After Haydn a surge of "great" composers began to appear, first as a trickle (Mozart, Beethoven), then as a flood (Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Weber, Rossini, Chopin, Berlioz, Verdi, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Franck, Mahler, etc.). Now, who was the last great composer? Perhaps Igor Stravinsky? Or Benjamin Britten? Are any great composers alive and composing today? Why are certain composers great, and others before and after them not? And to further muddy the waters: are not other "composers" in our culture routinely labelled great? What about Frank Sinatra? Is Elvis Presley great? Are the Beetles great? They, and other modern popular artists as well, are regularly identified as "great" in the modern media. In fact, Elvis Presley has even had a postage stamp issued in his honor.

How do artists come to be labelled great? How do they earn that sobriquet? The answer to that question, it seems to me, ultimately boils down to this: a broad, widely accepted cultural consensus has anointed them as great. Specifically, within a given cultural context (western Europe from, say, 1790 to 1945) certain characteristics as to what in a given art form is great gained widespread acceptance among a large majority of the population—at least among those people who counted socially, especially the ascendant bourgeoisie. Once that consensus was established, then critics could identify artists whose works exhibited those characteristics of "greatness" in exemplary fashion. In the case of the great European composers, that consensus had been building for a very long time—at least since about 1100, maybe even earlier. The maturation of the Christian faith in Europe arguably had a great deal to do with that process. One of the most obvious signs that we are now living in a post-Christian era is this: that particular consensus is now unravelling in Europe. Since it was never as firmly rooted in the United States, it has already unravelled here. The great composers, then, can only rightfully be identified as great within their own cultural context. Some learned people in a subsequent cultural context (that is, you and I) may, with hindsight, also identify certain composers as great, but that greatness cannot expect to enjoy widespread cultural acceptance in a new cultural context.

Does all of this mean, then, that works of art created before that consensus—Leonin and Perotin's organa, Dunstable's Veni Sancte Spiritus, and that triumphal cross in Brandenburg Cathedral—are not great? It seems to me that the question is irrelevant, since no cultural context as to what was great existed when they were created; it was an idea whose time had not yet come. What about modern "classical" artists—Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, Philipp Glass, art created by elephants—are they great? Again, an irrelevant question, because the cultural context that once determined greatness has broken down, and no new consensus has as yet arisen to take its place. The only shred of consensus today lies in monetary value. The director of the Sheldon Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska recently admitted—rather shame-facedly—that he had silenced a women who was ridiculing a modern painting simply by telling her what it would fetch on the market.2

Returning to the art recorded on the disk: Is any of it great? Again, the question is irrelevant. No standard, no broad consensus exists that would establish it as great, or mediocre, or downright tawdry. It seems fair to me to call most of it competent, and perhaps some of it intense, or arresting, or vibrant, or authentic. But great?—it's beside the point.

Why is this question of "greatness" important to us as artists in the church today? Speaking as a church musician, I'd say it is because a lot of church musicians still care about great art! We study it, analyze it, perform it; we live intimately with the most intense art of all ages and cultures. It forms and informs the criteria by which we assign value, worth. How long have we been able to do this? Not very long at all—only since the widespread, cheap availability of the printed word (beginning about 1700 or so); and of color reproductions of art, music recordings, videos, the mass media, and wide-spread foreign travel, these only since the later twentieth century. I'm hardly the first to observe that our modern culture is the first culture to preserve, cultivate, and appreciate all the art forms of the past, of all cultures. This has been a splendid gift to us—but it has also led to a certain failure of nerve, one might almost say an artistic paralysis, especially in the realm of classical music. We have come to note that there is indeed nothing new under the sun, and have begun to feel that the art of the past is as good as, and perhaps better than, the art created by contemporary artists. This has to be part of the reason why we as musicians, and specifically as organists, spend so much time re-creating instead of creating, playing organ literature instead of improvising. For organists, it certainly wasn't always that way. The documentary evidence below—evidence that records the tasks required of those applying to become organists in several major European churches, from the 1500s through the 1700s—reveals vividly the improvisational hoops our earlier colleagues had to jump through!

Required for the position of second organist, Basilica of San Marco, Venice, in 1541:

1. Opening a choirbook and finding at random the beginning of a Kyrie or a motet, one copies this and gives it to the competing organist. The latter must, at the organ, improvise a piece in a regular fashion, without mixing up the parts, just as if four singers were performing.
2. Opening a book of plainchant equally at random, one copies a cantus firmus from an introit or another chant, and sends it to the said organist. He must improvise on it, deriving the three other parts [from it]; he must put the cantus firmus now in the bass, now in the tenor, now in the alto and soprano, deriving imitative counterpoint from it, not simple accompaniments.3

Required for the position of organist at Hamburg Cathedral in 1725, recorded by Johann Mattheson:

1. Improvise a short free prelude, approximately two minutes long, based on material "not studied beforehand." The prelude should begin in A major and end in G minor.
2. Improvise a trio "on two manuals with the pedal," approximately six minutes long, on the chorale Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut. The left hand should not double the pedal, and the middle voice should be artfully constructed.
3. Improvise a fugue on a given theme, with a given countersubject. The length of the fugue was left up to the candidate, whose concern should be "not how long, but how good."
4. Compose, within two days of the test, a well-worked out piece and submit it, in written form, for close scrutiny by the jury. (Note that the candidate was asked to compose the piece, not play it.)
5. Produce, at sight, an artful accompaniment (i.e., continuo realization) for an aria, approximately four minutes long.
6. Improvise, on the full organ, a ciacona on a given bass theme. The work should be approximately six minutes long, and performed in a carefully considered style. Here the applicant was given a half-hour to gather his thoughts.4

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