FRANK MORANA
AmerOrganist 38/6

ROLLIN SMITH, ed., Toccatas, Carillons, and Scherzos for Organ, 27 Works for Church or Concert Performance. Dover Publications. $14.95. Most friends have been won for the organ, says Rollin Smith, by having heard an organist play a brilliant toccata, carillon, or scherzo. It follows, then, that every organist needs to have at least a few such pieces on hand, and the present publication will amply serve to fulfill that need. It contains works by two dozen French, Italian, Belgian, English, and American composers from the 19th and early-20th centuries, in which the common thread is not profundity, but effect. Most of the works are reprinted from authentic (and often hard to find) originals in the editor’s own possession, but several––owing to the almost unreconcilable disparity between upright and oblong print formats––have had to be painstakingly re-engraved expressly for this publication. The selections include much that is familiar, but also much that is less well-known. The familiar works, by Dubois, Fletcher, Gigout, Mulet, Widor, Yon, Boëllmann, Sowerby, and Bingham, need no special introduction other than that they are here made available in the same high-quality, cost-effective format that one has come to expect from America’s premier reprint publishing house. Some of the less-familiar works include a toccata by Georges MacMaster, carillons by Jules Grison and Emile Bourdon, a scherzo by Gaston-Marie Dethier, and a Rondò con imitazione de’ campanelli by Giovanni Morandi. MacMaster repatriated from England to France, but committed suicide at age 31; his Toccata, op. 67, no. 2 is motivically obsessive, with remote modulations in the manner of Schubert. Grison was cathedral organist at Reims from age 21; the final movement from his Les Cloches (subtitled “The Mournful Bells of Reims”) is a Magnificat prelude in which the Dies irae is accompanied by the pedale d’orage (thunder pedal; if you don’t have one, just play as many low pedal notes as possible simultaneously). Bourdon was cathedral organist in Monaco; his intricate Carillons, op. 7, no. 2, was favored by fellow classmate Marcel Dupré, and was the first work ever recorded by Dupré, on an organ roll for the Aeolian Company. Dethier emigrated from Belgium to the United States, helped found the American Guild of Organists, and became the first organ teacher at the Institute of Musical Arts (later renamed the Juilliard School); his Scherzo in E-flat has many starts and stops, and the “dead spaces” are filled with more interesting material than in the main passages. Morandi was cathedral choirmaster in Senigalia, and the composer of twelve books of organ sonatas; his “Bell Rondo,” op. 17, calls for the glockenspiel, but without any trace of Romantic-era style. In a class by itself––the only overt transcription, and the only “18th-century German” work represented––the once ubiquitous Toccata by Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 565, is given as the very opening piece in the collection, but in an early-20th-century garb: the 1911 edition by Edwin H. Lemare, an interpretation whose meritorious traits may come as a surprise to both players and scholars. Other works in the collection are toccatas by Callaerts, Mailly, Renaud, Renzi, Shelly, and Tournemire, carillons by Marty and Sowerby, and scherzi by Bingham, Bossi, and Fumigalli. The technical requirements for these pieces vary widely, so that here is something for almost anyone who wishes to “win friends” for the organ.

©The American Organist