SAINT THOMAS CHURCH FIFTH AVENUE in the

CITY OF NEW YORK

The Reverend Canon Carl F. Turner, Rector John Scott, LVO, D.Mus., The Nancy B. and John B. Hoffmann Organist and Director of Music

The Reverend Charles F. Wallace, Headmaster

Music of J.S. Bach

John Scott, organ

Saturday 20 June 2015 4:00pm

A RECONSTRUCTION OF MENDELSSOHN’S BACH RECITAL IN ST THOMAS CHURCH, LEIPZIG, AUGUST 6TH, 1840 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

On the Loening-Hancock Organ

I. Fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 552ii II. Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele, BWV 654 III. Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543 IV. Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582 V. Pastorella, BWV 590 VI. Toccata in D minor, BWV 565

Statue of Johann Sebastian Bach in front of the Thomaskirche.

PROGRAM NOTES Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was unquestionably one of the greatest advocates for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, particularly for his organ music. As performer and editor of Bach’s works he was instrumental in rehabilitating the great composer’s reputation to a wider musical public, after almost a century of neglect. Of particular importance is the recital that Mendelssohn gave at 6 pm on 6 August 1840 in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, where Bach had been Kantor from 1723 -1750. On that occasion, and for the one and only time in his career, Mendelssohn offered a full length program dedicated to the music of Bach, with the specific purpose of raising funds to erect a statue of the great composer. That monument, which Mendelssohn also helped to design, still stands today, just yards from the former site of the St Thomas Choir School. Mendelssohn’s performance must surely rate as one of the most famous and significant recitals in the history of music. Mendelssohn’s performance is documented primarily by the surviving handbill for the event and by the description given by Robert Schumann, who was present. His review of the concert appeared about a week later in his ‘Neuen Zeitschrift für Musik’, which begins: ‘Would that I could record last evening in these pages with golden letters! Again I thought how we are never at an end with Bach, how he seems to grow more profound the more frequently he is heard....The best illustration and explanation of his works will always be found in his music itself; and by whom can we expect to find this warmly and truthfully performed, if not by the artist who yesterday delighted us. How thoroughly Mendelssohn knows how to treat Bach's royal instrument, is well and widely known; and yesterday he laid before us the most precious jewels, in a glorious arrangement of change and gradation’. Four days after his Leipzig organ recital Mendelssohn wrote in a letter to his mother: ‘On Thursday I gave an organ recital here in St Thomas' Church, the profits of which will go towards a stone memorial to old Sebastian Bach in front of St Thomas' School here. I gave it as a solo and played nine pieces, and at the end a free fantasia. Now I shall have the same delight once again, in autumn or the new year, and then a dainty stone will be able to be erected. I have, however, been rehearsing here for eight days, so that I can now hardly stand on my feet and do nothing more than go through organ passages on the street’. Besides his remarkable creative talent, which flowered in every sphere that he touched, Mendelssohn is assured of a lasting place in musical history for two further peaks of achievement. He restored the music of Bach to the central repertory, and, as both composer and performer, he created a completely new style of organ composition in which the very different aspects of Classical form and Romantic aesthetic are successfully integrated. Mendelssohn’s recital began with an improvised Prelude, which led straight in to the magnificent Fugue in E flat major (BWV 552ii). This is the final work in Bach’s Clavierübung Part 3, his only double fugue for organ containing three subjects, one after the other.

The second item in the recital was the chorale prelude ‘Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele’(BWV 654), taken from the collection known as the ‘Leipzig Chorales’, compiled during the last decade of Bach’s life. Mendelssohn played this for Schumann in 1835, confessing that, if life were ever to deprive him of faith or hope, this one work would restore both. Schumann revered this composition, describing the ornamented chorale tune as though ‘hung with wreaths of gilded leaves’. In his review of Mendelssohn’s recital, Schumann waxes particularly lyrically about this work: ‘as priceless, deep and full of soul as any piece of music that ever sprung from a true artist’s imagination’. The first half of the concert ended with the Prelude and Fugue in A minor (BWV 543). Schumann wrote to his fiancée, Clara Wieck: ‘you would have taken great joy in it….it assumed on the organ a very grand, unique, and brilliant character’. Mendelssohn thus treated his Leipzig audience to the same piece he had played to great acclaim in London three years earlier at Christ Church, Newgate Street, when he became so excited during the final pedal solo that, according to a contemporary witness ‘he just sat on the organ seat and tore his hair’. This was the same pedal solo that he had not been able to complete the day before at St Paul’s Cathedral, when he played for so long, apparently, that the gentlemen pumping the organ blowers were instructed by the Verger to stop so that he could go home after Evensong. Schumann, for his part, surely had such passages in mind when he wrote that both the Prelude and Fugue were ‘very difficult, even for a master’. After a brief intermission, the recital resumed with the Passacaglia, or as Mendelssohn always referred to it, the ‘Passacaille’ in C minor (BWV 582). We do not know Mendelssohn’s registration scheme for the work, though Schumann’s comment that the work was ‘admirably handled in the choice of registers’ might suggest that Mendelssohn varied the registration frequently throughout the work. Bach’s masterpiece clearly provided a high point in the program. The recital continued with the Pastorale, or Pastorella in F (BWV 590). Only the first movement had been published at this time, and it seems likely, therefore, that this is all that Mendelssohn played, as opposed to the four movement work heard today. Despite the perhaps unsatisfactory nature of beginning in F major and ending in A minor, the movement certainly impressed Schumann, describing it as something ‘mined form the deepest depths in which such a composition may be found’. Schumann’s high opinion of the work explains why his wife, Clara, often included the Pastorale in her piano recitals during her long career. She, in turn, introduced her dear friend, Johannes Brahms to it, who also included it in his programs. The last Bach work on the program was the Toccata in D minor; almost certainly the well-known work heard today (BWV 565) rather than the ‘Dorian’ Toccata (BWV 538). Schumann’s description of it as ‘typical of Bach’s sense of humor’ is perhaps at odds with the usual interpretation of the work as stormy and dramatic. Whatever the case, the piece has become one of the most famous organ works of all time, and one can only wonder what Mendelssohn and Schumann would have made of the Bach scholarship of recent years which conjectures that the work was probably originally written for solo violin (in A minor) and may not even be the work of Johann Sebastian Bach at all!

