Whatcom Chorale sincerely thanks you for joining us this afternoon, and for your generous support of St. Paul’s organ restoration.
The Romantic tradition of French musical composition that pervaded the latter 19th century owes an enormous debt to the technical innovations of organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899). As artisan, carpenter plumber, metallurgist, acoustician, and engineer, Cavaillé-Coll painstakingly redesigned the instrument to increase its tonal flexibility and ease of manipulation. Each organ constructed was customized to its cathedral setting with exquisite attention to details of acoustics and operation. Never before had parishioners experienced the penetrating reedy voices of orchestral winds or such profound dynamic swells from softest pianissimo to grand fortissimo. The instrument’s increasing responsiveness enabled musicians to concentrate less on technique and more on the expression of intent and emotion. “If only you knew how I love this instrument…it is supple beneath my fingers and so obedient to all my thoughts.” This delighted exclamation of composer and organist César Franck (1822-1890) underscores Cavaillé-Coll’s monumental contributions.
Franck’s dedication to instrument and artistry was remarkable considering his early years as a child prodigy. Envisioning wealth to be gained from his son’s genius, Nicolas-Joseph Franck shuffled the eleven-year old César from performance to performance, with a final appearance before Belgium’s King Leopold I. Once this gambit for royal patronage failed, the domineering father hired eminent teachers in composition and piano to tutor and prepare the boy for the Paris Conservatory. César’s love for music somehow survived parental pressure and hours of arduous practice. He proved a conscientious and gifted student, distinguishing himself by winning several awards. Nicolas-Joseph, however, grew impatient when teachers failed to promote César as a rising concert sensation, and insisted that his son resign at age seventeen.
Young Franck displayed obvious talent, but in the opinion of admirer Franz Liszt, lacked the temperament and refinement essential for sustaining a successful stage career. “I do not know three in France who are his equals, but it seems to me he lacks that convenient tact which opens all doors…” Despite Nicolas-Joseph’s formidable ambition, reviews of César’s performances were uneven and he resigned himself to earning a living with fees from piano lessons, organ demonstrations, and vocal accompaniment. Unsurprising for a man in his twenties, Franck fell in love with one of his pupils at a Paris school. Enraged by this threat to his income, Nicolas-Joseph refused the couple permission to marry, relenting only when César agreed to repay the debt of 11,000 francs which Nicolas-Joseph claimed had been expended on his stillborn career. This constituted the final outrage that estranged son from father.
Burdened with greater responsibilities but freed from his father’s tyranny, Franck began to fashion his own future. He excelled at improvisation on the organ and developed a reputation for his “contrapuntally and harmonically luxuriant outpourings of melodic invention.” In 1852 he accepted the organist position at Saint Jean-Saint François. In 1854 Aristide Cavaillé-Coll agreed to construct an organ at the new church of Sainte Clotilde. The master engineer certainly knew of Franck’s extraordinary musicianship and likely recommended him for the position. An inventory of cost overruns suggests that Cavaillé-Coll even added organ stops that Franck particularly favored. With Sainte Clotilde’s completion in 1858, Franck became organist titulaire, a post to which he devoted the remainder of his life.
The exquisite organ at Sainte Clotilde aptly reflected the restrained power and unassuming conviction of the man who played it. Franck was revered as a saintly individual for his kindness and self-effacing manner, but denounced by some for his insistence that music be first an expression of faith and human emotion. The persuasiveness of his artistry emanated not from virtuoso technique, but from the beauty of his thought. Louis Vierne idolized this fatherly man and adopted Franck’s credo as his own… “to serve always, in spite of everything, no matter what might happen, to love God, and next to love of God to love one’s art, mindful of the good it could achieve.” As exemplified in today’s choral selections, Dextera Domini and Psaume 150, Franck’s statement of faith is forthright and unwavering.
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) gave voice to an era of transition. While his music paid homage to the classical structures of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, he also strove to illuminate the sonorities of his own genius. Artistic conscience served as Fauré’s ultimate guide: “To express what you have within you with sincerity and in the clearest and most perfect terms possible would always seem to me the summit of art.” In accordance with this precept, he disdained the grandiose, the frivolous and the use of novelty for the sake of effect. He composed serene melodies and harmonic modulations with the subtlety of a watercolorist.
By age nine Fauré’s command of the piano convinced his father to enroll the boy in L’École Niedermeyer, where promising students were trained as organists and choirmasters. Although somewhat indifferent to the organ, Fauré excelled as a pianist, winning several first place prizes. In addition, his exceptional abilities earned the admiration of Camille Saint-Saëns, whose interest and mentorship proved invaluable.
Fauré’s association with the Church was more practical than spiritual. He found pious churchmen narrow-minded and tedious, but endured their judgmental austerity as the price of steady employment. To avoid pedantic moralizing he often stepped out for a smoke during sermons. In fact, Fauré’s first job ended in dismissal after he appeared in the organ loft one Sunday morning sporting white tie and tails, the costume donned for a gala ball that had kept him out all night. He fared little better as organist at Clignancourt, ascribing his hastened departure to a “premeditated act of absenteeism” sparked by the chance to hear Meyerbeer’s opera, Les Huguenots.
