Written by Nelson Barden
Excerpts taken from “Edwin H. Lemare”, The American Organist
Part 1: Becoming the Best, January 1986 Vol 20, No. 1
Copyright 1986 by the American Guild of Organists
Used by permission of The American Organist magazine
Lemare’s technique was said to be legendary and he was considered to be a “wizard” of registration. Wherever he went, local organists flocked to hear him. Those who heard him play said that they “never forgot it.”
Lemare’s physique was to his advantage. His body fit the organ console naturally and he had uncommonly long fingers and thumbs. His performance style was described as “unforced and avoidant of eccentricity-- executing the most formidable difficulties with ease.”
Lemare made a specialty of playing orchestral transcriptions, particularly Wagner. His point was not to make the organ into an orchestra, but to make the organ a sensitive, expressive solo instrument.
Lemare became adept at “thumbing”, the technique of bringing out an extra melody. While the fingers played an upper manual, the thumb dipped to the keyboard below for a melody on different stops. This technique was not new, but Lemare carried it further and achieved completely independent action of his thumbs. He accompanied legato thumb melodies with trills and rapid figurations with the fingers. Both hands ranged over three or even four manuals simultaneously and another melody was played with the right foot. The effect was of Lemare playing duets with himself.
Lemare practiced stop changing assiduously. He believed that “the audience should never be made aware that there are any stops at all.” He excelled in the use of highly characteristic and varied tone color. He played thumb pistons as freely as he did the notes, producing striking dynamic changes by sliding across the buttons. But the bulk of his stop changing was hand registration. Lemare’s hands darted to the stop knobs and back to the manuals with no fuss or loss of rhythm. He said, “use as much phrasing with your stops as you do with your music.”
Some of Lemare’s techniques were novel. For instance, wherever possible, he pedaled all naturals with the heels. He considered the balanced swell pedal (not always found on organs of that period) an absolute necessity. He often masked the addition or subtraction of stops with the swell shutters and achieved prolonged crescendos. He learned to build the power of the instrument, starting from soft strings, up to a combination including swell reeds and the great foundations, with no noticeable change in the tone quality. With judicious rationing of the tonal resources, he produced an “endless crescendo” that was breath-taking in its intensity. Sometimes he produced the dynamic changes with stop changes only, and left the swell box shut except for an occasional startling accent.
Lemare cultivated remarkable rhythmic effects on the organ. He said: “One of the most life giving effects is the introduction of accents and sforzandi.” When the swell shutter mechanism was fast enough, he made sharp accents by snapping the pedal shut just before the beat, using either the left or right foot. He used subtle agogic accents, delicate rubato and a variety of precisely controlled wrist and finger staccato touches. He said: “The first thing to remember is that rapid passages must always be clear and distinct even though the player may have to resort to a greatly exaggerated staccato.”
Sometimes Lemare used heavy registrations but played so fleetingly that the large pipes hardly spoke. For accent, a slightly more legato touch let all the basses sound and produced a sudden broadening of the tone.
Out in the audience, the bouncy accents were a delight. After attending a Lemare concert, Malcolm Sargent, then a young chorister at Peterborough Cathedral exclaimed, “He did something I never thought possible. He made the organ dance.”
Lemare did not unduly emphasize note-perfect playing. He said: “I would rather hear a performance full of technical slips, where the player’s individuality and soul shone through it, than one of absolutely flawless technique and mechanical and almost monotonous correctness.”
Lemare felt that an organ recital needed something for everyone. His audiences were crowds of ordinary people who liked most what they knew best. Lemare played what the crowd liked with soul and his heart on his sleeve. Then, a bit at a time, he introduced his own transcriptions or orchestral music that was new to them including Wagner, Brahms, Dvorak, Humperdinck, St. Saens, Elgar, Sullivan, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and many others.
At every concert, Lemare collected “themes” from the audience and performed a spontaneous improvisation on the notes.