Repertoire List

"Cosmopolitan Encounters"

The competition repertoire invites participants to reimagine the historic encounters between great keyboard players of the past, staged as contests, duels or moments of inspiration: these include the meeting of Froberger and Weckmann in Dresden in the middle of the 17thcentury; the gathering of the Bach sons and their father at the royal Prussian court in Potsdam in 1747; the encounter of W. A. Mozart with the virtuoso J. W. Haessler in 1789. How did travelling virtuoso organists handle the instruments they met, and how did they adapt their music and its national styles to instruments that may have been foreign to them?

This competition offers candidates the chance to imagine some of those encounters as they play repertoire on three outstanding instruments: the Craighead-Saunders organ at Christ Church, Rochester, modeled on the 1776 Adam Gottlob Casparini organ in Vilnius, Lithuania; the original 18th-century Italian organ in the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester; and the organ at Cornell University, based on the 1706 Arp Schnitger organ at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. [See Specifications] Much of the competition repertoire has been chosen for its suitability to these three organs, but some music has been deliberately selected in order to encourage adaptability and an extension of the historical imagination of performers. In the last round in particular, candidates are asked to select and perform 19th- and 20th-century repertoire, imagining how 19th- and 20th-century composers may have approached old organs in a new age.

Where repertoire choices are to be made by the candidate, the specification of the competition organs should be taken carefully into consideration.

Selection round (DVD):

- Dieterich Buxtehude: either Toccata in d, BuxWV 155 OR Toccata in F, BuxWV 156
- J. P. Sweelinck: Variations on “Est-ce Mars” OR “Onder een linde groen” OR “More Palatino”
- J. S. Bach: Trio super “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr,” BWV 664

Round I, part I: "Casparini" organ, Christ Church, Rochester

- J. S. Bach: Prelude in D major, BWV 532/i
- Georg Muffat: a toccata from Apparatus musico-organisticus (1690) [competitor’s choice]
- J. S. Bach, “An Wasserflüssen Babylon,” BWV 653
- J. S. Bach: Fugue in D major, BWV 532/ii

Round I, part II: Italian organ, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester

A program of music by Girolamo Frescobaldi, Johann Jakob Froberger and Matthias Weckmann, including at least one piece by each. Not to exceed 20 minutes.

Round II: "Schnitger" organ, Anabel Taylor Chapel, Cornell
- Johann Gottlieb Graun: Organ concerto in G minor, 1st movement
- Nicolaus Bruhns: Chorale fantasy, “Nun komm der heiden Heiland ” OR “Vincent Lübeck, Chorale fantasy, “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”
- J. S. Bach: “Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter,” BWV 650
- C. P. E. Bach: Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, Wq. 119/7

Final: "Casparini" organ, Christ Church, Rochester: a recital program not to exceed 55 minutes, and to include:

- J. S. Bach: Either Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, BWV 552 OR Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548
- A work by Heiller or Hindemith
- Candidates’ choice of music written between 1750 and 1900

Program not to exceed 55 minutes