“Frank Ferko inhabits a unique and unusual musical world. In the background is his love of the music of Olivier Messiaen. In the foreground appears mystery, and thus his intense interest in the visions of Hildegard, her music, and the world of medieval chant. None of this is unique or unusual in the decade of the 1990s, but his vivid musical imagination, sometimes terrifying, in other instances timelessly static and meditative, is unique.”1
The preceding quotation offers a microcosmic portrait of Frank Ferko as a composer. Elements of his compositions have evoked comparisons to Poulenc, Messiaen, James MacMillan, and Arvo Pärt, yet Ferko’s style defies neat categorization. His coloristic approach, especially in his organ works, links him with the French. His bent towards ethereal sounds and other-worldly texts allies him with the current phenomenon of “CD spirituality,” as evidenced by the popularity of Gregorian chant recordings and the music of Pärt and Tavener.2 The portrayal of programmatic themes, especially those of a symbolic and spiritual nature, looms large on his agenda. On the other hand, he is very aware of the need for practical liturgical music, and bears that in mind when writing sacred compositions.
The catalog of Ferko’s works includes choral anthems on liturgical, chant, and hymn texts; settings of poems by symbolist writers Rimbaud and Mallarmé; hymn preludes and programmatic works for organ; a symbolist one-act opera and a sprinkling of compositions for various solo instruments and ensembles, including an intriguingly titled piece for horn, clarinet and piano, “The North Side of Heaven (Near the Rotunda).” He has been commissioned to write works for Valparaiso University, His Majestie’s Clerkes, and the Dale Warland Singers, as well as many churches. He has been the recipient of annual ASCAP grants since 1987 among other grants, and has won awards for his compositions, including the 1989–90 Holtkamp/AGO award for “A Practical Program for Monks,” a song cycle for tenor and organ.
Although Ferko now spends most of his time composing, he has twenty-five years of experience as a church musician, most recently serving as director of music at the Church of St. Paul and the Redeemer in Chicago, and continues to perform as an organist. Ferko received his Bachelor of Music degree in piano and organ performance from Valparaiso University. He received the Master of Music degree in music theory with a minor in organ performance from Syracuse University and holds a doctorate in music composition from Northwestern University, where he studied with Alan Stout. His teachers have included Richard Wienhorst (composition) and Philip Gehring (organ) at Valparaiso, and Howard Boatwright (theory) and Will O. Headlee (organ) at Syracuse University. This traditional foundation, an openness to diverse influences, and a willingness to experiment combine to create Ferko’s unique style.
I spoke with Frank Ferko about his compositional style and two of his most recent works, the Hildegard Organ Cycle and the Hildegard Motets. Excerpts from that interview follow.
When did you start composing?
I got started dabbling in composition as a teenage church musician at a little country church in Ohio. I started playing organ at fourteen, directing the choir at sixteen, and began exploring different kinds of church music, especially new music. My earliest compositions were take-offs on Richard Wienhorst’s works. I later studied composition with him at Valparaiso. He guided me into writing my own modes and writing pieces using those modes. Wienhorst encouraged me to explore Bartok (who wrote his own modes) and that eventually led to study of the music of Messiaen.
I also studied sixteenth-century counterpoint with Wienhorst. As a final project, we had the option of writing a 5-voice motet or taking the principles of sixteenth-century counterpoint we had learned and writing a modern work. I opted for the latter, and I’ve been building on that ever since, taking ideas from early music and working them into a modern context.
Have you always had a strong interest in new music?
I have been very interested in new music. While in the doctoral program at Northwestern, I was encouraged to stay in touch with what living composers were doing. But being a church musician, I’ve also been very interested in chant, so there are these two polar ends of things—the very early music and current music—that fascinate me.
Besides Messiaen, what other composers do you look to for inspiration?
Many different eras have influenced me. I’ve played Bach, and Bach’s counterpoint has been a very strong influence. Having a strong piano background, I’ve played Chopin and Brahms. These large sounds and rich harmonies have always stuck in my mind, but I’ve veered more towards the French as time has gone on. What I like to listen to most are French pieces from the twentieth century. Some people say there are elements of Poulenc in my sound, and of Messiaen from time to time. The Messiaen influence is strong because my master’s thesis was an analysis of his piano cycle, “Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus.” I studied his compositional techniques very thoroughly. There are techniques that he invented, explored up to a certain point, and stopped. Why not take those further and do something else? Or take a particular technique and combine it with minimalism and see what happens? I like many of the early works of Philip Glass and I don’t mind exploring that territory. I pull ideas from all over the place.
What do you have in common with composers like Arvo Pärt and John Tavener?
