listen to complete piece

composer	Dudley Buck (1839-1909)
performers	Alan Morrison, organ
publisher	McAfee Music
label	aca Digital Recording CM20022mailto:tjaaca@mindspring.com
duration	08:35

about the music

Buck's Concert Variations on the Star-Spangled Banner, op. 23 was one of a number of settings he made of the song that would later become the national anthem of the United States.

about the composer		back to top

Organist and composer Dudley Buck (1839-1909) was a central figure in the development of organ and choral music in the United States. He wrote a number of works devoted to organ pedagogy, as well as the first organ sonata written by a US composer. Among Buck's most popular works are his 12 large-scale secular cantatas of 1870's and 1880's, which were performed more often than other American choral works of the time.

Buck was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, where he attended Trinity College from 1855-1857 before moving to Leipzig, Germany to continue his musical studies. His principal teachers there were composers Moritz Hauptmann, Julius Rietz, Ignaz Moscheles, and organist Johann Schneider, whom he continued to study with in Dresden. Buck returned to Hartford in 1862 and took a position as organist for the North Congregational Church. He performed transcriptions and premieres of organ works, toured as a concert organist, and in 1869 moved to Chicago, Illinois. The Great Fire of 1871 forced Buck to return to New England, where he took a teaching post at the New England Conversatory in Boston, Massachusetts. He began to write large-scale compositions there, including The Forty-Sixth Psalm (1872) and the first of his cantatas The Legend of Don Munio (1874). Buck finally settled in Brooklyn, New York in 1875, becoming organist and choirmaster for Holy Trinity Church and director of the Apollo Club. He was invited by the US Centennial Commission to compose a work for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the resulting piece, a cantata entitled The Centennial Meditation of Columbia (1876), made him nationally known. Buck was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1898, and was active as a composer and performer until his retirement in 1901.

about the performers		back to top

Organist Alan Morrison has performed in venues across the United States and Canada, and has been a featured artist at two national conventions of the American Guild of Organists. On television he has appeared on two episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and on Georgia Public Television in a performance of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1. A champion of new music from the United States, Morrison has premiered new works by William Krape, Dan Locklair, Eric Sessler, Jon Spong, and Brent Weaver. He has recorded for aca Digital Recordings, DTR, and Gothic Records. Morrison initially studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York; his teachers included John Weaver, Cherry Rhodes, Sarah Martin, Susan Starr, and Vladimir Sokoloff. He is currently based in Philadelphia where he is the organist at Ursinus College.

related websites
http://www.concertorganists.com/htdocs/artistdocs/morrison.html