JEUX

Pages devoted to my favorite music, realized for MIDI with the JEUX SoundFont. These files assume you have loaded the latest version of the JEUX SoundFont in user bank 42 — if not, the results will be very strange indeed!

— John W. McCoy

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French Organ Music

François Couperin, Mass for the Parishes (1690, "Messe à l'usage ordinaire des Paroisses, pour les Festes Solemnelles") — I offer these realizations (ZIP file) with some trepidation, as the interpretation of this masterpiece, though written by a young upstart in his 20's, would benefit from a lifetime of study. There are, besides, many stylistic questions that are difficult to answer three centuries later.
1. Kyrie 1, Plain-chant en taille
2. Kyrie 2, Fugue sur les jeux d'anches
3. Kyrie 3, Récit de cromorne
4. Kyrie 4, Dialogue sur la trompette et cromorne
5. Kyrie 5, Plain-chant
6. Gloria 1, Plein jeu
7. Gloria 2, Little fugue on the cromorne
8. Gloria 3, Duet on the tierces
9. Gloria 4, Dialogue
10. Gloria 5, Trio
11. Gloria 6, Tierce en taille (Play MP3)
12. Gloria 7, Dialogue on the voix humaine (Play MP3)
13. Gloria 8, Trio dialogue
14. Gloria 9, Dialogue on the grands jeux
15. Offertoire (realization uses an 18th Century tuning in the middle section, and"tremblement fort") (Play MP3)
16. Sanctus 1, Plainchant in canon
17. Sanctus 2, Récit de cornet
18. Benedictus, Cromorne en taille (Play MP3)
19. Agnus Dei 1, Plainchant alternately en basse and en taille
20. Agnus Dei 2, Dialogue
21. Deo Gratias, Petit plein jeu
François Couperin, Mass for the Convents (1690, "Messe pour les Convents de Religieux et Religieuses") — With the same modesty, the 21 movements have been realized (ZIP file).In general, the Mass for the Convents is perhaps less showy and more introspective in character than the Mass for the Parishes. I find it impossible to decide which one I like best, but this one calls for some unusual registrations.
1. Kyrie 1, Plein Jeu
2. Kyrie 2, Fugue on the Trompette
3. Kyrie 3, Récit de cromorne
4. Kyrie 4, Trio, Cromorne et Basse de Tierce
5. Kyrie 5, Dialogue between the Trompette of the Grand Clavier and the Montre, Bourdon and Nazard of the Positif
6. Gloria 1, Plein jeu
7. Gloria 2, Little fugue on the cromorne
8. Gloria 3, Duet on the tierces
9. Gloria 4, Basse de Trompette
10. Gloria 5, Cromorne sur la Taille
11. Gloria 6, Dialogue on the voix humaine
12. Gloria 7, Trio, Tierce et basse de Trompette
13. Gloria 8, Récit de Tierce
14. Gloria 9, Dialogue on the grands jeux
15. Offertoire on the grands jeux
16. Sanctus 1, Plein Jeu
17. Sanctus 2, Récit de cornet
18. Benedictus, Tierce en taille
19. Agnus Dei 1, Plein Jeu
20. Agnus Dei 2, Dialogue on the grands jeux
21. Deo Gratias, Petit plein jeu
Jean-Henri D'Anglebert, 5 Fugues and Quatuor
Jean-Henri D'Anglebert, Four Vaudevilles (Play MP3)
Jean-François Dandrieu, Premier Livre de Pièces d'Orgue (1739) — The whole book is now available in MIDI files, so it has its own page! Dandrieu also left us a volume of Noëls and other pieces for organ, see below. One of the "other" pieces that is not a Noël is a fine set of variations, the Chanson de St. Jacques, another example of the seemingly inexhaustible legacy of ancient French melodies.
Clérambault: "Basse et Dessus de Trompette"
Marchand: "Basse de Trompette"
César Franck: A debate once raged as to whether it was necessary to play these pieces exactly as Franck has written them (this view held by Jean Langlais, among others), or whether, as Marcel Dupré advocated, Franck's registrations and other markings should be ignored. Franck's registration markings, at least as published, are entirely consistent and slightly peculiar in that they never call for high ranks. They are, apparently, what he wrote, and besides, the recordings of his champion Jean Langlais are compelling.
Saint-Saëns: Three Rhapsodies on Breton Melodies, Opus 7:
Saint-Saëns: Cyprès et Lauriers, Op. 156: First movement is for organ solo, "Cyprès" An unusual work, Cyprès et Lauriers is a memorial for the casualties of World War I. The first movement, for solo organ, is outstanding. The second movement requires orchestra along with the organ, also a very fine piece, but I don't yet have the soundfont resources to do it justice.
Saint-Saëns: Preludes and Fugues: Perhaps the reason Landowska lacked enthusiasm for Saint-Saëns' music was that he was too cheerful to plumb the depths of melancholy as Bach had done. Nevertheless, these Preludes and Fugues are an interesting collection. They explore different moods, sometimes playful, sometimes bucolic, sometimes grand and virtuostic. Can you find the notes B-A-C-H discretely hidden in one of the fugues?
Alexandre Guilmant: Three very grand sonatas or symphonies. There are a few audible distortions in the MP3 files, but they will give a good idea of Guilmant's style. Organists who tackle the first Sonata will have to confront the fact that very few instruments available today have "ventils"!
Messaien: Two movements from "La nativité du Seigneur", "Anges" (with obvious depiction of fluttering wings),and "Mages" (the Magi — unless I am greatly mistaken, this is music to ride camels by)
A Garland of Noëls — The organ nöel has remained popular longer than any other French organ music of its time. The Daquin collection, in particular, shows the form at its best. Each is based on a carol, and the names of these are known in many cases. They are usually composed as a series of variations or diminutions, often with distinct references to folk idioms.
- Dandrieu
  - Tous les Bourgeois de Chatres
  - Puer nobis nascitur
- Daquin — the Twelve Noëls
- Balbastre
  - Joseph est bien marié
- Lebègue
  - Or nous dites Marie

