Mark Dwyer plays organ music composed by Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) on the 1935 Aeolian-Skinner Op. 940 (3 manuals, 77 ranks) at Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts, where he has served as Organist and Choirmaster since 2007. The CD booklet contains extensive notes on the music by Francis Crociata, President of the Leo Sowerby Foundation.

Leo Sowerby and His Music in This Album
by Francis Crociata

Leo Sowerby (born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on May 1, 1895; died in Port Clinton, Ohio, July 7, 1968) left 550 works in every form and genre except opera. They are divided between the secular works including symphonies (among them one for jazz orchestra), concertos, instrumental sonatas and art songs, and the sacred – choral and organ music, though many of the latter are often found on concert programs.

He originally set out to be a pianist, later teaching himself the organ in order to play the Franck organ chorales. His ninety organ works include five concertos, six concerted works for solo instruments and small ensembles, the rest for organ solo. Only 35 have been recorded and a dozen still await their first publication.

Pageant of Autumn, H. 237 (1937) The first of Sowerby’s ninety organ works to enter the permanent repertory were written in the 1910s, and three of the dozen works of those years, Comes Autumn Time (which in orchestral form became a staple overture for symphony programs); Carillon, and Requiescat in Pace have never been out-of-print. During the 1920s, as first recipient of the American Prix de Rome for music, he rose to approach the height of his fame on the programs of the world’s symphony orchestras and among distinguished instrumental soloists, but he wrote only one organ piece and that a concert work for organ and orchestra, his Medieval Poem. 

In the 1930s, as his life settled into a comfortable routine of teaching at the American Conservatory, serving as organist-choirmaster of Chicago’s St. James Episcopal Church (later St. James Cathedral), and continuing to function as de facto composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony, he returned to the organ. Resurgence of organ composition began with “two and one-half” successes which endure to this day: the pedal tour-de-force Pageant, the Symphony in G,1 and the inner two movements, Air with Variations and Fantasy for the Flute Stops, of the his four-movement Suite for Organ. 

The Symphony and the Suite were published in London by Oxford University Press, but his principal publisher was the American H. W. Gray Co. The faithful Bill Gray gently reminded the perennially best-selling composer that it was time to add some organ solos to the Gray catalogue. Sowerby responded immediately with a work along the same lines as Comes Autumn Time, a single movement in sonata form with the unconventional reversing of the recapitulation with the sprightly first theme carrying directly into the coda. Gray accepted the piece but not the title (simply Concert Overture) and reminded the sometime publicity-averse composer that the checks he would receive depended upon the sales of the music. Off the top of his head, perhaps thinking of two of his most widely performed works, Sowerby sent a telegram: “OK, make it Pageant of Autumn”! It is dedicated to a fellow organist-choirmaster, Henry Hungerford, and was premiered at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel of the University of Chicago by Sowerby’s student, later organist-choirmaster of Washington National Cathedral, Paul Callaway.

Bright, Blithe and Brisk, H. 423 (1965) As Sowerby noted in a talk (quoted in the note on Sonatina), he often amused himself by incorporating aspects of the dedicatee’s personality into his composition of a piece. In the title of this alternately light-hearted and mordantly sardonic scherzo, Sowerby literally spells out the personality of the legendary organ virtuoso, esteemed University of Michigan pedagogue and oft-quoted dry wit, Marilyn Mason.

“Miss Mason” performed Classic Concerto for Organ and String Orchestra under the composer’s baton at the 1957 International Congress of Organists in London and made three Sowerby works cornerstones of her repertory: Pageant and both of Sowerby’s organ symphonies – the often recorded Symphony in G and the virtually unknown late-period Sinfonia Brevis which she called his ”Organ Symphony No. 2.” It was following her triumph with Sinfonia Brevis at Washington National Cathedral (enchanting especially the Washington Post’s famous critic and Sowerby aficionado Paul Hume) that she asked Sowerby, the director of the College of Church Musicians at the Cathedral since 1962,2 if he would entertain a commission from her. He fulfilled it a few months later during his summer residency at the Lake Erie Episcopal Choir Camp, Wa-Li-Ro.

