Joan Lippincott, the American organist and esteemed instructor, handed away final Saturday, Could 31 in Newtown, Pennsylvania. She was 89.
For almost 4 many years, Lippincott served as Professor of Organ and Head of the Organ Division at Westminster Choir Faculty in Princeton, New Jersey. A current assertion launched by the Faculty honors her contribution:
With an unerring ear, a fierce dedication to musical integrity, and deep private kindness, she was each a demanding instructor and a lifelong mentor to her many college students, who turned affectionately often known as “Lippincott Children.”
Lippincott was a extremely revered interpreter of the music of J.S. Bach. Listed below are a number of of her recordings:
J.S. Bach: Fantasia tremendous Komm heiliger Geist, BWV 651
The earth-shattering Fantasia on Komm heiliger Geist, BWV 651 opens an anthology of 18 chorales J.S. Bach compiled whereas employed in Leipzig within the 1740s. Rising over a mighty pedal tone, the opening depicts the primary traces of the Biblical verses from Acts 2:
And when the day of Pentecost was totally come, they had been all with one accord in a single place. And abruptly there got here a sound from heaven as of a dashing mighty wind, and it stuffed all the home the place they had been sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fireside, and it sat upon every of them. And so they had been all full of the Holy Ghost, and started to talk with different tongues, because the Spirit gave them utterance.
J.S. Bach: The Artwork of Fugue, BWV 1080
Bach composed The Artwork of Fugue throughout the last 10 years of his life. The gathering is made up of 14 fugues and 4 canons which develop from a single, sublimely easy musical topic. Because the work unfolds, Bach strikes from double, triple, and mirror fugues to a quadruple fugue in an more and more complicated and technically diverse exploration of contrapuntal prospects. The music was notated on an open rating with impartial staves, suggesting that it may be performed by any mixture of devices.
The unfinished last quadruple Fugue breaks off abruptly in the course of its third part. Within the concluding traces, Bach indicators his identify within the music, utilizing a motif (B-flat, A, C and B-natural) which corresponds to B-A-C-H within the German alphabet. It’s doable that the ultimate measures had been misplaced, or maybe Bach left an open-ended problem to future composers, suggesting that the chances are countless.
Joan Lippincott recorded The Artwork of Fugue in 2010, acting on the good Craighead-Saunders organ of Christ Church in Rochester New York, throughout the road from the Eastman College of Music. Right here is the opening Contrapunctus, during which the topic is launched, adopted by the ultimate unfinished Fugue:
Contrapunctus I:
Contrapunctus XIV:
