Another Mix of Nationalities

French on the Flentrop
J. Melvin Butler, organ
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle, WA; 1965
Loft Records, LRCD-1013

Works by Franck, Tournemire, Messiaen, Clerambault, Daquin, Balbastre and de Grigny.

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The organ building firm of Flentrop from Zaandam, Holland is one of the organ world's most venerable and important concerns. Founded in 1903 by Hendrik Flentrop, the firm became by mid-century an early specialist in the study and faithful restoration of historic instruments, with a pointed specialty in mechanical action (at a time when few modern builders, at least of large instruments, were employing this mechanism). Holland and Northern Germany had been a hotbed of progressive organ design in the 17th and 18th Centuries, advancement symbiotically reflected in the works of Dieterich Buxtehude and Bach, Georg Böhm and Samuel Scheidt, Johann Pachelbel and many others, and in our own time the Flentrop firm helped lead the way in recognizing the virtues and merits of traditional organ building.

Flentrop popped onto the radar screen in the US after the firm's 1958 installation of an instrument in the Busch-Reisinger Germanic Museum at Harvard University, a commission from Anglo-American organist E. Power Biggs who had caught the period instrument bug during his travels and recordings in Europe.



Widely recorded and featured on radio broadcasts, this instrument was a revelation for organ fans: it was a small instrument and had no orchestral imitation stops, featuring instead traditional indigenous organ sounds. Its design followed the German werkprinzip, a group of principles around which historic organs had been constructed: wind pressures were generally lower than those used in modern times, and pipes were voiced accordingly, often with great care given to how individual ranks blended together. Also, each division of the organ was located in, and its sound focused by, its own discreet case. And of course the instrument featured mechanical action--a physical link between keyboards and the pipe valves; no electricity was involved except to run the blower. And the result was very different from the player's perspective, certainly, but also for the listener: direct and intimate, the sound had a carefully-composed blend and a highly musical intensity that was all its own. It's hard to overstate the role this instrument played in reshaping public tastes in organ sound. Through these early efforts, the organ reestablished its place as an autonomous musical instrument (and not as a one-person "orchestra").

So much for background. The instrument on our current recording hails from the same shop, not quite a decade after the Harvard instrument was built, when the "neo-baroque" revolution was in full swing. The organ in St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle was installed in 1965, and bears resemblance to the Harvard instrument on several fronts: it is also formed around werkprinzip ideas; it has similarly plain casework; it employs similarly unburnished facade pipes (as opposed to most organs, which have polished tin facades). And while the instrument is larger--as is the acoustic into which it speaks--it is voiced with the same attention and personality as the smaller Harvard instrument displays.

Biggs played the expected classic repertoire on his Flentrop, but he also stressed that the sound fundamental principles used in its design and construction would do justice to any music. And so in addition to recordings of Sweelinck and Gabrieli and lots of Bach, of course, we also got, for example, the organ sonatas of Paul Hindemith. Everything sounded brilliant: clear and lucid, and with a certain very musical intensity.

What I didn't hear from that Flentrop was anything from late-19th & 20th Century France. That organ lacked the appropriate reeds and any kind of swell box, which made for quite a stretch with this repertoire. But I always wondered what, say, a Franck Choral would sound like on that organ; not authentic, surely, but perhaps compelling just the same. The 1965 St. Mark's Flentrop has no such limitations (especially after a careful 1994 rebuild by Paul Fritts). Here we have the resources for anything in the organ repertoire. And it demonstrates, as Biggs predicted, how far a solid foundation can go in making a persuasive case. In addition to having very French-sounding reeds for solo work and in the Pedal, the voicing is clear and bright, and the mechanical action gives a crisp, immediate response.

J. Melvin Butler is a specialist in French repertoire, and gives a fabulous performance. I confess my heart flutters for the Franck and Tournemire and Messiaen here; I'm less able to connect with the French baroque, which is my own limitation. Doubtless the de Grigny and Balbastre and Daquin and Clerambault are as well-treated in Dr. Butler's hands, but I just find it hard to sink my teeth into them.

The recording, as always from Loft, is brilliant and quite silent. St. Mark's is a pretty cavernous space--well-suited to much of this repertoire--and the recording captures the space very well.

