Allegro · Alla menuetto · Andante cantabile · Vivace (Scherzo)

Otto Nicolai 1810-1849: Potpourri from The Merry Wives of Windsor (arr. Hofmann)

Gabriel Fauré 1845-1924: Berceuse, op. 16

Maurice Ravel 1874-1937: Vocalise-Étude en forme de Habanera

Paul Hindemith 1895-1963: Echo

Heiter bewegt · Sehr langsam · Sehr lebhaft · Marsch

Allegro cantabile · Quieto · Animato

Very peaceful, quick · Slowly · Spirited movement · Very peaceful

Allegro · Andante molto · Allegro molto

Sigfrid Karg-Elert 1877-1933: Sonata Appassionata in F-sharp Minor for Solo Flute, op. 140

Fifth Chords, Vol. IV, 120

Allegretto cantabile · Scherzando · Pastorale

Sonne der Gerechtigkeit

The Music
by George Bozeman

The Music on CD 1:
Native of Ames­bury, Massachusetts, Everett Titcomb (1864-­1968) was organist and choirmaster at Saint John the Evangelist Church in Boston for much of his career. The Hedding Suite was composed at Camp Hedding, New Hampshire, where he spent many summers, and published in 1962. Titcomb writes: “Camp Hedding is a beautiful tract of woodland with hundreds of acres of lofty pines through which the wind and breezes make music. At the time the Suite was composed, the haunting tones of a flute played by Frances Drinker could be heard, creating a truly woodland symphony.”

A wealth of short salon pieces for flute and piano include the Fauré, Ravel, and Hin­de­mith numbers, and their piano parts adapt effectively to the idiom of the organ. Gabriel Fauré (1845-­1924) com­posed the Ber­ceuse around 1879 for violin or cello and piano. Published in 1880 to a popular reception and widely played by var­ious combinations of in­stru­ments, Fauré composed in 1880 a version for violin and orchestra.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) composed Vocalise-Étude en forme de Habanera for bass voice and piano in 1907 and published it in 1909.

Paul Hindemith (1895-­1963) composed Echo for Flute and Clavier in 1942 and published in it in 1945.

Otto Nicolai (1810-­1849) ran away from an unhappy home in  Königsberg, Prussia, at the age of sixteen. Poorly educated in everything except piano, he rose to become a popular composer of opera and a distinguished conductor. He founded the Vienna Philharmonic Con­certs in 1842 with the object of giving fine performances of Beethoven’s Symphonies. In 1847, after a farewell concert to Vienna which included Jenny Lind’s singing and excerpts from his Merry Wives of Windsor, he moved to important positions in Berlin, where he completed his most famous opera. It opened to brilliant suc­cess on March 9, 1849, but he had scant time to enjoy it, dying of a stroke two months and two days later. I found the Richard Hofmann (1844-­1918) arrange­ment, published in 1894, in a second-­hand store in Weimar several years ago; according to advertisements printed with it, Hoffman published dozens of operatic Potpourris über beliebte Melo­dien aus klassichen und modernen Opern und Or­a­torien (Potpourris on popular Melodies from classical and mo­dern operas and oratorios) arranged in 17 variations of instrumentation for solo or groups of violin, two violins, viola, ‘cello, flute, and piano.

Robert Muczynski (1929-­2010) composed these three preludes in 1962. They, and his Sonata for flute and piano from 1961, have become standard flute repertoire among his many chamber music compositions. As well, his orchestral works were widely performed by American orchestras. A native of Chi­cago, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees in piano at DePaul University, then taught composition at DePaul, as well as at Roosevelt University, at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, and, from 1965, at the Uni­versity of Arizona-­Tuc­son, where he was both chairman of com­position and compos­er-­in-­residence. His style is bright, cheer­ful, and extremely effective for solo flute.

Ernst Pepping was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1901 and studied under Walter Gmeindl at the Berlin High School for Music. After his appointment as a professor at the School of Church Music in Spandau, near Berlin, he devoted his composition largely to this field, and was considered the leading exponent of new German Pro­testant church music. His Spandauer Chor­buch written 1934-­1938 comprises twenty volumes of choral pieces for the liturgical year in two- to six-part settings. Pepping’s style in the chorale preludes is free yet closely knit, and there is a certain inherent archaism, all of which makes him a fine example of the neo-­baroque school. The Sonata for Flute and Clavier, composed 17 years later, is somewhat less tonal in style.

