Livestreamed Organ Recital V by Jonathan Vaughn from The Frantz Chapel, Christ Church, Greenwich CT Friday, May 1, 2020 at 5.30 p.m. ET (10.30 p.m. BST)

Prelude and Fugue in G - Nicolaus Bruhns (1665-1697)

Sonata no 2 in C minor (BWV 526) - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Vivace Largo Allegro

Chanson de matin - Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) arranged Sir Herbert Brewer (1865-1928)

Chorale Prelude on Croft’s 136th - Sir Hubert Parry (1848-1918)

Bruhns’s surviving corpus of music is achingly small, but demonstrates he was a musician of great stature in the pre-Bach period who is said to have played the violin while accompanying himself using the pedals. His Preludes and Fugues alternate between sections of fantasia and fugal writing.

Bach probably composed his six sonatas in the late 1720s as teaching pieces for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, and they are some of instruments’ greatest chamber music. The independence of the three equal voices are a yardstick for testing the quality of an organist’s technique, but the beauty of the music is where the real appeal lies. All six sonatas follow the Italian model with two fast movements framing a slower one. In this sonata, the standout movement is the third. The allabreve writing of the first theme contrasts with the clipped rhythms of the second, which soon develops into one of Bach’s most rhythmically complicated movements.

Chanson de Matin was written in 1899, the same year as the Enigma Variations, and the year Elgar truly gained recognition. It was originally written for violin and piano, and he also produced a popular version for orchestra.

Parry wrote fourteen chorale preludes for organ. Croft’s 136th is sung at Michaelmas in the Episcopal tradition to O ye immortal throng of angels round the throne.