No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Organ Music of William Russell
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2015
Abstract
William Russell (1777–1813) came from a London family of organists and organ builders. He published two sets of voluntaries: in 1804 and 1812. As well as his liturgical duties at St Anne's Limehouse, and in the Foundling Hospital Chapel, Russell worked as pianist and composer at the Sadler's Wells Theatre; the influence of opera and theatrical music can be strongly felt in some of the voluntaries. He was also particularly interested in the development of the organ itself, and had ‘progressive’ ideas regarding early nineteenth-century organ design.
Russell's music fascinatingly blends, or sometimes simply juxtaposes, several disparate musical influences. He therefore sits at an interesting point in English organ music. This article investigates Russell's own music – its forms, styles and genres – and his use of the instruments available to him. In addition, I will consider the extent to which his style was of the nineteenth century, and looked forward to future developments, of which his pioneering use of the pedals is one significant aspect.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015
References
1 See the preface to Dr Ward Russell's facsimile edition of the voluntaries, page vi.
2 For this, and for much other information about Russell and his voluntaries, I am indebted to the following sources: Gillian Ward Russell, William Russell and the Foundling Hospital (1801–1813) M.Phil thesis, CNAA 1985; Gillian Ward Russell, William Russell (1777–1813): an Enquiry into his Musical Style. PhD thesis, Leicester, 1994. There is also much interesting information in the preface to Dr Ward Russell's facsimile edition of the voluntaries (1991).
3 For further information and comment see: Thistlethwaite, Nicholas, The Making of the Victorian Organ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar: 14ff.
4 Dr Ward Russell notes that Carl Baumgarten, organist of the Lutheran Chapel in the Savoy (and a subscriber to Russell's first volume), published the first voluntaries in England to use three staves in 1783–84. As a German organist, he would have been well acquainted with pedals.
5 A ‘real’ answer gives an exact intervallic repetition of the subject, generally in the dominant key; a ‘tonal’ answer makes one or more changes in intervallic relationships in order to accommodate the harmony. It is worth noting that some of J.S. Bach's music, and in particular Das wohltemperirte Clavier (the ‘48’ Preludes and Fugues), was becoming known in England in the early years of the nineteenth century, around the time Russell published his voluntaries – although at first only in learned circles. A prime mover in this respect was Russell's friend and contemporary Samuel Wesley who included Bach in his recitals, and, in conjunction with Karl Friedrich Horn, published an edition of the ‘48’ in four instalments between 1810 and 1813.
6 See the preface to Dr Ward Russell's facsimile edition of the voluntaries, page vi.
7 Blewitt, Jonas, A Complete Treatise on the Organ to which is added a set of Explanatory Voluntaries composed expressly for the purpose of rendering Theory and Practice subservient to mutual elucidation (c. 1795)Google Scholar See David Patrick's modern edition: Jonas Blewitt, Twelve Voluntaries including Blewitt's treatise ‘On the Organ’ (London: Fitzjohn Music Publications, 2006): 2. The quotation above from Blewitt here refers specifically to his own Voluntary I in this volume.
8 At the close of the Largo of Voluntary IV (1812) Russell states ‘Put in the Trumpet & Hautboy, as the 2 Diapasons Principal & Cornet are all that are required in the next movement’. As mentioned above, the musical style of all three of Russell's ‘full swell’ movements might suggest a gentler registrational scheme to present-day players. But Russell's directions are unequivocal – and they work very convincingly on an appropriate organ of the period.