Out of ideas?

Let's say that Buxtehude, Bach, Mendelssohn, Franck, Widor, Vierne, and Messiaen are some of the most important composers ever for the organ. Who is missing from the list is not important. It is sufficient to agree that all those guys are dead and that some of them have been dead for quite a while.

Concerning how to play those composers’ music they way they played it or wanted us to, we have studied, argued, edited, re-edited, published, discovered, accepted, rejected, performed, lectured, muttered, proclaimed, loved, hated, worshipped, and scoffed for YEARS. We are much smarter about Bach than ever before, and yet we still don’t agree on how he did things. Same for Buxtehude. We were given more firsthand information from Franck, Widor, Vierne, and Messiaen, and yet I still encounter organists who hate this or that interpretation, based on this or that scholarly study. Widor was constantly revising, and Messiaen had more than one change of heart, especially after he got the Trinité organ rebuilt.

Consider Bach. We have lived with him for a very long time now. And yet we still hear fresh interpretations of his music. On that score, names such as Fox, Cochereau, Alain, Koopman, Carpenter, Guillou, and Jacobs come to mind. Never mind their individual scholarly levels; we’re looking here at novelty of interpretation and presentation. Will they/we ever run out of ideas? Will we ever run out of people who breathe new life into Bach at every turn? Or is it just that Bach’s music is perfect no matter how it is played?

The more frightening question is, “Have we gotten bored?” Is Bach now so old that we need people to play it through constantly newer lenses to keep it interesting? Or lo these many years later, have we finally decided that the sky will not fall if we do things our own way? Have we been looking for chances to reinvent Bach and can now get away with them? Where did the above-named performers get their ideas? Did they parrot the interpretations of their teachers? Or did their teachers grant them the freedom to go for it? Or did they just branch out and damn the torpedoes?

Widor set his instructions and registrations in stone, little oversights on his part notwithstanding. He also had definite, well-documented ideas on attack, release, staccato, phrasing, and on not ‘lifting’ at phrases if there is no rest written. And so his music is also set in stone. That leaves not a lot of freedom except in tempo and rubato. Then performers started chipping away at the stone of the registrations and the attacks and the releases and the phrasing and the lifting. The Allegros got slushy and seasick. The Adagios got careless. Widor’s calls for certain symphonic registrations are being replaced with more orchestral registrations, especially in the U.S. And Widor isn't the only victim, of course. Name your composer and piece.

I believe that performers have self-assumed a more prominent position in the pecking order. Guilmant and Dupré were world-class performers, but between the two of them, there was firsthand connection to Widor, Franck, and Cavaillé-Coll. But fast-forward to now, where many of Dupré’s students have hit retirement age. Who will carry Dupré’s performing torch now? Many people are choosing not to. They are performing in their own way, not in Dupré’s. Composers’ written intentions are categorically ignored more and more these days, but no one punishes the transgressors. Why should we? The gauntlet has been thrown down that if the music now speaks to a wider audience, then the new interpretation is not only forgivable but also would have been allowed – maybe even championed – by the composer himself.

We’ll never know. Myself, I shall continue to play the best I can in a traditional manner and leave the daring stuff to the daredevils. But there is virtue in knowing the ‘rules.’ There is virtue in alerting an audience that you’re going to ignore the rules. There is plenty of room for forgiveness in articulation in Bach. But I find no virtue in mushing up French Symphonic literature with flabby attacks and releases. I draw the line there. Now you know.