For those of you who missed my organ recital last Saturday (you weren't alone), here are the notes I used to introduce the music. I'm hoping to have a recording available soon (in CD and downloadable MP3 format).

Theme and Variations - Organ Music for Lent

St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron Ohio

7.30pm, March 11th, 2006

Works in theme and variation form have been written through most of the history of classical music, one of the most common forms of which is the Passacaglia.

Passacaglia (in French, Passacaille) is both a musical form and the corresponding court dance. Its name derives from the Spanish pasear (to walk) and calle (a street), supposedly to denote the music played by wandering musicians.

Originally a slow Italian or Spanish dance in 3/4 time, the passacaglia later came to be an instrumental work in 3/4 based on a melody which repeats unchangingly throughout.

Thema met variates - Andriessen

Opens with a free fantasia section, followed by the theme in A minor and subsequent variations.

Passacaglia - Buxtehude

Passacaglia in D minor, is made up of four sections, the outer ones in the tonic key of D minor, the second in F major and the third in A minor. Each section features the seven-note ostinato theme in the pedals seven times. The Dutch organist Piet Kee has put forward the convincing notion that the 4 x 7 statements of the theme are inspired by the 28 days of the lunar month (four weeks of seven days) - many Baroque composers used number symbolism in their work, and Buxtehude’s interest in astronomy is also known from seven keyboard suites (now lost) depicting the nature of the seven planets known at the time. Thus the opening is the new moon and the third section (which contains the most strident writing) is the full moon, and so on. Kee concludes:

There is yet another factor in the Passacaglia which points towards the cosmos. Although the precise length of an orbit of the moon around the earth is 27.321661 days, the interval between two new moons is 29.530588 days. The difference in time of 2¼ days, the difference between the so-called sidereal and synodic months, is caused by the movement of the earth around the sun. In Buxtehude’s Passacaglia there is also a difference of length: 28 times the four-bar theme should produce 112 bars, but the total length is 122 bars. This difference is caused by the three modulatory interludes and an extra final bar necessitated to end the piece in D minor. Thus the interludes create an ‘overlength’ of nine bars; converted into theme-lengths (days): 2¼.

Med Jesus vil eg fara - Nystedt

Knut Nystedt, born September 3, 1915, in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, is an orchestral and choral composer. He grew up in a Christian home where hymns and classical music were an important part of everyday life. His major compositions for choir and vocal soloists are mainly based on texts from the Bible or sacred themes. Old church music, especially Palestrina and Gregorian chants, have had a major influence on his compositions.

In 1966, the King of Norway made him Knight of the Order of St. Olav in recognition of his contributions to Norwegian music.

Passacaglia in C minor - Bach

The Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 582) is the name of a piece of music by Johann Sebastian Bach for the organ. It is his most large-scale work for the organ, described by the noted organist and Bach player E. Power Biggs as "a work of reasoned and convincing musical logic". It has been dated to the period 1716-1717, when Bach was invited to Dresden for a musical contest.

The opening passacaglia has an eight-bar bass theme, the first half of which is thought to have been derived from a short composition by the French compser Alain Raison for a mass. This theme is then repeated no less than twenty times, during which it is used as the framework for a series of variations, described by Robert Schumann as intertwined so ingeniously that one can never cease to be amazed. (Among other devices, the theme is transferred to the soprano voice for the eleventh and twelfth variations.)

The following fugue is based on the first half of the same theme, to which Bach adds several counter-melodies; G. Hoffman described it as reduc[ing] even this passacaglia of passacaglias to the function of an overture.

Master Tallis’ Testament - Howells

The title of this piece pays tribute to a father of English cathedral music - Thomas Tallis, who was organist at my former parish of Waltham Abbey between 1538 and its dissolution in 1540. Composed forty years later, in 1940, Master Tallis's Testament unfolds Quasi lento, teneramente in a gentle six-eight rhythm and in G minor. It consists of three variants of a theme which falls into three phrases (eight plus six plus four bars). The music rises gradually to a climax at the end of the third variant. A quiet echo of the last two bars supplies a coda and a peaceful ending in the major. The piece is one which its composer regarded as most typical of his compositional style and with particular affection.

Passacaille - Martin

Frank Martin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 15 September 1890. He was the tenth and youngest child of a clergyman's family. He played and improvised on the piano even before he went to school.

By the age of nine he composed charming children's songs that were perfectly balanced without ever having been taught musical forms or harmony. A performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, heard at the age of twelve, left a lasting impression on the composer, for whom J.S. Bach remained the true master.

His Passacaille for organ owes much to Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. Written during the Second World War, this cataclysmic organ work is a moving expression of deep anguish heroically endured and contained within the eight-bar pattern.