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Views from the Choir Loft

Need Easy Organ Pieces? Try This Little-Known Composer

Keven Smith · August 2, 2022

T’S A STRUGGLE that every church organist knows all too well: you want to glorify God and provide beauty to your congregation by playing new repertoire regularly. But you haven’t had adequate practice time since college. You probably have a day job and a family. And easier organ music often doesn’t seem worth playing, musically speaking.

What to do? You could spend hours searching the internet for those rare interesting-yet-playable gems. Or you could head straight to IMSLP and look up Gaël Liardon.

Who Is Gaël Liardon?

Gaël Liardon was a brilliant composer and keyboard player who died in 2018 just two months shy of 45 years old. In terms of digital footprint, he’s a mysterious figure; his Wikipedia page contains only seven sentences and offers no details on his tragic death. Fortunately for us all, this brilliant Swiss musician left behind several dozen fine organ compositions on IMSLP.

On the day Liardon died, his friend and fellow Swiss keyboardist Benjamin Righetti went to St. Francois in Lausanne (where he is the titular organist) and recorded Liardon’s O heiliger Geist, o heiliger Gott. This trio is my favorite of Liardon’s organ works and an excellent introduction to his compositional style:

Finding Liardon’s Music

As I mentioned, many of Liardon’s compositions are available on IMSLP. (The usual warnings about copyrights apply.) He wrote beautiful, sophisticated pieces on many famous hymn tunes. Even as an advanced beginner, I’ve found some of them quite accessible. There are fuguettes that don’t even require pedals.

My organ teacher sent me a link to the trio above just days after Liardon died. It was a poignant experience to “meet” such an impressive composer from my generation yet realize that he had already passed into eternity. I’m puzzled that Benjamin Righetti’s performance has only garnered 11,000 views, especially considering that I’m responsible for several hundred of those.

Keep this talented man’s music alive—and breathe new life into your repertoire—by exploring Gaël Liardon’s compositions today.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: organ, organ repertoire Last Updated: August 2, 2022

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About Keven Smith

Keven Smith, music director at St. Stephen the First Martyr, lives in Sacramento with his wife and five musical children.—(Read full biography).

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    Tempo?? • 𝘏𝘰𝘭𝘺 𝘎𝘰𝘥, 𝘞𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘺 𝘕𝘢𝘮𝘦
    Once, after Mass, my pastor said he really loved the hymn we did. I said: “Father, that's Holy God, We Praise Thy Name—you never heard it before?” He replied: “But the way you did it was terrific. For once, it didn't sound like a funeral dirge!” Last Sunday, our volunteer choir sang that hymn. I think the tempo was just about right … but what do you think?
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Don’t You Agree About These?
    If you want to make Jeff Ostrowski really happy, send him an email with effusive praise about the individual voice recordings for hymn #296. [Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass] They came out dazzlingly sensational, don't you agree?
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Choral Vowels? Yes? No?
    Here's a live recording of one of the choral “warm-up” exercises my choir enjoys. It was taken during our rehearsal on 27 January 2023. It’s good to make sure each chord is perfectly in tune and balanced before moving to the next one. That only happens when each singer has the correct vowel. If you like, you can freely download that vocal exercise.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

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“The recitation of the Office of the Dead, the Christmas Office, the spectacle of the days of Holy Week, the sublime chant of the Exultet, beside which the most intoxicating accents of Sophocles and Pindar seemed to me to be insignificant—all of this overwhelmed me with respect and joy, with gratitude, repentance, and adoration!”

— Paul Claudel (1913)

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