Midday Music for Organ: Annette Richards “Circa 1940”: Exploring the conception of Cornell’s Aeolian-Skinner organ as a microcosm of diverse musical worlds that look towards Europe even while expressing a uniquely American organ aesthetic, this program brings together music composed in a roughly 10-year period around the organ’s completion in 1940. From England, we will hear Herbert Howells’ poignant Master Tallis’s Testament (1940), from France the music of Jehan Alain (killed in 1940 in the trenches of the second world war at the age of 29), and finally, from the U.S. but with a wry glance across the Atlantic, the ever-popular Variations on America by Charles Ives, arranged by the composer for the organ at the encouragement of the legendary E. Power Biggs, in 1949.

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