Christopher Marks - Organ Music of Seth Bingham, Vol. 3: "Cathedral Strains" (2015)

"I am very much hoping that you will come, since without your gracious, intelligent, brilliant, yea, dazzling presence, the town of Bethlehem may just lie still for ever, itll be so disappointed. Quite without my knowledge I understand that they are planning wild festivities in your honor: torchlight parades, with banners and streamers which the local elves are already decorating with legends such as: WE LOVE OUR BACH, BUT OH YOU BINGHAM!!!

"There is even a suggestion that the Bach Festival may be abandoned in favor of a Bingham Sethtival next year, but this is only a rumor, I think.

"However, I understand that 17 -- count em,17 -- shapely local blonds are rehearsing intricate steps to be done to the Poco piu mosso variation on page 8 of the PASSACAGLIA. I think this is fine, but I am a bit perturbed as to whether or not our Moravian Trombone Choir can ever play this piece.

"The public schools are putting on special Bingham appreciation courses, with little signs on the blackboards reading:
Every masterpiece by Bingham
We will learn em all and Sing em.

"I dont see how you can afford not to come, with all this going on, and I suppose that this is only a small part of the preliminary preparations."

Reception of Bingham's music never reached quite this level, sadly, but his contemporaries nonetheless had an enormous respect for his work as a composer and church musician. It is hoped that this recording, along with the previous two volumes in this series, will help to regain a similar level of respect for his music now, more than 40 years after his death.

DISC 1
The Six Pieces, Op. 9, are the earliest of Bingham's organ works, published in the 1920s. They were written long before that, though, while Bingham was teaching organ at Yale University between 1907 and 1919. During that time, he performed frequently on the Woolsey Hall organ, which was a significant inspiration for these pieces, marking the beginning of Bingham's lifelong penchant for compositions that required the colorful tonal resources of an orchestral pipe organ. (He was also pursuing a career as a composer of orchestra music, an ambition that was never fully realized, but which informed his conception of music for the organ.) Programs from these concerts show Roulade performed as early as 1908, Aria in 1911, Chorale Prelude on "St. Flavian" in 1912, and the other pieces by 1919, though they must have been composed earlier than this. Each piece bears stylistic traits seen in Bingham's later compositions, though the six pieces as a set do not show the coherence of musical language that would come with works from the 1930s and 1940s. This is the work of a young composer experimenting with a variety of techniques.

Prelude and Fugue in C Minor was dedicated to Charles-Marie Widor, with whom Bingham studied in 1906-7. Searle Wright related the story that Widor, having read through the composition, embraced Seth in the affectionate French manner, planted a kiss on each cheek and assured him that he had written a truly fine work. The character and colors of the prelude are perhaps an homage to the first movement of Widor's Symphonie Gothique, with which it shares the key of C minor. Its orchestral scope, with swelling crescendos and decrescendos, is very much in the French manner. The fugue offers an early example of Bingham's fascination with counterpoint, in the way he transforms the theme by fragmenting, transposing, and inverting it. It reaches a climactic Franck-like apotheosis at the end, just before a bravura improvisational coda. A review of Lynnwood Farnam's performance of the piece at Westminster Cathedral said that if there are any more American works of the cailbre of the Seth Bingham Prelude and Fugue in C Minor it is high time British organists sought them out and played them.

Adoration was described well by Walter Blodgett in a 1951 retrospective of Bingham's organ music: The spirit of Franck hovers over this slow and poignantly harmonized cantabile in elegiac mood. The harmonies are more severely chromatic than usual for Bingham, but as was typical of his later compositions, the music evokes a specific image and character. Adoration was dedicated to Arthur Sewall Hyde, organist at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York, whom Bingham replaced in 1917-18 while Hyde served in the U.S. Army.

