Rudolf Löw, Da Christus geboren war

by admin · December 9, 2019

The Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden posesses a manuscript of 12 organ compositions by the hand of Rudolf Löw (1832 – 1898), a Swiss organist and composer. It is his opus 1, which he dedicated to his teacher Carl Ferdinand Becker. Three of these compositions are suitable for the Christmas period and I’ll publish them first.

The second of the Christmas pieces is a prelude to the choral “Da Christus geboren war”. The right hand plays the choral melody and the left the accompaniment on another manual. If it were composed in the Baroque era it would best have been rendered with the alto clef for the left hand part. As Löw writes it himself with the bass clef I use that same clef in my transcription. The music flows elegantly and I actually quite like the more Romantic idiom for a form that is so thoroughly Baroque. All in all a very nice piece that makes me look forward to playing the remaing 10 compositions from this manuscript.

The recording was done on the sample set of the Van Dam organ (1832) in Tholen by Voxus Organs for Hauptwerk.

Score
Löw, Da Christus geboren war