Ryan Kennedy, organ, October 19, 2023

José García-León, Dean

doctor of musical arts degree recital

Ryan Kennedy, organ Thursday, October 19, 2023 | 7:30 p.m.| Woolsey Hall

Jeanne Demessieux 1921–1968

Te Deum, Op. 11

Max Reger 1873–1916 ed. Karl Straube

Benedictus, Op. 59

George Baker b. 1951

Le Tombeau de Jean Langlais: A Threnody for the Heartbeat of Humanity (2021)

Maurice Duruflé 1902–1986

Prélude, Adagio et Choral varié sur le thème du Veni Creator, Op. 4

intermission

Jean-Louis Florentz 1947–2004

Debout sur le soleil: Chant de résurrection pour orgue, Op. 8

This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Artist Profile

Program Notes by the performer

Ryan Kennedy, organ Ryan Kennedy is a doctoral candidate at Yale School of Music, where he studied organ with Tom Murray, Martin Jean, and Jon Laukvik, improvisation with Jeffrey Brillhart, and was advised by Robert Holzer for his dissertation. In his time at Yale, he was awarded the Charles Ives Prize, the ISM Student Community Award for Best Colloquium Presentation, and the Friedmann Thesis Prize for his research on the organ music of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. Previously, Ryan earned his B.M. and M.M. from the Juilliard School, where he studied organ with Paul Jacobs and improvisation with Noam Sivan.

As Director of Music at Sacred Heart Latin Mass Parish in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ryan improvises the six weekly Low Masses on his 31-tone extendedmeantone organ, and conducts three choirs for the High and Solemn Masses.

As a concert artist, he specializes in orchestral transcriptions, including works by Ravel, Strauss, and Mahler, and modern French repertoire, some of which you will hear tonight. As a teacher, he emphasizes the importance of improvisation and has given multiple master classes on the types of improvisation historically used in the Mass.

Te Deum demessieux The Te Deum laudamus is one of the ancient hymns of the Catholic Church, traditionally attributed to Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine. In the Divine Office, this hymn concludes the service of Matins.

On Christmas Eve in Fort Wayne, the effect of this with rousing organ accompaniment after two hours of unaccompanied chant in a dark church is hard to describe — something has arrived, something important and maybe fearsome. The hymn is cast in the same poetic form as the Hebrew Psalms, with parallelism being the primary poetic device: according to legend, Saint Ambrose said the first half of each line, and Saint Augustine responded with the second antiphonally.

For instance: Te Deum laudamus : te Dominum confitemur You, O God, we praise : you, O Lord, we confess After the hymn proper, there are appended a variety of Psalm verses.

Jeanne Demessieux, born in 1921 and the star pupil of Marcel Dupré, knew this hymn intimately as titular organist at La Madeleine in Paris, a church famous for its music — previous incumbents included Saint-Saëns and Fauré. She was simultaneously the first female giant of the organ, with a recording contract from Decca, endless engagements in the United States, and a fully-memorized repertoire of more than 2500 works. Despite the vicious

Program Notes, cont. conflict between her and her former teacher, which limited her career in ways we may never fully understand, and her tragic death at the age of 47, she was unquestionably among the greatest to walk the earth and play the organ. Also, despite her many landmark recordings, revealing a musician of the highest stature, she is best known for her compositions, and this one in particular: Written for a performance at St. John the Divine in New York, this virtuosic romp features solos for the famous State Trumpet, the world’s loudest organ stop, which can literally be heard from Columbia University. Woolsey Hall fortunately houses this stop’s cousin, on half the wind pressure but with just as much swagger.

This dialogue between full organ and one very loud stop (an organ in itself) is redolent of the antiphonal basis of the poem itself. Demessieux’s compositional language is sparkling, and is completely out of character with her teacher’s — her voice is fresh, and the dissonances more quirky than aggressive. This makes me sad, considering the number of her compositions still listed as “unpublished.”

Benedictus reger Max Reger, one of the last great tonal composers in Germany, was also one of the most prolific. In a life of just 43 years, he wrote 147 opus numbers of music, including about 18 hours of organ music.