It is somewhat ironic that Roulade, one of Bingham's very first compositions, would also become his most popular, performed and recorded more than any other throughout his lifetime and to the present day. Its attractiveness is undeniable, with its virtuosic display of technique, its kaleidoscopic possibilities of registration, and its already mature approach to structure and thematic development. It is dedicated to another prominent New York organist, David McK. Williams, who succeeded Hyde at St. Bartholomew's. Williams performed Roulade on many occasions, including for a 1924 inaugural concert of the then-new Skinner organ at Trinity Church in New York.

The intense chromaticism of Chorale Prelude on "St. Flavian" seems more German than French and features rarely in the rest of Binghams output. Although the hymn tune appears most plainly in the right hand on a solo reed stop, it is also woven into the accompaniment in fragments and faster note values in ways both subtle and obvious. This prelude was dedicated to Bingham's close friend, the famous French organist Joseph Bonnet, who would practice at Bingham's church when he was in New York and who performed St. Flavian on his tours.

Aria is dedicated to Homer Humphreys, organ teacher at New England Conservatory in the early 20th century. Blodgett says of the piece simply, The composer regrets the publication of this piece. Since Bingham consulted with Blodgett on his article, it seems likely that it is true, but unfortunate that the composer felt this way of a rather attractive piece. The fanciful solo line is ideally suited to the Böhm Flute stop on the Schoenstein organ in this recording. The harmonies in the A section waver between French Impressionist and American popular. The B section relies on softer 8-foot foundations and is much more contrapuntal. It is true that the piece is not as well crafted as some others in this set, but the moments of lyricism are worth it.

Counter-Theme was dedicated to Harry Benjamin Jepson, Bingham's organ teacher at Yale and lifelong friend and mentor. It was Jepson who encouraged Bingham's formative study in France and Jepson who hired Bingham to assist in teaching at Yale upon his return. A review of Counter-Theme shortly after its publication aligns with Bingham's own dry sense of humor:

"Counter-Theme refers to the simultaneous use of two themes and not to the counter of the music store. If the composer had been Percy Grainger we would have surmised that the melodic idea came to him while waiting to have his music charged at Schirmer's, after the manner of his Arrival Platform Humlet. Mr. Bingham handles his two themes with commendable skill and their simultaneous exposition at the finish is well managed."

This technique of presenting and then combining two separate themes was to be a frequent gambit for the composer.
Most of Bingham's pieces tended to be shorter character pieces, so a work as lengthy as the Passacaglia in E minor, Op. 40, is unusual. It is his only piece for organ based on the baroque passacaglia form, though he wrote an unrelated passacaglia for orchestra much earlier. Any passacaglia for organ stands in the shadow of the great Bach Passacaglia in C Minor. Composers who confront the form must wrestle with how, like Bach, to create a sense of large structure while still providing variety through the many iterations of the ground bass. Bingham's fertile imagination is seen in his treatment of the theme through 29 repetitions, two of which are briefly extended. He also achieves a sense of architecture by dividing the piece in two large sections, each beginning quietly, growing to a dramatic climax, and tapering off again. The manuscript is dated Oct. 8, 1935.

The Suite, Op. 25, completed in August 1924, is one of the most overtly French- inspired pieces in Bingham's output. He admits as much in some amusing penciled annotations to the manuscript, witty subtitles for each movement that never made it into the published score. Cathedral Strains (subtitled, but not so much of a strain as some by Dupré) is a rather austere piece in ABA form, evoking the Gothic edifice of a European cathedral. Rhythm of Easter (fairly original except in a few bars of Vierne) is indeed reminiscent of a scherzo movement from a Vierne organ symphony. At the same time, though, the jaunty syncopated melodies are strikingly suggestive of American ragtime or folk music. The piece is in an unusual ABCABC form, though the sections are connected by transitions based on the easily identifiable opening motive. Intercession (very much inspired by Bonnet and occasionally lapsing into Franck) is a beautifully expansive piece that uses the softest stops of the organ. It is in ABA form, the A sections containing a simple chorale-like theme, with the contrasting B section utilizing impressionistic harmonies and melodies. The final movement, a French toccata in the style of Vierne, is impossible to mistake for anything but an organ toccata in the French tradition, even without Bingham's annotation. The Toccata is in classical sonata form (an unusual approach for Bingham), with two contrasting themes presented at the beginning, developed in the middle, and recapitulated in the home key at the end.