German Organ Music

Buxtehude
- BuxWV 137, Prelude, Fugue, and Ciacona
- BuxWV 139, Prelude and Fugue in d (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 145, Prelude in F (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 149, Prelude in g (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 155, Toccata in D (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 156, Toccata in F (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 157, Toccata in F
- BuxWV 161, Passacaglia in d (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 171, Canzonetta in G (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 174, Gigue Fugue in G (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 184, "Ein feste Burg"
- BuxWV 188, "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ" (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 220, "Von Gott will ich nicht lassen" (Play MP3)
- BuxWV 223, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern"
Pachelbel
- Chorale Variations, "Alle Menschen müssen sterben" (Play MP3)
- "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" (Play MP3)
- "Von Himmel hoch" (Play MP3)
- "Allein Gott" (Play MP3)
- "Aria Sebaldina"
- "Ciacona" (Play MP3)
- "Fantasia, G Minor" (Play MP3)
- "Prelude, D Minor"
- "Komm Gott Schöpfer" (Play MP3)
- "Nun lob mein Seel"
- "O Lamm Gottes" (Play MP3)
Johann Sebastian Bach has so much music, we gave him is own page!
Johann Gottfried Walther
- "Christus des is mein Leben"
- "Nun bitten wir"
Anonymous: "Es is das Heil uns kommen hir" - No matter who wrote it, a very fine work that should be in every church organist's repertoire
Johannes Weck
- "Spanish Dance"
- "Tanz der schwarz Knab"
Handel Organ Concertos: Handel's music is extremely Italianate, but it is also extremely English. He quickly figured out that "what the English really want is music they can beat time to". Our realizations of his organ concertos use a group of stops that attempt to simulate the resources of a 17th-18th Century English organ with two manuals and fairly modest resources. A few of the organs had rudimentary pedals (pulldowns, most likely), and the B-flat concerto (Opus 7, No. 1) has a distinct pedal part. The actual organs used by Handel to perform these pieces are long since gone (lost in a fire, in one case), and there has been a great deal of speculation about them. It is very likely Handel would have had a tierce mixture on the main manual, and probably a couple of reed stops as well. The realizations require the Hpschd SoundFont in bank 40, plus your default General Midi font for the orchestral parts. I used my own reworking of the Chaos 4MB GM font. You will probably want to tinker with the initial volume of the orchestral parts to achieve the best balance in your own MIDI environment. In the slow movement of the B-flat concerto Opus 7, No. 1, I use muted strings (GM "String Ensemble 2"), which may need additional volume adjustments. In realizing these concertos, I improvised the cadenzas and missing movements indicated by Handel as "ad libitum", not at the keyboard, but "at the mouse". Thus, the little Sicilienne I inserted in Opus 7, No. 2 has never been published in any form except the present MIDI file, and has never been seen in normal musical notation.
- Opus 7, No. 1, B-flat Major
- Opus 7, No. 2, A Major (slow movement ad libitum, here improvised at the mouse)

Dutch Organ Music

Antonie van Noordt: Psalm 24 (Play MP3)

Italian Organ Music

Michaelangelo Rossi — Italian organs are noteworthy especially in the composition of the ripieno. The higher ranks break back often, to prevent shrillness. The bass is not muddy, and the treble is still pleasing. I had these pieces in mind when I constructed the Ripieno I of the Grand Orgue and Positif of the JEUX SoundFont. The effect is different from the Plein Jeu, which has fewer high-pitched ranks in the bass, and which breaks back in different places.
- Toccata Sesta
- Toccata Settima
Frescobaldi: "Aria detto Balletto"

Spanish Organ Music

Juan Cabanilles (1644–1712) has so much music we gave him his own page. And what music! Some of it is so original, you would be hard pressed even to assign it to the correct century.

