Zeuner: Fantasies and Fugues

Charles Zeuner (1795–1857) was undoubtedly one of the best American organists in the first half of the nineteenth century. He left Germany in 1830 with a rich musical heritage, having studied both with Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Michael Gotthard Fischer, who were in turn the students of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. Zeuner was active as an organist both in Philadelphia and in Boston, where he was also briefly the president of the Handel and Haydn Society. His known works include the first U.S.-published organ music and the first organ concerto written in the U.S. Most of the twenty-seven prelude and fugue pairs and three extended fantasies found in this volume were intended for the organ, and no fewer than fourteen of them include Zeuner's distinctive double-pedal notation. However, several works do not call for specific pedal parts, and they could easily be played on the organ manuals alone or on a piano. Zeuner's prelude and fugue pairs are usually linked thematically, but sometimes this relationship is obscure. At least two works in this volume are newly-composed preludes for existing fugues by his teacher, Fischer. Zeuner's command as a composer is clearly evident in this music that exhibits many characteristics of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including an expressive and often surprising chromaticism. The music for this edition comes from both holographs and manuscripts copied by William Newland now housed at the Library of Congress.