Lynnwood Farnam, the dedicatee of this suite, had performed Bingham's Prelude and Fugue in C Minor on a summer 1924 European tour in many locations including Exeter Cathedral, St. Ouen in Rouen, and Trinity College Chapel in Cambridge. It is easy to imagine that the dedication of this new suite was in gratitude for these performances.

DISC 2
Bingham must have had a deep admiration for renowned 19th-century church musician Lowell Mason, whose life's work was to foster performances of classical music in churches and to develop strong congregational singing. Bingham had the same aims in his career, evidenced by projects like an early performance of Bach's St. John Passion at St. Bartholomew's in 1917, which Bingham thought was the first performance of that piece in New York. Mason was a prodigious writer of hymn tunes, many of which appeared in hymnals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though some of these tunes are still sung today, the ones chosen for Seven Preludes or Postludes on Lowell Mason Hymns, Op. 42, are less commonly found in contemporary hymnals and may not be as familiar to modern listeners as they would have been to Bingham and his congregations. This set is more compositionally adventurous and technically demanding than most hymn preludes written for church use (unlike Bingham's better known Twelve Hymn Preludes collection, clearly aimed at a more average church musician). They show a composer at the top of his game, balancing high musical ambition with the practicality of church service music. The first prelude, on WESLEY, dedicated to Catharine Crozier, displays an astonishing array of compositional approaches in only three minutes. Beginning with a rhapsodic introduction, the piece moves to a fughetta, then a difficult trio with the melody in the left hand, followed by a short transition to a grandiose statement of the tune in pompous English manner. BOYLSTON is dedicated to Julian Williams, a Pennsylvania organist who frequently performed Bingham's Toccata on LEONI and other works. The melody is heard twice, the first time with eighth-note rhythms in the accompanying voices, the second time with triplets. The style is very reminiscent of Brahms organ chorale preludes. MISSIONARY HYMN is dedicated to Frederick Kinsley, who for a short time was organist at Riverside Church and who performed Bingham's music there. The Binghams lived quite near Riverside Church and frequently attended concerts there. This prelude fragments and develops the tune throughout a long first section, which includes a bagpipe-like drone section, then presents the theme in grand manner with improvisational flourishes between each phrase. WATCHMAN is the longest of the seven pieces, a colorful set of variations that capitalizes on the tonal resources of the organ. This recording includes an unpublished variation, found in manuscript in the New York Public Library (NYPL) Arts Collection, intended to be placed just before the final fortissimo variation. This prelude was dedicated to Alexander Schreiner, organist at the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Schreiner often performed Bingham's music on his recitals (notably Unto the Hills from Pastoral Psalms). LABAN was dedicated to Alexander McCurdy, organ teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and a student of Lynnwood Farnam. This prelude is a burst of energy, short but difficult and full of harmonic surprises. HENLEY was dedicated to Leslie P. Spelman, another organist and long-time friend of Bingham, whom he first met in 1931 at the American Church in Paris, where Spelman was then organist. This prelude is in two sections: the first is very quiet and slow, featuring a dialogue between soft string celestes and vox humana stops; the second is a chorale prelude in the ornamented baroque style. Though Bingham called for a clarinet stop for the right-hand solo melody, this seemed like a good opportunity to showcase the lovely French Cornet stop on the Schoenstein organ. The last of these pieces, WORK SONG, was fittingly dedicated to Daniel Gregory Mason, Lowell Mason's grandson, who became close friends with Bingham and hired him to teach at Columbia. After an introduction, the melody is presented as a trumpet tune. This is followed by a transition featuring fragments of the melody, which leads to a pompous march.

