Lamento (second movement from 'Suite pour Orgue') by Denis Bédard
6This is no ordinary lament: it's a romantic and thoroughly luscious Lamento! Hence the thumbnail. Monsieur Bédard gives us a beautiful, original melody underpinned by gorgeous harmonies.
In this performance I alternate the melody between the beautiful Clarinet stop and the Great Open Diapason No. 2 (the Diapason sounds particularly wonderful in its lower register, as you can hear in the couple of bars starting at 2:35). The final dreamy section is played on the gorgeous Willis strings on the Swell (top) keyboard - here underpinned by the Swell 16-foot Lieblich Bourdon for a bit of subtle extra gravitas.
On a techno-apologetic note, this piece repeatedly uses the very squeakiest (in a strong field) of the pedal keys. Roll on the re-build when the organ can be properly dismantled so that all these rattles, clunks and squeaks can be fixed! Along with the bigger-ticket items of collapsing pipes and leaky wind reservoirs. But, despite her aches and pains, the Old Girl soldiers gracefully on! As the years go by, I'm increasingly empathetic.
On the very last chord you can see me play a sneaky extra note on the top keyboard, low down on the Lieblich Bourdon at 4:47. This is a little harmonic trick to impersonate the deep pitch of a quiet 32-foot pipe by playing at the interval of a fifth above the note played by the Pedal Bourdon. This gives a very subtle extra rumble below that final chord. It's the "expensive draught" effect (rightly beloved of cathedral organists, whose establishments had the money and space to install real 32-foot pipes) which makes for a delicious way to end a quiet piece of music. It's a trick I use only very rarely at Christ Church and I think it works very nicely for this piece. To achieve this effect successfully, it's crucial that the higher note (played by the left hand) is played on a significantly quieter 16-foot flue stop than the lower note (played by the feet). This is so that the higher note doesn't compete with the lower, root note but instead adds just the harmonics needed to impersonate a note an octave below the pedal bass note. The Christ Church organ is blessed with two 16-foot flue stops on the manuals and so there are a couple of options to achieve the trick successfully for different pieces. I use the other option at the end of Richard Purvis's beautiful 'Romanza', also on YouTube.
Born in Quebec, Denis Bédard was organist for 20 years at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire in Vancouver, Canada. He retired from the Cathedral in 2021 ... so we can hope for more of his wonderful compositions now that he's got more time on his hands! I've also recorded his wonderful 'Memoriam' and his 'Méditation sur O Filii et Filiae' on YouTube.
Played by Paul Broadhurst on the vintage 'Father' Henry Willis organ of Christ Church, Birkenhead, UK.
Recorded 28 February 2023