Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square is streamed online every Wednesday at 12:00 noon MDT.  Piping Up! can be viewed on TheTabernacleChoir.org, the Choir’s YouTube channel, the Choir’s Facebook page, and Broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. When concerts are concluded, they are available for on-demand viewing on the Choir’s website, YouTube and Facebook.

These programs continue the tradition of noon organ recitals at Temple Square—a tradition that has lasted for more than a century. The concerts are produced without an audience and comply with all COVID-19 guidelines. Each concert will feature a different Tabernacle or Temple Square organist and is hosted by Luke Howard.

Repertoire

Organist: Joseph Peeples

1. Trumpet Tune in A Major^† . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Kasen
2. a. Prelude and Fugue in G Minor^† . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Johann Sebastian Bach
b. Ar Hyd y Nos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dale Wood
3. a. Hymn: Come, Come, Ye Saints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . arr. by organist
b. An old melody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .arr. by organist
4. Grand Choeur Triomphal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexandre Guilmant

^† LISTENER REQUESTED SELECTION Go to the Piping Up! web page to make your request!

Focus Piece

An on-going feature of Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square is a focus piece with additional inspirational background on a specific repertoire selection. Written by host Luke Howard, a professor of music at Brigham Young University, the focus piece connects the music in a unique way to lift and inspire listeners.

“Grand Chœur Triomphale” (Guilmant)

You may have heard the popular aphorism, originally penned by George Bernard Shaw, that goes something like this: “Those who can, do.  Those who cannot, teach.”  It’s a fallacy, of course, a false dichotomy.  To be fair to Shaw, it wasn’t meant as truth; it’s just a clever satirical maxim.  Shaw didn’t actually believe it any more than we should.  And as an educator myself, I trust wholeheartedly in the corollary: “Those who can, teach.”

But there is a grain of truth in what Shaw wrote, especially when it comes to music.  It’s a rare musician, indeed, who is both a leading performer and a gifted, committed teacher.  The organist Alexandre Guilmant was one of those rarities.  A master improvisor and composer, Guilmant was also a music administrator, and a teacher noted for his kindness and attention to detail.  He published not only his own numerous compositions for organ, but several multi-volume anthologies of earlier organ works, by both French and foreign composers, that remain important sources even today, and always with an eye to educating the student.  

Guilmant wrote two series of works himself, “L’Organiste pratique” and “L’Organiste liturgique”—or, the “The Practical Organist” and “The Liturgical Organist.”  These are also pedagogical sets whose principal aim is to train, teach, and serve the organists who followed after Guilmant, including, significantly, his most celebrated student, Marcel Dupré.    

In its large outlines, Guilmant’s career exemplified the advice Jesus gave to his followers: “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”  The calling to lead, and teach, and serve, and do, is a holy calling—one that Guilmant took very seriously as both a liturgical and practical organist.  Perhaps we could tweak George Bernard Shaw a little, and say, “If, like Alexandre Guilmant, you can, then do and teach.”

Joseph closes today’s program now with the “Grand Chœur Triomphale” the second piece in Volume 4 of Guilmant’s “L’Organiste pratique,” from 1876.

1. George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co, Ltd., 1903), 230. The original quote is, “He who can, does.  He who cannot, teaches.”