The next four pieces, all composed late in Bingham's life, were published individually but make a nice group, since each is based on a pre-existing melody and together they demonstrate Bingham's late compositional style through a wide range of colors and characters.

Offertoire sur une chanson espagnole was originally included in the collection Le Tombeau de Gonzalez, published in Orgue et Liturgie to memorialize organ builder Victor Gonzalez, for whom Bingham had much admiration. About the theme, Bingham wrote, "Since Gonzalez was of Spanish birth, I asked my sister-in-law, the former Consuelo de Zavala, to suggest a Spanish theme. Forthwith over the telephone, she obliged by whistling the air from an ancient Iberian folk song." The austere and elegiac tone is appropriate for commemoration of a respected friend and colleague. More notable, perhaps, is the distinctly modern harmonic language and creative approach to registration, hallmarks of Bingham's later compositions.

Prelude and Fughetta on "St. Kevin" was dedicated to George Markey, who at the time of its publication occupied Bingham's former position at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Most often associated with the Easter text, "Come ye faithful, raise the strain," the tune is set rather sedately in the prelude, appearing in the tenor voice on an English horn stop, accompanied by minor-tinged harmonies. The fughetta is based on a short theme over which phrases of the hymn appear one by one, building to a climactic ending. It is not difficult to picture the prelude as the empty tomb on Easter morning and the fugue as the triumphant Resurrection.

Introit on "Elton" comes from an anthology called Six Soft Pieces, published in 1962 by World Library of Sacred Music. Based on another hymn by Lowell Mason, this has a much more conservative style than the other pieces in the group. With its prayerful tenderness, it is another fine example of the church hymn-prelude genre.

The Good Shepherd was the last composition published by Bingham. This musical depiction of Psalm 23 incorporates the hymn tune AUGHTON (He leadeth me), heard in small fragments but never presented as a continuous melody. The score contains texts from the hymn and the psalm for optional narration, a device that seemed somewhat dated for purposes of this recording. Though the published piece is dedicated to Eugene Hancock, an earlier sketch was titled Pre-Communion (He Leadeth Me) and dedicated to Jean Langlais.

Sight-Reading Test 1963 is a short, unpublished piece among the manuscripts at the NYPL Arts Collection, written on one page of staff paper. Also in the NYPL archival collection is a letter to Bingham from Svend Tollefsen, then Chairman of the Examination Committee for the American Guild of Organists. Tollefsen makes this request, "Should you find the time and inclination to help us with this matter, a setting of the ground-bass test for the Fellowship as well as an Organ sight-reading test for Associateship and Fellowship examinations would be much appreciated." One presumes that the miniature composition recorded here is the result of this request. Far from a throwaway exercise, this little piece shows great care with motivic development and stands as a lovely and unified composition. It is also fascinating to see how carefully constructed it is as a sight-reading test: it begins simply, gradually adding in harmonic, rhythmic, and technical complexity, ensuring that only the best sight-readers will make it to the end! Needless to say, some practice went into the performance on this recording.