In their essay accompanying a 1994 two-­CD set of Sowerby organ and sacred choral works, Craig Timberlake and David Chalmers observed that it is composed along neo-classical lines and that “Sowerby himself seems to laugh at the end when a nasty reed appears to growl in the pedal!”3

Sonatina, H. 279 (1944) “I once had a student who thought a work couldn’t be a sonatina if it didn’t have an Alberti bass in the left hand,” began a Sowerby lecture on his organ works. “I’m sure that she would have been more than dismayed by this particular example.” The work, composed in April and May of 1944, is one of the dozen solo and concerted works introduced by E. Power Biggs on his popular Sunday morning radio program and was dedicated by Sowerby to his former student, the Indiana organist-­composer Darwin Leitz. Sowerby continued:

The first movement (in a placid and easy going manner) consists of a series of variations over a ground bass, which is constantly reiterated as the music moves forward, and then recedes from a climax. The second movement (very slowly) is one of the most frankly sentimental pieces I have ever written. [Note: The movement was once, in the 1970s, included in the programming of a public radio program devoted to “space music.”]

The composer continued:

"The third movement (fast and perky) is the real sonatina movement. The piece carries no special message, but it might be said to express three facets of the personality of its dedicatee, something with which I have often amused myself in my writing, though I realize it has no meaning for anyone else.”

Sonatina is one of the works that often figured on Sowerby’s own recital programs in the 1940s and 50s and has endured in the standard organ repertory even during the decade following his passing in 1968 when his music was in partial eclipse. The Very slowly movement was and still is often adopted as a stand-alone recital selection. Even Virgil Fox, who made Sowerby’s pedal tour-­de-force Pageant his calling card early in his career but later mostly left Sowerby to his friendly rivals Biggs and Catharine Crozier, continued to occasionally include Very slowly on his recital programs.

Arioso, H. 260 (1942) is another of the works which Sowerby used for his own recital programs and about which he wrote to an inquirer in 1958:

"About this piece, there is little to say except that it was written (I believe) in 1941 [actually between the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, and its completion on January 13, 1942]. It is an individual composition and not part of a suite; I fear it is somewhat sentimental, although it perhaps does show off an organ which has particularly fine strings."

Dedicated to Jack Goode, a former student and later colleague on the American Conservatory of Music faculty, Arioso begins and ends softly, though it reaches a climax using little volume, but much sensuous harmonic complexity and color. Of his three distinctly impres­sionistic works for organ (the others being Madrigal and the aforementioned Very slowly movement of the Sonatina), Arioso is undeniably the most sensuous and most indicative of his affection for Debussy and, especially, Ravel.

The distinctive angularity, which is characteristic of much of Sowerby’s writing in the 1930s, is here exchanged for a style somewhat akin to French impressionism. Yet Arioso’s ternary form bears the individual stamp of the composer in its flowing and extended freedom as well as in the pentatonic flavor of its opening measures. In the middle section, a solo flute is heard weaving graceful arabesques around a slower-moving melody. The tonal center is almost continuously in flux as the tempo increases and the flute solo moves ever higher to the main climax of the movement, from which the intensity gradually subsides to prepare for the return of the first theme. A thirteen-measure coda dissolves to the ending triple piano.

Prelude on “The King’s Majesty” H. 277 (1944) is a chorale-based set of variations, founded on the hymn-tune of the same name. Sowerby published three chorale preludes in the mid-1910s, the first of which, “Rejoice! Ye Pure in Heart!” (1913) is a virtuoso tour-de-force in variation form, like the famous Pageant (1931) and like “The King’s Majesty”, which was his return to the hymn-tune prelude some thirty years later, when he was seventeen years into his tenure at St. James, Chicago.

