Johann Gottfried Walther
Johann Gottfried Walther (1684–1748) was a German organist, composer, music theorist and lexicographer of the Baroque era. He is remembered for his organ works and for the first major German dictionary of music.
As city organist of Weimar he wrote 132 organ preludes on Lutheran chorale melodies and became known for organ transcriptions of orchestral concertos by Italian and German masters of his day. Fourteen such transcriptions survive, alongside free keyboard works.
His Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732) was the first German dictionary of musical terms and the first to join terminology with biographical entries on composers and performers. Drawing on more than 250 sources, it defines over 3,000 terms. He had earlier prepared Praecepta der musicalischen Composition (1708) as a handbook for Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar; it remained in manuscript until a mid-twentieth-century edition.
Compositions by Johann Gottfried Walther appear on
Magnificat
Douglas Lawrence plays a magnificent recital on the four-manual Rieger organ he designed for The Scots' Church, Melbourne, drawing out the instrument’s full range of colour and power.
Organ Miniatures
A collection of 33 short organ works on the 1882 T.C. Lewis organ at St George’s Uniting Church, East St Kilda. The programme samples music written for small pipe organs and harmoniums, from Baroque chorales to twentieth-century miniatures.
Transcriptions Baroque
Recorded in Trinity College Chapel, Melbourne, this disc pairs trumpeter Anthony Pope with organist Dominic Perissinotto across eight Baroque concertos. Four are heard on trumpet with organ accompaniment; the rest are solo organ transcriptions by celebrated organists of their day.
Diapason
This CD marks 150 years of the Bishop Kelly Pipe Organ at St Patrick’s, Mentone. Built by Frederick Nicholson for Prahran’s Independent Church, it is among Australia’s most significant historic instruments. Christopher Trikilis and Dr Gordon Atkinson explore its colours for two and four hands, in music by Vierne, Walther, Hesse, Bonelli and others.