Of the Father's love begotten – a F/father and S/son conversation with Peter-Anthony Togni
In 2003, Peter-Anthony Togni was commissioned by Lydia Adams and the Elmer Iseler singers to create an arrangement for their Christmas recording on CBC Records: Puer natus in Bethlehem! (MVCD 1165). He chose to arrange the Gregorian chant “Corde natus”, usually translated as “Of the Father’s love begotten.” Here is the text he used:
Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega
He the source, the ending He.
Of the things that are, that have been
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore.
Of the birth forever blessed!
When the virgin full of grace
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bore the Saviour of our race,
And the babe, the world's redeemer,
First revealed his sacred face,
Evermore and evermore.
Amen.
In his final item in this Advent series, Kevin Burns speaks with Peter-Anthony Togni about his life and work as a composer and a musician, and about this composition in particular. The conversation begins with his father, Victor Togni. Peter-Anthony was barely five years old when, in 1965, Victor Togni, was killed in a car crash when he was en route to a Montreal recording session with CBC Radio. Victor Togni was an internationally acclaimed organist and composer who had studied with Europe’s best: Marcel Dupré, Fernando Germani, and Olivier Messiaen to name only a few. How, after the age of five, did Peter-Anthony Togni learn about his father? 
“I have very few direct experiences. I remember making soup… I remember my father playing the organ in St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto and we were down in the congregation and I would look up and hear this sound coming from up there. But most if what I know about my father comes through my mother and my aunt Kate who is a Sister of St. Joseph. When I’ve gone to play concerts people would come up to me and say: ‘I remember your father. He was such a lovely man.’ And my mother would balance that with: ‘Oh, he was crazy!’ – but in a good kind of way, I think. I don’t know my father so much as feel my father. And for a while I thought I had to be him and this is one of the reasons I learned I play the organ, I suppose.”
When did you know that music, as performer or as a composer, would be your life’s work?
“I had some sense of that but I really didn’t know that until I was 15. I was living up in northern British Columbia at the time, a place called Fort St. John and I had a wonderful piano teacher there who encouraged creativity. For whatever reason, I was riding my bicycle to get some milk, I think, and I was coming home and I just felt, ‘I think I am going to be a composer.’ And I felt as if I was flying!”
When you listened to your father’s CBC tapes and records and looked at his scores, what was he teaching you?
“My father was a brilliant improviser and I remember listening to those recordings thinking, ‘Man! How do you do that?’ My father had a great love of Gregorian chant and a lot of his music is based in that modality, as is mine. I think he taught me to have the courage to explore and that improvisation is as much of an art as composition.”
Victor Togni (standing extreme right) was a co-founder of the Pembroke Community Choir. This photo was taken at the choir's inaugural concert in April 1958. Five months later, Victor Togni married choir member Margaret Lyons, she's in the front row – 3rd from the left.
You compose music for concert settings and you also compose music that is more liturgical. Is that a different kind of process for you?
“Yes, for me composing sacred music is an aural prayer. It comes out of how I start my day. I usually start by playing the Bach C Major Prelude and it’s a way for me to explore beauty and to try, through music, to hook up with what I perceive to be God. This is a journey where I have a lot more surprises, a lot more gifts along the way of let’s call it inspiration. It makes me tell the truth. When I’m struggling with things, when I’m feeling dark and a sinner, if you will, and who am I to be writing music that is leading people to beauty and into God-time? All of that reminds me of the incredible gift of God’s love to the world, that God’s love is the size of the sun and that all our
mess and craziness is the size of a pin, you know. I really feel that creating music is my greatest way of praying, although it can be really frustrating at times, as can prayer. But I do have a routine as a composer. I work from 9 until 12 and again from 1. My composing schedule is bit monastic. And a bit like office hours!”
Tell me about writing “Of the Father’s love Begotten.”
“It was a great joy writing it. It was wonderful. The Elmer Iseler Singers have a done a lot of my music over the years and we have a lovely relationship. I’ve always loved that chant melody and I thought they would be a great choir to sing the harmonies I put in it. I put a lot of ‘scrunches’ and I call them ‘smears’ and we are so used to working with each other that I knew that the piece was going to a good home.”
When you were hosting Stereo Morning on CBC Radio 2, you would often give listeners little hints about life with the “Tiny Tognis” – your four sons who are mostly all grown-up now. The final line of both verses in this composition repeats the word “evermore”. If you could give your sons an “evermore” gift this Christmas, what would it be?
“Well, other than good bourbon, I would give them the gift of knowing that no matter what mistakes I have made as a parent, and I have made many, that my love for them is ‘evermore’ and I would encourage them to really look inside and tell the truth. Other than that, I would buy my second son a brand new guitar because he’s a classical guitarist and he needs one and if I had the money I’d get him that, too!”
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There are no available links to the Elmer Iseler Singers performance of this composition but you can still hear a live recording of it made at a 2009 concert by the De Angelis Vocal Ensemble in Capistrano, California, under the direction of Matthew Gray. Here’s the link on that choir’s Youtube channel: