Mayfair Organ Concerts – The Grosvenor Chapel
19 March 2024

Early Music Day concert
Andrew Benson-Wilson
BEFORE BACH

Conrad Paumann (c1410-1473) Incipit Fundamentum m.C.p.C;
Magnificat Octavi Toni. 2v
(From the Buxheimer Orgelbuch, c1460)

Hans Buchner (1483-1538) Magnificat anima sexti Toni. 2v

Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629) Magnificat Tertii Toni. 3v

Mathias Weckmann (1617-74) Magnificat II. Toni. 4v

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) Fantasia in G; Three Fugues from the Magnificat tertii Toni

Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654) Benedicamus à 6 Voc.1624

This is the first of two related Early Music Day concerts with the titles of BEFORE BACH and AFTER BACH. The second concert, AFTER BACH, is this Sunday, 24 March at 7.45 in Christ’s Chapel of Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift, 14 Gallery Rd, Dulwich SE21 7AD with music by Stanley, CPE Bach and Corrette. Today’s concert traces German organ music from around 1460 to Bach’s youth, with a focus on music for the service of Vespers, notably the Magnificat, one of the key musical elements of Vespers in both the Catholic and Lutheran traditions.

The Buxheimer Orgelbuch is an enormous collection of music collected between 1450/70. The organist and theorist Conrad Paumannwas the driving force behind the collection and the named composer of several pieces, including this short opening Incipit Fundamentum. He was born in Nuremberg but built his career as Court Organist in Munich. The Buxheimer Orgelbuch passed to and languished in the library of the Imperial Buxheim Charterhouse in the 16th-century until 1883 when, after secularisation, it was sold to the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

Hans Buchner, a pupil of the famed organist and teacher Paul Hofhaimer, was organist of Konstanz Munster. Like Paumann, he published a treatise on organ composition and performance, which included a collection of organ music. These two Magnificat verses are labelled Choralis in discanto et alto fugat, pedaliter, the chant appearing in canon first at the fifth, then at a fourth above two more elaborate lower voices, one using the pedals.

Hieronymus Praetorius was a pioneer of the North German school of organist composers before the generation of Sweelinck students (which included two of his sons) dominated the musical life of Hamburg. He followed his father as organist of Hamburg’s Jacobikirche. He composed many large-scale vocal works in the Italian late Renaissance polychoral style. The second verse of this three-verse Magnificat is an early example of a chorale fantasia, and genre that continued until Bach’s time.

Matthias Weckmann was taught in Dresden by Schütz, a pupil of Giovanni Gabrielli, and by Hieronymus Praetorius’s son Jacob in Hamburg. He had organist posts in Dresden and Denmark. He was a friend of Froberger, a pupil of Frescobaldi. In 1655, after a well-documented audition, he became organist at Hamburg’s Jacobikirche, which had one of the finest organs in Germany, with pipes dating back to 1512. The second of this four verse Magnificat (composed during the 1664 Hamburg plague) is also a choral fantasia. It is followed by a more meditative verse and a powerful concluding movement.

Johann Pachelbel was born in Nuremberg and studied in Altdorf and Regensburg. While working at Vienna’s Stephansdom he was introduced to Italian music, before returning to Nuremberg as organist of St. Sebaldus. He was a friend of several members of the Bach family and was the teacher of Bach’s older brother, Johann Christoph Bach. The 9-year-old Bach may have met Pachelbel at JCB’s 1694 wedding. Towards the end of his life, he composed 95 Magnificat fugues in the eight church modes. The first fugue is one of the few that includes a reference to the Magnificat chant. It follows a Fantasia in the style of a Frescobaldi Durezza e Legature.

Samuel Scheidt studied with Sweelinck before becoming Kappellmeister to the Margrave of Brandenburg. After the Thirty Years War and the death of his four children from the plague, he became director of music to Halle’s city churches. In 1624, he published one of the most important early 17th-century collections of keyboard music, the three-part Tabulatura nova. The Tabulatura nova ends with two Modus Pleno pieces designed to demonstrate a method of playing full organ for six voices and double pedal lines. This final one is based on the chant for the concluding Vespers Benedicamus.

© Andrew Benson-Wilson 2024

Andrew Benson-Wilson specialises in the performance of early music. His playing is informed by his experience of historic organs, an understanding of period performance techniques and by several internationally renowned teachers. He has recorded the complete organ works of Thomas Tallis. One of his Tallis CDs, with plainchant verses sung by Chapelle du Roi, was Gramophone Magazine’s ‘Record of the Month’. The Organists’ Review commented that his “understanding of the historic organ is thorough, and the beautifully articulated, contoured result here is sufficient reason for hearing this disk. He is a player of authority in this period of keyboard music.”

Andrew’s recitals have ranged from the enormous 1642 Festorgel organ in Klosterneburg Abbey and the famous 1562 Ebert organ in the Innsbruck Hofkirche, to a tiny 1668 chamber organ in a medieval castle in Croatia and the 1723 ‘Bach’ organ in Störmthall, Leipzig. One reviewer wrote that his recital in London’s St John’s, Smith Square was “one of the most rewarding organ recitals heard in London in years, an enthralling experience”. Recent recitals have included Christ Church Spitalfields and a special Handel concert in St George’s, Hanover Square for The Handel Friends.

Andrew’s little book, The Performance of Early Organ Music, is a required text in a number of Universities. He is also a reviewer, formally with Early Music Review and now reviewing on his own website:http://www.andrewbensonwilson.org. He is an elected member of The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, and the Council of the National Early Music Association. Examples of live performances can be heard at http://soundcloud.com/andrew-benson-wilson.

Andrew’s next Mayfair recital is on Tuesday 2 July at 1:10 in St George’s, Hanover Square with a programme of Weckmann and Scheidt in their anniversary years.