Berkshire Bach Society presents: Renée Anne Louprette performing on the Johnson Organ of the Unitarian Universalist Church, Housatonic, Feb. 7, 2026
Program
Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Suite from “Céphale et Procris”
Dietrich Buxtehude, Ciacona in E Minor, BuxWV 160
Georg Bōhm, Suite No. 2 in D Major
Johann Sebastian. Bach, Chaconne in G Minor, BWV 1179
J.S. Bach, Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major (“St. Anne”), BWV 552
On a freezing Saturday afternoon, Renée Anne Louprette’s Housatonic organ recital, which has become an annual must for many locals, attracted a sizable crowd of 82 hardy souls to the United Unitarian Church for a masterfully executed program entitled “The Baroque Dance Masters.” The ingeniously assembled collection of works offered mostly unfamiliar fare up until the final work, which is one of the greatest masterpieces in Bach’s canon, for organ or otherwise. It was also the work which deviated most markedly from the “dance music” billing. For the rest of the program, that description proved apt.
Perhaps the most unique item on the program was the opener: a suite of pieces drawn from the 1699 opera “Céphale et Procris” by Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.
It is unlikely that any of us had ever heard this music before, which added to the value of hearing it in this delightful performance. But two questions must be asked: Why was operatic music included in an organ recital, and why was it billed as “dance” related? The answer reveals the resourcefulness of the performer in creating fresh repertoire out of old music in a way that enhanced respect for this under-represented but wonderful composer. Louprette, who teaches early music at Bard College, discovered this work and was immediately attracted to it. (There do exist two European recordings of the opera, so it is not actually hiding from “view.”) Louprette had chosen to perform some of the instrumental sections as a suite with her Baroque ensemble, including the overture and selected dance movements, and proceeded to make parts, since there was available only a 1699 score available, one that did not specify instrumentation. Eager to share this wonderful music more widely, she enlisted her organ student Manar Hashmi to help in transcribing the suite for organ solo, resulting in the work performed on this recital.
A great deal of French Baroque music is based on dance rhythms. King Louis XIV was the inescapable arbiter of musical taste during his long reign, as well as the employer of much of the artistic establishment of France. He was very fond of dancing, required the court operas to include staged dances (an early form of ballet), and often joined the dancers on stage to participate himself.
The autocrat of music who served the autocrat of France was Jean-Baptiste Lully, whose operas formulated a style for the French stage which prevailed for almost a century. In her opera, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre adhered to these conventions; unfortunately, by the time it was performed in 1699, the monarch had shifted his preferences toward religious music (under the influence of a current mistress) and the opera disappeared after only six performances. Judging by what we heard, this had nothing to do with its attractiveness. While recognizably within the forms and idioms of the genre, the music is fresh, very lively, full of its own form of rhythmic vitality and melodic originality.
One would imagine that an organ would be the last instrument to capture these qualities. The instrument can often sound a little soggy in defining articulated rhythms, which should be crisp and transparent in dance music. This is especially true of modern organs, either because they are built to generate massive sonority or have an electronic action, or both. But the combination of the smaller Johnson organ with its tracker (i.e., direct touch-controlled) action and Louprette’s keen awareness of the style and her inherent energy and liveliness as a performer rendered the music delightful and full of dance character. (For a video exploring this instrument, click here.)
The dance pedigree of the remainder of the program was perhaps less obvious. The keyboard suite by Georg Böhm offered the most direct connection to the dance. Böhm was an organist of the North German school and mentor of J. S. Bach.
Along with Bach’s uncles and Dietrich Buxtehude, Böhm’s work was an important, direct influence on the young Bach’s stylistic formation. His corpus of keyboard works includes many dance suites such as the present one, No. 2 in D Major, as well as many chorale-based pieces, some of which have become standard repertoire. The suites are written on two staves, which renders them suitable for performance on any keyboard instrument; when done with organ, they do not require the use of the pedals. This one is tuneful and catchy; the “Rigaudon” movement could serve well as an alternative to the Clarke “Trumpet Voluntary” so beloved at weddings and graduations. Louprette’s rhythmic alertness rendered this work colorful and effective.
