Jeffrey Snedeker. Sage Chapel (Aeolian-Skinner organ). “Out of the depths.” Music by Bach, Mendelssohn, and 19th-century contemporaries.

“I must rush off to the monastery and work off my excitement at the organ,” the young Mendelssohn exclaimed to his parents after reading Schiller’s William Tell. An avid devotee of the instrument across his life, Mendelssohn’s Sonata in A major, Op. 65 no. 3, with its stunning fugue on the penitential chorale "Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu Dir," is now a classic of the organ repertory. Ithaca organist Jeffrey Snedeker takes this piece as the starting point for a survey of settings of this chorale, from Mendelssohn's idol J. S. Bach, to his 19th-century German contemporaries and beyond.