Sowerby was a key member of the Episcopal Church’s Joint Commission, headed by the iconoclastic composer and theoretician Canon Charles Winfred Douglas. Canon Douglas was editor of The Hymnal 1940 of the Episcopal Church and founder of the Evergreen Conference, a summer workshop for church musicians that became a regular stop on Sowerby’s annual summer tour. (Douglas was also a friend and confidant of Rachmaninoff and editor of the English edition, 1920, of Rachmaninoff’s All-­Night Vigil, Op. 37, of 1915.) So Douglas was delighted when, in late 1943, Sowerby revealed that, for his return to the chorale prelude form, he was contemplating the hymn-tune The King’s Majesty, written in 1939 by the Canadian composer, Graham George, for the Palm Sunday text, “Ride on, ride on in majesty.“Alas, the venerable Canon did not live to hear the mighty work that this latest tune, first published in his new The Hymnal 1940 had inspired. In an unmailed letter written on January 17, 1944, about Sowerby’s planned visit the following month, Douglas wrote,

"How I wish you might have your Prelude on The King’s Majesty done! What a corking theme for a Prelude! Do try to have it!"

Douglas completed a prelude of his own on the following morning and died suddenly later that evening.
Douglas did not exaggerate. The theme and the prelude in the form of variations that flowed from it are indeed “corking,” a work perhaps better suited to be the rousing end of a concert than as a gathering prelude for the opening hymn. 

Sowerby finished the Prelude at home in Chicago on February 4, gave its first performance at St. James on February 20, and included it on recordings made for an obscure record company in 1946. Like every work on this recorded collection except for Bright, Blithe and Brisk, it became a staple of Sowerby’s own repertory until, on his doctor’s recommendation, he stopped giving recitals in the late 1950s. Especially when writing in a concert virtuoso mode, Sowerby was particularly comfortable writing in variation form. On publication, Prelude on “The King’s Majesty” was dedicated to Graham George, a close colleague and friend of both Douglas and Sowerby.

Notes:
1 Mark Dwyer made a much praised recording of its third movement, Passacaglia, released on DVD as JAV-197.
2 Sowerby was a founder and director of the College in 1962, serving until his death in 1968.
3 The 2-CD album is Leo Sowerby: American Master of Sacred Song on the Gloriae Dei Cantores label, GDCD-016, produced in 1996.

Francis Crociata has published more than one hundred essays and articles on the lives and music of Leo Sowerby and Sergei Rachmaninoff. He founded the Leo Sowerby Society in 1971 and, in 1989, co-­founded the Leo Sowerby Foundation of which he became president in 1993.

Well-known as a gifted organist, Mark Dwyer has held the position of Organist and Choirmaster of The Church of the Advent, Boston, since 2007. He has held similar positions at St. Paul’s Church, K Street in Washington, DC, and The Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York. Prior to his positions in Washington and Albany, Dr. Dwyer served as Associate Organist and Choirmaster at the Advent; 2025 marked his his 30th year on staff.  Dr. Dwyer is active as an organ recitalist, having presented programs throughout the United States and in England.

He conducts The Advent Choir, an all-professional ensemble of 18 singers. During his tenure, The Advent Choir has become known not only for their stylish performances of Renaissance polyphony, but also for their impassioned readings of 20th and 21st century works. His work as conductor, accompanist and recitalist may be heard on the Raven, JAV, Arsis, and AFKA recording labels.

A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Mark Dwyer is a 1985 graduate of the New England Conservatory. In 2012, Nashotah House Seminary of Delafield, Wisconsin, awarded him the degree, Doctor of Music, honoris causa, in recognition of his contributions to the field of sacred music.

Over a thirty-year period beginning in 1978, the firms of Nelson Barden & Associates and Spencer Organ Company carried out various restoration efforts on the Advent Organ. In a pre­lim­in­ary, two-year campaign, Barden overhauled the chamber, re-routed access and improved lighting, and restored the combination equipment and all windchests. In 1988, the wind system was restored, and the blower was relocated from the basement to second storey. In 2003, a thorough console reconditioning introduced solid-state switching and combination memory while retaining the elegant 1935 pneu­matic knob and tablet movements.

