Santa Barbara Music Club Free Concert

The Santa Barbara Music Club, in collaboration with the American Guild of Organists, presents another program of great classical music on Saturday, November 16, 3:00 PM, at First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara.  Concordia University’s award-winning organ professor Tom Mueller will perform works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph-Ermend Bonnal, Heinrich Reimann as well as one of his own recent compositions. Admission is free. Details are available at www.SBMusicClub.org.

Mueller returns to the magnificent First United Methodist Church Aeolian-Skinner/Schantz 54 rank, 2,500 pipe organ to perform Johann Sebasdtian Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C,  Joseph-Ermend Bonnal’s La Vallée du Béhorléguy, au matin, Heinrich Reimann’s Fantasie über “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” and his own Seven Versets on “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” (“How Brightly Shines the Morning Star”)

Regarding his program, Mueller comments that the mature compositional output of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) is a synthesis of Italian, French, and German musical elements, although Bach never traveled beyond the confines of present-day Germany. Throughout his life, Bach demonstrated an ability to master new styles and then integrate them into his own compositional language. Among the organ works, Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C, BWV 564, is an excellent example of this phenomenon. An early work, this piece likely dates to Bach’s tenure at the ducal court in Weimar in the 1710’s. Listeners familiar with the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi and other Italian Baroque composers will recognize the familiar fast-slow-fast sequence of movements here, as well as the brilliant violin-like figuration and loud-soft dynamics that imitate the contrast of tutti and concertino in the Italian concerto grosso—a form that Bach would later revisit in the Brandenburg Concertos. Along with these allusions to contemporary Italian styles, however, there are references to other regions and eras. The virtuosic passages for the hands and feet at the opening of the Toccata bring to mind the improvisatory style of Dietrich Buxtehude, a master organist in North Germany with whom Bach studied for a short period in the early 1700’s, and the dense counterpoint, dissonant suspensions, and chromaticism in the closing measures of the Adagio recall the Italian durezze  e ligature (literally, “dissonances and suspensions”) of the early 1600’s. Bach’s skill at adapting these disparate influences into a unified whole is a testament to both his compositional skill and his remarkable musical curiosity.

A contemporary of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, Joseph-Ermend Bonnal (1880–1944) lived through a period of great musical change in fin-de-siècle France. Like many other significant French musicians of this period, Bonnal studied at the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers included Gabriel Fauré (composition) and Louis Vierne and Alexandre Guilmant (organ). Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Bonnal spent the bulk of his career outside Paris, including a long-term post at the Bayonne Conservatory. Bayonne lies close to the Basque region that straddles southwestern France and northeastern Spain, and it was this setting that inspired Bonnal’s 1930 Paysages euskariens (“Basque Landscapes”). The first movement, La Vallée du Béhorléguy, au matin (“Morning at the Valley of Behorleguy”) is particularly evocative, with music figures that suggest a shepherd’s pipes and distant chimes.

Composed in 2020, Tom Mueller’s Seven Versets on“Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” was commissioned by Bill and Nancy Raabe, and is dedicated to Bruce Bengtson, the longtime organist and Director of Music at Luther Memorial Church in Madison, Wisconsin. The piece is a wide-ranging set of variations on the Epiphany chorale “How Brightly Shines the Morning Star.” The genesis of this piece lies in an email exchange with Bill Raabe in which he challenged Mueller to compose a cycle of preludes in which each of the seven stanzas of the chorale would be musically illustrated by a separate movement. Over the course of the seven movements, Mueller sought to strike a balance of contrast, repetition, and formal symmetry, while still allowing each movement to be true to the Affekt and mood suggested by the chorale text. The resulting roadmap included several instances of structural mirroring in the motives, colors, keys, and textures of individual movements. For example, the first and last movements are based on the motive of a dotted rhythm and use a forte-piano-forte dynamic scheme. The second and sixth movements mirror each other in the use of soft flue registrations, imitative three-voice textures, and slow tempos. The central movement, “Werd’ von Gnaden . . . “ is unique in its use of a very slow and sustained texture, the absence of chorale-based supporting material, and the aria-like presentation of the chorale melody.

Heinrich Reimann (1850–1906) was an important musical figure in late nineteenth-century Germany. After completing his university studies, Reimann settled in Berlin, where he pursued a successful career as a church musician, teacher, and musicologist. Notably, he shaped the talents of two musicians who would dominate the next generation of organ music in Germany: the performer and pedagogue Karl Straube and the composer Max Reger. Reimann’s Choralfantasie on “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” established a template for large-scale German organ works that led directly to the compositions of Reger and Sigfrid Karg-Elert: an orchestral sense of proportion, dynamic range, and texture; an emphasis on counterpoint; and formal structures that depart from standard symphonic models in favor of the more flexible approach found in the works of Liszt and Wagner. In this piece, the listener experiences the full resources of the organ, from the softest pianissimo to the roaring full tutti (with double pedal!) in the final passages.

Tom Mueller serves as Professor of Music and University Organist at Concordia University in Irvine, California, where he directs academic programs in keyboard, composition, and church music. He is an active recitalist, composer, and educator.

Mueller won first place in the 2014 Schoenstein Competition in Hymn-Playing, held in conjunction with the national convention of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) in Boston, Massachusetts, and was honored by The Diapason as a member of the inaugural “20 Under 30” list of influential figures in the world of organ and church music in 2015.

He maintains an active concert schedule, and frequently performs across the United States and Europe. In 2010, he performed the complete organ works of J. S. Bach in a series of seventeen concerts in his native state of Maine. He has received numerous commissions for new choral and liturgical works, and performances of his compositions have been broadcast on national radio and television. As an organist, his recording credits include Scott Perkin’s A New England Requiem and O Beauty Ever Ancient Ever New by the Choir of St. James’, both of which were released on the Gothic label. His organ music is published by ECS.

Research interests include the early organ and keyboard works of J. S. Bach, the performance practice of organ continuo playing in the classical-era concerted sacred music of Germany and Austria, and the American reception of the nineteenth-century opera star Jenny Lind. He has presented workshops, masterclasses, and lectures for numerous organizations, including numerous AGO chapters, and has served as a faculty member for the AGO’s Pipe Organ Encounter (POE) program for young organists. He has held professional leadership and committee positions at regional and national levels of the AGO and the Association of Lutheran Musicians.

Mueller earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music. He also holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame (M.S.M. in organ), and the University of Maine at Augusta (B.M. in jazz composition and piano), where he graduated summa cum laude. He resides in Orange County with his wife and daughters.

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This and all concerts offered by the Santa Barbara Music Club are open to the public with free admission.  For more information about this concert as well as future and past concerts, see our website www.SBMusicClub.org

The mission of the Santa Barbara Music Club is to contribute to the musical life of our community through the following:

1       Presentation of an annual series of concerts, free to the public, featuring outstanding performances by Performing Members and invited guests;

2       Presentation of community outreach activities, including bringing great music to residents of area retirement homes;

3       Aiding and encouraging musical education by the disbursement of scholarships to talented music students whose permanent address is in Santa Barbara County.

For more information about programs, to join, or to donate, please visit our website, http://sbmusicclub.org.