I feel a common bond in terms of the philosophical approach, the way I’m approaching writing music. Arvo Pärt very definitely is an intensely religious person. John Tavener also. In that respect, I’m approaching the writing of pieces in the way that they are. We all use common modality in our writing, and there are certain ways that we form melodic lines that may be similar, but we’re putting things together in different ways.
I hear some similarity with Tavener in the way you approach writing for voices.
I know what you mean. I think this has to do with the fact that we have learned how to write for the human voice. Many composers have learned instrumental writing and try vocal writing and don’t understand the voice. You have to understand the limitations. You have to be very careful how you set text, especially vowels. That comes from studying early music and counterpoint—examples of glorious music for the voice. In that sense, there’s a certain similarity between Pärt, Tavener, James Macmillan and myself in the use of the materials. We all write well for voices.
As I’ve listened to your music, I’ve noticed that acoustics seem to a play a key role. Are live acoustics required for a true performance of your works?
I like live acoustical settings, the reverberance. This goes back to my love for chant and how a single line can spin and create other sounds. I can take a single line, a choral sound or an organ sound and create some interesting ear perceptions with the acoustics. The reverberance needs to be there. I’ve played the organ cycle successfully in relatively dead rooms, but there’s a whole dimension that’s missing. For example, the first movement of the organ cycle has a water drop idea, intended to reverberate through the room. It’s written at a very slow tempo to allow that to happen.
Do you have a special affinity for writing for the organ? What is there about it that works especially well for your music?
One of the reasons I’ve written so much for the organ is because it is my instrument and I like writing things that I can play, though I don’t write with myself as performer in mind. I understand it, and I’m very well aware that there aren’t that many composers today who feel comfortable writing for the organ. I enjoy it, so I’ll write pieces for the organ. With the organ, if I’m unsure about something I’ve written, I can sit down and try it out.
The musical ideas presented in the Hildegard Organ Cycle could best be presented successfully on the organ. The colors of the instrument and the acoustical setting in which organs are often found make it possible to express certain ideas in a way that cannot occur in other situations. The organ works are usually tailor-made with the tonal colors of the organ in mind. The approach I use in incorporating specific colors into my organ works allies me closely with the French composers who have always been colorists.
Do you think you almost have to be an organist to write music for the organ?
I tend to think so, although there are some people out there who are not organists and yet have written some very fine music for the organ. I’ve tried to get composers I know to write for the organ. They’re a little interested and they think the various colors and stop names are interesting, but it’s complicated for them. How do you deal with all these keyboards and these pedals? The thing that’s usually the biggest stumbling block is the registration—they don’t know what to suggest. Some composers leave it up to the player. I object to that. I think it really is the composer’s responsibility to inform the performer as to what tone colors to use, because there’s so much choice involved there. Particularly when writing interesting harmonies, chromatic lines, and dense textures, I think it behooves the composer to let us know just what kind of color he wants. A composer wouldn’t write a piece for orchestra and give the conductor a piano score, leaving it up to him to decide who’s going to play what. It’s not the conductor’s job to do that. An organ composer has to be the orchestrator. Composers usually have colors in mind, but are reluctant to write them down because they’re unfamiliar with stop names and know it’s going to differ from one instrument to another. Poulenc sat down with Duruflé and registered the organ concerto. Composers should sit down with organists and do that. Somebody who does play the organ knows the instrument and its capabilities so well that they can incorporate things that a non-organist wouldn’t do. But the same thing happens with writing for other instruments. A player can write more intimately for an instrument than a non-player.
You also perform as an organist, playing your own works. What else do you perform?
On an upcoming recital, I’m doing one movement from the Hildegard cycle along with works by Bach, Brahms, Helmut Walcha, and Heinz Werner Zimmerman. Mostly Germans because it’s a germanic organ. Yes, I play other people’s music—especially when a church organist. I still improvise, that’s one thing I’ve always done—postludes—that’s kind of fun.
I studied improvisation with Philip Gehring, and he improvises all the time. He always said you can’t really teach it, but every Sunday in chapel services we heard him doing it. It was the best example. His postludes were always improvisations on the last hymn. When I became an active organist, I started doing the same thing. The early ones I did I’m sure were just horrors, but you just keep doing it and you learn. I would hear something I thought was interesting and I would work that into a Sunday morning improvisation and just see where it would lead, combining the idea with a hymn tune, which I always used as the basis. It was a good way to pick up ideas I was hearing and develop them into my own compositional style.
Was the organ cycle composed through improvisation or sitting down and writing?
Some of it came from improvisation, some from just sitting down and writing. Actually, the tenth movement, the terrifying one, did begin as a postlude for a church service. I started the postlude with the repeated chord figure with big gaps between the chords. Heads went up. It was a gripping effect. I remembered that later and thought it would be a good way to end this organ cycle.
