Charles-Marie Widor
The Organ Symphonies
Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) was organist of the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, a position he held for 63 years (1870-1933). He is best known for his ten “symphonies” for organ.
All existing editions—whether original (see below) or more recent—fail to address the problem of page turns. One of the primary aims of the OrganScore edition was therefore to resolve this issue through the use of large-format scores. By way of example, the famous Toccata from Symphony No. 5 occupies only four pages in the OrganScore edition, compared with ten pages in the original editions.
Widor’s symphonies were all composed and first published between 1872 and 1901, but they underwent numerous revisions up to 1929. The history of these revisions may be summarised as follows:
- 1872: publication of symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 (Op.13)
- 1879: minor revisions to Op. 13 ;
- 1887: revision of Op. 13; publication of symphonies Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8 (Op. 42)
- 1888-1892: minor revisions to Op. 13 and Op. 42
- 1901: revisions of Op. 13 and Op. 42 and publication of symphonies No. 9 (“Gothique”) and 10 (“Romane”)
- 1911, 1918-1920, 1928-1929: mainly minor revisions.
Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 (Op. 13) were particularly reworked between 1872 and 1901. In some cases, the revisions resulted in complete rewritings of certain movements, or in the suppression, addition or replacement of others (see, for example, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3). It would have been unfortunate to overlook these intermediate versions entirely. We have therefore sought, for each of these first four symphonies, to include in the appendices earlier versions of movements that we considered to be of particular interest.
