Christopher Wicks
plays the organ at
Saint John Lutheran Church
Salem, Oregon
Sunday, October 15, three p.m.
Prelude and Fugue in c minor, BWV 546 by J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
Like most organ music of Bach, this prelude-and-fugue was intended to have a Lutheran liturgical role, although it is not directly based on a hymn. Bach probably could not have foreseen that in the last century, it would become a standard piece for performance at funerals for members of the British royal family, but that is exactly what has happened. Current scholarly opinion suggests that the prelude and the fugue come from differing eras in Bach’s career, the prelude actually much later.
Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns den Gotteszorn wand
(Jesus Christ, Our Savior, Who Shielded Us from the Wrath of God) by Heinrich Scheidemann (1595-1663)
Heinrich Scheidemann was the organist at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Hamburg in the far north of Germany, and an organ and composition student of the Dutchman Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, known as the “maker of Hamburg organists” or the Hamburgischer Organistenmacher. This piece is an example of a North German “chorale fantasia,” taking a simple four-phrase Communion hymn by Luther and elaborating it into a twelve-minute affair.
Offertoire sur les grands jeux from the “Parish Mass”
by François Couperin (1668-1733)
Couperin came from a family of musicians, but outshone the others, and served as the court composer and organist for Louis XIV of France, the ‘Sun King.’ He composed two cycles of organ music for the Roman Catholic Mass, one for the usage of parishes and a simpler one for the use of monastic communities. This “offertoire” was to be played at the time in the Mass when the Communion elements were prepared to be placed on the altar.
Toccata in G Major by Johann Adam Reincken (1643-1722)
Dutch by birth but German by career, Reincken was known principally as an improviser, and very few notated works survived his death. In fact, this is one of only four of them: two chorale fantasias, both quite long, and two toccatas. It is an example of what the North Germans called the stylus fantasticus or “fantastic style,” rapidly changing among sections and moods and tempos, not based on pre-existing hymns, but demonstrating the improviser’s ability to create fugues and novel textures with the instrument.
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