EUGENE HARTZELL, Toccata and Passacaglia (1983), Doblinger 18893. The active principle of the toccata, irrespective of nationality or century, is constant movement, yet in this example the sense of movement is stifled by long-drawn-out harmonies and regular phrase-patterns. A promising sonority at the outset, the seventh chord with major/minor third, is not fulfilled, and the ostensible tonal freedom falls into an obvious “C-D” polarity. The registrations are ineffectual––it is hard to imagine any competent organist taking literally on 8¢ alone the passages so marked, or on 8 and 4 (without 16), the chord blocks that appear in the treble registers. This section halts on a twelve-note chord from which the tones are gradually released, leading ultimately to just a single note (presumably pianissimo) and a silence. The ensuing Passacaglia, again, lacks the essential momentum that one normally expects. The subject itself is a promising tone row that, in its reiterations, is set amidst quarters, eighths, triplets, and sixteenths, successively, but it is then fragmented, dissipated, and replaced with weaker material, a polyrhythmic arioso, the tail ends of whose four short sentences are marked for 4¢ alone. The passacaglia “subject” appears once more (and twice again at the end), but what follows, not very credibly, is a free fantasy on the notes B-A-C-H. As much as one would like to be able to say that the composer had lent “new direction” to a time-honored form, the treatment here seems merely uneventful and arbitrary.