Liszt (in a class by himself)

"Angelus"
"Ave Maria von Arcadelt"
"Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam" (Play MP3, very large file) One of the longest and noisiest pieces of the organ repertoire, the score running to about 50 pages. As in all of Liszt's organ works, there are numerous problems in the score, and several versions to choose from. Our realization is VERY loud, so you may want to preview the last 40 bars or so with the volume turned way down, to be sure your speakers will survive! Liszt left essentially no registration instructions beyond dynamic markings, so we have been guided by the registration practices of Franck and his contemporaries, whom Liszt admired. We tackled this piece to find out if it could be done, with the result that several new stops were developed along the way. Once we got used to the more bombastic sections, we came to appreciate what a beautiful piece this is!

Paul Hindemith

Ludus Tonalis (MIDI file, 304 kB.) ( Play MP3 file, 75 MB). Originally for piano solo (1942), but while the movements are quite intriguing for a pianist who appreciates counterpoint and musical lore, the piano has some limitations. We had the privilege of knowing several musicians who had studied or performed with Paul Hindemith, so as a matter of curiosity we decided to investigate the Ludus further. The individual movements — fugues and "interludes" based on the 12 semitones — reveal Hindemith's take on all sorts of musical forms, but it was the discovery that the postlude is the result of turning the score of the prelude upside down, and then playing what you see, that really sealed the deal (this oddity may be the reason that music students are often forced to analyze this work, with the likely result that they never want to hear it again). As an organ piece, the Ludus is far more accessible to a general audience (those who have not studied it to death), and a technical tour de force as well.
From Silvia Kind, who later occupied the same office at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin where he had been her favorite teacher, I came to know a different side of Hindemith. There were many tales of his remarkable musical abilities, his fascination with model trains that were allowed to take over his whole house during the Christmas holidays (only the kitchen was off limits, and woe to anyone who accidently kept one of his trains from reaching the next stop on time), and his very special gifts as a teacher. As a student, Silvia was first a piano student. One of her required recitals, at lunch time, included Mozart's Fantasia and Fugue in A minor. On the day in question, Silvia came down with a terrible migraine. She got through the fantasia and about halfway through the fugue, then her mind went blank. She held the low C, then in desperation played a C 6th chord and then an A minor chord to end up in the correct key. She ran from the stage, all the way to a second story practice room, where she threw two chairs and a music stand out of the window. Then, feeling much better, she went for a walk in the park. Hindemith had been in the audience; he gathered his students together and dispatched them in pairs to find her. It was he who found Silvia in the park. "My dear", he said, "didn't I tell you? You can cadence from any degree of the scale!"

Yes, the Ludus shows us the serious Hindemith, but also the playful man who took his students on picnics and made them improvise fugues with such texts as "Hunger, hunger, hunger" before lunch. The same man whose little cantata "Frau Musica" tells us, with Luther, that music has the power to dissuade the devil from his evil works. Later experience might have taught him otherwise, but we think Hindemith's faith in music survived undimmed.

