The stars were out on the morning of Thursday, June 12^th at First Lutheran Church when the Boston Early Music Festival presented its Twelfth Mini Organ Festival.  First there were the stellar performers Kola Owolabi and, stepping in for Catalina Vicens, Jonathan William Moyer. Then there were the stellar composers: Bach, Handel, Buxtehude, Sweelinck, Frescobaldi, Purcell and the no less wonderful Peter Philips, Vincent Lübeck, Johann Caspar Kerll, Juan Cabanilles and Manuel Rodrigues Coelho. And finally, there was the stellar instrument, the two-manual, 27-stop Richards, Fowkes Opus 10, built in 2000 and expanded in 2010. 

This mechanical action beauty visually and aurally evokes the late 17^th and early 18^th – century masterpieces of Arp Schnitger which define the organ landscape of North Germany and the Netherlands.  Each principal, flute, string and reed stop, distributed over the Werk, Rückpositiv and Pedal, rang out with a distinct individuality yet played well with others, a hallmark of the Schnitger sound. The full Plenum, heard in the Bach and Buxtehude works, was awe-inspiring, and a true “Manifestation of Power” as per the “Love and Power” theme of the Festival.

Both artists have performed and recorded on historic instruments (Moyer’s CD on the 1637 Stellwagen in Lübeck and Owolabi on the 1732 Andreas Silbermann in Ebersmunster), and their stylish, informed approach and unique registration of each work were stunning.

The BEMF theme carried into the mini-festival with Owolabi’s “The Voice of the Organ: Manifestations of Power and Love” and Moyer’s “The Abuse of Power and the Renewal of Love.”  Love as the corrective to power is aptly illustrated by Benjamin West’s “Omnia Vincit Amor” on the cover of the Festival program book, and the concepts of love as well as power featured in both organ programs.

Moyer pointedly highlighted abuse of power as he replaced the early keyboard virtuoso, scholar and curator of Bologna’s renowned Tagliavini Collection, Catalina Vicens. Vicens’s difficult decision not to travel to the United States, given the political situation, puts her in a growing company of elite international artists who have decided it unwise to grace to our shores. 

Power abused diminishes art.

Moyer’s program paired opposites: “War and Peace,” “Greed and Humility,” “Darkness and Light,” “Transgression and Pardon.”  For “War,” Moyer performed the “Tiento por A la mi re” by Cabanilles which included motives from the popular Spanish batalla, a genre in which the composer excelled, inspired by Clement Janequin’s 16th-century chanson “La Guerre.”  Moyer’s ingenious interpretation included the use of the organ’s magnificent reeds, its birdsong (Vogelsang), and a double pedal effect imitating drums. 

For “Peace,” Moyer chose Sweelinck’s four didactic variations on the chant “Da pacem Domine,” a favorite of Luther, who made his own German paraphrase and asked the composer Ludwig Senfl to use the chant as the basis for a motet. Sweelinck’s long note cantus firmus appears in the soprano, tenor, alto and bass respectively, and the organ’s bright but weighty principals lent gravity to every note.

Orlando di Lasso’s wildly popular chanson “Susanne un jour,” intabluted in a florid version in the immense Flores de Musica (1620) by the Lisbon organist Coelho, served to illustrate “Greed.” Here lust equates with greed, and Moyer illustrated the virtuous Biblical heroine with his own virtuosity, using a glittering 4’ flute. “Humility” found its voice, literally, in Frescobaldi, as the organist sings an obbligato melody to the supplication “Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis,” while playing a four-part ricercar from the composer’s Fiori Musicali (1635).

The artist’s own five-variation set on Thomas Tallis’s “O Nata Lux” of 1575 conveyed the polarity of “Darkness and Light.” The motet or “Theme” is first heard in Moyer’s setting, followed by an “Introduction,” “Perpetuum mobile,” “Inversions I and II,” closing with an “Ostinato.” A formidable and fascinating composer, Moyer uses dense, crushing dissonances in the first and last movements (dark) contrasting with open counterpoint and canons in the middle movements (light). This resulted in an emotional and scholarly tour de force.

“Transgression and Pardon” closed the program in two exceptional chorale settings –  Bach’s monumental double pedal “Aus tiefer Not” (BWV 686) from Clavierübung III (1739) and Lübeck’s stylus fantasticus fantasia on “Ich ruf zu dir.”  For the Bach, the artist called on the full potential of the organ with a 16’ on the Werk and 16’ reeds for the melody and harmony of the pedal.  Moyer notes that Bach’s work of “towering counterpoint with double pedal produces an overwhelming sonic effect.”  Indeed, Moyer’s was a commanding performance of unrelenting power,

The Lübeck, with 12 sections divided into the four parts of the first verse, came across as an essay in a variety of “textures, sonority and affect.” At 271 measures it is one of the largest known works in the genre.  Lübeck (b. 1654) published a Clavier Übung in Hamburg in 1728, from which Bach took the title for his own series of “keyboard practice” publications starting in 1731. Marked for “a 2 clav. e pedale,” the chorale fantasia features a middle section of alternating manuals with an early instance of advanced hand crossing, and some extensive pedalling in the style of Buxtehude. The final pages of 16^th-note runs constitute a virtuoso challenge, giving way to a lively triple time section, finishing with alternating manuals and a cadential flourish, which Moyer brought to a quiet close.

