositions are available – most were not written down, or just the first part of a piece was notated. The first two compositions heard today are probably examples of what a church musician in Europe would have played before, during, or after the mass.

The last two pieces on the program today are two of the three large works that Mozart wrote for something called a musical clock that consists of pipes combined with clockworks of complicated machinery. This instrument is called the AUTOMATIC ORGAN, and was highly thought of and frequently composed for. It may be likened in principle to the player piano of today.  In either case, a player is not required! Frederick the Great commissioned pieces for this instrument, and many famous composers of the 18th century wrote for it, including CPE Bach, WF Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven. Mozart and Beethoven were commissioned by Count Joseph Deym-Mueller, an owner of a cabinet of curiosities and other venues of display in Vienna. The third composition on the recital today, K. 616, written for one of Deym-Mueller’s places, was described by one listener to conjure up an image of a bed, softly illumined in the evening by alabaster lamps, with a figure of a lovely woman asleep in it; from behind it comes the most ravishing music, composed especially for that place. (For me, that’s not quite the image – it’s more of a trip down the Ohio River on the Belle of Louisville!)

After the death of a famous Austrian General, Deym-Mueller acquired a showroom to exhibit a mausoleum with a life-size wax figure of the general in a glass coffin, artificially illuminated. To enhance the effect of Deym-Mueller’s exhibition, Mozart was commissioned to write funeral music for the showroom to be played on a mechanical organ. Thus was created the K. 594, heard for the first time there on March 23, 1791, and heard today as the final piece of the recital.