Carillon (for Frederick Mac Arthur)

This is my 100th video on YouTube and I am so pleased to offer this work in celebration of that fact. This is just one of the many relatively unknown Romantic, Modern and Contemporary concert level works that one can find on my YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/RandallMullin).

I met Charlie Callahan when he had first come to Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C. During one of his first recitals there, which I attended, he played his Carillon (written for Frederick MacArthur). I was very taken with the work and he gave me a copy of the manuscript. “Life happened” and I put the piece on a shelf and forgot about it.

Recently, I got an email from the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival, which has been reissuing many of the Aeolian-Skinner “King of Instruments” recording series, and I noticed that Charlie had a CD in that group. I bought it and was delighted to see the Carillon, which I heard so many years ago, listed there. I bought a copy of the score from Concordia Publishing House and began to learn it.

Although Charlie probably wrote this with the Aeolian-Skinner sound in mind, I always think of pieces named “Carillon” as part of the French tradition and this work certainly can claim the characteristics of pieces written with that esthetic.

So the organs of Cavaillé-Coll came to mind and luckily with my extension of the Grand Symphonic Cavaillé-Coll (a combination of the Caen and Metz Cavaillé-Colls, Rotterdam, and Dom Bedos sample sets) which extends the range of manuals and pedals to 61/32, encloses the Positif, and includes the Dom Bedos and Rotterdam Chamades on the fourth manual, I was able to consider recording the piece with those enticing sounds. I love the wedding of the music of Callahan with Cavaillé-Coll and I hope you do too.