Despite these transgressions Fauré’s luminous Sunday performances enhanced his reputation and confirmed the support of Saint-Saëns, who recommended the young composer to influential friends and celebrated performers. Fauré soon became a frequent attendee of salon soirées, performing for an artistic assemblage that might include Baudelaire, Flaubert, Franck, Duparc, Massenet, or Bizet. Saint-Saëns also appointed Fauré as his deputy at L’Église de la Madeleine, with the opportunity to perform as organist when Saint-Saëns traveled to concert engagements.
Fauré remained at La Madeleine for twenty years, but derived little satisfaction from the job and resented the time it stole from his true vocation of composition. The clergy’s intolerance of imagination and the congregation’s distaste for innovation frustrated him continually. While he had little patience for the platitudes of Catholicism, Fauré was no atheist. His concept of God promised the perfection of all that fell short in this earthly experience of reality. The Requiem, for which he is best known, suggests death as a portal offering rest and release. At that time humanity will finally know God, but until then the alternative to imperfect reality is creation. Fauré saw little value in cultivating realism, commenting: “Art and music especially consist of raising ourselves as high as possible above that which is.”
The text of Tantum Ergo was written by Saint Thomas Aquinas to celebrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Fundamental to this prayer is the conviction that once consecrated, the bread and wine of communion actually become the body and blood of Christ. The emphasis of Aquinas’ meditation is that one can only achieve this understanding through faith. As an organist responsible for providing liturgical music, Fauré composed multiple settings of Tantum Ergo. Today’s selections both offer touching, deceptively simple melodies that imply childlike innocence and echo the unquestioning acceptance underlying true belief. In a similar vein, the Ave verum corpus celebrates Christ’s resurrected body and is often used during the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Fauré’s haunting, uncomplicated melody flows unexpectedly into dissonant harmonic resolutions that evoke an aura of divine mystery, a quality that seems inexplicable, but can nevertheless be incontrovertibly known within the devout heart.
Louis Vierne (1870-1937) first displayed his musical aptitude at age two when he plunked out the notes of a Schubert lullaby after hearing it played on the piano. Born with congenital cataracts, he suffered blindness until age seven when surgery partially restored his vision, enabling him to see nearby objects, walk unaided, and eventually read large print. At fifteen Vierne won a premier prix in both piano and violin, and was stunned to receive warm congratulations from his idol, César Franck. The boy responded in awe, “I heard you at Sainte Clotilde when I was ten and I nearly died of happiness… It was too beautiful. I never wanted it to end… It took hold of my heart. It hurt me and made me feel good at the same time!” The kindly Franck promised to instruct Vierne at the Paris Conservatory, allowed him to audit organ classes, and taught him counterpoint during the intervening years.
Sadly, Franck died hardly a month after Vierne officially enrolled at the Conservatory. His successor, the virtuoso Charles-Marie Widor, took particular interest in nurturing Vierne. Widor’s methods were less genial than Franck’s and he demanded absolute technical control of keyboard touch and tempo. “All random movement is harmful,” Widor explained, “because it is a loss of time and strength.” Practice sessions were long and rigorous, but Vierne learned to appreciate his mentor’s conviction that “flawless technique must be tirelessly sought in order to be forgotten.”
As Vierne achieved mastery Widor allowed him first to coach incoming students, and then offered to teach him composition and orchestration. Once his protégé had proven himself as a published composer, well-known recitalist, and sought after teacher, Widor urged him to join 500 applicants in competing for the principal organist position at Notre Dame de Paris. Vierne hesitated because the post paid poorly and he feared his hard-earned reputation would suffer if he lost. Despite these reservations, Vierne performed brilliantly and the jury awarded him the prestigious position by unanimous vote.
Vierne presided as organist at Notre Dame for thirty-seven years. Although he lived well into the 20th century, his artistic sensibilities remained unapologetically Romantic. He described the purpose of pure music as “…giving voice to the movements of the soul …for elucidating the interior life… The pure musician sings of his joy, grief, hate, anger, hope, assurance. His creative field is without bounds, because he expresses all the feelings that pervade his personality.” Vierne’s music frequently accomplishes this acute expression of feeling through extravagant chromaticism, unexpected syncopation, and what Saint Saëns called “frightful harmonic indiscretions.” Melodies are both luxuriant and transparent, containing the essential germ of human feelings that seek utterance.
In his Messe Solennelle Vierne delivers a dramatic work of great passion and intensity. The organ and choir play equal roles in illuminating the sacred text, often engaging in dialogues of dissonance and contrast. Beginning with the thunderous, terror-filled Kyrie, Vierne’s inspired use of chromatics and propulsive rhythms drives relentlessly forward to resolution in the ethereal and introspective Dona nobis pacem. The fortunate legacy of Vierne’s artistic impetus to express tremendous emotion is this creation of tremendous beauty.