ST ASAPH EXPERIENCE SAMUEL SEBASTIAN WESLEY (1810-1876) Choral Song and Fugue

JOHN HOSKING OLIVIA HUNT ORGAN OF ST ASAPH CATHEDRAL Marcel Dupré SOPRANO Jo ha nn S eb g a in st sk ia o n H B a n c h h o J ST ASAPH EXPERIENCE SAMUEL SEBASTIAN WESLEY (1810-1876) Choral Song and Fugue L n i a l i B m l o JOHANNl SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) e u o l a B n LOUIS MARCHAND (1669-1732) g n e o r é NICOLAUSL BRUHNS (1665-1697) G u g i l n l a a u L FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847) m r a e l l C e o S n g i n a e r s C s o n An d t ré ler HERBERT HOWELLS (1892-1983)Fleu g-E ry Sigfrid Kar BETHANPERCY WHITLOCKGRIFFITHS (1903-1946) XANDER CROFT HARP VIOLIN Plymouth Suite ST ASAPH EXPERIENCE JOHN HOSKING (organ of St Asaph Cathedral) * OLIVIA HUNT (soprano) † BETHAN GRIFFITHS (harp) § XANDER CROFT (violin) ‡ JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV547 * 10:52 SAMUEL1. I. Prelude SEBASTIAN WESLEY (1810-1876) 5:17 Choral2. II. FugueSong and Fugue 5:35 CRAIG SELLAR LANG (1891-1971) 3. Introduction & Passacaglia in A minor * 9:16 JOHANNANDRÉ SEBASTIAN FLEURY (1903-1995) BACH (1685-1750) 4. Variations sur un Noël Bourguignon * 7:35 LOUISLÉON MARCHAND BOELLMANN (1669-1732) (1862-1897) 5. Ave Maria † ‡ § * 3:58 NICOLAUSJOHN HOSKING BRUHNS ((1665-1697)b. 1976) 6. Toccata in F sharp minor * 4:56 GUILLAUME CONNESSON (b. 1970) 7. Toccata for solo harp § 4:48 LÉON BOELLMANN (1862-1897) FELIX8. Ave MENDELSSOHN verum corpus (1809-1847) † * 3:04 LILI BOULANGER (1893-1918) 9. Pie Jesu † § * 4:19 JOHN HOSKING (b. 1976) 10. In the halls of our patronage † § 3:08 SIGFRID KARG-ELERT (1877-1933) 11. Symphonic Chorale, Op.87 No.3 'Nun ruhen alle Wälder' † ‡ * 19:31 MARCEL DUPRÉ (1886-1971) HERBERT12. Toccata HOWELLS (Symphony (1892-1983) No.2, Op.26) * 6:57 TOTAL TIME: 78:24 PERCY WHITLOCK (1903-1946) Plymouth Suite Music has always played an important role at St Asaph Cathedral, with records of the Cathedral Choir dating back to the 13th century. The composer, Paul Mealor, was a chorister here, as was Felix Powel, who wrote the famous war-time song Pack up your troubles. William Mathias founded the North Wales International Music Festival at the Cathedral in 1972, which still runs to this day and has attracted some of the biggest names in the classical music industry over the years. It is wonderful to have four musicians taking part in this recording, who have been associated with the life of the Cathedral in recent years. John Hosking was Assistant Director of Music for 14 years, Olivia Hunt has joined with our choirs for services and concerts as well as performing in our music festival as a soloist, Xander Croft has played in Civic and Rotary concerts, and Bethan Griffiths regularly performs with the NWIMF's resident orchestra, NEW Sinfonia. SAMUEL SEBASTIAN WESLEY (1810-1876) I hope that this recording gives a flavour of the variety of music making that happens within St. AsaphChoral Cathedral. Song and Fugue The Very Revd. Nigel Williams, Dean of St. Asaph The compositionJOHANN of SEBASTIAN organ music BACH blossomed (1685-1750) in the sixteenth century, and it drew on three traditions: idiomatic keyboard arrangements of existing vocal music (intabulations), dance forms and improvisation, including variations on pre-existing melodies. What was new was the creationLOUIS of MARCHAND abstract pieces, (1669-1732) free from other forms or materials, but again building on the practice of improvisation – the skill of fantasia. There were two basic strands: one built on keyboard figuration and bravura over a harmonic frame; the other based on contrapuntal writing.NICOLAUS Among a range BRUHNS of classifications (1665-1697) and titles, the first strand may be entitled toccata, preludium or intonazione; and the second may be ricercar, tiento or by the later seventeenth century fuga. Either strand may be headed fantasia, for fantasy, the composer’s or player’s imagination is the primary source. These idioms and compositional methods still current, not least in the highly sophisticated art of improvisation that has been a constant in the French organ-playing tradition. FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847) Improvisation (in a high art tradition, not in the sense of ‘making do’) is part of the skill of any performer, even when the composer has written a highly annotated score. Any musical performance requires the creative integration of the musical material, the player’s skills and temperament, the instrument, and the space and acoustic in which the performance takes place. The process of integration relies on the player’s judgement; and it not only changes from place to place (and in the case of the organ, instruments are very often significantly different), but even in the same place according to a whole series of interacting variables, including the size and character of