I ought to begin this review with a confession. This particular recording has been on my “work in progress” pile for an unconscionably long time, which is unfair to the composer, the performer and the label. To them I offer my apologies but the truth is that it’s taken me a long time to feel that I have assimilated this massive and complex piece sufficiently well to be ready to write about it. There’s a second reason for this
mea culpa, which is to urge collectors not to be daunted, as perhaps I was at first, by the sheer magnitude of
Christus, nor by its complexities. Persevere. Work your way into the music and the rewards will be great. It may be helpful at first either to listen to movements separately or at least to have something of a pause between them.
Francis Pott is a composer who can work on a big canvass. That was proved by his substantial and very fine choral work,
The Cloud of Unknowing (
review). However,
Christus, which is an earlier work, is even more substantial in scope. The work is on a vast scale. Indeed, I’m struggling to think of many works for solo organ that match it in scale and ambition. Two great cycles by Olivier Messiaen come to mind.
Meditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité runs for about 80 minutes in performance while
Livre du Saint Sacrement takes nearly two hours. However, Pott’s work is, in at least one sense, even more demanding on the performer and on listeners for he divides
Christus into just five movements, two of which run for over half an hour, whereas the aforementioned Messiaen cycles are divided into much shorter movements – respectively into nine and eighteen.
A little surprisingly, this isn’t the work’s first recording. The world première was given by Ian Simcock on the organ of Westminster Cathedral in April 1991. That performance was issued by Priory Records but I believe it is no longer available. This Signum release is also a recording of a live performance, given on an unspecified date in 1997.
In the score, which I believe is published as no less than three separate volumes, each of the five movements is headed up by superscriptions. These include some lines by Thomas Traherne and verses from scripture (Movement I); verses by Thomas Merton (II); a poem by Charles Causley and some lines by Howard Mumford Jones (III); lines by St John of the Cross and Dylan Thomas (IV); and a verse from the prophet Joel (V). At the end of the score Edwin Muir’s poem
The Transfigured is appended. Unfortunately these literary inspirations are not reproduced in the comprehensive booklet but they can be accessed at the composer’s
website. It is well worth reading them.
Logos, the first of the five movements, begins quietly. Right at the start we hear a four-note motto theme, which is to play a key role throughout. As the music unfolds there’s a sense of growth, albeit uncertain even troubled growth. During these first minutes the textures are lean and spare. The opening of the movement, as the composer explains in his substantial note – which is also available on his
website – evokes “a world as yet devoid of any affirmative or elevating impulse.” Eventually, at track 7, 3:13, a chorale theme is introduced. This is a very significant theme and, as Pott says, is the nearest thing to a “Christ motif.” I won’t attempt to describe the music in detail – it’s far too complex and diverse for that and, in any case, the composer has made a far better job than ever I could in his notes. However, I will say that the concluding allegro (tracks 12 and, especially, 13) is very exciting, if one may use such a term. Here I suspect the music is illustrating that, at last, Christ has come into the world though the dark forces have by no means been overcome or banished as a result. The composer says this: “Fitfully dramatic and beset by sudden contrasts, the movement seeks to convey some impression of the Holy Spirit [Logos] contending with a resistant pagan force.”
Much of the music in the second movement,
Gethsemane, is subdued in tone, yet it is intense, even oppressive. In my listening notes I’ve listed several descriptive words for what I hear, including ‘darkness’, ‘solitude’, ‘apprehension’, ‘suffering’ and ‘negation’. At length the music achieves a substantial but fairly brief climax (track 18) before subsiding to a very subdued end. Francis Pott says the music “becomes both more meekly accepting and more other-worldly.” As I hear it, there’s acceptance but certainly no repose.
Via Crucis, the third movement, is founded on a passacaglia at first, though the form is not conventionally treated. The music grows from subdued beginnings, gaining in power and volume. The momentum increases until a jagged scherzo (track 22), which is very aggressive in nature. A massive climax is attained (track 25) as the moment of the Crucifixion arrives after which the music, in the composer’s words, “finally collapses into an unsettled darkness”. I sense, perhaps, in the final sequence of quiet chords, Christ’s last words, “it is accomplished”.