The Music on CD 2:
In this program played by the Hot Air Duo in 1991, only the works by Kropfreiter and Karg-­Elert were performed on the instruments specified by their composers. All the rest are transcriptions of one sort or another. We are always looking at familiar music with an eye to enriching our particular repertory for flute and organ.

Augustus Franz Krop­freiter (1936-­2003) was the organist at the large church of the Augstinian monastery in St. Florian, where Anton Bruckner had been a choir boy and, later, organist 1845-­1855. Kropfreiter said improvisation at the organ was “the most precious source of life and often an inspiration for compositions.” His Four Pieces for Flute and Organ, composed in 1962, begin and end with plainchant melodies and provide fascinating and idiomatic interplays between the flute and organ. He said that, ca. 1960, his compositions were influenced by German Paul Hindemith (1895-­1963), Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-­1974), and Austrian Johann Nepomuk David (1895-­1977), who had been a choir boy at St. Florian and became a composition professor at Stuttgart.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) is best known for his organ music. He grew up in Leipzig, was educated there, and became professor at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1932, he visited America for a 3-month concert tour arranged by the Wurlitzer company. After visiting in the home of Boston organbuilder E. M. Skinner, Mrs. Skinner told of the fate of a new carpet in the guest room, “He spent the week smoking in bed and tossing the butts on the floor. When he left, the rug was full of holes.” Karg-Elert composed the Sonata Appassionata for flute in 1910-1914 as influenced by Schön­berg, Debussy, and Scri­abin, including in it a direct reference to Scriabin’s one-movement piano sonatas.

Béla Bartók (1881-­1945) wrote no organ music, but much of his work was inspired by eastern European folk music which is often played by wind en­sem­bles. Such textures found in Mikrokosmos, Bartók’s mon­umental collection of 153 graded piano studies composed 1926 to 1939 and published in 1940, adapt easily and effectively to the organ.

I discovered Emil Petro­vics’ Hungarian Children’s Songs for flute and piano in a Dresden music store in 1989. We tried them with flute and organ and chose several that were particularly effective for a Fall, 1990, concert in New Hampshire. The titles of the songs are printed in Hungarian, meaningless to us, so I called the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, where a very nice lady translated them for me. Emil Petrovics (1930-­2011) composed three successful operas and two ballets as well as oratorios, cantatas, and works in most other forms, including a string quartet which brought him to international notice when it won a prize the Liège Competition in 1959. He became a professor at the Liszt Academy of Music in 1969 and director of the Hungarian State Opera in 1986.

Paul Hindemith (1895-­1963) set himself the task of writing a sonata for every orchestral instrument and piano. The Sonata for Flute and Clavier fits beautifully on the organ and is one of his more ingratiating works. It was composed in 1936 and was first performed in Washington, D. C., in 1937.

The Hot Air Duo
The title of this set of CDs reflects the sad fact that one of the performers is no longer with us and the organ heard here is gone as well.
J. Bryan Dyker was born May 28, 1956 in Annapolis, Maryland, and his family settled in Lovettsville, Virginia, in 1970. He was a gifted flutist and played as a member of the Richmond Symphony Orches­tra 1979-­1985. At Virginia Common­wealth University in Richmond, he majored in music, study­ing flute with Francile Bilyeu and organ with Ardyth Lohuis. With George Bozeman, he formed the Hot Air Duo which played across the United States and for several Organ Historical Society Conventions. He worked as an organbuilder for Jim Andrews Organbuilders of Richmond 1983-1984 and James R. McFarland & Co. of Millersville, Pennsylvania, 1977-1979. He served the Organ Historical Society as chairman of the Historic Organs Recitals Committee and had been its youngest member when he joined at age 13 while an organ­building apprentice of  James R. Baird of Herndon, Virginia. His last organ­building position since 1985 was as chief voicer for George Bozeman, Jr. & Co. in Deerfield, New Hampshire. He died February 17, 1994, after a long illness.