The music and writings of Hildegard von Bingen are currently receiving attention. 1998 is also the 900th anniversary of her birth. What prompted you to write music based on her writings?
I wrote most of the organ cycle back in 1990, before Hildegard became a big cult thing. I wanted to do something that would make people aware of who this woman was, what she did, and what she experienced.
What led you to choose Hildegard’s “Visions” as the basis for your works?
In the late 80s, my church choir in Hyde Park did a concert every spring. There were a couple of women in the choir who were vocal feminists, and they said, “We never sing any music written by women composers.” I started exploring, finding music written by women composers. I had discovered the name Hildegard in the early 80s. In putting together this concert, I started researching her music and transcribed chant melodies into modern notation. The choir was fascinated. I found other women composers from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We did an evensong and concert in which all the music was written by women. That got me looking into Hildegard, and I wanted to find out more. I did more research and looked at her last book, “De Operatione Dei,” which includes the ten visions. I had been wanting to write a large work for organ, and later that year I decided to write an organ cycle based on the ten visions.
You've written a detailed preface, a “guidebook” if you will, which provides information as to what’s being portrayed in each of the movements of the organ cycle. Without this guidebook, what can an average listener discern?
Most of the music I write is written on at least three levels—there’s the surface level, where anybody can just walk in and they will hear something they can appreciate. It will wash over them and they’ll either like it or hate it. They’ll form an opinion right away, but they’re really not appreciating what’s in the music.
The second level at which I write is an assocation with technical devices, for example writing numbers rhythmically or pitch-wise into a piece of music. There are other numerical phenomena which have also found their way into my music such as the Fibonacci series and certain kinds of numerical proportions such as 2:1, 3:2, or 4:3—proportions that were used for tuning in the medieval period.
The third level is extra-musical assocations—the programmatic elements. The whole organ cycle is program music: specific depictions of ideas that Hildegard presented in her descriptions of her visions. Most people haven’t read the “Visions,” which is why I wrote the “guidebook.” I thought I should condense some of these ideas into a concise format and provide the information for people so they have some idea of what the basic program is.
What are the most effective means for communicating ideas through music? Without knowing the program, what images in the organ cycle can a listener recognize?
There are certain obvious techniques that can be built into the music. The water drops [in the first movement] come across pretty clearly. The fifth movement with the repeated clusters has a tendency to sound like somebody’s angry, and Hildegard was. She was talking about the anger and judgment of God. I wanted to show that anger. Writing great big clusters that are very dissonant and shaking away with full organ is a way of doing that. Another technique is to present thematic material in an obvious way, such as an unaccompanied single line melody, repeated. Repetition is an important way to impress a musical idea on people. In the organ cycle there’s one chant melody that comes back throughout the cycle—and people remember that. They recognize it in different guises and are aware of it
What was the impetus for composing the Hildegard Motets? How were the texts selected?
The fifth one was the first one to be written, and that came about purely as an experiment. I was in a group, now defunct, called Chicago Composers Consortium, and we did three concerts a year at the Three Arts Club. In 1991, His Majesties Clerkes had done the first Chicago performance of Arvo Pärt’s “Passio,” at Orchestra Hall. One of the people in the consortium had heard the concert, raving about the Clerkes’ performance of the Pärt. We decided to do a whole concert of choral music and hire His Majesties Clerkes to perform seven new works. Since I had been working on the Hildegard Organ Cycle, I had also looked at some of her poems in the back of the book which contains the visions. I bought a critical edition of the poems and found them amazing. I wanted to write a substantial piece for the Consortium program, so I was looking for a longer text. The Holy Spirit text, a sequence hymn, seemed like a good choice. I knew what the Clerkes were capable of, and figured they could do just about anything. I wanted to take advantage of that and wrote a fairly challenging piece. They really liked it and asked to keep the copies of the piece to perform again in their regular season. That was in the fall of ’91. In February ’92, I decided I wanted to write a whole cycle on these texts because they’re so vivid, intense, and wonderful. I decided on the number nine as a mystical number, then chose the texts. The Clerkes were celebrating their tenth anniversary, and decided to commission the set of works for their final concert in 1993. The texts were selected with liturgical use somewhat in mind, variety in terms of the language Hildegard used and variety of lengths—some long and some short. I wanted some continuity and some contrast.
Are the Hildegard works liturgical music or concert music?
The Hildegard pieces were originally intended to be concert works I knew when I wrote them that people—particularly church organists with the proper instrument, acoustics and a good choir—would probably want to use these pieces in the liturgical setting. Many of the pieces in the organ cycle are fairly quiet and not terribly long. They could work as prelude music. The first movement could be used with a baptism, with the water symbolism. There’s an implication of Advent in the seventh movement, the slow, lush movement with the long melody in the celeste chords. Even though the motet cycle was written as a concert cycle for His Majestie’s Clerkes, I thought people might want to use the individual movements in church settings, so I found texts of Hildegard that had assocations with liturgical settings and outlined that in the preface notes. These pieces have crossover quality—they can work in concert or in a church setting.
