«Straube–Dupré–Germani, On the Interpretational Revolution in the 20th Century

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Prof. Martin Sander



The future of the organ and organ playing in competition with all other
musical and non-musical offerings for church-goers and for the public
in general depends decisively on the expressivity our listeners find in organ
music. Looking back on the changes in interpretation that began
about a century ago, we can find both incentives and warnings for dealing
with the literature of various stylistic periods. Historical recordings document
the differences of the two most important competing schools of
interpretation: on the one hand, Karl Straube, who long continued the
principles of German Romanticism, on the other the Lemmens / Widor /
Dupré school. The latter cultivated from generation to generation an ever
greater emotional asceticism, particularly discarding fine variations of
tempo and rhythm as means of expression and reducing differentiated
articulation to an either/or between legato and staccato. These developments
find expression in Fernando Germani's application of the aesthetics
of Dupré to German Romanticism, especially to the works of Max Reger.
The changes in meaning, expression and effect of the music this provokes
are not without influence on the music's cultural significance.