Discographie

Major Discoveries: Batiste’s Unbelievable Beethoven Transcriptions

Artistic Quality: 10
Sound Quality: 10

Going to church in 19th century France was a trip. Organists were known primarily for improvisation, and the liturgy only permitted limited time for original music-making. Many of these improvisations were in the style of (or directly quoted) popular tunes of the day by the likes of Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Auber, Meyerbeer, and their contemporaries. One of the most popular items, and the standard by which both organists and their instruments were judged, was the “Orage,” or storm, a splendid example of which is presented here. Most of these were also improvised, but Batiste had the courtesy to write one of these improvisations down in the form of an Offertoire (I kid you not). It’s quite impressively imitative and realistic, at least at the incredibly violent climax.
Obviously this appeal to the popular taste aroused the ire of the more doctrinaire and tasteful proponents of French liturgical music. Edouard Batiste (1820-1876), who taught at the Conservatoire from the age of 16 and wrote the standard text on Solfège, had his own unique solution to this problem. He transcribed for organ, in abbreviated form, all of the slow movements of Beethoven’s symphonies, giving them names such as Communion, Offertoire, and Elevation. Thus, the funeral march of the Eroica became an “Offertoire funèbre,” while the Adagio of the Fourth Symphony became an “Elevation.”
These transcriptions are fascinating not only historically; they provide a very interesting take on contemporary performance practice. Batiste presided over the Merklin-Schütze organ in St. Eustache (1854), one of the largest in Paris. That instrument no longer exists, but a very similar instrument by the same builder, from 1857, in original condition and recently restored, exists in the Iglesia Catedral de Santa Maria in Murcia, Spain, and it is this instrument that Swiss/Argentine organist Diego Innocenzi has chosen for his splendid program. A specialist in the French romantic repertoire, his performances on this particular instrument are probably as close as we are going to get to the sound of mid-19th century organ music in France.
Some of these transcriptions, such as the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth (one of the very few non-”liturgical” items) are simply hopeless; the instrument just can’t spit out the notes quickly enough. Batiste’s Grande sortie on the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, which reduces the piece to about eight minutes with an extended bit of the Adagio interpolated, will sound incredibly but captivatingly strange to anyone who knows the original. One of the most fascinating aspects of Batiste’s transcriptions is that he indicated very detailed registrations, including a superabundant use of the Tremulant, which is the organist’s equivalent to vibrato. It’s everywhere, even to the point where the instrument sounds like a theremin or Hammond organ.
Check out the sound clip below of the Offertoire in A, a.k.a. the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and consider also that Batiste was ideally placed to transmit the authentic tradition of Beethoven performance in France. The orchestra of the Paris Conservatory, after all, was founded by Habeneck in the late 1820s specifically for the purpose of producing Beethoven’s symphonies. On the vibrato question, at least, Batiste’s transcriptions may well be as close to real authenticity of sonority as we are likely to get, and of course they completely contradict the nonsense coming from today’s period instrument performers.
In any case, Innocenzi is a splendid player who clearly seems to be enjoying himself in this very enjoyable music. Even Batiste’s original compositions (disc one of this two-disc set), while obviously not on the level of Beethoven, are unfailingly colorful and tuneful. They were enormously popular in their day, and not just in France, but also as far as the United States. After Batiste’s early death in 1876, his music fell into oblivion along with all of the rest of the theoretically tasteless productions of the mid-century generation of French organists. We can only be grateful to Innocenzi and the folks at Aeolus for reviving this neglected repertoire niche, and presenting it to us in a superbly engineered, intelligently annotated project. For serious collectors and Beethoven fans, this is essential listening.