Category Archives: Themes

Pange lingua

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PangeLinguaPange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium is a hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) for the Feast of Corpus Christi. It is also sung on Holy Thursday, during the procession from the church to the place where the Blessed Sacrament is kept until Good Friday. The last two stanzas, called separately Tantum Ergo, are sung at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The chant is in the Phrygian mode.

See a list of other popular chant themes here.

Videos:
Aart de Kort – Grands Jeux sur le Pange Lingua – Orgue Isnard (1774) de la Basilique St. Marie-Madeleine à St. Maximin (Provence)
Anthony Hammond – Improvisation on “Pange Lingua” – Bradford Cathedral

1953 Haarlem Improvisation Themes

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Improv-Themes-2At the 1953 Haarlem Improvisation Competition, the contestants were Paul Barras, Anton Heiller, Piet Kee (winner), Matthieu Prange and Karl Richter. Adriaan Engles provided the themes and asked for a Sonata in three movements according to the instructions shown with the themes. Thanks to the NCRV archives it is possible to hear the improvisations of the finalists (Anton Heiller, Piet Kee and Karl Richter) through the links below:

Many other improvisations and performances are available through the NCRV archives here.

St. Anne

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StAnneST. ANNE was probably composed by William Croft when he was organist at St. Anne’s Church in Soho, London, England. The tune was first published in A Supplement to the New Version (1708) as a setting for Psalm 42. ST. ANNE became a setting for “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” in Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), and the two have been linked ever since. The tune shares its first melodic motif with a number of other tunes from the early eighteenth century, most notably Bach’s great fugue in E-flat, nicknamed “St. Anne” because of the similarity of the first fugue subject to this tune.

Videos:
Robert Summers Potterton, III – Improvisation on ST. ANNE – St. Luke’s Lutheran Church: Dedham, MA

Nettleton

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NettletonFirst published without any composer listed in Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (1813), this tune has been ascribed to both John Wyeth (1770-1858), pubisher of the collection and Asahel Nettleton (1783-1844), who was a well-known evangelist of the early nineteenth century for whom the tune is named. Nettleton published Village Hymns (1825), but this compilation had no music and there is no indication that Nettleton wrote any tunes at any time. Wyeth, a printer by trade, was known as a compiler and publisher of early shape-note tune books. However there is no evidence that he also wrote music, as he was not himself a musician.

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Videos:
Timothy Howard – Improvised postlude on NETTLETON – Pasadena Presbyterian Church, California

Beach Spring

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BeachSpringAttributed to B. F. White, the tune BEACH SPRING first appeared in The Sacred Harp published in Philadelphia in 1844. The tune is named after the Beach Spring Baptist Church in Harris County, Georgia, where White lived. It is a strong, pentatonic tune cast into a rounded bar form (AABA).

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Artwork as Theme

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Improvisation no.III, Wassily Kandinsky, 1911

Improvisation no.III,
Wassily Kandinsky, 1911

Most certainly since the Romantics began to compose programmatic music, there has been a close tie between visual art and music. Perhaps the most famous example is the set of piano pieces Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. It only follows then that organists would then be asked or inspired to improvise music based upon a painting.


Recordings:

Edoardo Bellotti
Promenade: a Musical Procession Through Paintings

Videos:
Jean-Baptiste Dupont – improvisation on the paintings of M.K.Churlionis
Vidas Pinkevicius – Painting: Pieta
Vidas Pinkevicius – Painting: Sleeping Beauty

Aurelia

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AureliaComposed by Samuel S. Wesley, AURELIA (meaning “golden”) was published as a setting for “Jerusalem the Golden” in Selection of Psalms and Hymns, which was compiled by Charles Kemble and Wesley in 1864. Though opinions vary concerning the tune’s merits (Henry J. Gauntlett once condemned it as “secular twaddle”), it has been firmly associated with Samuel John Stone’s text “The Church’s One Foundation” since tune and text first appeared together in the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern.

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Hyfrydol

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HyfrydolHyfrydol is a Welsh hymn tune composed by Rowland Prichard in 1844. It was originally published in the composer’s handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal Cyfaill y Cantorion (“The Singers’ Friend”). The best-known arrangement is probably that by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which he originally produced for his revision of the English Hymnal. Popular texts paired with this tune include William Chatterton Dix’s hymn Alleluia! Sing to Jesus!, Charles Wesley’s Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus, Francis Harold Rowley’s (1854-1952) I Will Sing the Wondrous Story (1886), John Wilbur Chapman’s Our Great Savior (“Jesus, what a friend for sinners”) (1910), and Philip P. Bliss’ I Will Sing of My Redeemer (1876), as well as many other hymns from a variety of faith traditions.

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Recordings:

Organ Ovations & Improvisations
Includes an improvised suite on the tune Hyfrydol by Tom Trenney.

Videos:
Kerry Beaumont – Improvisation on ‘Hyfrydol’ – Coventry Cathedral
Wm. Glenn Osborne – Prelude on ‘Hyfrydol’ – Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Wm. Glenn Osborne – Postlude on ‘Hyfrydol’ – Cathedral of Mary Our Queen

Lobe den Herren

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LobedenHerrenThe melody named for Joachim Neander’s German chorale Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren was first published in 1665 and is probably based on a folk tune. The English translation Praise to the Lord, the Almighty was prepared by Catherine Winkworth and published in 1863.

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Videos:
Richard Cummins – Improvisation on Lobe den Herren – Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church on April 15, 2012

Tom Hazleton – Free Hymn Improvisation on ‘Lobe Den Herren’ – Basilica of Mission San Dolores, San Francisco, California

Daniel Roth – Improvisation on ‘Praise to the Lord’ – Saint Sulpice, Paris

Passion Chorale

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PassionChoraleOriginally written by Hans Leo Hassler around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret”, this chorale is often associated with the text “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a text based on a medieval Latin poem often attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), but now attributed to the Medieval poet Arnulf of Louvain (died 1250). Paul Gerhardt wrote a German version “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden.” The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in his St Matthew Passion. Bach also used the melody with different words in his Christmas Oratorio. The hymn was first translated into English in 1752 by John Gambold. The most widely used English translations were made by the American Presbyterian minister, James Waddel Alexander in 1830 and the English poet Robert Bridges in 1899.

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Videos:
William James Ross – Free Fantasy on Herzlich tut mich verlangen – St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas
Paul Kayser – Passacaglia on “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” – Dudelange, Luxembourg
Wilco Buitendijk – Improvisatie over ‘O haupt voll blut und wunden’ – Rodenrijs