Secrets of Organ Playing Weekly Contest--Week 41 submission Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown

This is my submission for the Secrets of Organ Playing Week 41 contest. I was planning on recording the Bach Dorian Fugue this week, but realize I did Bach's In Dir Ist Freude last week. To not become complacent, I chose to record this piece instead.

Charles Dibley is a composer out of Vermillion, South Dakota. I was first introduced to his music when I encountered it in the music store in Sioux City, Iowa, which has subsequently closed. I was looking for organ music, and he had several organ works that he had self-published and was selling in the store. I ended up meeting him later that same year. Chuck is a tuba player and is part of a brass quintet that help play for graduation ceremonies at the University. Since then, he has sent me pieces periodically to try out for piano and organ.

This piece is based on the setting of the text Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown to the tune of Candler. It begins with a solo flute stop intoning the first phrase, with the second being accompanied by a second flute. Slowly, the texture builds up until the end of the hymn is reached. The piece appears to begin a set of variations as the next repetition of the tune is now in a minor key. However, as the piece progresses, the variation technique seems to fall away and only motives of the tune begin to move to the forefront. In the second "variation" marked Allegro and begins the crescendo towards the end, the music become preoccupied with the descending triad that begins the second half of the tune. The third and fourth "variations" focus on the opening motive, adding stops in each variation before....a sudden return to the hymn tune in two flutes over a 16' pedal creates the coda of the piece. I enjoy playing this piece as a prelude for this moment--going from a large sound to a soft registration suddenly often catches many of the congregation off-guard as they tend to be speaking very loudly to be heard over the organ in the fourth variation.