The Mother Road

Bach: Great Chorales of the Clavierübung III
Murray Forbes Somerville at the Harvard Flentrop
Raven Records, OAR-750

• Ten Chorale Preludes, BWV 669-671, 676, 678, 680, 682, 684, 686, 688
  
• Prelude and Fugue in E-flat, "St. Anne"

***

This instrument was made famous by the late concert organist E. Power Biggs, who recorded six volumes of Bach on it, plus Hindemith's organ sonatas and some Sweelinck and several others. Since Biggs' death in 1977, the instrument has been regularly played, but recorded much less frequently. The Harvard University Organist Murray Forbes Somerville recorded the Orgelbüchlein on it 20 years or so ago now, and organist John Ayer did a musical tribute to Biggs a few years back. On this present disc, recorded in 2000, Dr. Somerville finishes his tenure at Harvard by recording about half of the Third part of the Clavierübung.

I confess have a exaggerated soft spot for this particular organ, and I'm frankly surprised to learn there is a recording on it which I've somehow missed (I've scoured my CDs a couple times, convinced that this purchase was a duplicate, but so far I can't find it). Years ago I even made a pilgrimage to Boston specifically to see this organ, and I was able to get a private tour of the instrument and was allowed to spend a couple hours on my own poking around and playing it. When I was first discovering the organ--and discovering Bach--in the early 80s, Biggs' recordings were in record stores everywhere. The existence of this particular instrument in Harvard's Germanic Museum was Biggs' doing, with the organist doing the research, commissioning the builder, and even paying for the instrument out of his own pocket (he later donated the organ to the University, I believe). This instrument played a huge role in awakening America's sensibilities to the riches of organ history, and specifically to the real virtues of baroque organ design, principles from which contemporary organ design had diverged sharply.

This awakening to the merits of baroque and pre-baroque organs began a couple decades before this Flentrop was installed at Harvard in 1958, and in fact American builders, responding to this awakening, had begun to take small, tentative steps to incorporate some of the baroque tonal and mechanical principles into their modern instruments. The preceding organ in the Germanic Museum's loft--prior to Biggs' Flentrop--came from the firm of Aeolian-Skinner, and was an experiment with Biggs to try out some of these new theories. The organ was broadcast weekly on radio, and became quite famous in its own right. But this Aeolian-Skinner "baroque" instrument was a travesty compared to what Biggs had played and recorded in Europe, and he wanted much more. The story goes that the tonal directorship of Aeolian-Skinner was coming vacant, and Biggs wanted that position for himself, confident that he could help the firm, and the American organ industry as a whole, take a giant leap back to the future. When the position was denied him, the most famous and influential organist in the world went to a Dutch builder and commissioned the instrument which helped put Skinner, and most of the other builders of "American Classic" organs, out of business entirely.

That's the story, anyway. But the instrument is quite able to tell the salient parts of its own story, the rest of this business falling away and leaving only music. It's a fairly small organ--27 stops and 34 ranks over three manuals and pedal--but it's in a spectacularly live acoustic, and the organ speaks with an astounding clarity. It seems possible to identify the sound of each individual pipe, and yet the ensemble comes together from disparate individual sounds in a most unexpected way. Dirk Flentrop has given the organ a bright, present character which sounds vibrantly musical, moreso than any other organ I've ever heard. I'm accustomed to thinking that it's just my early exposure to the instrument which biases me toward this favoritism, but even after a couple years without listening to these old recordings I find my excitement quickly renewed to hear it again; it's really a magical convergence of circumstances which add up to a confident and compelling musical statement.



Dr. Somerville writes in the CD notes:

The pipes, voiced on low wind pressure and placed on the historic form of slider chests, have a gentle, alive quality of sound, and the open-toe, un-nicked voicing gives an articulate quality. This instrument was among the first examples (and for many years by far the most prominent) of the "Baroque" or historical organ revival; Flentrop subsequently installed many other instruments throughout the United States. Though it now appears to us more a product of its time in its neo-Baroque austerity (with no tremulant, no strings, pronounced chiff, and equal temperament) it remains a beautifully musical organ in an almost ideal acoustic location.

The playing and recording are both first-rate. This one gets put in my special pile.