The fourth movement is entitled
Viaticum. This translates as ‘food for the journey’ and in the Roman Catholic Church the term is used for the final receipt of Holy Communion by someone who is close to death. Pott describes the movement as “the dramatic low point” of the symphony and says that it “evokes a world locked in sleep or buried in some deep midwinter of the spirit.” He says that the movement provides “extended repose” between the third and fifth movements. It seems to me to conjure up the Great Stillness over the world that Christians associate with the period of the entombment of Christ. Does it also, perhaps, seek to convey the feelings of loss and fear experienced by the disciples during those days? The music is consistently subdued and as well as the philosophical and theological impulses behind it I think that the movement serves a pragmatic purpose. Though neither the organist nor listeners can lose concentration these pages at least lower the emotional temperature a little – and allow the performer an element of physical respite.
That respite is much needed before the rigours of the enormous final movement,
Resurrectio. These rigours are not only intellectual but also, for the organist, physical. The thunderous opening put me in mind of the refrain from the Easter hymn,
This Joyful Eastertide, which affirms that Christ “burst his three-day prison”. There’s certainly a palpable feeling of a hugely energetic physical event here and the composer refers to “a great struggle towards the light”. It’s notable, however, that one feels that even now victory over death and the forces of darkness is far from assured. The pages that follow contain what sounds to me like a vast toccata; the music has great energy and the rhythmic impulse is extremely strong throughout. After an immense and extended climax, lasting some six minutes (tracks 10 and 11) the music falls back and eventually an initially quiet fugal episode begins (track 14). That gives way to an extended section (tracks 15 and 16) which the composer describes as ‘War in Heaven’. This is music of raw power, very great energy and no little force. At the culmination of this episode the chorale, first encountered over an hour and a half ago (CD 1, track 7) and heard subsequently in various guises, achieves its apotheosis in C major. Now the chorale is majestic and fulfilled. The work moves to a tumultuous conclusion, which is marked by a stupendous chord of F sharp major, sustained in this performance for nearly 30 seconds.
This is an astonishing work and I hope I’ve given some slight flavour of its scale, reach and ambition. It is an awesome work – in the true sense of the word – and in every sense it’s a compositional
tour de force. However, I’m not an uncritical admirer of the work. There are times when I think there’s simply too much music. Two instances that strike me particularly are the fourth movement, where I confess my attention wandered, and the fugal episode in the finale – to be honest, I struggle to see what emotional or musical function that passage fulfils. In both cases – and listeners may have their own views about other passages – I think that perhaps the composer’s invention has run away with him just a bit too freely and less might mean more.
However, I
am an uncritical admirer of the performance of Jeremy Filsell. Without a score, who knows whether the performance is note-perfect? But if there is the odd slip in the two-hour span of the piece it’s not apparent and I don’t think it matters at all. The word “virtuosity” doesn’t begin to do justice to his accomplishment here. The amount of work required to learn and master a work that is so complex, both musically and intellectually, almost defies belief. And then to be able to sustain the intellectual rigour and physical effort over the span of the performance is an amazing feat – remember, this is a live performance. This is, quite simply, a jaw-dropping feat of musicianship.
Though the booklet is excellent in many ways, no information is given about the organ but from a bit of
web research I believe it to be a four-manual instrument with 75 stops by Kenneth Jones, installed in 1992. It sounds to be a most impressive instrument with a very wide range of colours and registrations available to the player. Filsell exploits its resources to the full in this performance. The recorded sound is very good, allowing the complexities of the music to register but giving space and ambience around the music. There is inevitably some resonance and reverberation but the engineer, Andrew Post, has done a very fine job.
The piece has been divided up into no less than forty-five separate tracks. The only slight regret I have is that track references were not incorporated into Francis Pott’s detailed note about the work; that would have made it much easier for the listener to follow the music as it unfolds.
Inevitably, I’ve described the work in religious terms because that’s how Francis Pott has conceived this magnum opus. However, I think that a listener who does not subscribe to the Christian faith should still be able to appreciate
Christus – and admire it, I hope – as a work of art.
This is a highly significant piece of modern organ music. Given its length and the demands it makes on the performer, opportunities to hear it live are likely to be very limited. All the more reason, then to invest in this recorded performance which, surely, can be classed as definitive.
John Quinn
Jeremy Filsell (organ) 
