RUDOLF INNIG

Franz Lachner - Three Preludes and Fugues

(36 pages, 15 €)

When Franz Lachner published his Three Organ Sonatas op. 175, 176 and 177 in 1877, he was already over 70 years old. Like Felix Mendelssohn, who founded the genre of the organ sonata in 1845 with his Six Organ Sonatas op. 65, Lachner drew on previously composed organ pieces in his Organ Sonatas in F minor, C major and E minor, which he also published as a version for piano four hands. He compiled his Three Sonatas in their final form from a collection of Six Preludes and Fugues (1855/56) and three further Preludes (1868) and added individual new movements (also like Mendelssohn) during the creation process.

The preludes and fugues in E major and F major presented here belong as numbers 9 to 12 to the Six Preludes and Fugues from 1855 and 1856, but with the exception of number 11, they were not included in the sonatas and have remained unpublished to date. The autographs are in the Bavarian State Library in Munich as Mus. Mss. 5810. The numbering of the individual pieces shows that Andante con moto (number 9) and the fugue in E minor (number 10) originally formed a unit as a prelude and fugue, just as the fugue in F major (number 12) belonged to the Andante con moto in F minor as number 11, which later found its way into the final movement of the Sonata in F minor op. 175. Prelude and Fugue in B minor, on the other hand, was published in a Mozart album, commissioned by the Mozart Society in Gotha and printed by the Kahnt publishing house in Leipzig.

This volume appeared in 1856, apparently in honor of the 100th anniversary of W. A. ​​Mozart. This is also supported by the fact that Franz Lachner was working on the Six Preludes and Fugues at this time. In the original print of Franz Lachner's organ sonatas, it is noticeable that the registration information is almost identical to that of Felix Mendelssohn in his organ works op. 65.And it is not surprising that Lachner's (only) 'master student' Josef Gabriel Rheinberger adopted the same information in his twenty organ sonatas.

The three organ sonatas by Franz Lachner, as well as the previously unpublished Three Preludes and Fugues presented here, certainly deserve more attention. They are character pieces for organ of great originality and compositional mastery, which need not fear comparison with similar pieces by Rheinberger or Reger. My interest in the organ music of Franz Lachner (MDG 317 1487-2, further information on this website under CDs) arose in connection with my recording of all of Josef Gabriel Rheinberger's organ works between 1998 and 2005.

At that time, I asked myself who Rheinberger's composition teacher Franz Lachner was and why his parents, who lived in Vaduz (his father was the 'Finance Minister' of the Principality of Liechtenstein), entrusted their 'child prodigy' Josef Gabriel in 1851 at the age of twelve to the Royal Music School in Munich and the busy General Music Director of the Court Opera Franz Lachner.

Franz Lachner, who is now largely forgotten, was elected organist at the Protestant Church in Vienna in 1823 at the age of twenty, and he was a close friend of Franz Schubert there. Later he became the first conductor of the Vienna Court Opera and he shaped for more than thirty years (1836-1868) the musical life in Munich. Franz Lachner was widely known not only as a conductor, but also as a composer of symphonies, operas and chamber music.

The representation of these pieces on the organ in the present musical text assumes a three-manual instrument with a swell organ and as many combinations as possible. This corresponds to the information in the text on the manual distribution (GT, POS, SW), the dynamics (from pp to ff) and the use of the swell (< or >), which can, however, be transferred to the individual instrument.

(Dr. Rudolf Innig)