Organ Music in New England: Cultivating a Living Tradition
Justin Murphy-Mancini (organ)
rec. 2024, First Religious Society Church, Newburyport, USA
Acis Productions APL03781 [74]

Newburyport, Massachusetts was carved out of the town of Newbury in 1764. In its heyday, it was known for whaling, shipbuilding and fishing, and in the twentieth century became an important historical site. One of the main churches in the town is the First Religious Society (FRS), originally Congregationalist, now Unitarian. Its well-known organ was built in 1834, and rebuilt in 1889, 1957 and 2012. The subtitle of this disc is “Cultivating a Living Tradition”. The former Music Director at FRS, Justin Murphy-Mancini, does exactly that in a recital of two hundred years of organ music, much of it written by Unitarian composers.

Justin Murphy-Mancini has organized the music here around the different versions of the FRS organ. The first six pieces are examples of music in New England about two hundred years ago, from the original creations of the First New England School (William Billings, Supply Belcher, Daniel Read etc.) to a greater interest in European forms and practices. Of the composers in this group, probably Rayner Taylor is the best-remembered; his Variations on Adeste Fideles are impressive. I found the Soft Organ Voluntary by Christian Heinrich Rinck, with additions by Manuel Emilio, the most interesting of this group.

The next group of composers mostly belong to the Second New England School. It comprises composers who had studied in Europe and wrote only in European forms. John Knowles Paine was America’s first prominent orchestral composer and the first college Professor of Music. His Double Fugue on “God Save the Queen,” a student work, is a little stuffy, but quite clever. The best-known of the school today, and certainly the most recorded, is George Whitefield Chadwick. His Three-voiced Canon in the Fifth, also an early work, already betrays the humor and vitality that characterize the composer’s many works. Paine’s contemporary Dudley Buck was well-known for his religious and patriotic works. His Variations on The Last Rose of Summer show a degree of virtuosity which reminds us that he was virtually the creator of the organ recital in America.

The last five pieces bring us into the 20^th and 21th centuries. Undoubtedly, the least well-known of the five composers is Edith Lang, in her time a prominent Boston church organist, but also the organ accompanist for silent movies at Boston’s Exeter Street Theater. She literally co-wrote the standard work on accompanying silent movies. Based on the Prelude for a Festive Occasion, her music should be much better-known. A quote from Mozart’s 41st Symphony appears in the middle of the piece, which is otherwise quite dramatic. It is part of a Festive Suite that I would like to hear in its entirety. Everett Titcomb, Lang’s almost-exact contemporary, was a major composer of music for the Episcopal Church. He was especially known for basing his church music on plainchant, and many of his works are still sung today. Here we have his complete Suite in E major, the largest of his works for the organ. The Prelude is charming and rather distinctive, and the Scherzo is a masterpiece of compactness. After a moving Cantilena, there is a rousing and imaginative Recessional.

Honolulu is quite far from Newburyport, but they are bridged by a commission from the Bernice Pauahi Estate to the well-known composer Daniel Pinkham. In the Isles of the Sea is, as Justin Murphy-Mancini says, “written in Pinkham’s dissonant but tonally-derived harmonic language”. Murphy-Mancini includes one of his own compositions, part of a larger work based on the hymn I’ll sing on. This is experimental in style, but quite interesting. Finally, there is the Partita on “Detroit” by David Hurd, surely the most prominent composer for the Episcopal Church today. Besides 39 years at the General Seminary in New York, he has also served at several important churches in Manhattan, and is currently Director of Music at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. The hymn-tune “Detroit” was written by William Bradshaw roughly when FRS received its first pipe-organ. The Partita is a fine work. Each of Hurd’s nine distinctive variations retain the feeling of the time and place in which the hymn was first heard.

Justin Murphy-Mancini is to be congratulated for his imaginative choice of music and for the research that must have gone into the notes that he has prepared. As for his playing, he gets everything he can out of the FRS instrument, and is a master of each style required for his 200-year survey. I was especially impressed with his use of the pedals, most notably in the Titcomb suite. This is one of the most imaginative organ discs to come my way in some time.

William Kreindler

Contents
Traditional American (arr. Edward Little White)
Washington’s March, from Organ without a Master
William Selby (1738–98)
A Fuge or Voluntary
William Wood (1788–after 1815)
Voluntary No. 1 “Duetto”
Christian Henrich Rinck (1770–1846)/Manuel Emilio (1812–71)
Soft Organ Voluntary
Rayner Taylor (1747–1825)
Variations on “Adeste Fideles”
John Knowles Paine (1839–1906)
Double Fugue on “God Save the Queen” for the Full Organ, Op. 2, No. 4
George Whitefield Chadwick (1853–1931)
Three-voiced Canon in the Fifth with Accompaniment, Op. 12, No. 9
Dudley Buck (1839–1909)
The Last Rose of Summer, Varied for the Organ, Op. 59
Henry Morton Dunham (1853–1929)
Chorale Prelude on “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,” Op. 20, No. 1
Edith Lang (1885–1969)
Prelude for a Festive Occasion (in the style of Mozart)
Everett Titcomb (1884–1968)
Suite in E major
Daniel Pinkham (1923–2006)
In the Isles of the Sea
Justin J. Murphy-Mancini (b. 1989)
I’ll sing on
David Hurd (b. 1950)
Partita on “Detroit”