Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881) Hosannah!
Kurt Lueders - Eglise Protestante Unie du Saint-Esprit Paris VIII L'orgue Merklin-Schütze (1865)/Mutin-Cavaillé-Coll 1899/1909 II/14 (12)
From his appearance on the French organ scene in the 1850s the Belgian virtuoso Jacques Nicolas Lemmens increasingly came to rival, then supplant Lefébure-Wely as Cavaillé-Coll’s ideal of organ playing. The subtle tug-of-war between improvisatory, operetta-inspired fantasy and classical polyphonic rigor played out to a great extent through the activity and publications of these two contemporaries, with posterity ultimately forging a healthy mix that became the so-called French School. By the time Lefébure died Lemmens had already largely left the organistic mainstream, as his students Guilmant and Widor quickly took his place as favored artists for the dedication of Cavaillé-Coll’s instruments. Lemmens is best known for shorter pieces such as the Fanfare — arguably one precursor of the “French toccata” style — and the stately polyphonic Prelude in E flat which cleverly renews the technique of the fugue à 5 freely illustrated by Boëly in his prelude “Esprits divins.” Hosannah!, alternating Mendelssohnian traits of overture-like majesty with fluid figuration over an oboe solo in the tenor, was first published in a Parisian church music journal at the late 1850s, then incorporated into Lemmens’ famous organ tutor of 1862 (actually to a great extent a collection of his organ works to that date). In the latter printing he intriguingly removed the transition preparing the reiteration of the first section (skipping from E major to G major). Here the choice has been made to reinstate it (text: Kurt Lueders).

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