When Jonathan Ambrosino assumed the organ’s care in 2005, restorative efforts turned to tonal matters. The Great Cymbel was restored to its 1935 composition and voicing, while the added 1964 flutes were revoiced in the 1935 manner. The Pedal mixtures were restored, as was the Swell Stopped Diapason. A new Swell
2' Rohrnasat allowed the return to the Positiv of its original 8’ Rohrflöte, thanks to a few replica pipes. The Positiv flutes, having been revised in 1964, were revoiced closer to their 1935 tone. 

In 2007, the 32’ Subbass was extended from F to C with five new pipes in the north transept gallery. Finally, an unenclosed Trumpet was replicated for the Choir, the original pipes and windchest having been relocated to the west gallery in 1964 and, in 1968, transfigured into the present horizontal register. In 2020–’21, the Pedal 8’ Principal and Swell Geigen chorus were restored closer to 1935. In this work, Jonathan Ambrosino was first assisted by Jeff Weiler, and more recently Daniel Kingman and Duane Prill. In 2011, Joseph G. Sloane joined Jonathan Ambrosino as the organ’s co-curator. 

Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, opus 940, opus 940-A / 1935 / 1964
The Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts

Great Man. II
    16'    Diapason    61
    8'    Principal    61
    8'    Diapason    61
    8'    Flûte Harmonique    61
    8'    Cor de Nuit     61
    4'    Principal    61
    4'    Octave    61 
    4'    Rohrflöte    61
    2'    Super Octave     61
IV    Fourniture (2')    244
    III    Cymbel (1')    183
IV-V Sesquialtera (2')     293
Swell to Great 16-8-4
Choir to Great 16-8-4
Positiv to Great 16-8
Great on Choir

Positiv Man. I
    8'    Rohrflöte    61
    4'    Principal    61
    4'    Koppelflöte    61
    2'    Nazard    61
    2'    Blockflöte    61
    1'    Tierce    61
    1'    Sifflöte    61
IV    Scharf (')    244
Positiv Only (Choir stops silent)

Swell Man. III, expressive
    16'    Quintaton    73
    8'    Geigen    73
    8'    Stopped Diapason    73
    8'    Viol de Gambe    73
    8'    Viole Celeste    73
    4'    Octave Geigen    73
    4'    Flauto Traverso    73
    4'    Fugara    73
    2' Rohrnasat     73
    2'    Fifteenth    61
    III    Grave Mixture (2')    183
    III    Plein Jeu (1')    183
    16'    Bombarde    73
    8'    Trompette I    73
    8'    Trompette II    73
    8'    Vox Humana    61
    4'    Clairon    73
Tremolo
Swell to Swell 16-4

Choir Man. I, expressive
    8'    Orchestral Flute    73
    8'    Dolcan    73
    8'    Dolcan Celeste (tc)    61
    4'    Zauberflöte    73
    8'    Clarinet    73
    4'    Krummhorn     73
Tremolo
    8'    Unenclosed Trumpet    73
         (low pressure)
    8'    Antiphonal Trumpet    73
         (en chamade, West Gallery,
         high pressure)
Choir to Choir 16-4
Swell to Choir 16-8-4
Choir Only (Positiv stops silent)

Pedal
    32'    Subbass    12
    16'    Principal    32
    16'    Bourdon    32
    16'    Contrebasse    32
    16'    Quintaton    SW
    8'    Principal    32
    8'    Flûte Ouverte    32
    8'    Quintaton    SW
    5'    Quinte    32
    4'    Principal    32
    4'    Flûte Harmonique    32
    III    Mixture (3')    96
    II    Fourniture (1')    64
    16'    Bombarde    32
    8'    Trompette    32
    4'    Clairon    32
Great to Pedal 8
Swell to Pedal 8-4
Choir to Pedal 8-4
Positiv to Pedal 8