Sigma Alpha Iota

NEW ORGAN WORKS An Introduction to the Organ Works of Naji Hakim By Heather Hernandez N aji Subhy Paul Irénée Hakim, born in 1955 in Beirut, Lebanon, is an organist‑composer‑improviser of international stature. He was introduced to the organ during his elementary school studies at the Collège du Sacré Cœur in Beirut. He began with private piano lessons, but, when he was nine or ten years old, he began work on his own at the organ using various methods such as Dupré1 and Gleason.2 In 1975, he moved to Paris to finish his engineering studies at the Ecole Supérieure des Télécommunications since the Ecole Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Beirut in Lebanon closed because of war. He continued his organ studies in performance and improvisation with the famous French organist-improviser-composer Jean Langlais (1907-1991). Hakim worked with Langlais for about ten years, and Langlais became like a second father to him — very encouraging and very demanding. With Langlais's encouragement, he entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris where he obtained seven first prizes in organ performance, organ improvisation, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, analysis, and orchestration. He was in the classes of Rolande Falcinelli (organ and improvisation), Roger Boutry (harmony), JeanClaude Henry (counterpoint), Marcel Bitsch (fugue), Jacques Castérède (analysis) and Serge Nigg (orchestration). Hakim has composed works for organ, two organs, organ duo, and organ with other instruments, as well as orchestral and concerto works, solo instrumental and chamber works, and vocal works. He has won many awards for performance, improvisation, and composition. For example, his Symphonie en Trois Mouvements won the composition prize of the "Amis de l'Orgue" in 1984. The Embrace of Fire won first prize in 1986 in the International Organ Competition in memory of Anton Heiller, at Southern Missionary College in Collegedale, TN. In addition, he was awarded the Prix de Composition Musicale André Caplet from the Académie des Beaux‑Arts in 1991. He has also been the recipient of first prizes at the International Organ Competitions held in Haarlem, Beauvais, Lyon, Nuremberg, St. Albans, Strassburg, and Rennes. Hakim was the assistant organist at Sainte-Odile in Paris from 1976 to 1985, and accompanied five Masses a week: two on Naji Subhy Paul Irénée Hakim Saturday, two on Sunday morning, and one on Sunday evening. He was titular organist at the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur in Paris from 1985 to 1993, after which he succeeded Olivier Messiaen as titular organist at Eglise de la Trinité until 2008. He is professor of musical analysis at the Conservatoire National de Région in Boulogne‑Billancourt (a suburb of Paris) and has been visiting professor of organ, improvisation, and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 1993. In 2002, he received the title Doctor honoris causa from the University Saint-Esprit in Kaslik, Lebanon. Hakim became composer in residence at the Trinity College of Music in London in 2004. He has published The Improvisation Companion in English and French and, in cooperation with his wife, musicologist and organist Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet, two textbooks on musical analysis. Dufourcet studied organ with Langlais, Falcinelli, Susan Landale, and Marie-Claire Alain and earned a Doctorate in Musicology from the Sorbonne. She is titular organist at Notre‑Dame‑des‑Champs in Paris and teaches music history at the Université Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux. Olivier Messiaen and Langlais have both greatly influenced Hakim's harmonic language. He also has great respect for the works of Stravinsky, Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bach, Beethoven, and Gershwin. In an interview with Thomas Chase, Hakim stated: My thematic material is often related to song or dance, and it is realized in classic forms (variations, rondo, arch), or free forms (rhapsodic). I consider myself a classical composer by the use of forms that are best in initiating a dialogue with the memory of the listener. My harmonic language is rooted in tonality, enlarged by modes, scales, and color chords, and is always conditioned by attractions, with or without resolutions.3 Hakim's published organ works feature a number of effects in common with his improvisations: tremolos, bitonality, ostinatos, shocking harmonic changes, rapid scales, chord clusters, and glissandi. Many of his organ works incorporate Gregorian chant. During my interview with Hakim in 2001, he said the following about Gregorian chant and today's culture: The problem in religious music today is that often people do not have any theology or any interest in understanding the mystery of faith or in approaching it. They have an understanding limited to funeral music that music in church should be sad and Gregorian chant should be sung slowly and very sadly. When one watches the artworks of the middle ages, sculptures and paintings, the saints are always smiling having open hands HAKIM continued on page 10 sai-national.org SUMMER 2011 PAN PIPES 9

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