Music for Solo Violin by Johann Sebastian Bach

The Fuga: Allegro (from Sonata No. 1) is the first and shortest of Bach’s three great fugues for solo violin and has a scary trick up its sleeve. Many soloists memorize these works, but if you forget a crucial key change on the last page, you can find yourself circling around in an endless harmonic loop with no way out! And this has happened to some very accomplished players in performance. The theme begins with four repeated notes before descending and gathering complexity. Bach’s writing is so clever that some passages sound like three violins are playing.

The Allemanda opens Bach’s first Partita in B minor which alternates four stylized dance movements (of which the Allemanda is one) with a “Double,” or variation at twice the harmonic speed. An Allemande or Allemanda (literally, German dance) is a moderately slow movement very popular in the Baroque era, and was often placed at the beginning of a suite or partita. It is serious and graceful, but with a clear sense of rhythmic direction.

This Allemande captures a hint of French texture with its dotted-note (long-short) rhythm.

The Double, following the Allemanda, is characterized by rapid sixteenth-note passagework, which features some daunting leaps and awkward string-crossings that make it challenging for the player, but always rewarding for the listener.

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The selections on Pastor Sebastian’s April 2 program are part of a personal 10-year project (begun in September 2020) to master and perform all the movements of Bach’s three Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin within 10 years at St. Matthews.

Music for Shakuhachi

The Japanese Zen Buddhist Shakuhachi is a vertically-played bamboo flute. It’s outer simplicity, a length of bamboo with five large holes and a half-moon shaped cut-out for a mouth piece,  belies a complex double conical bore and approximately 60 carefully tuned and timbred separate pitches over its two octave range. The instrument came to Japan from China between the 6th and 8th centuries, where it was already being played by Cha’n Buddhist monks. The instrument at that point in time was about half the size of the current standard length (1 shaku + 8/10s – hachi,  in old Japanese measure = 54 cm).

The shakuhachi was never played as a folk instrument. Instead, it was passed down from teacher to student as an instrument of Buddhist enlightenment, at first by mendicant, or wandering, monks. Later, it was taught in the Meian temple by the Fuke order of Zen monks. These monks were called “komuso” or “priests of nothingness.” The music for the instrument, called “honkyoku” or “original songs,” is designed as a part of a musical meditation practice called “suizen” (blowing meditation). In honkyoku the sounds of nature such as wind, the rhythm of crane wings, sounds of nesting birds, insects buzzing, and more figure prominently and intentionally. The practitioner is not required to simply render notes as they are taught. Instead, as one plays one harmonizes the sounds of the room, the emotions of the listeners or chanters, and eventually the entire environment around them. For a musical person exploring interfaith and intercultural connections, it offers a rich and deep journey into spirituality through noticing, respecting, and listening to others and our shared environment. To the solo practitioner, it sustains a spiritually and culturally rich and deeply rewarding musical practice.

Tamuke (Tah-moo-keh) (transl: “hands folded together in prayer”) My root teacher, Taniguchi Yoshinobu, writes eloquently about Tamuke:

"Tamuke" literally means "hands folded together in prayer" and is a eulogy or requiem for the departed souls of loved ones. It is a melody that brings indescribable sorrow and stillness deep into the heart.

A shakuhachi player can sit playing Tamuke until the person in his or her heart appears. Time is not part of this world; one should naturally lose oneself in this process and several hours will pass in an instant. Play shakuhachi to express the emotions you experience at the gates of death. Play while remembering the things you experienced with this person, recalling their existence as if you are sharing old stories with them. Play until tears of sadness stream down your cheeks, then tears of happiness, as you feel their presence sitting next to you and the relief that they still have an existence, albeit in a different world.

In our current pandemic context, Tamuke is a living piece. A piece to be played simply to remind myself that there are people suffering from loss and that I am sometimes so isolated in my own cozy home, that I must wake up and remember. Tamuke allows me to express the constraint of emotions in the light passages of a lullaby, while alternating with emotional outbursts which sound like crying, or heavy sighs, overblown sounds called “miraiki”, and notes stretched too sharp to be played on a piano, clarinet, or flute. I can play Tamuke until I remember them sharing songs and their stories with me.

Music for Organ

J.S. Bach appears on nearly every organist’s program list. The Fantasia in G minor is a dynamic interplay between divisions of the organ which “speak” to one another in dialogue. The sixteenth note passages remind one of the Holy Spirit which is always with us. The heavy, deliberate pedal line might suggest our earthly existence and struggles with life. The juxtaposition of fiery brilliance and peaceful reflection echo the reality of today’s hopeful Spring in the midst of worries of a third wave of the pandemic.

O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross (O man, bemoan your grievous sin) is a prelude on a Lutheran passion chorale from Bach’s “Little Organ Book”. The ornamented melody is played by the violin which gives it an intimate, tender tone.

Organist and composer Gaston Dethier was born into a musical Belgian family. His career began at just 11 years of age when he was appointed organist at l’Église Saint-Jacques-le-Mineur de Liège. During studies at the Liège Royal Conservatory under Alexandre Guilmant, he won multiple prizes for excellence in organ, piano, harmony and composition.

He moved to the US as a young man and became a professor of piano and organ at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Andante Grazioso, first published in 1899 as an organ solo, is typical of his late-romantic lyrical style. It has since been arranged for a number of instruments with organ accompaniment, including flute, oboe, violin, viola and Bb clarinet.

Léon Boëllmann was born in Alsace and at just nine years old was accepted to study at the prestigious École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, where one of his teachers was the renowned Eugène Gigout. Boëllmann excelled in every subject he took, winning first prizes in piano, organ, counterpoint, fugue, plainsong, and composition.

After graduating, he held senior posts at a number of major Paris churches. But his professional career, during which he wrote 160 pieces in many musical genres, was cut tragically short when he died at age 35. His wife died only a year later and Eugène Gigout, his former professor, raised the couple’s three young children, one of whom, Marie-Louise Boëllmann-Gigout (1891–1977), became a noted organist in her own right.

Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique (1895) is his best-known work for organ. The third movement, Prière à Notre-Dame, is memorable for the gentle arch of its opening phrases, its pensive understated texture, and restrained but effective dynamics.

 

April 2 Concert Page

Biographies

Music at St. Matthews Concert Series