When I listen to Roger Sherman’s “The Organ Loft” tonight, it seems I will touch her soft lips and part for the last time. “Touch her soft lips and part” from William Walton’s film score for “Henry V” serves as the closing theme for Sherman’s program, which he has produced for Seattle’s KING-FM since 1993. It has become part of my Sunday evening routine since my own shows have been picked up by KWAX Classical Oregon (which airs the “The Organ Loft” in syndication).
Alas, as Schiller tells us, even beauty must die. Today will mark the final broadcast of “The Organ Loft,” always an enjoyable balance of organ and choral music. Sherman, Associate Organist Emeritus at Seattle’s St. Mark’s Cathedral and Artistic Director Emeritus of Orcas Choral Society, is also CEO of Loft Recordings. Loft manages The Gothic Catalog and Clarion Records, among others. Unsurprisingly, many recordings on those labels have been presented on the program.
Gothic has left a big footprint in Princeton, NJ (where I live and work), through its recordings of Princeton University Chapel’s Aeolian-Skinner/Mander organ, organist Joan Lippincott at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Westminster Choir College alumni, such as organist Peter Richard Conte.
Sherman has further distinguished himself as executive producer of well over 100 choral and organ recordings and has engineered, edited, and mastered dozens of recordings for the Loft, Clarion, Gothic, and reZound labels.
Yet again, I thank my lucky stars for my internet radio, which brings so much beauty into my living room and into my life from around the country and around the world. Sherman’s show has been a warm and welcome visitor on Sunday evenings.
Walton’s wistful music is often the last thing I hear on Sundays before heading off to bed. For those 90 seconds, I stop whatever I’m doing and make sure that I am wholly present. Whenever I listen to this arrangement for cornet and organ (at the link), I will think of Roger Sherman.
“The Organ Loft” airs on KWAX Classical Oregon at 6:00 p.m. PDT, but when I stream it here on the East Coast it’s 9 PM.
I know from experience that a lot of love and a lot of sweat goes into producing a satisfying and polished radio program every week. Thank you, sir, for all your hard work and for sharing your knowledge and life’s passion with thousands of listeners you will never meet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9-M_zch6Y
Tag: organ
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The Last of “The Organ Loft”
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Bach Better Late Than Never
You may have heard the big news by now, that a couple of organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach have been rediscovered. New works by Bach! Well, kind of. They were actually uncovered all the way back in 1992, while researcher Peter Wollny was cataloguing Bach manuscripts at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels. But the mills of the gods grind slowly, and IT TOOK 30 YEARS, I guess, to confirm their authenticity.
Be that as it may, the “new” Chaconne in D minor, BWV 1178, and Chaconne in G minor, BWX 1179, were performed for the first time in probably 320 years yesterday. A stream of the double debut, at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig – where Bach served as cantor for 27 years (less time than it took for the organ pieces to be authenticated) and where his remains are interred beneath a bronze marker – with Baroque authority Ton Koopman at the organ, has been archived on YouTube.
There’s some annoying A.I. Bach at the start and plenty of German speechifying, but if you want to cut to the chase, the Chaconne in D minor can be heard twice, at 15:28/59:40, and the Chaconne in G minor at 22:45/1:07:02 at the link below.
The undated, unsigned manuscripts are believed to be in the hand of Salomon Günther John, one of Bach’s pupils. The chaconnes are thought to have been composed early in Bach’s career, when he was working as an organ teacher in Arnstadt in Thuringia.
Unsurprisingly, Koopman finds the music to be “of very high quality.”
Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hXzUGYIL9M
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