Liszt : Prélude and Fugue on the Name of B.A.C.H

Schumann : Six Fugues B-A-C-H, op. 60

During the Classical period of the 18th century, organ music was seldom written, since most composers started to write for the newly invented piano forte. We know though that the young Mozart performed on existing organs to great acclaim; early in his life he worked on church music compositions which show great interest in polyphonic structures, a practice he would take up again towards the end of his life playing organs in Dresden, Leipzig and Prague (Mozart’s works from this period include the Adagio in C-Flat KV 546 and the Leipzig Gigue in G-Sharp KV 574). The few classical organs built at that time replicated the classical architecture of the period with symmetry, balance and fewer decorations. In his classical period, the young Beethoven had been taught organ playing by teachers such as the Court musician Van den Eeden, who were still steeped in the traditional Baroque tradition. From them he became familiar with J.S. Bach’s musical concepts, and in particular with the Wohltemperierte Klavier.

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Bach : Passacaglia and Fugue in C-Minor

Bach : Die Kunst der Fuge

The Reformation and Counterreformation of the 16th and 17th centuries had a decisive impact not only on the architecture of the time, moving from the harmony and balance of the Renaissance to the painted heavens, extreme ornamentation and disturbance captured in the concave and convex form of the Baroque, but was also replicated in the musical forms of the opera and the art of the castrati singers of the period. In church building, the basilica form was resurrected, not only bringing public and priests into a shared space, but changing the church service to a more participatory experience, in which music, and particularly the organ, played a significant part.

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On my recent European lecture tour, I was fortunate to hear several concerts in magnificent Baroque churches on Baroque organs, including one in the church of the former Cistercian monastery of St. Urban, Switzerland and one in the St. Francis Church in Prague. Not only was this a musical experience to treasure, hearing the works of the greatest organ music composers of their time, (Frescobaldi, Pachelbel, Muffat and Johann Sebastian Bach) played on original instruments, but experiencing it in an architectural space specific to the period.

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Liszt : Les Jeux d’eau a la Villa d’Este (1882)

Ravel : Jeux d’Eau (1901)

Tan Dun : Memories in Watercolor (2003)

Debussy : Preludes (1910-1913) – Des pas sur la neige

Debussy : Preludes (1910-1913) – Brouillards

Debussy : Preludes (1910-1913) – Ondine

Liszt : Etudes d’execution transcendante (1851)

I recently attended a concert held at the Musikfest Stuttgart, which incorporated ‘Water’ as its central thematic element.

In this particular performance, entitled Jeux d’Eau – Wasserspiele – Water Games’, Igor Levit, the young and extraordinarily talented German/Russian pianist, played compositions by Liszt, Debussy, Ravel and Tan Dun.

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Eric Satie
Parade (1917)

Gymnopédies (1893)

Paul Cézanne - The Black Clock

In their respective fields, Paul Cézanne and Claude Debussy influenced the artists of the early 20th century, which found their counterparts in intellectual circles formed around writers and poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Proust and André Breton. Jean Cocteau, in particular, with his interests in the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky and the compositions of Eric Satie, brought many of these artists and their ideas together.

In painting, Cézanne, in his still-life ‘The Black Clock’ and ‘Still-life with a Peppermint Bottle’, pointed the way. Contrary to what we have seen in Baroque era still-lives, which always would refer to the fleeting nature of objects and the viewer to consider his salvation in eternity, in Cézanne’s paintings, objects are present only to be painted. There is no story, no interpretation possible: the ‘Black Clock’ does not tell time; the relationship between it, the cup and the conch shell is distorted and the table cloth rises up to underline the flatness of the canvas, creating pyramid, cube and circles which are at the basis of Cézanne’s concept of painting.

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