Widor once said “To play the organ properly, you need to have a vision of eternity.” Does that statement apply to performing your Hildegard works?
Yes, I think there’s truth to that statement. There’s a certain amount of that with the Hildegard pieces. Performers will have a much better understanding and be able to bring out what’s in the music much better if they have the textual associations, the implied ones in the organ cycle or the expressed ones in the motets, if they know where Hildegard was coming from, they have a good translation to work from, and they understand the texts. The performance will be much, much better. Many little musical points are strongly associated with the texts.
Some people have used the term “organist-theologian” to describe composers such as Widor, Tournemire, and especially Messiaen. Do you identify with that role, being an organist and composer yourself?
To a certain degree, yes. I think I’m creating similar kinds of things, at least with the Hildegard pieces. When I perform those works, I know exactly what is going on there because I’ve read all the visions and commentary of Hildegard. Reading them was a very intense, moving experience. It moved me to write the organ cycle. I wanted to put the theology into music. I want people to know about what I felt from reading the texts when they perform or hear this music.
I was intrigued by the statement in the liner notes of the Hildegard recordings, “Frank Ferko inhabits a unique musical world . . .” (quoted at the beginning of this article). What is your response to that?
I was flattered. The remark addresses the organ cycle specifically. When I was practicing in preparation for recording it, the producer came up to the organ loft and said, “I want to hear the last movement on this instrument. This is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard. I want you to use as much organ as you can, a lot of reeds.” I agreed, that’s what the movement really needs. That last movement is terrifying, and yet there are other movements that are gentler that take you off into some ethereal land somewhere. I think that he was thinking of all the different moods that are created in that work and how different they are when you stop and think about them from beginning to end.
Every now and then I do pull in, into my own little world when I’m writing. There are a number of people who’ve taken an interest in my writing and they’ll ask me if I’ve heard the latest recording of James MacMillan because they find a similarity between his style and mine. I tell them I can’t listen to that for a few months because I’m working on something of my own. I have to completely pull myself away from other things and just immerse myself into my own little world while I’m writing. I don’t want to listen to anybody else’s music while I’m doing that. There is a little bit of reclusiveness that’s implied in that statement, but not to an excessive degree. I try to be sociable.
Would you describe your music as mystical?
There is definitely an ethereal quality that I try for. “Mystical” carries with it some other connotations, and I suppose that the things that I’ve written have a certain amount of that because of the text associations, especially Hildegard’s texts. There is mysticism involved in it, but generally, I’m coming at the music from a technical viewpoint. I’m trying to create a certain mood.
I noticed several settings of poetry by Mallarmé and Rimbaud in your list of works. Is their poetry of particular interest to you?
I like symbolism, and Mallarmé is very symbolistic. Rimbaud wrote very colorful poetry. The symbolist poems are particularly interesting to me.
You seem to have a strong preference for ineffable ideas and symbolic texts.
I’ve always been fascinated by that kind of thing—the intangible things that we perceive in some way, either through an association or imagination. When we are thinking of intangible things, such as God, angels, saints, good, evil, love, and so on, I think it is natural for us to try to represent these intangibles in some tangible way. That’s why we have church buildings, stained glass, religious paintings, statuary, and religious drama. These are ways in which artists have tried to represent things which are in a way abstract. Music is perhaps the best way to express or represent abstract ideas. Music has the capability of expressing things that words or pictures just cannot accomplish. By connecting music with symbols it is possible to create a very powerful form of expression. Is there such a thing as a symbolist musician? Maybe that’s what I am.
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Frank Ferko’s compositional style is woven from diverse threads: ancient mystical texts and medieval compositional techniques, minimalism and Messiaen, ineffable mysteries and concrete images, the highly complex and the startlingly simple. The result is a musical tapestry of exceptional depth and beauty, a vibrantly spiritual contribution to the musical palette of both concert hall and sanctuary.
Musical examples are reprinted by permission of E. C. Schirmer Music.
For more information about Frank Ferko and his music, visit his web-site:
http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~dahling/biography.html
Notes
1. The Hildegard Organ Cycle, Arsis CD 101, a statement made by producer Robert Schuneman in the liner notes of the recording.
2. Patrick Russill, “Cantos Sagrados: Patrick Russill reflects on the holy songs of James MacMillan,” The Musical Times 1837 (March 1996): 35–37.
3. Philip Greenfield, “Review of The Hildegard Motets” The American Record Guide 6 (Nov./Dec. 1996): p. 122.
