Lefebure-Wely - wonderful music - all yours

[Contratrombone64]

This is fabulous stuff and MORE than you could possibly play at one church service, enjoy (yes, it's out of copyright).

[Krummhorn]

Wonderful collection ...
Just reading through these, #1 and #4 are the ones I'm going to work on first. I'm again playing for a Hymn Festival in September ... either one of these will work out splendidly for the prelude spot.

[Contratrombone64]

Hey Lars - he's one of my all time favourite organ composers, he just understood the instrument so wonderfully AND didn't have a problem writing pleasing music (go figure).

[jhnbrbr]

There was a time when he was rather despised for his outrageous Sortie's, but I get the feeling attitudes have changed and he's fully respectable again now. And there's no doubt he could write beautiful quieter stuff too, and he was NEVER boring.

[dll927]

Wasn't he the organist at St.-Sulpice at the time "the monster" was put in? I think he died just a few years later and left room for C-M W.

Apparently there was at least a minor bit of controversy over Widor getting the job. He was pretty young at the time, but had a couple of influential advocates.

It's sort of odd how composers seem to come and go in estimation. Supposedly, Franck was not highly regarded during his lifetime, but his reputation grew later. As for Widor, he wrote other compositions, but is now known almost exclusively for the organ "symphonies", which no less an authority than Marcel Dupre called "suites of pieces".

[Contratrombone64]

In my humble opinion, Widor's Symphonies, on the whole are tedious and boring ... there are odd movements that I adore (Pontifical March springs to mind). Vierne was far more interesting in my mind and, sadly his symphonies are rarely performed. As for Guilman - who ever hears the other three symphones, one of which is just stunning (number 1)?

[rovikered]

Wasn't he the organist at St.-Sulpice at the time "the monster" was put in? I think he died just a few years later and left room for C-M W.

Apparently there was at least a minor bit of controversy over Widor getting the job. He was pretty young at the time, but had a couple of influential advocates.

The story of Widor's appointment to Saint-Sulpice is curiously interesting.
Briefly it is that he was appointed Organist on a temporary basis. The appointment was never confirmed but he stayed on as Organist and remained so for the rest of his life. Technically, I suppose, he was the 'temporary' Organist for 64 years !!

[dll927]

Yes, I've been through that story a number of times. One version says that, since he was hired for a year, they just forgot about it when the year was up, since the organ was still sounding. Widor never got the "titulaire" title, but his "temporary" was a new meaning of the word.

As for his "symphonies", I agree that parts of them leave one wondering, and at least some of the first ones had actually already been composed as separate pieces before he came up with the "symphony" idea.

A fellow named John Near, who last I heard was a professor at a small Christian Science college in the midwest, did his doctoral on Widor's symphonies and did quite thorough research on the various versions of them. It seems Widor made numerous changes as time went on, but that's what professors live for -- to delve into everything that happened and see if they can produce a "definitive" version. And surely there will be another one later who will choose to "revise" Near's work.

I once had a history professor at San Jose State who had done his dissertation on the presidential election of 1908. That election is somewhat laughed at, since Teddy Roosevelt sort of hand-picked Taft to succeed him. But when you need a subject for a dissertation, all bets are off.

BTW, there was another professor in the history department at SJS, Jackson Turner Main, who was a grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner, of "no more frontier" fame.

[jhnbrbr]

I used to own an interesting little biography of Widor - until I made the mistake of lending it to someone! I seem to remember that Cavaille-Coll was not fond of Widor's style of playing at first, and took him to see Rossini in the hope that Rossini would set him straight, but Rossini thought Widor was fine as he was. Cavaille-Coll apparently took an active interest in the training of organists as well as the building of organs, worried that there weren't enough talented players to exploit his instruments to the full.

Going back to Lefebure-Weley, we can be sure that Franck held him in high regard as he dedicated the "Final" of the Six Pieces to him.

[Contratrombone64]

jhnbrbr - I didn't know that about Franck and L-W - thanks

[dll927]

Well, L-W got a real romp dedicated to him. That is easily Franck's liveliest organ piece. You'd better know where the pedals are for that beginning preoration.