The dance suite adhered closely to the French model, starting with a French overture (an entrance work, not a dance) followed by a succession of dance types and concluding with a “ciaconna.” This last item requires a separate discussion, as it played a large role in the way the rest of the program was linked to dance. The “ciaconna” (in Italian) or “chaconne” (in French) originated as a seductive folk dance from Spain (and possibly going further back to Moorish origins). It was associated with the guitar, a less-elegant cousin of the lute during the 16th century that was coming into its own as a solo instrument in the 17th. Unlike its more elegant cousin the lute, the guitar was typically strummed, and its music, like that of the modern folk guitar, was mostly chordal and organized into harmonic patterns. The chaconne is such a pattern, formed into a pair of symmetrical phrases, usually of four bars each. This pattern came to form the framework for more “artful” works that provided rich variations but retained the powerful momentum of a potentially endless series of repetitions growing in intensity over the course of a work. The result is a body of later Baroque music that typically possesses a sense of splendor and majesty. It became a requirement for inclusion in French court theater music, whether opera or ballet, forming the crown of an act or of an entire work. Its splendor was of course associated with the person of the monarch himself.
As with other features of French music of the time, the chaconne was picked up by the Germans, especially the organists, since it offered an ideal format for improvisation: Just keep repeating the chord pattern and make up the variations as you go—the more repetitions the better. In their hands, it morphed into a work that would not have been danced to: You were not supposed to dance in church. The Germans imbued it with their love of counterpoint, making it a more abstract and intellectual form displaying the skills of composer and performer (usually the same person). The result is a body of powerful compositions found in the works of these North German composers, culminating in those of Johann Sebastian Bach. Eventually, the chaconne found its way into solo violin repertoire, challenging the skills of virtuoso performers of the day. The culmination of that branch of the chaconne family tree is of course a work by Bach as well, the final movement of his Partita No. 2 for solo violin, which is perhaps the best-known example of a chaconne today.
Louprette’s program included two such free-standing chaconnes, one great example in E Minor by Dietrich Buxtehude, whom Bach briefly studied with (for three months) as a teenager, and one in G Minor, a recently discovered, rare example of a less-than-splendid student work by the 15-year-old future master. In her excellent oral program notes, Louprette mentioned that this work is not only a bit crude by Bach’s standards, but also awkward to play (rare for Bach, who was a great organ virtuoso). But her performance seemed to easily surmount that obstacle to make the best case for the work.
The final work on the program turned away from dance altogether, if not from French influence. It was Bach’s great Prelude and Fugue, the so-called “St. Anne,” from his German Organ Mass of 1739, a canonical masterpiece of organ repertory. These works are abstract in a double sense: They are not based on dance forms, nor are they religious. They form the bookends to a collection of catechism choral settings that Bach published as part three of his “Clavier-Übung.” The French connection, however, is in the greatly expanded form of the French overture, with a stately first part pervaded by dotted rhythms (Louprette called them “ta-das”) representing the entrance of a grand power, and a fugal second part. Whereas a typical such overture, like the one heard at the start of the program, lasts about four minutes, Bach’s work comes to about four times as long. Each part is itself subdivided into many sections, with concerto-like episodes and refrains in the prelude, and three stages of development, each growing more active, in the very elaborate fugue. While this may sound like a primarily intellectual experience for the listener, it is anything but. Bach’s sense of drama builds complexity, tension, and a kind of ecstatic energy, especially in the fugue, that was convincingly rendered in Louprette’s virtuosic performance. In her comments, she mentioned that in his organ works Bach developed a complex technique of using the pedals to a previously unheard-of degree that could be mastered by few if any other organists of the time. Her performance proved that times have changed—her pedal technique was dramatically visible to the audience by means of a well-placed video camera and screen. The overall performance was a fully realized rendering that transcended the limitations of the relatively small Johnson organ. How she accomplished this deserves a final word.
During the Baroque period, organ builders developed instruments designed to generate powerful masses of colorful sound. This trend continued into the 19th century, when builders (especially French and American) attempted to match full symphony orchestras decibel to decibel. Remember that Memorex ad with the listener’s hair, tie, and lampshade being blown backward by a blast of sound? (If not, click here.)
But one of the lessons of the “early instrument” movement of the last 50 years is that the perception of sound power is a function of scale; when listeners adjust their aural framework to the space and the instrument, even modestly projected sound can feel powerful. Louprette achieved this on the relatively small Johnson organ by judiciously balancing her registrations, seizing many opportunities to employ the most delicate sounds of the instrument (such as a duet just for the flute stops in their four-foot and two-foot registers) to frame and enhance those moments requiring the richness and power of the full organ.
Rather than having our hair blown back, we adjust our ears, lean in, and play a more active role in soaking up the music. The intimacy of the space in the United Unitarian Church, with its relatively dry acoustics, enabled a full experience of the richly detailed articulation even when the full resources of the organ were deployed. This was most obvious in the splendid apotheosis of the concluding fugue. The thoughtfulness of the program along with its idiomatic and virtuosic rendition demonstrated why this audience turned out in sub-zero weather for what has become an essential Berkshire musical experience.
