'Clair de Lune'

I almost got burned by this third movement of Suite bergamasque by Claude Debussy. Years ago, I had an earful of it each time my second car, which I had bought from a friend, blared out a poorly recorded excerpt from Clair de Lune whenever it was backing up. It was the “in” thing in the mid-‘80s when cars came equipped with a sound gadget that was meant to warn inattentive motorists and pedestrians that a car was about to rear-end them. The tune was as irritating as it was fancy; I got rid of it as fast as I could. Suddenly, the tune became a garbage call in the neighborhood of my parents’ home in Santa Mesa. You could hear it three times a week at the break of dawn from a public address system mounted atop the garbage truck. Yes, it was time to get your garbage out, oh boy!

Clair de Lune, inspired by Paul Verlaine’s poem, is easily Debussy’s most recognizable piano piece, but I never realized that it would sound glorious when played by a pipe organ. Hearing it again, after all these years, made me realize that there is much to appreciate about the piece. I haven’t heard French composer Louis Vierne’s organ version of Clair de Lune, but I gathered it was from him that Dr. Edward D. Berryman (S.M.D, organist) drew inspiration when he recorded it along with other classical masterpieces for the 1971 album “Organ Music From Westminster” (Ark Records).

The album is the latest in my ever-growing pipe organ music LP collection, which include Michael Murray’s “The Great Organ At Methuen” (Telarc), and Virgil Fox’s “At The Organ Plays Johann Sebastian Bach” and “On Top of Bach” (Command Classics). “Westminster,” however, stands out as the most accurately recorded among them. The album was recorded at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Record engineer R. W. Fulton pulled out all the stops to ensure that the mighty eloquence of this Kimball organ was faithfully captured. The pipe organ was built in 1927. Its principal reed and choruses were replaced in 1958, and it was totally re-voiced in 1971.

There’s something about this magnificent royal-looking musical instrument that can leave one awestruck. It is solemn and at the same time playful; it can evoke different emotions from a single track. Majestical, mystical — the sound from this ostensible “king of instruments” has been unfortunately thrown into oblivion and relegated to church music. And even in churches, the organ only serves as an accessory to choir hymns. This is totally disheartening because a great deal of good concert music was written exclusively for the organ.

The pipe organ is also one of the better ways to gauge how well your sound system widely reproduces the audible frequency range. In a well-configured system, you can expect to feel the deepest lows. In an organ, one pipe equals one pitch, far different from other orchestral instrument, like the flute or trumpet, which can produce multiple pitches through the keys on the instrument. There are no keys or holes in the pipes of the organ to control the pitch. An organ pipe’s pitch is determined by the length of the pipe. If I’m not mistaken, the longest pipe is where those floor-crawling 14 Hertzes come from.

How well your analog sources team up to retrieve otherwise hidden musical information determines how the pipe organ will finally sound in your system. The plinth, platter and tone arm should as much as possible be made from materials that ensure complete isolation of the turntable from vibrations; the tone arm tracking should be precise; the motor should be able to rotate exactly at 33.3 or 45 rpm, and the cart should be able to accurately “scratch” the record’s groove to retrieve even the faintest musical information — these are just some of the things which make an analog system well-configured. And if your system is such, then you will no doubt be able to hear the heavenly music contained in Dr. Berryman’s “Organ Music From Westminster.” 

Both sides of the album contain masterpieces that will glue you to your “sweet spot.” Fantasy In Echo Style by Jan Sweelink, Adagio-Allegro-Adagio by W. A. Mozart, Finlandia by Jan Sibelius and selections form Pastolare by J.S. Bach, Louis Vierne’s Scherzo From Symphony II, Clair de Lune selections for Sonata V by F. Mendelssohn, and the finale from Symphony VII by C. M. Widor — all of these selections have those pleasantly jolting lows with the slithering air movements that can either shake your seat or tickle your toes.

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For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com or at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com or you can tweet audiofiler at www.twitter.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.