For organ - c. 14'
This work pays an affectionate general homage to two major figures in twentieth century French organ music, Jehan Alain [1911-40] and Maurice Duruflé [1902-86]. Although stylistic affinities are probably momentary and certainly of an incidental nature, the presence of Alain may perhaps be detected in the melodic shape which forms a secondary episode in the Toccata. This bears a passing resemblance to the germinal motif in Alain’s celebrated Litanies, a work to which overt reference is made here in the Fugue’s final chord (familiar to most devotees of the organ repertoire). Duruflé is evoked, perhaps at greater length, in the rhythmic and melodic contours of the Fugue, which amounts –at least in its early stages –to a kind of deliberate but approximate echo of his own in the Prélude et Fugue sur le Nom d’Alain. The secondary episode of the Toccata carries a faint suggestion also of the In Paradisum plainchant, and hence also of the final movement in Duruflé’s Requiem. However, the more general rhythmic character of the Introduction, Toccata & Fugue has its roots in many other musical places, some of them centuries older. Structurally it is relatively simple. The Introduction presents material which recurs at later stages in the design, -most notably between the Toccata and the Fugue and towards the very end. The Toccata is based upon free use of additive rhythms, but adheres ostensibly to sonata principle in presenting a secondary melodic paragraph and then a form of development. After the climax of this, however, the recapitulation is attenuated and inconclusive, leading to a reflective passage before the Fugue. The Fugue deliberately hints at the sectional design of Duruflé’s. Its subject is an inversion of the Toccata’s secondary theme, but is not restored to that earlier form until a new section of the Fugue begins with running semiquavers. This passage therefore serves as a recapitulation previously denied in the Toccata. It leads to a recurrence of the Toccata’s additive rhythms and chordal figurations before the Introduction reasserts itself in the closing stages. The Toccata and the Fugue are thus indivisible, and could not be performed separately even were they not linked by continuous music.
The Fugue features free use of ‘stretto’ with and without augmentation, including a final, free canonic statement of the subject simultaneously in its original and inverted forms.
