Evening Thoughts on Listening to the Complete Organ Works of Duruflé

Have you listened to a music box album recently? Mechanical perfection, charming, delightful, but not exactly emotion stirring. And not what I'm going to write about today.

In the medical field there is a concept of "publication bias". This is the intuitive notion that ideas, hypotheses, and research studies will be more likely to be published if they fit the needs of the organization footing the bill. In the case of pharmaceuticals, for example, a study which doesn't show a particular drug in the most favorable light will be swept under a rug somewhere and never see the light of day, unless some outside agency was involved and has control of the study. The same can be said of other media, including online forums and email lists, to greater or lesser degree. Organ lists are composed of individuals heavily invested in the status quo and detest any variance. Hence this post. On my own private blog, or as close to my own as Google will allow. He who pays the piper usually calls the tune.

Which got me thinking. Why are the tunes played on the organ still largely the same in overall tone and emotional impact today as 50-200 years ago? Then they were financed by the church or the aristocracy. Could this be one reason the average man on the street cannot relate to organ music? The other day a post on a popular pipe organ email list in the midst of yet another pity party over the perceived lack of popularity of the pipe organ pointed out differences from the past. There used to be a cultural or aristocratic elite who could afford to subsidize the fine arts, and the lack of that patronage system today was a prime reason for the decline in interest in careers in music, most specifically organ music. For the record, many U.S. symphony orchestras struggle to make ends meet, and rely on generous corporate grants and private philanthropic funds to keep ticket prices just below the stratosphere. And it seems some would have us believe that symphonies have become less adventurous in their programming so as not to offend the middle class concert goer. That average bloke who would prefer not to be surprised with anything dissonant or new. This blog isn't about symphonies, so I won't debunk all the assumptions in the above statements, but you get the idea. Funding has crippled creativity and dumbed down classical music, or so the story goes. It seems that the lack of an aristocracy or other system to support the gifted organists strongly favors pop or other styles of music because of this 'defect'. But is this really a defect?

On a whim the other day I purchased Todd Wilson's CD of the complete works of Duruflé. According to Henderson's Dictionary of Composers for Organ (an amazingly comprehensive Who's Who of the organ composer world by the way), Duruflé was born in France January 11, 1902. He died in Paris in 1986, but stopped performing after his car accident in 1975. Therefore arguably, Duruflé is a modern composer for the organ. Yet listening through the 69 minutes and 13 seconds of his complete works this evening, I was immediately struck by a recurring emotional theme which could have come from any previous time in history: Mystery and awesome power. The kind of mystery in a horror film. The kind of mystery in the dramatic organ chords of Phantom of the Opera. The kind of mystery in a spooky movie. The dramatic thundering pedal notes of some kind of terrible disaster flick. Or to inspire awe and respect for an aristocratic or religious institution.

I reflected back on the organ concerts I have attended over my life, and with a few notable exceptions, I quickly noticed that this was not really an aberration. The organ seems tailor made to awe and intimidate it seems. To inspire respect and admiration for the ruling class, or the ruling religion, and possibly as a stand in substitute for holiness. Organ historians have documented a period of ever increasing air pressures used even in secular organs. Perhaps this trend is not hurt much by the organist's ego. Perhaps this is even one reason I was attracted to it. What better way to really strut your stuff than to really scare the dickens out of the birds in the rafters? That'll show them who's boss. It's hard to argue when you play the 'king of instruments'. Maybe the audience will be scared enough to be impressed or at least get a shiver up their spine. More or less a cathedral version of the ghetto car boombox which vibrates houses for two blocks around. But is this music?

Which got me thinking again. Unless we are planning on moving back into the feudal system, or a religious theocracy, perhaps the middle class which is now driving popular culture is not all that far off track. They aren't impressed with being impressed, and maybe, just maybe, they can't relate to music designed to inspire reverence and awe for a monarch or even a earthly appointed religious representative of the deity. Maybe the average Jane or Joe considers it just a bit off-putting, to say the least.

Maybe I'm off base here, but I would venture a guess that the music that really touches you does so because it reaches out and accepts you, it strikes a familiar and welcoming jacket around you and makes you feel at home. It says "I've felt that way too, why don't you hum along with me as we think back to that time when...". It doesn't slap you in the face or creep you out.

Maybe, the general public that doesn't currently have a CD of Durufle' running in their auto's CD player day in and day out is no more attracted to organ music than you are to listening to mechanical music box recordings, and for similar reasons. Maybe what we need is a combination of a completely reworked repertoire including completely new compositions and a neo-Leonard Bernstein's Young Person's Guide to the Organ for PBS.