the audience and the nature of the occasion. This disc represents, in one sense, a frozen moment recorded at one time in one place with one principalHERBERT instrument. HOWELLS It is also the (1892-1983) result of a series of subsequent ‘improvisations’ by recording engineers, editors and CD manufacturers; and it enters a new phase of improvisation wheneverPERCY it is played WHITLOCK – depending (1903-1946) on the person, the equipment, the space and the context. The challenge for John Hosking has been to integrate his reading of a range of contrasting Plymouth Suite scores with the characteristics of a specific organ in a small cathedral, and in some cases with other performers. The challenge for the listener is to accompany him on that exploratory journey and to bring their own imagination into play whatever the circumstances and location. The background of the emergence of idiomatic keyboard instrumental music (and some Spanish composers advertised their music as suitable for harp or keyboard) is relevant to the repertory heard here. Three pieces are dependent on the principle of variation on existing music material – those composed by Sigfried Karg-Elert, C. S. Lang and André Fleury. All three composers chose genres established in the seventeenth century: chorale prelude, passacaglia and French Noël. The idiom in which they composed was inevitably conditioned by the organs with which they were familiar. SAMUELAs an assistant SEBASTIAN music masterWESLEY at (1810-1876)Clifton College in Bristol, C. S. Lang was entirely familiar with the richly voiced, four-manual organ by Harrison and Harrison (1911), played daily at the Choralshort morning Song andservice Fugue to accompany the hearty singing of hymns by around 600 boys. It was for this instrument that he wrote his famous Tuba Tune – a piece he was reputedly banned from playing after the service, since the boys rollicked out of chapel when they heard it. JOHANNLater, as SEBASTIANdirector of music BACH at Christ’s(1685-1750) Hospital, Horsham, he commissioned a five-manual organ by Rushworth and Dreaper for the school chapel (1929). Finally, he must have taken account of the rather hybrid organ and the acoustic of Worcester Cathedral, where the LOUISdedicatee MARCHAND of the Introduction (1669-1732) and Passacaglia (1952) (Track 3) – David Willcocks – was organist. NICOLAUSThe core of BRUHNSthe organ (1665-1697)of Dijon Cathedral at which Andre Fleury presided from was built from 1740 – 45 by the Riepp brothers from Ottobeuren in Bavaria, though in a French style. After successive rebuildings in 1787, 1846–48 and 1860, it was remodelled with three (rather than four) manuals and pedal, and with pneumatic action in 1953. His Variations sur un Noël Bourguignon (1959/60) (Track 4) were conceived for an organ that retained some of its French Classical identity, but whose new action allowed complex passagework that would FELIXhave MENDELSSOHN been tough work with(1809-1847) an old and no doubt heavy mechanical action. Sigfrid Karg-Elert never held a major post as a church organist; rather, it was on the harmonium that he broadcast from his home weekly from 1924. The large German Kunstharmonium engaged his attention from about 1904 in preference to the piano, and his earliest organ works were arrangements from harmonium compositions. He wrote, ‘the Kunstharmonium, with its capacity for expressiveness, its wealth of differentiation of tone and its technical perfection became the instrument which met my highly-strung artistic demands.’ Although the influence of J. S. Bach and Max Reger are present, it is the expressive Kunstharmonium that may most have influenced Karg-Elert’s approach to the composition of the three HERBERTSinfonische HOWELLS Chorale ,(1892-1983) Op. 87 (1911), of which Nun ruhen alle Wälder (Track 11) is the last. PERCYThe task WHITLOCK facing John (1903-1946) Hosking is to re-imagine these works not only in relation to his own personality but to the single organ on which they are recorded, and the space in which it is Plymouth Suite located. At its core is an English nineteenth-century organ, much changed to achieve the eclectic aspirations of the twentieth century. The starting point for C. S. Lang’s Introduction and Passacaglia in A minor (Track 3) is Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor. This includes the length and underlying harmonic implications of the theme, and some of the compositional approaches, albeit in the context of a post- Romantic idiom. He will have been used to shaping performances of Bach’s Passacaglia on the Harrison at Clifton and the Rushworth & Dreaper at Christ’s Hospital. Similarly, Fleury’s Noël variations hark back to eighteenth-century models, especially in the initial statement of the Noël, and the texture and registration of the first and fourth variations.

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