Renée Anne Louprette: Bach: Clavier-Übung III | The Pedal Settings
Acis

Kola Owolabi: Georg Muffat: Apparatus musico-organisticus
Acis

These recent Acis recordings target church organ aficionados in particular, but their appeal is hardly limited to that fervent group when the music performed—Johann Sebastian Bach's Clavier-Übung III (1739) and Georg Muffat's Apparatus musico-organisticus (1690) by Renée Anne Louprette and Kola Owolabi, respectively—is so gripping. As central to the releases are the organs on which they perform, she on the Craighead-Saunders organ (2008) of Christ Church, Rochester, New York and he on two new instruments at Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Italian style C. B. Fisk organ, Opus 148 (2018) and Richards, Fowkes & Co, Opus 24 (2021). Testifying to the importance of the instruments to the recordings, photos and extensive details about all three appear in release booklets that also include notes on the performers, historical background, and the works performed.

Named after Eastman School of Music organ professors David Craighead and Russell Saunders, the Craighead-Saunders organ played by Louprette on her third recording for Acis is modeled after one built in 1776 by Adam Gottlob Casparini for the Church of the Dominicans in Vilnius, Lithuania. In that regard, the new one's design is fitting as it possesses many of the qualities Bach desired in an organ. American organist Louprette is well-qualified to take on the Clavier-Übung III. She's Assistant Professor of Music and College Organist at Bard College and has directed the organ program of Rutgers University since 2013. She's performed internationally and premiered new works, including the US premiere of John Tavener's Requiem; indicative of her range, she followed her first Acis release, Bach: The Great Eighteen Chorales with an album of twentieth-century French organ pieces called Une voix française | A French Voice.

Twelve pieces appear on the sixty-eight-minute release, “large pedal settings of the Mass and Catechism chorales together with the framing ‘St. Anne' Prelude and Fugue,” in the words of Rutger University's George Stauffer. In his commentary, he also notes that the diversity of the material reflects Bach's late interest in blending national and historical styles. Whereas some parts are written in the sixteenth-century Renaissance motet style of Palestrina, others, Stauffer argues, reference Italian and French styles while still others explore the kind of canonic form beloved by German composers of the time. In his view, the pedal settings present an eclectic fusion of Renaissance, Baroque, and pre-Classical writing.

As expected, the Craighead-Saunders organ sounds glorious, never more so than in the opening “Praeludium pro Organo pleno,” which, at over ten majestic minutes, has ample opportunity to showcase the instrument's sonorous brilliance and textural richness. The intensity diminishes slightly for the contrapuntal solemnity of “Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit” and the chorale-like “Christe, aller Welt Trost.” After “Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist” reinstates the declamatory dynamism of the opening part, “Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr,” “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam,” and “Jesus Christus, unser Heiland” allude to the Italian style with spellbinding ritornello exercises and “Dies sind die heiligen zehn Gebot” and “Vater unser im Himmelreich” captivate with canonic treatments. Similar to “Praeludium,” “Wir glauben all an einen Gott,” “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir,” and the concluding “Fuga pro Organo pleno” resound at a majestic, verging on ecstatic pitch. Louprette executes it all, naturally, impeccably.

While there are fundamental differences between the music on Kola Owolabi's double-CD treatment of Muffat's Apparatus musico-organisticus and Louprette's Clavier-Übung III, common to both is a blending of Italian, French, and German musical styles (even if Muffat's treatment is highly personalized). In its twelve toccatas and three variation pieces, Owolabi's recording individuates itself by focusing on the late-seventeenth South German baroque style, in contrast to the Central and Northern German schools of organ composition associated with Bach and Buxtehude.

Just as Owolabi's release is substantially longer than Louprette's, so too is the commentary included in the booklet, an in-depth essay by the organist himself. Like Louprette, Owolabi is well-equipped to offer expert analysis of the material. He studied organ performance and choral conducting at McGill University, Yale University, and Eastman School of Music and is currently Professor of Organ at the University of Notre Dame. He's given solo recitals throughout the US and abroad and is also a published composer whose choral works have been performed by multiple ensembles. In his essay, Owolabi writes about Muffat himself, the Apparatus musico-organisticus in general, and each of the fifteen pieces performed.

A Buxtehude contemporary, the Savoy-born Muffat (1653-1704) began his musical training at the age of ten at the court of King Louis XIV and later settled in Salzburg in 1678 as cathedral organist and chamber musician at the court of the Prince-Archbishop. In an attempt to acquire a position at the Viennese Court, Muffat presented his Apparatus musico-organisticus to the new Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph I, at his 1690 coronation. Owolabi's 108-minute recording is apparently the first document of Muffat's keyboard works to have been performed on North American organs, in this case, as mentioned, on the new instruments at Cincinnati's Christ Church Cathedral (the idea of recording the work apparently came to Owolabi when he visited the city on a 2019 field trip with students). The need to present Apparatus musico-organisticus in this manner was not a matter of indulgence but rather necessitated by the music: whereas eight toccatas are in church modes that work in meantone, the remaining four are in the keys of E minor, D-mixolydian, C minor, and Bb major that only sound in tune on a “well-tempered” instrument. Differences aside, the pieces are united by the recurring presence of fugues, counterpoint, and daring harmonic progressions.

Performed by Owolabi on the meantone-tuned C. B. Fisk organ, the opening disc begins with “Toccata prima,” which blossoms from a solemn beginning into a series of florid runs. The second initially exudes a similar downcast character before introducing rapid patterns and growing ever more ornate and demonstrative. The mighty gleam of the organ irradiates the opening section “Toccata tertia” before a graceful counterpoint-driven episode of softer, flute-like timbres takes over. While a lamenting quality informs “Toccata quarta,” the fifth exudes, in Owolabi's words, an “exuberantly festive tone.” A soothing and enveloping warmth emanates from “Toccata sexta” when its layered chords and F major key allow for a flow of dulcet harmonies. After the seventh opens with the grandeur of an overture, it then quietens as melodies are passed from the right to the left hand and patterns entwine elaborately. That sweetness carries over into “Toccata octava” when soft chords intone against a pedal point before the pace picks up to bring the first disc to a spirits-lifting close.

On disc two, dark chords flood the dramatic opening section of “Toccata nona,” and the tenth, similar to the seventh, demonstrates an overture-like character in coupling dynamic flourishes and ascending scales. Stately solemnity shadows the eleventh, and, being the last, the twelfth is fittingly one of the more ornate and virtuosic of the toccatas. As the recording moves into its final parts, the pretty, endearingly melodic “Ciacona” is followed by the “Passacaglia,” which, in Owolabi's view, makes use of the French rondeau form and in its length and scope recalls the “Passacaille” from Lully's 1686 opera Armide. Apparatus musico-organisticus concludes with “Nova Cyclopeias Harmonica,” an aria with eight variations that's structured in an arc form with a soft beginning and ending. Twelve of the fifteen pieces are in the five- to seven-minute range, with only the “Toccata sexta,” “Toccata septima,” and “Passacaglia” each pushing past nine minutes, the latter the longest at twelve. The relative brevity of the dozen settings makes the release feel surprisingly shorter than its 108 minutes, something atributable, in part, to the fact that so much activity is packed into them.

December 2023