Choralvariationen für Orgel, Gesamtausgabe by Daniel Magnus Gronau (review)

This publication is the product of research at the Newberry Library, Chicago, and the discovery there of a microfilm that preserves a copy of a hitherto lost manuscript by Daniel Magnus Gronau (ca. 1700–1747). A composer and organist active in Danzig, Gronau is a shadowy figure, and much of his music has not survived. Consequently, the microfilm restores a significant amount of his work to posterity. The contents include a large number of chorale variations for organ previously owned by St. John’s Church, Danzig, and considered lost since 1945. The manuscript was discovered by Hermann Rauschning among the church registers of St. John’s in 1909, which at that time had not been transferred to the state archives. The significance of the manuscript was noted in the 1920s by the organist Gotthold Frotscher, who copied six of the chorale cycles in addition to publishing partial transcriptions of Gronau’s work including details of the composer’s organ registrations. The latter area forms one of the key points of interest in this modern edition. Following World War II the manuscript was considered lost except for the six cycles that Frotscher had brought forward. Further, the records of the church mention two volumes that contain a total of eighty-four variation cycles that were entrusted to Gronau’s successor Friedrich Gottlieb Gleimann. The records indicate that there were “Two volumes [with] leather binding in folio with 84 hymn melodies in counterpoint and with variations, 1 book in quarto with 60 preludes, 1 book in octavo with 516 fugues, in a case” (p. xii). Unfortunately the first volume had already disappeared by 1909, and there is also no trace of the volume of preludes. But the manuscript with the 516 fugues is held in the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences (formerly the Danzig Municipal Library). The manuscript for the present volume remains elusive despite the editors’ note that it must have been used in the microfilm created by the Newberry Library in 1981, although it has not been possible to ascertain who ordered the filming of the score (p. xii). The first volume includes two editorial commentaries. Martin Rost writes on “Daniel Magnus Gronau and his Chorale Variations for Organ,” and Krzysztof Urbaniak on “The Organs of Daniel Magnus Gronau.” A critical report and plates complete the prefatory materials. As the editors observe (p. v), the discovery of the complete manuscript in microfilm has allowed for a reassessment of the work of Gronau, and perhaps equally the question of organ performance practice in the eighteenth century.

The especial value of this edition lies beyond the narrative of detective work noted above. Rather, these volumes allow us a valuable glimpse not only into a style of keyboard writing seldom encountered and indeed rarely studied in modern pedagogy, but also an approach to organ registration that will cause many to think anew on current performance practices and perceptions of the approach of baroque composers. Organ registration is indeed an art form, not least because no two performers will approach works the same way when studied through comparative analysis. Whereas protocols of performance can be observed from treatises and...