Many readers will be familiar with this large-scale work dating from 1931, either from the Hinrichsen edition of 1938 or through the various recordings made in recent years, though not, significantly, by Professor Stockmeier.

There are a number of interesting aspects to this work; its material is, according to Godfrey Sceats (Organ Works of Karg-Elert, p38), derived partly from the Harmonium Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, op 46, and employs the same fugue subject in its final movement.

The inspiration for its composition originated in a request from Johannes Piersig, a Breslau organist, for Karg-Elert to contribute an organ work for a broadcast on the Silbermann organ at St George’s Church, Rötha, near Leipzig. (Full details of this instrument appear in the January 1939 issue of ‘The Organ’.) Music for Organ, op 145, resulted; the exact date of its composition and first performance is not clear, but both Music for Organ and the Passacaglia, Variations and Fugue, op 150, were written with this organ in mind.

Sceats adds that he had ‘several times urged him to rewrite the Harmonium Sonata for the pedal organ. He said he would do this but wrote this new Passacaglia and Fugue instead’. It was performed by the composer during his disastrous North American concert tour in 1932. This explains op 150’s dedication to Henry Willis who originally suggested that the tour should take place.

An indication of the problems which this work poses appears in Piersig’s preface. Not only does he admit to adding hints on the playing of particular passages, together with dynamics, tempi, articulation marks and fingering; but he also ‘edited’ the original manuscript in such a way that it cannot now be considered an authentic text. Piersig performed Music for Organ at King College Chapel, London on 9th January, 1939; in connection with this event Sceats

quotes from a letter by the performer which includes the following:
‘As for the BACH Passacaglia and Fugue (op 150), I have in my possession a revised version of this which represents the composer’s final intentions. It is an improvement on the original manuscript and carries out fully a fundamental strictness of form which brings out better the dramatic structure of the composition . . . and a suppression of all that is non-essential or in the style of improvisation.’

What, one wonders, was this non-essential material whose emission so improved on the original manuscript? And did Piersig’s version, as published by Hinrichsen, really reflect the final intentions of the composer as seen, and performed to him when a very sick man, shortly before his death?

Serious students and performers of Karg-Elert’s music will find the Catalogue of Works (Zimmermann £14.50, available from Cathedral Music) absolutely indispensable for the information which it provides; in the entry for op 150 the following illuminating statements occur: According to a letter from Piersig to Sceats (op. cit. p34), he owned the manuscript of a revised version.

Not until 1961 (Musik und Kirche p230f) did Piersig report publicly that he revised the edition of Karg-Elert’s op 150 after its premiere, while Karg-Elert was in America, and in doing so shortened it drastically.

In the preface to the published edition, Piersig does not give this a mention, and emphasises instead that the printed version was shown to the already seriously ill composer and was played to him during his last days. Frau Schwaab (Karg-Elert’s daughter) considers the arrangement of the work as unauthorised.

With this in minds, the unsatisfactory nature of the present published version

must surely induce caution amongst those contemplating performances and recordings. At the very least, slavish adherence to speed, articulation and registration marks should be avoided, since we can be by no means certain that they represent the composer’s intentions, even if the musical text can be considered acceptable, which is very much open to question.