Widor: A Life beyond the Toccata (review)

Although familiar to many organists for his lifelong devotion to their instrument as composer, performer, teacher, and coeditor (with his pupil Albert Schweitzer) of an edition of Bach’s organ works, Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937), if known at all by the wider musical public, is most likely to be remembered for a single work frequently heard at church weddings and sharing with J. S. Bach’s D-Minor Toccata and Fugue the distinction of being the most oft-recorded organ piece: the flashy Toccata that closes the fifth of his ten organ symphonies. While some of the organ symphonies, or at least selected movements from them, have in recent decades appeared on recitals and discs, very little of Widor’s substantial output for other media has been revived. As its title implies, John Near’s Widor: A Life Beyond the Toccata seeks to increase awareness and appreciation of a figure who, as the author asserts in his prefatory remarks, “was not at all just an organist and organ composer, but rather a mainstream musician who composed in nearly every genre, and who had been a sort of cultural ambassador for France” (pp. xvii–xviii).

Indeed, it is surprising that work toward a more complete picture of so major a figure in the musical cultural life of France’s Third Republic should have only been begun during the three decades past and, furthermore, that the initiative has been taken by English-speaking rather than French scholars. First came Near’s groundbreaking 1985 doctoral dissertation at Boston University (“The Life and Works of Charles-Marie Widor”), followed two years later by an insightful monograph, The Life and Times of Charles-Marie Widor, 1844–1937 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), then by British freelance writer Andrew Thomson, who also contributed several essays on Widor and his contemporaries to The Musical Times and co-authored the New Grove entry on him. Professor Near too continued championing and exploring his life and works through preparation and publication of an excellent critical edition of the ten organ symphonies between 1987–97 and by gaining access to a substantial stash of Widoriana stowed away in the home of the composer’s grandniece. Those materials, particularly a 103-page unpublished manuscript, Souvenirs autobiographiques, that the ninety-one-year-old Widor dictated to Claude Monet’s cousin, plus other writings by the composer and by pupils, friends, and critics, have enabled Near to produce a biography in which the narrative voice is often that of Widor or his contemporaries.

In addition to nearly 500 pages of main text and notes, Near’s book contains several informative appendices, including a 44-page work list—certainly the most comprehensive assembled thus far—that chronologically itemizes and annotates the vocal, keyboard, chamber, orchestral and theatre works produced by Widor over his long and prolific compositional career. The most notable of these are covered in three main chapters, which also chronicle his parallel and arguably more important accomplishments as organ virtuoso, Paris Conservatory professor, major figure in France’s Bach revival, and prolific author of music criticism, articles, prefaces and textbooks. Thus, the first of these chapters, “First Creative Period (1864–79),” not only discusses the first six organ symphonies and various vocal and instrumental works but also recounts the valuable support and inspiration Widor received from the successful and influential Parisian organ builder Cavaillé-Coll, who during their lifelong friendship promoted his protégé as recitalist on his new and restored organs and secured his appointment as organiste titulaire of the prominent Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice. At Sunday mass during his 64-year tenure there, Widor entertained distinguished visitors and leading artistic figures in the organ loft with virtual recitals on Cavaillé-Coll’s largest and most important instrument.

The next chapter, “Years of Mastery (1880–94),” besides featuring, among other works, a symphonic poem (La nuit de Walpurgis), a ballet (La Korrigane), an...