Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, from Musae Sioniae (1609) Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)
Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) Transcribed by Jean Guillou (1930-2019)
1. The Gnome
2. The Old Castle
3. Tuileries—Children’s Quarrelling After the Play
4. Bydlo
5. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
6. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
7. The Market Place of Limoges (The Big News)
8. Catacombae (Sepulchrum romanum)
9. Cum mortuis in lingua mortua
10. The Hut of Hens’ Legs (Baba-Yaga)
11. The Great Gate of Kiev
Program Notes
Michael Praetorius was born in a small town near Eisenach (the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach nearly a century later), in modern-day central Germany. He spent most of his career in Wolfenbüttel, near Hanover, in northern Germany, working for Duke Heinrich Julius. Praetorius was an influential music theorist, writing about musical terms, forms, and instruments, as well as a prodigious composer of vocal works. His Musae Sioniae is an encyclopedic collection of vocal chorale settings (works based on Lutheran chorales, or hymns), but it also includes four un-texted choral settings marked pro organo—for organ. These four organ chorales, plus nine shorter and later ones, are Praetorius’ only keyboard works.
Musae Sioniae was published in part books for the singers, similar to modern instrumental parts. This meant that an organist would need to take the four-part books from the four voice parts and then create a score to play from at the organ. This fantasia on Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott draws on the gamut of figuration available to a keyboard composer.
Modest Mussorgsky was a Russian composer whose music often pushed the conventions of the Romantic style. His style is heavily influenced by Russian history and legend. He was a member of the Mighty Handful, a group of Russian composers also known as The Five, that included Balakirev, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin. They met in St. Petersburg in the late 1800s and worked together.
In 1874, the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg, Russia, exhibited watercolors and drawings by painter and architect Viktor Hartmann. Mussorgsky, a friend of the artist, was inspired to write Pictures at an Exhibition after seeing the works. Each movement is based on a picture from the exhibit, and a recurring Promenade suggests the viewer wandering the exhibit. Originally written for piano, the work has been orchestrated several times, most notably by French composer Maurice Ravel in 1922.
French organist Jean Guillou transcribed the work for organ. Writing about the work, Guillou states that:
When he composed these musical “pictures,” a remarkable feat of synesthesia, Mussorgsky invented a kind of musical architecture that really cannot be compared with any preceding musical compositions. First the motifs are appearing in the pictures, essentially incongruous in their diversity, with nothing more to link them than the language of their creator. Then there is the logic of the creative impulse that drove Mussorgsky to link this heterogeneous assortment with interludes he called “promenades,” introducing a theme that is to run through the whole work.
Several of Hartmann’s paintings are known. Many have been lost over time. The images are of ordinary daily life and traditional folk legends. There is a humorous sketch of ballet costumes of chicks still in their shells. There are images of a poor man and a rich man, both Jewish—two pictures that Mussorgsky himself owned—and a cart with enormous wheels pulled by an ox.
There are scenes of public places: the marketplace of Limoges and the Parisian Tuileries gardens. There are scenes from folklore: one of gnomes and one of Baba Yaga, a character from Russian legend who lived in a house on a hen’s legs and ate children.
Hartmann also sketches himself and two friends in the catacombs below Paris. The last image and movement are of a plan for a city gate—a commission that was, unfortunately, never built. About this movement, Guillou muses that, in the music, “all the hallowed solemnity of [the country] is depicted here, with its churches, cupolas, pealing bells, its ornaments, and its splendor.
Biography of Thomas Heidenreich
Thomas Heidenreich completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music in April 2022, where he studied with Michael Unger. He is a member of The Diapason’s 2021 class of “20 under 30” recognizing talented young organists, and the 2016 winner of the Joan Lippincott Competition for Excellence in Organ Performance at Westminster Choir College. In 2019, he performed for the Association of Anglican Musicians national conference in Boston at the Harvard Memorial Church.
Since March 2024, Thomas has served as the Director of Music Ministry at First and Second Presbyterian Churches in Saginaw, where he plays the organ, directs the choirs, and leads the Concerts at First Presbyterian Saginaw series. From 2021-2024, he was the Organist in Residence at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in southeastern Wisconsin, where his playing is featured on the Seminary’s newly released recording, We Praise Our God. His playing will also be featured on the forthcoming world premiere recording of Frederik Sixten’s St. John Passion (English translation), in collaboration with ensembles from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music.
Thomas was the 2017-2018 Association of Anglican Musicians Gerre Hancock Organ Fellow at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, studying with Alan Morrison