John Scott Director of Music Saint Thomas Church, New York City John Scott was born in 1956 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, where he became a Cathedral chorister. While still at school he gained the diplomas of the Royal College of Organists and won the major prizes. In 1974 he became Organ Scholar of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he acted as assistant to Dr. George Guest. His organ studies were with Jonathan Bielby, Ralph Downes, and Dame Gillian Weir. He made his debut in the 1977 Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall; he was the youngest organist to appear in the Proms. On leaving Cambridge, he was appointed Assistant Organist at London’s two Anglican Cathedrals, St. Paul’s and Southwark. In 1985 he became Sub-Organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1990 he succeeded Dr. Christopher Dearnley as Organist and Director of Music. His work at St Paul’s involved the training and direction of the choir, and the overseeing and development of the Cathedral’s busy music program. He was responsible for the music at a number of high-profile events, including the National Service of Thanksgiving for the Millennium, the services to mark the 100th birthday of HM The Queen Mother and the Golden Jubilee of HM The Queen (for which he was asked to compose an anthem) and the service held on 14 September 2001 following the terrorist atrocities in the USA. As an organist, John Scott has performed in five continents, premiered many new works written for him, and worked with various specialist ensembles. He is a first-prize winner from the Manchester International Organ Competition (1978) and the Leipzig J.S. Bach Competition (1984). In 1998 he was nominated International Performer of the Year by the New York Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He is a Past President of the Incorporated Association of Organists. He has been a member of a number of international competition juries, including those in Manchester, Dublin, Chartres,

Dallas, St. Albans and Erfurt. Recent highlights of his career have included recitals in Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Notre Dame in Paris, the Aarhus Organ Festival in Denmark, Cologne Cathedral, Disney Hall in Los Angeles and London’s Royal Albert Hall. In recent years he has performed the complete organ works of Buxtehude and Messaien at St Thomas, to commemorate the composers’ anniversaries. In addition to his work as a conductor and organist, John Scott has published a number of choral compositions and arrangements and he has jointly edited two compilations of liturgical music for the Church’s year, published by Oxford University Press. In 2004, after 26 years at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, John Scott moved to take up the post of Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York, where he directs the renowned Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. He was awarded the LVO in the New Year’s Honours List in 2004, and in 2007 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Nashotah House Seminary in Wisconsin.

Loening-Hancock Gallery Organ

Taylor & Boody Organbuilders, Inc. Staunton, Va. – Opus 27 (1996) Mechanical key and stop action 2 manuals, 25 stops, 32 ranks The Loening-Hancock gallery organ was built by Taylor & Boody Organbuilders to honor Dr. Gerre Hancock's 25 years of service to St. Thomas Church. Its classical construction reflects contemporary interest in organs of distinct national character and historical precepts of construction. The case is fumed white oak with pipe shades gilded in 23-karat gold. The cedar case doors, the façade design with its embossed pipes and inverted fields, and the ornamental kiosks are distinctly 16th-century Dutch, a style of organbuilding which would have been familiar to the original settlers of New Amsterdam. The key action is directly suspended and made of wood. The stop action is mechanical. The two manual divisions each display the fundamental Principal stop in the façade: the Hauptwerk 8' Principal and the Oberwerk 4' Principal. The 16' stops in the Pedal are located behind the organ. There are places prepared for the addition of three manual stops in addition to space available for a third manual division. The wind system has three large wedge bellows which can be operated by foot. A wind stabilizer is available to steady the wind for heavy-texture pieces. The tuning is in Kellner temperament.

The Loening-Hancock Organ was dedicated on May 21, 1996 with a concert featuring Frederick Swann, organist, in solo organ works, and as soloist in concertos by Handel and Haydn, assisted by players from the Orchestra of St. Luke's and conducted by Gerre Hancock. Hauptwerk (Manual I) – 54 notes (C1-F54)

16

Bordun 54 2 2/3

Nasat 54

8

Principal 54 2

Superoctave 54 8

Rohrflöte 54

Mixtur V-VI ranks 295

4

Octave 54 16

Trompet 54 4

Spielflöte 54 8

Trompet 54

2

Quinte preparation

Oberwerk (Manual II) – 54 notes (C1-F54)

8

Gedackt 54 2

Gemshorn 54

8

Quintadena preparation

Sesquialtera II ranks 108 4

Principal 54

Scharff IV-VI ranks 278

4

Rohrflöte 54 8

Dulcian 54 2

Octave preparation

Pedal – 30 notes (C-F30)

16

Subbass (poplar) 30 16

Posaune 30

8

Octave [C1-F6 from HW] 24 8

Trompet HW 4

Octave 30

Spare slide

Couplers

Oberwerk/Hauptwerk

Tremulant (entire organ)

Hauptwerk/Pedal

Oberwerk/Pedal

Grateful thanks to Mr. Lawrence Trupiano, Curator of the Organs at Saint Thomas,

for kindly operating the foot bellows for the organ today.

Program of Mendelssohn’s of Mendelssohn’s Organ Recital in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig.