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One of the pieces posted at the beginning was Cesar Franck’s arrangement of the old Catholic hymn, “Panis Angelicus”. Franck was known for a lot of different things, and one of them was organ music. Bach was the great composer for the organ, but in the late Eighteenth Century, Franck produced a number of masterpieces for the instrument.

Franck was the church organist at St. Clothilde for most of his life, and he worked with a unique organ built by Cavaille-Coll. There are a number of French organs with comparable registry but very few American organs. Organists are expected to improvise, and Franck was a master of this art. Then he would write down from memory what he had just improvised. One of his best is the Fantasie in A Major.

Most people tend to think of organ music as boring and something for organ lovers only. But this is one of the spookiest pieces in the repertory because Franck uses three sharps for a key of convenience while he explores chromatic harmonies on the edge of the music of his era. Turn off the lights when you listen to it for the full effect.

The first eight bars define the basic theme, and everything you hear for the next 14 minutes is a version of that inverted, reversed, harmonized and moved around the instrument. At 2:45 he pulls it into a theme in A minor which is downright amazing. At 9:55 he finally unleashes the full organ, and he has the theme played on the pedals! Follow the bass notes for the theme. At 12:00 he resolves the theme by suspending it between musical keys in a wonderful passage almost unmoored from the concept of key. He ends it in A minor, with a sense of both sadness and power.

One other thing to notice is the rests. Organ composers make use of silences while they let the sound decay in the space of the church. Listen to Franck work the silences.

Franck: Fantasie in A Major”