Bonbons, Encores, Chestnuts, Transcriptions, and Oddities

Two Carillons
- Handel: Carillon
- Dandrieu: Carillon, ou Cloches (Play MP3)
Program Music by Kerll (or possibly not!)
- "The Battle" (long thought to be the work of Cabanilles, and here realized for "Spanish" organ)
- "The Styrian Shepherd" (attributed to Kerll by at least one editor, this piece might be characterized as variations on a yodel — the traditional Styrian instrument was a horn, here taken to be a gemshorn)
Post-Baroque Music, Transcriptions from the Romantic Era, and other entertainments. Transcriptions from the operatic and symphonic repertoire were standard fare for organ concerts a hundred years ago, even during church services. In most cases, the organist would have used the piano reductions and concert transcriptions that were fashionable then. As luck would have it, a friend of mine fell heir to a large collection of such music, and it proved irresistible!
- Tchaikowski: Hamlet Fantasy-Overture — This one is big! 100 KB Midi file, lasts almost 18 minutes. I used a piano transcription from about 1900, and I corrected the wrong notes against Leonard Bernstein's recording. Notice how tastefully the organ setting omits all the unnecessary crashing and banging around that is present in the orchestral score. The treatment of Hamlet is eccentric; we discover that Ophelia is 100% Russian.
- Sibelius: Valse Triste
- Weil: Tango from the "Three-Penny Opera"
- Widor: Toccata from Organ Symphony No. 5
- Rossini: "Cujus Animam" from the Stabat Mater, Lizst transcription (Play MP3)
- Weber: "Turandot" (overture to the opera, based on a Chinese melody and later metamorphosed by Hindemith) Our registration is a little odd: the piano reduction was a bit too heavy in the left hand, so we used the 8' reeds and principals of the positif and supplemented the right hand with the Nonade IV transposed down an octave. By itself, the Nonade sounds terrible (contains fifth, third, seventh, and ninth mutation intervals), but when added to the reeds produces almost unheard-of brilliance. This is the same principle used in the construction of the Grand Jeu, but taken several levels beyond.
- Meyerbeer: "Marche du Sacre" from "Le Prophète" (Play MP3)
- Wagner: "Siegfried's Rhein Journey" "Wagner's music isn't as bad as it sounds." — Mark Twain
- Wagner: "Magic Fire" (concert transcription by Franz Bendel from Die Walküre, publ. 1895)
- Wagner: "Ride of the Valkyries" (arrangement by Otto Singer from Die Walküre, publ. 1905)
- Wagner: Prelude to "Lohengrin" (arrangement by Otto Singer, publ. 1905)
- Wagner: "Spinning Song" (transcribed by Liszt, from The Flying Dutchman) (Play MP3)
- Saint-Saëns: "Le Rouet d'Omphale" (Omphale's Spinning-Wheel, piano reduction of the composer) (Play MP3)
- Saint-Saëns: "La Jeunesse d'Hercule" Op. 50. (The Boyhood of Hercules, please fasten your seatbelts! I.e., beware of speaker overload, there are some very loud sections!)
- Saint-Saëns: "Phaëton" Op. 39, symphonic poem
- Saint-Saëns: "Africa", fantasy for piano and orchestra Op. 89, piano reduction by the composer. (Play MP3) North Africa, that is! A virtuostic evocation ending with an exotic procession and joyous tumult.
- Lalo: "Le Roi d'Ys" (Play MP3) (overture to the opera, a sort of French riposte to Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde". A Los Angeles radio host who should have known better and who shall remain anonymous translated the title as "The King of Why's"! Whether you believe the place once existed and then sank into the sea, or that it is simply mythical, the name is pronounced "EESS" !)
- W. Winterling: "Funeral March for Kaiser Wilhelm I" (Opus 13) — the thought of giving the Kaiser a big send-off might have given much satisfaction to French audiences of a certain generation!
- Nicolai: "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (Overture) (Play MP3)
- Chabrier: "España" (Play MP3) (The music of Spain was all the rage in France in the late 19th Century. Everyone tried his hand at writing exotic dances, whether they had ever been to Spain or not! This is the first large-scale piece that I realized when I developed the JEUX soundfont.)
- Jules Massenet: Ballet music from Le Cid: 1.Castillane (Play MP3) 2.Andalouse (Play MP3) 3.Aragonaise (Play MP3) 4.Aubade (Play MP3) 5.Catalane (Play MP3) 6.Madrilene (Play MP3) 7.Navarraise (Play MP3)
- Jules Massenet: Scènes Alsaciennes (Play MP3). While Massenet is best known for his operas, he also left us several orchestral suites. This one is a typical example of the direction of patriotic music in France at the end of the 19th Century, an odd combination of military and folk themes. The piece at first appears to be simply a charming depiction of the Alsacian countryside. "Dimanche Matin" finds us in the fresh air surrounded by the sounds of birds and church bells. These are liberal times; after church we head straight for the cabaret ("Au Cabaret") where lively dance tunes are heard. In the afternoon, we rest under the fragrant linden trees ("Sous les Tilleuls"). "Dimanche Soir" finds us back at the cabaret, with popular Alsacian airs marked in the score. The action is interrupted, however, by the passage of a French brigade retreating from the German forces that occupied the area until 1918 ("Retraite Française" marked in the score). This chilling reminder of the incessant wars that have passed through Alsace and Lorraine uses trumpet stops accompanied by a sort of rhythmic tramping on the pedal board, creating very effective drum rolls that work just as well on the JEUX soundfont as they do on real pipe-organs.
- Georges Bizet: "Patrie" (dramatic overture) (Play MP3). But the Franco-Prussian War was now over, and perhaps peace would prevail. George Bizet (1838-1875) hit a national nerve with his patriotic overture "La Patrie", which celebrates the intrepid French troops, the vision of pastoral tranquility they are fighting to preserve, and their return as heros, even though they had actually lost the war! In music, at least, the end to this story is a happy one.

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