Bach plus seven in the Tower

Here’s an absolute gem I would have missed, had it not been for the diplo-mate and European Commission/EUNIC support for a fabulous cause. Organist William Whitehead is masterminding a project to ‘complete’ the Orgelbüchlein, Bach’s miniature collection of chorale preludes for organ. The exquisite little book has titles of 164 chorales, but Bach only completed 46 of them. Whitehead had the brilliant idea of commissioning composers to fill in the gaps, providing as he puts it ‘a “Gesamtorgelbüchlein”, a complete hymnal...a sort of 21st century tribute to Bach posing the question “what would Bach have done if he’d been alive today?" '.

Looking forward to getting inside my beloved Tower of London and sitting in the airy Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, I nevertheless approached what I imagined would be an all-organ programme with some trepidation. I only partly josh that too much organ music makes me sick, simply because during one Aldeburgh Festival when I was on duty as a Hesse Student, I had to leave Gillian Weir’s recital in Norwich Cathedral to throw up just outside the porch. In truth, it was probably something I’d eaten, though Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on BACH is chromatic enough in itself to turn the stomach.

As it turned out, Whitehead had devised a sequence of dazzling intricacy and variety. The real depths were plunged in the wonderful Catherine Martin’s exploration of three Biber ‘Rosary’ Sonatas, accompanied by Whitehead: I’ve heard Andrew Manze’s performances on CD, but I was hardly aware of all the musical symbology, such as the sign of the cross, in these searing representations of the Annunciation, the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion. And only rarely have I taken on board how vibrato-free playing as expressive as this can pierce the soul. It was helpful to have an introduction from Catherine explaining the use of scordatura; each of the sonatas requires retuning of the strings to create its special quality. I came across the scheme while I was seeking further web enlightenment:

Two of the Biber sonatas were placed strategically as part of the Orgelbüchlein sandwich, respectively prefaced and concluded by two of Bach’s big Preludes and Fugues as played with magnificent control and the occasional freedom by Colm Carey; the one in G major (BWV 541) sent us out treading air. Carey also played the Bach originals and the new works in the Orgelbüchlein’s sequence, broken only by the central Biber meditation on Gethsemane. In another inspired touch, Susan Gilmour Bailey gave expressive rein to the original chorale melodies, so we could hear what the six new composers as well as Bach had done with them.

Or not. In two cases, undoubtedly the most original, Spanish composer Benet Casablancas and Lithuanian Justé Janulyté had sent the melodies underground, Casablancas’s wild fantasia – much the longest at just under the commission limit of five minutes – asking the organist to pull out a multitude of stops. Most interesting, perhaps, was the range of approaches: in addition to these mysteries and complexities, Thomas Daniel Schlee gave us a 21st century version of Bachian polyphony, Ēriks Ešenvalds contented himself with chaste homage to Bach and Jonas Jurkūnas’s reflection on the surprisingly cheerful Am Wasserflüssen Babylon burbled along cheerfully, if a little aimlessly, in minimalist style.

I was delighted to see Benet there (pictured above right with Whitehead), since we’d enjoyed a lively correspondence following our pre-performance conversation when the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the brilliant Josep Pons played his Seven Scenes from Hamlet. And I hadn’t realized that my connecting Jurowski with Casablancas, as a composer in whose music he might take no small interest, resulted in a performance of the composer’s Darkness Visible when the LPO and their principal conductor visited Barcelona this February.

I’ve said little of the circumstances surrounding this Spitalfields Winter Festival event. It began unpromisingly with our queueing at the Tower entrance in the freezing cold, being roughly herded by an uncharming Beefeater while penguin-suited Esso employees swanned past us to their reception. But it’s always wonderful to enter the inner sanctuary at night, the White Tower looking more imposing than ever

As you can see from the top photo, the lights of St Peter ad Vincula glowed invitingly. Inside it was warm and bright. We admired the monuments, and the sanctuary inscriptions to the three ladies who lost their heads on Tower Green and were buried here – Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey – alongside sanctified Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. The organ case sat in the Banqueting House Whitehall from its construction by Bernhard Schmidt in 1699 to its removal to this royal chapel in 1899, by which time additions had made it three times larger; more recently it has been restored to its original dimensions. The pipework is recent and the instrument sounds in good health, for all I can tell. One thing’s for sure: sitting in the first row of the left aisle and watching foot and fingerwork, as well as having superlative Martin playing right in front of us only added to the pleasure of an unforgettable evening.

One footnote while we’re in chapel: should I have been surprised when the government’s Maria Miller announced that the Church of England would be legally exempt from the current move to allow gay marriages in church* (ie limiting such marriages to a very restricted number of venues)? After all, isn’t the CofE the Tory party at prayer? For myself, I don’t care: civil partnership is good enough for me, and I was reminded that in early January we celebrate seven years of our ritual and the ‘Just Not Married’ party which followed, jumping in as we did to tie the registry office knot three weeks after it all became legal in the UK. But why should those who do want a church event be treated like second-class citizens? Erstwhile blogger pal Jon Dryden Taylor, who doesn’t post enough these days, gives a brilliant exposition of why our rights should be extended here.

*It now turns out this was done 'on the hoof', without consulting the CofE