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Organ music is the most important element in the legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach. The Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542, today a united cycle, were written by the composer at different times as independent works. It is assumed that the Fugue was written between 1712 and 1717, and the Prelude somewhat earlier. In the two-part cycle Bach combined works that were popular because of their expressiveness – the improvised fantasia and the strict polyphonic fugue.
In music, the word “fantasia” is commonly used to describe an instrumental work where the composer, abandoning normal structural systems, gives free vent to his imagination. The fugue, meanwhile, is the intellectual zenith of the polyphonic style.
Stormy pathétique and lofty lyricism are the two emotional elements of Bach’s Fantasia in G Minor. The theme of the fugue comes from the 17th century dance song Ick ben gegroet. The scherzo and playful quality of the theme and the liveliness and pointedness of its rhythmic image form a contrast with the fantasia’s monumental chords.
Maurice Duruflé was a French composer and organist who continued the traditions of France’s romantic school. His mentors were Paul Dukas, who taught composition, and the pupils of César Franck, the “spiritual father of France’s organists”, Charles Tournemire and Louis Vierne, under whom Duruflé studied the organ at the Conservatoire de Paris.
From 1930 Maurice Duruflé was the organist at the Église St Étienne-du-Mont and in 1942 he became Marcel Dupré’s successor in organ studies at the Conservatoire de Paris, being appointed professor of harmony one year after that.
The first period of the composer’s works generally produced instrumental works. These include the Scherzo (1924), Scherzo for Orchestra (1940) and Prélude, récitatif et variations for Flute, Viola and Piano (1928).
In the post-war years Duruflé was drawn by choral genres. He wrote four motets (1956) and the Messe cum jubilo (1966).
His works for organ today occupy a special position in organists’ repertoires. Particularly popular are his Prélude, adagio et choral varié sur le theme du “Veni Creator”, Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain and Suite for Organ, Op. 5.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s works for organ include seventeen church sonatas, vocal church music, masses and much more besides. Of particular interest are the works the composer wrote towards the end of his life for mechanical instruments and the glass harmonica – Fantasia in F Minor, KV. 608, Adagio and Allegro in F Minor, KV. 594 and Andante in F Major, KV. 616 among others.
Fantasia in F Minor, KV. 608 continues the line taken in the earlier Adagio in B Minor and the dramatically intense Fantasia in D Minor. All of Mozart’s Fantasias are recollections, “music of the memory”. 1787 was a year of grief for Mozart. This can be seen from the sadness and suffering in the letters written by the composer in the “year of destiny” when he lost his father and son as well as some of his friends – Count Hatzfeld and Dr Barisani – and, finally, in autumn that year he bid farewell to the “deeply respected” maestro Gluck.
Franz Liszt, the “inventor” of the romantic concert-virtuoso style in organ music, determined an extremely important line of development in organ music in the latter half of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century. Taking the organ as a full symphony orchestra fully corresponded with the composer’s generally romantic tendencies and his personal passions.
Liszt’s first work for organ – Fantasia and Fugue to a theme from the chorale Ad nos, ad salutarem undam from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète – was composed in 1850 during his Weimar-Altenburg period. The open premiere of the work took place at the inaugural ceremony of the new organ at the Merseburg Cathedral on 26 September 1855. It was performed by the composer’s pupil Alexander Winterberger. In his letters, the composer himself hints at an earlier performance of the Fantasia by Dresden’s virtuoso organist Carl August Fischer.
The Fantasia and Fugue is the most grandiose and developed of all of Liszt’s works for organ. This work is a fully developed fantasia variation in terms of composition where the fugue forms one episode.
The Fantasia is based on the chorale of the Baptism from Act I of Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète – a unique imitation of truly medieval melodies. As it develops, the first motif of the chorale transforms into a romantic summons, while the second becomes a march.
Anna Kolenkova
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