Fanfare from École d’Orgue

Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823–1881) was one of the towering organ pedagogues of the 19th century — trained in the Bach tradition through his teacher Adolf Friedrich Hasse in Breslau, he carried that rigor back to Belgium and France, where his teaching at the Brussels Conservatoire and his landmark 1862 method École d’Orgue helped shape the entire French Romantic organ school that followed. Tucked within that method is the Fanfare in D, a bright, ceremonial showpiece built on antiphonal calls, terraced dynamics, and crisp staccato fanfare figures — writing that already sounds remarkably like a brass ensemble trading phrases across an organ’s terraced manuals.

This arrangement draws that brass character out into the open, scoring Lemmens’ fanfare for two trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba. The interlocking echo entrances and full-organ tutti blasts of the original translate naturally into the antiphonal give-and-take of a brass quintet, while the work’s compact ABA’ form — a bold opening statement, a brief modulating episode, and a varied return that builds to a fortissimo close — makes it a dazzling concert opener or encore piece.