In many ways, Sonata of Prayer and Praise, Op. 60, is Bingham's most ambitious composition. Although writing symphonies and sonatas for organ was by this time an established tradition, Bingham had yet to confront this multi-movement approach, favoring shorter character pieces in loosely connected sets. Here, the non-programmatic abstraction of sonata form is made explicitly about church music through its titles and use of hymn tunes, showing how inseparable were Bingham the composer and Bingham the church musician. This piece (like the five pieces preceding it on this disc) was written after Bingham's retirement from Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. These post-retirement years, during which he also taught composition at Union Theological Seminary, seemed to offer him the opportunity to develop his compositional style in a direction that was less typical of practical church organ music, yet he continued to touch on church themes.
The sonata was dedicated to Leonard Raver, who was well known as a champion of contemporary American organ music. Raver was quite enamored with the piece and played it frequently in 1958-59. Bingham, in turn, gave Raver letters of introduction to Andr<@233> Marchal, Norbert Dufourcq, and other French organists. Raver wrote to Bingham, "Syracuse was a great success and your Sonata the most successful of all. Everyone showed great interest in the work and [Arthur] Poister particularly wants a copy as soon as it is published in January. The more I play it, the more it becomes a part of me. There is no doubt at all but that it will become a highly regarded part of the contemporary repertoire." This last statement has not turned out to be true, unfortunately, but the piece is due a reappraisal. In a letter to Bingham, Frederick Swann was also very complimentary of the piece: "It is magnificent writing, and so very organistic. The melodic lines throughout are among the most beautiful you've written<@133> [The second] movement will also go on tour with me this year, and will be enjoyed by the thousands who will hear it, I'm sure." Raver went on to record the piece for French radio broadcast and performed the piece many times, but it has not become a standard among contemporary organ repertoire. Perhaps this is in part because of its difficulty, which is not only technical, but also in understanding and communicating its unusually (for Bingham) complex structure. Raver acknowledged the importance of having a unified idea of it, writing, One must take great care not to let the many registration changes get in the way of the music<@133>but then, this is an eternal problem for organists as you well know.

Prelude to Worship is clearly modeled after sonata form. In the manner of Beethoven, the primary theme is not so much a clearly recognizable melody, but a short motive (A-F#-A-E), more or less in A major, which is developed extensively through the exposition. A fanfare-like transition (still using that motive, mostly in the pedal) takes us to the secondary theme, which, true to classical sonata form, is in the dominant key of E, though a modal E, not a clear E major. The chorale-like secondary theme is more melodic and laid back, ending finally in a cadence on E major. The development abruptly breaks in with a full organ registration and continually inventive transformations of the opening motive, ending finally in a pedal cadenza that heralds the recapitulation of the primary theme in A major. The recapitulation is, as expected, a restatement of themes from the exposition, all centered around the key of A. The piece winds down quietly in a coda. Throughout the movement, Bingham demands frequent color changes that challenge both the organist and the tonal resources of the organ, in the manner of the organ symphonists, but in a modern American tonal language.

Rapid Lyric is the scherzo movement of this sonata. It seems to be Bingham's answer to Dupré's Prelude in G Minor, featuring virtuosic yet subdued triplet figuration over which floats a chant-like melody. Bingham's career-long fascination with counterpoint (shared by Dupré shows prominently in this movement, with the melody often heard in canon between manuals and pedals.

Christmas Meditation is the obligatory slow movement, based on Bingham's own hymn tune Signum, which was written for the famous Christina Rossetti text Love came down at Christmas. This text is featured in optional soprano and tenor solos, which are not included on this recording and which, if excluded, make the piece suitable for other occasions than Christmas. It is a set of continuous variations on Bingham's melody which, if not familiar to the listener, is easily recognizable by the end.

The rhapsodic Finale is based on multiple themes, including another of the composers hymn tunes not identified as such in the score. In 1943, the Hymn Society of America conducted a contest for tunes to be written to a text by Thomas Curtis Clark. Bingham's entry, titled Madison Avenue, was the winner and was printed in the October 1943 issue of The Diapason. This tune is used throughout the Finale movement to this sonata, most prominently in the pedal during the brief toccata section almost 4 minutes into the piece. This hymn tune and the themes from the previous three movements are all related, each beginning with motion either up or down a third and back again to the original note: the Prelude to Worship primary motive is AF#AE; the Rapid Lyric melody begins ACAG; Signum, the third movements theme, begins CE-flatCA-flat; and Madison Avenue begins AF#AB. This sort of motivic unification is not unusual in single movements by Bingham, especially in his later career, but it is quite significant for him to have structured a large-scale, four-movement piece in this way. Nothing else in his solo organ repertoire approaches this level of compositional complexity, ambition, and skill. That he wrote it in his late seventies shows just how much he continued to grow as a musician over a long and fruitful career.