Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen

Chorale Prelude on "Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen" (EG 16, GL 111) by Jan Janca.

Playing on the sample set of the Kam organ of 1859 at Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, a large Dutch organ, I decided to give it a bit of Dutch treatment by playing the solo voice with the famous "Dutch trio" registration: Baarpijp 8' + Quintadeen 8' + Vox Humana 8 ' + Tremulant.

So there we go......a German-British organist playing the the music of a Polish-German composer on a the sample set of Dutch organ.

Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen is a german poem by Jochen Klepper, with the tune melody by German composer Johannes Petzold.

This part of a collection of short chorale preludes titled "Das Kirchenjahr in 16 Choralvorspielen" (= The church year in 16 chorale preludes) composed by Janca in 2006. It was commissioned by Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde (GdO) for their 2006 international organ conference.

Jan Janca was born in Danzig (today Gdańsk, Poland) in 1933 and studied organ and composition at the music academy in Kraków from 1950 till 1955. He then worked as a freelance organist and made his first commercial organ recordings at the famous organ of Oliwa cathedral.

Janca was friends with my late grandfather, as well as a number of other young musicians from the region around Gdansk who were all starting their musical careers in the mid 1950s.

Janca never returned to Poland from a concert tour to Germany in 1957 and settled in Germany, where he continued his studies at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart, before becoming in a private student of Marcel Dupré in Paris for a few years.

From 1962 to 1996 Janca was a music teacher at the Wilhelmsstift in Tübingen and also served as organist at the Johanneskirche in Tübingen.