Prelude on Lonesome Valley (Francis Jackson)
‘There is a genuine-ness in the welcome extended’. Francis Jackson’s description of American hospitality is a reassuring reminder that people have so much more to offer than just their politics. Over the course of his sixty-six year recital career, Francis Jackson toured the United States of America on numerous occasions. The Prelude on an American Folk Hymn was commissioned by Dr Lee Hastings Bristol (1923-1979) after FJ’s 1970 visit to Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey. In his book Music for a long while, Francis provides the following account of this visit:
I flew back to the United States in August, this time to New Jersey to take part in an Anglo-American boy choir training course at Westminster Choir College. In Princeton University chapel I conducted a choir, two hundred and twenty-five strong, of men and boys. This was organised under the sponsorship of the Royal School of Church Music of England and the Music Commission of the Diocese of New Jersey and was at the conclusion of the course. The choir was composed of singers from many parts of North America including distant Florida and the Canadian border. Present were many of America’s leading figures in ecclesiastical music, among them Gerre Hancock, organist of Saint Thomas Church, New York (a successor to T Tertius Noble) and Doctor Ronald Arnatt.
During the ceremony I received the honorary Fellowship of Westminster Choir College. This was presented to me by Doctor Lee Hastings Bristol, a significant figure in the college and in music generally around the country. I was Doctor and Mrs Bristol’s house-guest in their beautiful home, in the grounds of which he had built a music room to contain a two-manual tracker organ in the baroque style fashionable at the time. He nicknamed the music room ‘The Supplement’, he having been much occupied with production of an additional book to the American Hymnal known by that name [More Hymns and Spiritual Songs: a hymnal supplement containing material from old and new sources]. One of his projects was to publish a collection of organ pieces, based on tunes contained in the book which bore his name, as the Bristol Collection. The tune I chose to use was an old American folk tune to the words beginning ‘Jesus walked this lonesome valley’, the tune having the final two words for its title.
Noël VI (Louis-Claude Daquin)
Christmas church services in late-eighteenth-century France were extremely popular, particularly during the reign of Louis XV from 1715 until 1774. Vast crowds gathered every Christmas Eve to hear celebrity organists such as Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1724-1799) and Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) perform sets of variations upon popular noëls (usually improvised). The church authorities increasingly became concerned that the organ ‘hitherto solely the handmaid of the liturgy, now possessed entertainment value’. Christophe de Beaumont (Archbishop of Paris 1745-1781) is said to have been particularly appalled by the noëls that Balbastre performed at St Roch on Christmas Eve in 1762, stating that they “ne conservoit (sic) pas le respect du à la sainteté du lieu” [did not conserve the respect owed to the holiness of the place]. Balbastre was forbidden from playing those particular noëls again and denied access to the organ loft at Notre Dame on at least two occasions. Daquin also drew large audiences and sometimes ‘the police were needed to keep order’ on the streets of Paris when he was performing. Daquin dedicated a set of twelve noëls entitled ‘Nouveau livre de noëls pour l’orgue et le clavecin’ to Louis Charles de Bourbon (1701-1775, Comte d’Eu 1755-1775) in November 1757. Every noël begins with a simple two-part or three-part statement of its melody (unless it is played en taille) followed by a succession of increasingly elaborate variations. Only three noëls include a specific pedal part, perhaps indicating that Daquin ‘had developed his finger dexterity at the expense of his pedal technique’.
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Noël VI comes from Lorraine where it is sung to the words ‘Qu’ Adam fut un pauvre homme’ (see first verse above) and Daquin instructs the organist to play his setting ‘sur les jeux d’Anches, sans tremblant, et en duo’. The notation of Noël VI is rather old-fashioned for 1757 (the melody is presented in 2/4 instead of 6/8), but the piece is a typical example in most other respects. Daquin decorates the melody with pincé, port-de-voix, coulé and other ornaments before breaking it into smaller sections (diminution) for dramatic echo effects using three manuals. I used Jean-Marc Fuzeau’s wonderful facsimile edition (including original C clefs) for this performance.
G B Sharp, ‘The Organist’s Repertory. 12: Louis Daquin, 1694-1772’, The Musical Times vol. 113 no. 1554 (1972), 806.
Giles Cantagrel translated by Sean McCutcheon, ‘Louis-Claude Daquin livre de noëls’ CD liner notes page 11, ATMA Classique, 2014.
Sharp, ‘The Organist’s Repertory. 12: Louis Daquin, 1694-1772’, 806.
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