It was this windmill — performing all of his organ music, most of which is very

complicated — at which I thoroughly failed to successfully tilt in March of 2023… I merely performed some of it. This little piece from his 12 Stücke, Op. 59, is one of the most loved. The title, Benedictus, refers to the practice of dividing the Sanctus so the second half is sung after the consecration. The symbolic quality of this is considerable, because “blessed is he” now refers specifically to the sacrament newly present. But this title also refers obliquely to the Toccatas generally played at this point in the Low Mass (i.e., a Mass with no singing). There are beautiful examples

by Frescobaldi, but throughout the Neapolitan world (which at the time included much of Spain) these slow toccatas con durezze e ligature with their many suspensions reflected a common understanding. In Italy, they were even played using a stop designed to evoke the vibrato of a human voice — the Voce Umana.

I believe Reger is trying to evoke one of these passionate Italian toccatas, a repertoire of which he was well aware.

As is typical for Reger, the music passes through just about every tonal area, but this is hardly shocking compared to the chromaticism of the Italian examples.

What sets this apart is his mastery, through the editing of organist Karl Straube, of the full dynamic possibilities of the contemporary German organ.

Rather like the constantly changing tonality of Wagner, the up-to-date German organ permitted constantly changing registration and dynamic.

Compared to me today at Woolsey Hall, Straube had fewer color options, but the

basic timbre of his organ was available seamlessly from pppp to ffff, an incredible feat. Coupling the constant chromaticism of the Italian Renaissance with the constant dynamic changes of the German contemporary must have seemed, to Reger and Straube, to be truly the music of the future, retrospective but also improving on the past — if Reger sought for “redblooded Bach” in his own music, we might call this “red-blooded Frescobaldi.”

Le Tombeau de Jean Langlais baker The Requiem, in addition to being one of the oldest compositions still regularly performed, is so much a part of public consciousness that it staggers belief — if you have ever noticed the Dies irae quoted in Berlioz, Rachmaninoff, or Star Wars, you are part of a secret, early-musicappreciating club, and moreover a club that is occasionally willing to look death in the face. This Mass, chanted to some of the oldest tunes still in use, is a plea for mercy, not just for the dead but for the living who will inevitably join them, and never has the line between dead and alive been so perilously thin as during the darkest hours of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We were all in a bad position.

Dr. George Baker, a polymath, has achieved successful careers in both medicine and organ composition, and was in a unique position as a medical doctor to understand the dangers we all faced and the suffering victims underwent. This composition, honoring the

victims of COVID-19, was premiered in 2022 by Stefan Engels on the monumental double-organ at St. James Cathedral, Seattle. I was in the room.

The piece opens with a heartbeat figure in the pedal, combined with the chant Requiem æternam (Eternal rest). As the heartbeat evaporates, we hear the Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy) in a high register. The next section is the Dies irae (Day of wrath), aggressively rising from the bass and becoming powerful and cutting. At the climax, the powerful pedal stops sing Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), before a long diminuendo to darkness.

From this darkness, a light emerges: the Lux æterna (Eternal light), against shimmering strings in the treble. As the pedal returns with the heartbeat figure, a delicate flute begins the In paradisum (In paradise), the final chant of the burial ceremony. The music sinks lower and lower. The heartbeat fades in and out. A few painful last beats. Then, a single pipe, sounding at 18 Hz, at the bottom limit of human hearing — flatline. In the final silence, the composer directs me to “remain motionless.”

Jean Langlais, Dr. Baker’s teacher and friend, was a preeminent practitioner of weaving chant into organ music, and he is honored tonight as an inspiration, a guiding light to Dr. Baker and me in his work, life, and legacy.

Program Notes, cont.

Prélude, Adagio et Choral varié sur le thème du Veni Creator duruflé Veni Creator Spiritus, the hymn to the Holy Ghost, is a ninth-century hymn attributed to Rabanus Maurus. If the attribution is accurate, this is one of the first works with a known composer.

This is the office hymn for Vespers of Pentecost, sung on New Year’s Day, and has historically been sung for dedications, ordinations, and coronations. There are many settings of “versets” for this hymn, to be played on the organ between the verses in the Parisian rite, and most French luminaries contributed an effort, from Titelouze to a 22-year-old Duruflé who in 1926 wrote five versets.

Maurice Duruflé is beloved among 20th-century French composers for his generous tonal language, his command of the technologically-advanced modern organ, and the high quality of all his published music, born out of a perfectionist attitude to the compositional process which saw many pieces destroyed.

An organist interested in Duruflé only has ten published works to play with, including three works with choir, and his expansive treatment of the Veni Creator (supplemented in 1930 with two more movements) represents the peak of what an organist, composer, and organ builder can collaborate to create.

