Julius Reubke: Sonata on the 94th Psalm
–recorded in live concert, 1970
–posted in digitized format May 9, 2016
John Weissrock, Organist
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Friedrich Julius Reubke lived only a short time, from Mar. 23, 1834, to June 3, 1858. Born in the Harz Mountain area of central Germany, he was already an accomplished organist when he moved to Berlin in 1851. He studied piano with Theodor Kullak and composition with Adolf Bernhard Marx, and encountered the New German School in the person of the conductor Hans von Bülow, associated with Franz Liszt, who was in residence in Weimar during those years.
Reubke moved to Weimar in 1856 to continue his studies in piano and composition with Liszt. He lived in the same house as Liszt, the Altenburg, and there composed his two major works, the Piano Sonata in B-flat minor, and The 94th Psalm : Sonata for Organ, which he finished in April 1857. Reubke himself played the first performance two months later on the large and brand new Ladegast organ of the Merseburg Cathedral, and lived only one more year.
A few days after Reubke died, Liszt wrote to Adolf Reubke, organ builder and Julius’ father: “Truly no one could feel more deeply the loss which Art has suffered in your Julius than the one who has followed with admiring sympathy his noble, constant, and successful strivings in these latter years, and who will ever remain true to the memory of his friendship—the one who signs himself with great esteem, Yours most truly, F. Liszt”
The piece is a symphonic poem for organ, laid out on a plan similar to that of Liszt's Fantasy and Fugue on the Choral “Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam.” It brings the pianism of Chopin and Liszt into the world of organ music, and embodies the close motivic, thematic, and harmonic integration characteristic of the music of the line of great composers that runs from Bach through Beethoven and Wagner to Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg.