Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a musical family reeeiving his earliest musical instruction from his father and later from his older brother, Johann Christoph. From the beginning of his eareer until 1729 when he became cantor for St. Thomas Church and School and Director of Music for Leipzig, Bach concentrated on composing sacred vocal music. It was during the first years at Leipzig he composed his most impressive sacred cantatas and the St. John and St. Matthew Passions.
Leon Boellmann
Leon Boellmann was a French composer for the organ and piano. He showed promising early talent and was accepted at the age of nine into the Ecole Niedermeyer in Paris. After graduation in 1881 he was employed as choir organist at Sts. Vincent and Paul Church in Paris where, for the remainder of his career he became cantor and chief organist. Boellmann performed all over Europe on piano and organ and is best known for his Suite Gothique with its spectacular Toccata at the end of the organ suite.
Dietrich Buxtehude
Dieterich Buxtehude was a German-Danish organist and lutenist, was a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. His organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services. He wrote in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, and his style strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach and Gustav Mahler. Buxtehude, along with Heinrich Schütz, is considered today to be the most important German composer of the mid-Baroque.
He was an organist, first in Helsingborg (1657-1658), then at Elsinore (Helsing?r) (1660-1668), and last from 1668 at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, where he succeeded Franz Tunder and married Tunder's daughter Anna Margarethe (1668). His post in the free Imperial city of Lübeck afforded him considerable latitude in his musical career and his autonomy was a model for the careers of later Baroque masters such as George Frideric Haendel, Johann Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1673 he reorganized a series of evening musical performances, known as Abendmusik, which attracted musicians from diverse parts and remained a feature of the church until 1810.
In 1705, J.S. Bach, then a young man twenty years old, walked from Arnstadt to Lübeck, a distance of more than 400 kilometers, and stayed nearly three months to hear the Abendmusik, meet the pre-eminent Lübeck organist, hear him play, and as Bach explained "to comprehend one thing and another about his art.
Cesar Franck
César Franck was born in Li?ge, Belgium to a father from the German-Belgian border and a German mother. He studied at the conservatoire in Li?ge before going to the Paris Conservatoire in 1837. Upon leaving in 1842 he briefly returned to Belgium, but went back to Paris in 1844 and remained there for the rest of his life. Franck made his living by teaching, both privately and institutionally. He also held various posts as organist: at Notre Dame de Lorette, at St Jean-St François. During this time he became familiar with the work of the famous French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. In 1858, he became organist at the newly-consecrated Saint Clotilde Basilica, where he remained until his death.
From 1872 to his death he was Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatory. As an organist he was particularly noted for his skill in improvisation. Franck is by many considered the greatest composer of organ music after J. S. Bach. His works were some of the finest organ pieces to come from France in over a century, and laid the groundwork for the French symphonic organ style.
In 1890, Franck was involved in a serious traffic accident. It was after this accident that he wrote his Trois chorals for organ. Franck died as a result of complications from the accident very shortly after finishing the chorales.
Justin Heinrich Knecht
Justin Heinrich Knecht was a German composer, organist, and music theorist.
He was born in Biberach an der Riss, where he learnt to play the organ, keyboard, violin, and singing. He attended a Lutheran collegiate institution in Esslingen am Neckar from 1768 to 1771, when he became Lutheran preceptor and music director in Biberach, which was a free imperial city until 1803, and had a rich cultural life. He became organist of St Martin's church in 1792, which was used simultaneously by Lutherans and Catholics.
He led an energetic, busy musical life; he composed for the theatre and church, organised subscription concerts, and taught music theory, acoustics, aesthetics, composition, and instruments at the Gymnasium, which was affiliated to the Musikschule in 1806. He went to Stuttgart in December 1806 in the hopes of a post there as capellmeister or similar, but after being appointed Direktor beim Orchester by King of Württemberg in the April 1807, returned in 1808 to his former life in Biberach, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Johann Pachelbel
Johann Pachelbelwas a prolific composer.After about five years as deputy organist at St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna (1671-76), and a year as court organist at Eisenach, Pachelbel was appointed to the Predigerkirche at Erfurt in June 1678, where he remained for twelve years. During this time he was outstandingly successful as organist, composer and teacher (his pupils included Johann Christoph Bach) and was twice married. He left Erfurt in 1690 and, after a short period returned to Nuremberg, where he was organist at St Sebald until his death.
Marian Sawa
Marian Sawa was a Polish organist, composer and teacher. Since 1966 he dedicated his life to teaching at the J. EIsner Secondary School of Music in Warsaw and from 1992 at the Cardinal Wyszynski University. He combined teaching with a busy schedule of performances, both in Poland and abroad and is one of the leading polish composers of organ and liturgical music. The city of Sejny has devoted a festival to his music. Although he recorded many compositions, a large body of his work still remains to be published.
Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert had an extraordinary childhood aptitude for music, studying the piano, violin, organ, singing and harmony. He also studied composition with Salieri while he was a chorister in the Imperial Court chapel in Vienna. By 1814-15 he had composed a large body of work that included Erlkonig. The Ave Maria was composed in about 1825 for voice and piano and was first published in 1826 as Op. 52 No. 6. The piece was called Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen's third song) after an excerpt from The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott and translated into German by Adam Stork. The more widely known version of the song with the full Latin text of the prayer was a later adaptation that outgrew the popularity of the original.
Mieczyslaw Surzynski
Mieczyslaw Surzynski, the son of an organist, teacher, conductor and brother of three more organists, was the most prominent Polish organ virtuoso and composer of organ music in the Romantic era. In 1902, he won First Prize in an organ competition in St. Petersburg for improvising on "O Holy God," then published it in 1906 to become his best known work.
He was born near Poznan in music family. He received very good music education in Poland , after he continued his studies in Berlin and Leipzig, where he wrote his first compositions. From 1890 he was music director and conductor of Music Society's Orchestra in Poznan, organist in cathedral, famous as organ virtuoso and improviser. In 1891-3 he moved to Liepaja in Latvia, where he leaded church choirs , piano and theory lessons. Next he stayed 8 years in Petersburg, was organist and cantor in cathedral, after he moved to Saratov as professor in Conservatorium, next - in Kiev as choir conductor in St. Alexander Church. Permanently he composed and edited his works by Leuckart, Pustet, June, Gebethner and Wolf. He wrote Messes, Organ Sonata Op.34, Organ Concerto Op.35, School for Organ, many works for organ, piano, choir, chamber music.
From 1904 he conducted Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, in 1906-9 he was organ and counterpoint professor in Warsaw Conservatoire and organist in St. John Cathedral until I World War. As prisoner of war he spent very hard time in Russia 1915- 1921. After returning to Warsaw he continued his activity as professor in Conservatorium. He war very sick and tired, died in 1924.
Improvisation Op.38 is the transcript of one from his famous improvisations on the polish sacred song "Holy God".