George Bozeman, a native of Texas, studied with Helen Hewitt at North Texas State College. In 1967 he received a Fulbright Grant and studied organ with Anton Heiller and harpsichord with Isolde Ahlgrim at the Academy of Music in Vienna.  Bozeman began his career as an organbuilder with Otto Hofmann of Austin, Texas, and later worked with Robert L. Sipe of Dallas and Fritz Noack in Massachusetts. In 1971, he founded George Bozeman, Jr. and Company, Organ­builders, in Lowell, Massachusetts. David Gibson became a partner and project numbers 2-24 carry the name of Bozeman-Gibson. In 1976, the firm moved to a solar-heated barn in Deerfield, New Hampshire. In 1983, George Bozeman, Jr. became sole proprietor, building and maintaining organs until his retirement in 2018. Throughout he has remained active as a church musician and serves as Director of Music at the First Congregational Church in Pembroke, New Hampshire. He has played recitals throughout the United States and in Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, and European. He is a member of the Boston and New Hampshire chapters of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society (which he served as vice-president 1979-1983), the American Institute of Organ Builders, and the International Society of Organbuilders. His articles have been published in The Diapason, The American Organist and The Tracker.

The Rieger Organ
The organ recorded on these CDs was built for St. James’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia, by Rieger Orgelbau, Schwarzach, Austria. Installation was complete in 1974. It replaced the Austin Organ Company’s Op. 418 of four manuals and 40 stops. The Austin was in place when the current building opened in 1913. The Austin was rebuilt by a parishioner, then by Austin in 1953. The committee selecting a Rieger organ to replace the Austin was advised by Eugene Roan (1931-2006), chairman of the organ department at Westminster Choir College. A fire ignited by lightning on July 13, 1994, destroyed much of the church and the Rieger organ in its 20th year. The church rebuilt within the remaining walls in the same Georgian style, restoring many original artifacts, and installed C. B. Fisk Op. 112 of 1999 with three manuals and 62 ranks. St. James’s first building was completed in 1839 with a two-­manual and pedal organ built by Henry Erben of New York. Erben replaced it in 1875 with a larger organ. The 1839 organ exists in storage.

1974 Rieger Orgelbau, Schwarzach, Austria
St. James’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia
3 manuals, 49 stops, 84 ranks, 56-note manuals, 30-note Pedal

II. Hauptwerk
16’ Gemshorn
8’ Principal
8’ Holzflöte
4’ Octav
4’ Nachthorn
2-2/3’ Sesquialter II (reduced from IV with cotton)  
2’ Superoctav
1-1/3’ Quarte II
1-1/3’ Mixtur VI
8’ Trompete
4’ Trompete
Tremulant
I/II, III/II

I. Rückpositiv
8’ Salicional
8’ Rohrflöte
4’ Principal
4’ Koppelflöte
2-2/3’ Nasat
2’ Gemshorn
1-3/5’ Terz
1-1/3’ Quintlein
1’ Scharff IV
16’ Bärpfeife
8’ Krummhorn
Tremulant
Zimbelstern
III/I

III. Schwellwerk
16’ Pommer
8’ Bleigedackt
8’ Gamba
8’ Schwebung (TC)
4’ Holzprincipal
4’ Rohrflöte
2’ Blockflöte
1’ Sifflet
2’ Mixtur V-VII
1/3’ Zimbel IV
16’ Dulzian
8’ Musette
4’ Schalmei
8’ Chamade
8’ Cornett V (TG) mounted, façade
Tremulant

Pedal
16’ Principal
16’ Subbass
10-2/3’ Grossnasat (ext. Basszink)
8’ Octave (ext. Principal)
8’ Gedackt
5-1/3’ Basszink III
4’ Choralbass
2’ Nachthorn
2-2/3’ Rauschpfeife VI
32’ Sordun
16’ Fagott
8’ Posaune
I/P, II/P, III/P

mechanical key action

electric stop action

Combination Action: electric, 12 small pistons per division in the left keycheeks; 12 Pedal pistons in the right keycheek of Manual I.  Toe pistons for Generals.