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Kola Owolabi’s concert celebrated “both the power of music, and the pipe organ as the voice of that power.” He opened with the power of the full organ, organo pleno, as Bach indicates for “Komm Heiliger Geist “ (BWV 651) in the autograph manuscript of “The Great Eighteen” (or “Leipzig Chorales”). The Pentecost chorale verses, which reference both power and love, would have been in the minds of the congregation as they heard the chorale melody ring out in long notes in the pedal. Reeds in the pedal of organs, specifically the Posaune 16’, were long associated with the Voice of God; virtually every German Baroque instrument, large and small possessed them.

The setting of the four verses of “Schmücke dich” made for an interesting melange of styles; the first two verses were written by Bach’s cousin Walther and the second two probably by Bach’s best student, Johann Tobias Krebs. Walter treats the chorale gently, with its reference to love and the Bridegroom in the second stanza, while the Krebs Trio with the chorale in the middle voice followed by a Bicinium with an ornamented melody, had a more forceful projection.  Owolabi explored the rich variety of colors offered by the organ in bringing this piece to life.

Like Moyer, Owolabi also used 4’ stops for the ornamented intabulation of another Lasso chanson, “Le Rossgnol.” The Nightingale here represents both freedom and unrequited love, and the Philips setting contrasts brilliant 16^th-note figuration of the melody against a reworking of the quieter four-voice polyphony below.

While Purcell served as organist of both Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, he has left us very little organ music.  The composer in Owolabi has sought to rectify this by transcribing and arranging some of Purcell’s finest orchestral works for the organ. For the theme of love, he chose to set the Symphony, in the style of a French Overture, from Purcell’s 1692 Birthday Ode to Queen Mary, “Love’s Goddess Sure.” Owolabi notes that this is “the most delicately scored of the odes,” with four-part strings, recorders and continuo, and makes the transition to the organ seamlessly.

The artist’s decision to open the Handel “Organ Concerto in F major” (Op. 4, No. 4) with a toccata by an influential composer whose works had been copied by both Handel and Bach, Johann Caspar Kerll, made for one of the most intriguing elements of the event. In private correspondence, Owolabi cites as his evidence quotes from John Hawkins in 1776 and Charles Burney in 1785 for Handel’s grave or flashy introductions to the first movement of his concertos.

Hawkins states:

When he gave a concerto, his method in general was to introduce it with a voluntary movement on the diapasons…the harmony close wrought… the passages concatenated with stupendous art. This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself, which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one ever pretended to equal. 

Owolabi chose Kerll’s “Toccata Sesta” for this introduction; which features “virtuosic passagework over a series of pedal points,” and also suggests a tradition where the orchestra tuned their open strings while the organist improvised over such pedal points. The artist arranged the orchestral parts of the concerto himself, and executed the concerto’s powerful orchestral moments and brilliant organ solos, which included fleeting bird song motives, with true “spirit and firmness.

The performance closed with the power of the full organ proclaiming Buxtehude’s magnificent “Praeludium in D Minor” (BuxWV 140). Buxtehude’s prowess as a composer and performer, as well as the instruments he had at his disposal at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, prompted both Handel and Bach to make pilgrimages (in 1703 and 1705) to work with him.  The Prelude’s dramatic opening precedes two fugues separated by an improvisation and ends with a toccata in true stylus fantasticus.

It must have had a remarkable effect on Buxtehude’s 52-stop, 3-manual organ, and Owolabi rose to the occasion to create a sensational finish. Power and Love in all its manifestations truly revealed their natures in this pair of excellent organ performances. We all felt enriched as a result.

Musicologist and organist Sarah Davies, formerly a radio programmer, publicist and booking agent for early music (NYC, 1973-1994), earned her PhD at New York University with a dissertation on the geistliche repertoire in 16^th-century Swiss and German organ and lute tablatures; her work has been published in Budapest, Leuven and Regensburg. As a recitalist, she has been heard on historic organs in Germany, France, Switzerland and America (Sion c. 1400, Tannenberg, etc.), and she performed 15^th-century works from the Buxheimer Orgelbuch with Ensemble PAN at the Boston Early Music Festival and the Holland Festival.  She is a founder of EMA.