Leonhardt playing the organ in the film, THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH (available on Netflix)

Though I had hoped to hear or see the proceedings online, I heartily admire the fact that cameras and recording equipment were not allowed at the funeral. Too often one-of-a-kind occasions like this one are treated primarily as something to be preserved and publicized rather than lived in the moment. I should have known that Mr. Leonhardt would have arranged things as they were.

A reader who was at the obsequies has very kindly sent me a link to his own description of what must have been an unforgettable event. Bert Shudi has also posted these valuable reflections on the master’s career.

UPDATE: The blogger who had provided the account of the funeral has seen fit to remove it. I apologize for any inconvenience. Herewith, however, the link to a stupendous video of a live performance of Bach’s funeral cantata by Leonhardt, with other star performers that you may recognize, in Amsterdam’s Waalsekerk. The German text and English translation can be found here. This inspiring music, lovingly recreated at the hands of Gustav Leonhardt seems as fitting memorial as any musician could hope for.

There has naturally been curiosity about the funeral arrangements for the great Dutch musician who died last week — and certainly about what music will be included. The service will be on Tuesday the 24th. Many people had, like me, assumed that it would take place where he has been the titular organist for many years, the nearest Dutch equivalent to Westminster Abbey, the Nieuwekerk, which is also very near his house. But the Nieuwekerk now has divine service only on royal and other state occasions (including coronations) and at the moment is occupied by an exhibition on Judaism that, by contract, may not be interrupted.

The other church with which Mr. Leonhardt was long associated (and where he gave me my organ lessons) is the Waalsekerk, which is on the other side of the Dam from his house and the Nieuwekerk,

and the Waalsekerk has a magnificent organ.

But it is too small for the crowd that is surely anticipated and, besides, holds its services in French. Presumably the funeral will be in Dutch, though I wonder how many people ever heard the man utter a single Dutch word besides Sweelinck! (He was content to teach in English, French, German, or Italian, but an American friend who took pains to learn Dutch was told that lessons were not to be in Dutch. Even the notice on the doorbell of his house to “speak distinctly” into in the intercom was in English.)

Thus, the funeral will be conducted in Mr. Leonhardt’s own parish church, the Westerkerk, pictured at the top of this post (which has also pinch-hitted for the Nieuwekerk for royal occasions when the latter was under restoration). It has generous proportions,

contains two organs,

is centrally located,

and is even said to have been designed by the same architect who built the Leonhardts’ great palace on the Herengracht:

We can hope that there will be a way of hearing the funeral on the Web. If it is available, I’ll post an update here (and will of course be grateful to hear from anyone who has early news of such a Webcast).

Looking up at the larger organ in the Westerkerk

William Rieder

With this post four years ago, RogerEvansOnline was born. Many thanks to all of you who have followed it all that time or any part thereof. But I want to do something far more important than to congratulate myself on the anniversary of the site or of my own birth.

The first week or so of posts during that January were typed at the beach house of my dear friend of long standing, William Rieder. At that point he had already been battling — no, warring with — cancer. There had been so many battles won and many more to come. Bill died a few weeks ago, just before Christmas, to the great grief of his many friends, and every anniversary of this blog, so long as it lasts, will be for me a day of thanksgiving for a man of many gifts and accomplishments, a legendary curator of the period rooms at the Metropolitan Museum, and an incomparable friend.

That it happens to be Bach’s great funeral cantata seems heartbreaking today.

“Ja, komm, Herr Jesu!”

(The black shirts are a nice touch.)

Just a few weeks before I was going to try a rather thrilling new technological tool in a recital — an innovation that I thought would probably impress my audience with the preternatural with-itness of this guy playing old music with the latest wireless page-turning technology — The New York Times rather stole my thunder in an article about a Carnegie Hall performance that used those very tools.

Now the TED Talks present the pianist reviewed in that article talking about and demonstrating the Bluetooth-enabled procedure that I am finding so helpful:

UPDATE: A friend who was in the audience sends this photo of the iPad/AirTurn combo in use on December 8. (Since the picture was taken on an iPhone, and in the foreground you see a MacBook Pro making an audio recording of the music, Apple should be paying me.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Of course there are other ways to turn a page.

As even the general-interest secular press has been noting, the whole English-speaking Catholic Church (at least that majority of it that follows the Latin Rite rather than the various Eastern Rites), has been more or less convulsed by the introduction before Christmas of an entirely new English translation of the Mass, both of the invariable and of the immense body of daily variable texts (except for the biblical readings, which have their own translations). The nature and quality of the English had been much discussed over the past four decades, as well as attendant musical issues — prime among them the place of Gregorian chant in the modern world.

Loss and Gain, the title, as it happens, of a remarkable novel by John Henry Newman, is the theme of so much development in human affairs. A much-forgotten passage by Pope Paul VI in 1969, it seems to me, sums up much in this and other questions of human culture:

Clearly the most noticeable new departure is that of language. From now on the vernacular, not Latin, will be the principal language of the Mass. For those who appreciate the beauty of Latin, its power, and aptness to express the sacred, substitution of the vernacular certainly represents a great sacrifice. We are losing the idiom of the Christian ages; we become like profane intruders into the literary sanctuary of sacred language; we shall lose a large portion of that wonderful and incomparable, artistic and spiritual reality, Gregorian chant. We indeed have reason for sadness and perhaps even for bewilderment. What shall we put in the place of this angelic language? We are sacrificing a priceless treasure. For what reason? What is worth more than these sublime values of the Church? The answer may seem trite and prosaic, but it is sound because it is both human and apostolic. Our understanding of prayer is worth more than the previous, ancient garments in which it has been regally clad. Of more value, too, is the participation of the people, of modern people who are surrounded by clear, intelligible language …. If our sacred Latin should, like a thick curtain, close us off from the world of children and young people, of work and the business of everyday, then would we, fishers of men, be wise to allow it exclusive dominion over the speech of religion and prayer?

– Paul VI, Address to a general audience, on the new Ordo Missae, 26 November1969: Notitiae 5 (1969) 412-416 (Italian) English translation, Documents on the Liturgy, 1963-1979 [ICEL] (The Liturgical Press, 1983)