Fantaisie et fugue Op. 21 No. 6 | A.P.F. Boëly | performed by Margaret-Mary Owens

Fantaisie et fugue Op. 21 No. 6 by Alexandre Pierre François Boëly (1785-1858)
Performed live April 8, 2022 by Margaret-Mary Owens for her final doctoral recital at the Eastman School of Music. Location Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, NY.
While Alexandre Boëly wrote several pieces that were lively and contemporary in nature like the so-called “thunder music” that depicted the Final Judgement, the composer was most known in his time for writing “serious” music and championing old-fashioned composers like Couperin and J.S. Bach during a time when playing older music was unpopular. He was fired from his organist position at Saint Germain l'Auxerrois in 1851 for playing music the public deemed boring, though he maintained a small circle of friends like the young César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns who appreciated the value of playing older music. Boëly’s appreciation of Bach can be heard in the contrapuntal middle section of his Fantaisie et fugue Op. 21 No. 6, while his pianistic leanings and the influence of Carl Czerny is audible in the bubbling arpeggios of the outer sections. This piece, like its eleven other companions of his Opus 21, were written for organ or pedal piano, justifying the arpeggio texture not commonly seen works written only for solo organ.