Frederick Hohman’s commissioned composition, The Organ Icons, will be premiered March 3, 2019 at 4PM, at Daniel DiCicco Hall at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For those who can’t attend in person, the recital will be streamed live on the AGO website.
Sunday, March 3, 3:00PM: Pre-concert discussion
Sunday, March 3, 4:00PM: Recital featuring Katelyn Emerson on the Pogorzelski-Yankee organ
The Organ Icons
THE ORGAN ICONS takes its inspiration from the 16th-century Parody Masses as were composed by Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594), where excerpts from bawdy secular songs were incorporated into the compositional fabric of sacred choral compositions sung in the Mass. In the Parody Mass, secular fragments were often so well concealed in sacred choral writing, that only the performers could secretly appreciate their presence in vocal phrases. Of course, it is up to the individual as to whether parody does or does not equate with humor. The parody technique is definitely the focus throughout THE ORGAN ICONS. Instead of bawdy, secular tunes to parody, the composer Frederick Hohman draws upon some of the most easy-to-recognize, non-texted musical motives in all the pipe organ literature. The composer uses them in numerous transformations, and in a diverse breadth of musical styles. The motives are: [1] the opening of J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, S. 565; [2] the figuration that opens the Toccata from Charles-Marie Widor’s Fifth Organ Symphony (the first three notes of which are, in aural terms, identical to the opening mordent of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor); [3] the pedal theme of the same Widor Toccata; [4] the opening phrase of the Reformation hymn-tune “Ein Feste Burg” (A Mighty Fortress, c. 1528), and [5] the 7-note motive from the climax of Olivier Messiaen’s (1908-1992) Transports de joie (Outburst of Joy ) from Ascension Suite.
Frederick Hohman composed THE ORGAN ICONS for the 2019 Pogorzelski-Yankee Award. The score is published by Zarex Scores and it is available now, exclusively at www.ProOrgano.com.
More information about the Pogorzelski-Yankee Annual Competition.
