January 12, 2025
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
R. Walden Moore, organ.
Johann Sebastian BACH: Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV 546
Rebecca Groom te VELDE: Three Variations on “Puer natus in Bethlehem” (nos. 31, 33 & 34)
Fanny MENDELSSOHN-HENSEL: Prelude for Organ in F major, H. 231
Nadia BOULANGER: “Prelude” from Trois Piéces
Gerre HANCOCK: “Grand Isle” from Three Cincinnati Improvisations
Don LOCKLAIR: “…and call her blessed…” from Windows of Comfort, Organbook II
César FRANCK: “Pièce Héroïque” from 3 Pièces pour grand orgue
Jon Ciliberto | 25 JAN 2025
The pipe organ presents mysteries. Its mechanisms are largely hidden — unlike a flute or violin, and in a more alchemical way than a piano. Many instruments use moving air, but organs don’t spring from human breath. This mechanistic recreation of a living being must have seemed like AI to medievals or (less anachronistically) the divine. I find, even today, value in approaching organ recitals with a sense of the unknown.
Organist R. Walden Moore (Yale school of Music)
The organs in place in churches across Atlanta provide opportunities to hear music across the span of centuries, performed by great performers. One of the most distinguished, R. Walden Moore, was at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.
Moore retired last year after forty years as Director of Music at Trinity Church, New Haven.[1] He is Adjunct Lecturer in Organ at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music/School of Music.[2]
As is often the case for organ recitals, the program ranged across the centuries (although after the medieval period). Also typical for organ recitals, it was slotted into the host church’s regular calendar — here, for Evensong — as part of the Music at St. Luke’s program.
One aspect of hearing organ music in a church is the awareness of ritual activity around you. As with my preferred mindset, this bracketing creates a distinct listening experience from the concert hall, and one can find that, regardless of one’s individual experience of being in church, the bearing of others and the space itself can create a particularly focused sort of listening.
Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C minor was first on the program, and walking in at one minute past 3:15, I had the experience of hearing the music from different places in the church as I made my way into the pews. It is well known that the huge spaces of church interiors play a role in organ music composition — sound hangs in the air seconds or dozens of seconds after the keyboardist lifts finger or foot, creating complicated and intense harmonic worlds. And where one is in the church also changes how the music sounds.
The program offered various voices of the organ. After the largeness of Bach, the soft flute of Rebecca Groom te Velde’s work was a restorative bit of space.
Nadia Boulanger’s “Prélude” was also a moody, somewhat jazzy alternative to the huge and exhilarating Prelude of Mendelsson-Hensel. Similarly, Locklair’s “…and call her blessed…” was the 70s yacht rock of the program. Frank’s work, closing the program, left listeners in a moody, romantic, and even fantastical state, ending in a more tragic than heroic place — all odd ways to lead into the Church service’s Evensong choral entry (“Love divine, all loves excelling,” by Ned Rorem).
“[B]y his own confession, [Moore] is not a virtuoso,”[3] and his Bach especially had the crystalline directness that some prize in performances of his work. I’m not in much of a position to judge the finer points of technical acumen on the pipe organ, but Moore’s leaning into the big chords of Bach and Franck struck me as well-measured rather than over-the-top flamboyant. One wonders if there were laws of organ aesthetics, would precision and expression stand in complement to one another, or in opposition?
Lovers of organ music have many places to go in Atlanta. A range of organ events can be found at the Atlanta Guild of Organists website. The Cathedral of St. Philip, Druid Hills Presbyterian Church, St. Luke’s Episcopal, and many other Atlanta churches have robust music programs, including recitals for organ. ■
Some upcoming pipe organ performances:
- January 26, 2025 @ 3:00 p.m.
Spivey Hall – Morrow, GA
Alan Morrison, organ
Recital ($25-$55) ↗ - Sunday, January 26, 2025 @ 3:15 p.m.
The Cathedral of St. Philip – Atlanta, GA
Brian Parks, organ
Recital – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, transc. Brian Parks, Scheherazade, Op. 35 ↗ - Saturday, February 8, 2025 @ 10:30 a.m.
Druid Hills Presbyterian Church
Michael Burkhardt, organ
Organ Improvisation Master Class ↗ - Saturday, February 8, 2025 @ 7:00 p.m.
Druid Hills Presbyterian Church
Michael Burkhardt, organ
Organ Improvisation and Hymn Festival ↗ - Saturday, March 22, 2025, 12:00 pm – 5:00pm
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church – Atlanta, GA
Taylor Organ Competition ↗
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- St. Luke’s Atlanta, Music Program: stlukesatlanta.org/music
- [1] The Harmonics Of Walden Moore
New Haven Independent | Jun 26, 2014 - [2] Walden Moore | Yale School of Music, Faculty
- [3] Walden Moore’s legacy at Trinity-on-the-Green, Choir & Organ | May 10, 2024
- St. Luke’s Atlanta, Music Program: stlukesatlanta.org/music
Read more by Jon Ciliberto.
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