Another Mix of Nationalities

French on the Flentrop
J. Melvin Butler, organ
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle, WA; 1965
Loft Records, LRCD-1013

Works by Franck, Tournemire, Messiaen, Clerambault, Daquin, Balbastre and de Grigny.

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The organ building firm of Flentrop from Zaandam, Holland is one of the organ world's most venerable and important concerns. Founded in 1903 by Hendrik Flentrop, the firm became by mid-century an early specialist in the study and faithful restoration of historic instruments, with a pointed specialty in mechanical action (at a time when few modern builders, at least of large instruments, were employing this mechanism). Holland and Northern Germany had been a hotbed of progressive organ design in the 17th and 18th Centuries, advancement symbiotically reflected in the works of Dieterich Buxtehude and Bach, Georg Böhm and Samuel Scheidt, Johann Pachelbel and many others, and in our own time the Flentrop firm helped lead the way in recognizing the virtues and merits of traditional organ building.

Flentrop popped onto the radar screen in the US after the firm's 1958 installation of an instrument in the Busch-Reisinger Germanic Museum at Harvard University, a commission from Anglo-American organist E. Power Biggs who had caught the period instrument bug during his travels and recordings in Europe.



Widely recorded and featured on radio broadcasts, this instrument was a revelation for organ fans: it was a small instrument and had no orchestral imitation stops, featuring instead traditional indigenous organ sounds. Its design followed the German werkprinzip, a group of principles around which historic organs had been constructed: wind pressures were generally lower than those used in modern times, and pipes were voiced accordingly, often with great care given to how individual ranks blended together. Also, each division of the organ was located in, and its sound focused by, its own discreet case. And of course the instrument featured mechanical action--a physical link between keyboards and the pipe valves; no electricity was involved except to run the blower. And the result was very different from the player's perspective, certainly, but also for the listener: direct and intimate, the sound had a carefully-composed blend and a highly musical intensity that was all its own. It's hard to overstate the role this instrument played in reshaping public tastes in organ sound. Through these early efforts, the organ reestablished its place as an autonomous musical instrument (and not as a one-person "orchestra").

So much for background. The instrument on our current recording hails from the same shop, not quite a decade after the Harvard instrument was built, when the "neo-baroque" revolution was in full swing. The organ in St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle was installed in 1965, and bears resemblance to the Harvard instrument on several fronts: it is also formed around werkprinzip ideas; it has similarly plain casework; it employs similarly unburnished facade pipes (as opposed to most organs, which have polished tin facades). And while the instrument is larger--as is the acoustic into which it speaks--it is voiced with the same attention and personality as the smaller Harvard instrument displays.

Biggs played the expected classic repertoire on his Flentrop, but he also stressed that the sound fundamental principles used in its design and construction would do justice to any music. And so in addition to recordings of Sweelinck and Gabrieli and lots of Bach, of course, we also got, for example, the organ sonatas of Paul Hindemith. Everything sounded brilliant: clear and lucid, and with a certain very musical intensity.

What I didn't hear from that Flentrop was anything from late-19th & 20th Century France. That organ lacked the appropriate reeds and any kind of swell box, which made for quite a stretch with this repertoire. But I always wondered what, say, a Franck Choral would sound like on that organ; not authentic, surely, but perhaps compelling just the same. The 1965 St. Mark's Flentrop has no such limitations (especially after a careful 1994 rebuild by Paul Fritts). Here we have the resources for anything in the organ repertoire. And it demonstrates, as Biggs predicted, how far a solid foundation can go in making a persuasive case. In addition to having very French-sounding reeds for solo work and in the Pedal, the voicing is clear and bright, and the mechanical action gives a crisp, immediate response.

J. Melvin Butler is a specialist in French repertoire, and gives a fabulous performance. I confess my heart flutters for the Franck and Tournemire and Messiaen here; I'm less able to connect with the French baroque, which is my own limitation. Doubtless the de Grigny and Balbastre and Daquin and Clerambault are as well-treated in Dr. Butler's hands, but I just find it hard to sink my teeth into them.

The recording, as always from Loft, is brilliant and quite silent. St. Mark's is a pretty cavernous space--well-suited to much of this repertoire--and the recording captures the space very well.

The French Up North

Charles Tournemire
12 Préludes-Poèmes for Piano, Op. 58
Lise Boucher, piano
ATMA Classique, ACD22329
(October, 2004)

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Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) was titular organist at the Basilique Ste. Clotilde in Paris, a post previously held by César Franck. Ste Clotilde is one of the municipal church posts in Paris from which, along with the Paris Conservatoire (now the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, or CNSMDP), came a remarkable school of composers from the middle 1800s. Indeed, César Franck can be considered the Godfather of this school, a movement which produced so many luminaries: Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, Alexandre Guilmant, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, Gabriel Fauré, Joseph Bonnet, Theodore Dubois, Camille Saint-Saens, Maurice Duruflé, Jean Langlais, Jeanne Demessieux, Marcel Dupré, Pierre Cochereau, Philippe Lefebvre, Olivier Messiaen. What a list. And the tradition continues to the present day: Jean Guillou at St. Eustache, Daniel Roth at St. Sulpice, Naji Hakim at Sainte-Trinité, Olivier Latry at Notre Dame and Vincent Warnier holds the organ chair at St. Etienne-du-mont jointly with Thierry Escaich.

Charles Tournemire is an important figure in this movement, both in his role as titular at Ste. Clotilde from 1898 til his death in 1939, and also as an instructor at the Conservatoire. (Many of the great figures of this movement held both church posts and teaching posts at the Conservatoire. Thus did their ideas find both academic and popular audiences, a perfect setup for ideas to take root and foment and evolve.) I first learned of him as one of the teachers of my man Maurice Duruflé, who is said to have learned his harmonic language from Tournemire.

Tournemire is mostly known for his immense organ cycle L'Orgue mystique, a collection of 51 suites of five movements each, based around the church's catalog of gregorian chant tunes. Mystical and sounding highly improvisational, L'Orgue mystique is a massive work intended to supply organ music for an entire year of church services. But l'Orgue mystique is not all Tournemire wrote. In addition to other organ works, he also composed several symphonies and works for solo piano. This present release of Préludes-Poèmes for solo piano slots neatly between Debussy and early Messiaen aesthetically. His harmonies are impressionistic, and the pieces are not strongly tonal. They remind me of Debussy's Preludes, but are less descriptive and have a weaker tonal center. These sound like challenging pieces to play.

The performance is by French-Canadian pianist Lise Boucher, and is excellent. She has a sensitive touch, and also a fiery power as needed. The recording is fine. I recommend this recording to other who, like myself, revere Debussy and Ravel, but find Messiaen's later forays into birdsong a bit hard to follow. Tournemire provides us a bridge between the two.