Samuel Alexandre Rousseau, Berceuse, or: the difficulties of playing French Romantic organ music

This is my entry for Week 30 for the Secrets of Organ Playing Contest. In the comments to my entry last week @organduo mentioned Samuel Rousseau, a composer that was unknown to me till that moment. So I set myself a challenge: play something composed by this Samuel Rousseau.

The French composer and organist Samuel-Alexandre Rousseau (1853 - 1904) was born in Neuve-Maison, Aisne in 1853 as the son of an organ-builder. Samuel Rousseau entered the conservatoir de Paris at the age of 14, and became one of the first pupils in the organ class of César Franck. He studied composition with François Bazinand and won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1878 with his cantata ‘La fille du Jepthé’. Rousseau established himself as a composer, organist, conductor and music critic. He became organist at the Saint Clothilde (though not 'organiste titulaire', as that post was given tot César Franck). Later he became maître de Chapelle, at the same basilique. He died in 1904, only 51 years old.

Nowadays Samuel Rousseau is largely forgotten. The square outside the basilique Saint Clothilde bears his name, but that square is perhaps more famous because of the César Franck memorial, than because of the man who it is named after.

Samuel Rousseau composed several operas, masses and a requiem. And of course he wrote numerous works for the organ and the harmonium.

The Berceuse is number four from Rousseau's "15 Pièces pour orgue", opus 56. It is a relatively straight forward composision in A-B-A form, preceded by a short introsduction and concluded with a short Coda. In this piece Rousseau shows himself a master of harmonisation. Though this composition has some nice melodies and tonal colours, the most noteworthy aspect is the fact that through almost the entire piece the left hand plays a continuos succession in eigth notes of f-sharp and g-sharp . The piece is written in B major, visits other keys like F sharp major and d sharp minor and through that all, a constant stream of f-sharp, g-sharp, f-sharp. g-sharp notes is heard. The clever thing is, it sounds natural and not as some gimmick. In short: it is really well composed.

In playing French Romantic organ music like this composition, I encounter several problems, technical and practical. It is difficult music to play, for several reasons. One has to play (for a large part) legato. And though that is not difficult when playing one note at a time, it becomes increasingly difficult when playing multiple notes as the same time. One usually has to change manuals quite often. And there are all these swells and other levers to use at the appropriate moment. In this composition I use a swell for the middle manual and a swell for the upper manual. So, one foot is responsible for the swells and one foot for the pedal notes. And in the final bars the right foot controls the left swell while my left foot has to cross underneath it, to play some quite high pedal notes. Very inconvenient.

A practical issue is that somehow al these French composers had LARGE hands. My hands are quite small. Some of the chords these composers write, I can literally not play, because the notes are too far apart. And that is only one chord. Chord progressions are a difficulty on top of that. In the video you can see me stretching to reach some notes. Playing legato in these moments is impossible for me. So I play it portato and hope to make it sound like it was meant that way.

A final practical issue: these compositions are often quite long. And I have only room for four pages on the music rack of my organ. I can extend that a bit by having an additional two on the computer monitor, but that's the limit. And I have a lousy memory, so I do need the score. Besides being playable that was an important reason to choose this particular composition: it is 4 pages long and fits nicely on my music rack. Playing all these notes, swells, knobs and manuals ánd having to turn a page, is beyond me at the moment.

So, despite my manual incompetence and some playing trickery, I hope you enjoy this performance. Based on this one composition Rousseau sounds like a composer who's music deserves to be played and heard.

The sound recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sampleset, made by Voxus, of the Stahlhuth/Jahn organ in the St. Martin’s church, Dudelange (https://www.voxusorgans.com/en/product/dudelange).

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