This piece can be seen as an “Introduction, Theme, and Variations,” albeit a complicated example. For instance, the theme is

only heard in its entirety after a full 13 minutes of music. Its first statement represented the beginning of the 1926 composition, but in 1930 the composer decided to cast the theme as the consequence of two movements worth of development, during which the theme gradually grows.

At first it is a motivic kernel, embedded in a fleeting texture. Lyrical figures gradually emerge, hinting at but never fully stating the theme. In the second movement we finally hear the first five notes of the theme on the gentle string stops, but the development deliberately clouds the intended destination — beautiful if you know the theme and where he’s going, but confusing otherwise.

Duruflé most likely assumed everyone would know the chant intimately. Because everyone doesn’t, I will very quietly play one verse of the chant before beginning the composition, so everyone can better appreciate this structurally adventurous masterpiece. With the beginning of the third movement, we arrive at the 1926 composition, a theme with four variations, the final of which brings the piece to a thunderous conclusion with the mode 8 Amen in the pedal.

Debout sur le soleil: Chant de résurrection pour orgue florentz በሰመ፡አብ፡ወወልድ፡ወመንፈስ፡ቅዽስ፡ ፩አሞላክ።አሜን።ጦሜረ፡ትሰብአት።፩ቀዊሞ፡ ላዕለ፡ፀሓይ In the Name of the Father… (written on the title page) Jean-Louis Florentz, born in 1947 and student of Pierre Schaeffer and Olivier Messiaen, was an ethnomusicologist with a particular interest in the music of Ethiopia, who sought to write music that was both Western and Eastern. There is so much to say about this piece. I will keep my remarks to five: 1. This piece was inspired by Jacques Leclercq’s book of the same name. A modern mystic and prolific author, Leclercq was a canon at Notre Dame Cathedral, whose mystical visions were highly impactful to Florentz.

2. The Ethiopian influence is considerable, and complicated. “Debout sur le Soleil is the synthesis of two distinct but related musical scenes: a hybridized ‘liturgical act’ that superimposes the sonorities of Notre Dame’s Cathedral organ with the music of Kidana-Mehret Cathedral” (Alcee Chriss III, “Hybridity in the Organ Works of Jean-Louis Florentz: Euro Africanism as Catholic Evangelism,” D.Mus. thesis, McGill University, 2019, 61). Florentz dreamt of this piece being performed before a “combined liturgy” at Notre Dame, with

representatives of both the Roman and Ethiopian Churches.

3. If Duruflé pushes the technology of the 1930s to its limit, Florentz is somewhere in the stratosphere. Among other factors, Florentz likens the modern organ to the cockpit of an airliner, where two pilots are required. Performing this piece alone is not an option: a first officer is needed to lend an extra hand at several points, not to mention to turn the pages (performance from memory would be the equivalent of flying an approach without procedure charts: reckless).

4. Rather like his teacher Messiaen, Florentz’s music is immediately identifiable as being by Florentz. The three factors that influence this are the extreme polyrhythms, the use of pentaphones or 5-note modes rather than traditional Western scales or tone rows, and the unusual colors (heavy on mutation stops, in particular septièmes) he demands from organs. The result of combining these ingredients is a highly spiced soup.

5. Florentz suggests in a note that the performer must spiritually don the “genet skin,” traditionally draped over the Reader in the Ethiopian Church to shield the Word from the Reader’s human nature.

The technical challenges of this piece, which are considerable, are not even slightly the focus. I, as the organist, am attempting to be a “conduit” for something larger than myself — insofar as I can “disappear” behind the music, I will have been successful.

Upcoming Events at YSM oct 20

Giancarlo Guerrero, guest conductor Yale Philharmonia 7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $13, Yale faculty/staff start at $9, Students free [ticket required]

oct 21

Yale Schola Cantorum with Juilliard 415 Institute of Sacred Music 7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Free admission This concert will also be performed on October 20 at Alice Tully Hall, New York, NY; Tickets $25

oct 25

Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Joseph Slifka Center Free admission

oct 27 & 28

Fall Opera Scenes Yale Opera 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $13, Yale faculty/staff start at $10, Students start at $6

oct 31

Quartetto di Cremona Oneppo Chamber Music Series 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $31, Yale faculty/staff start at $23, Students $14

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