The Carol and Its Context in Twentieth-century England

Dr. Peter Hardwick is a retired music professor who, during his career, taught at the University of Guelph, Guelph, and Agincourt Collegiate Institute, Toronto, Ontario. In addition, he served as organist of St. John’s Cathedral, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and St. George’s Church, Guelph.

In 2003, Scarecrow Press published his book British Organ Music of the Twentieth Century. Over the last two and a half years he has been writing a monograph on the life and music of Kenneth Leighton, which will probably be finished sometime this year. Dr. Hardwick has written feature articles and numerous reviews of recordings and organ music for The Diapason

Kenneth Leighton was born on October 2, 1929, at Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. His formal education was at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield (1940-47) and Queen’s College, the University of Oxford (1947-51). He continued his composition studies privately with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome (March-September, 1951). Leighton was principally a composer, but he also appeared quite frequently as a concert pianist, and he gave the first performances of a number of his own piano works. In addition, he was a highly regarded teacher of composition. Except for two years as a lecturer and fellow at Worcester College, Oxford (1968-70), he taught composition in the Faculty of Music at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1956 until his death on August 24, 1988.1

Musical training

The composer was involved with church music throughout his life. In his childhood, the Leighton family were parishioners of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in downtown Wakefield, and Kenneth sang in the choir there, as did his father and brother. In 1938, he gained admittance to the Wakefield Cathedral Choir. Years later, the composer reminisced that

 . . . my career as a Cathedral chorister left some of the most vivid impressions in my mind of that time of life. I didn’t particularly ask to become a chorister . . . but my father had sung in church choirs all his life, my brother had been a choral scholar before me, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world--nobody questioned it--that I should follow in their footsteps. Unlike my brother I didn’t have much of a voice, I fear, and I would never have made a soloist--but I was able to sing reasonably in tune, and I was able to sight-read; and so I became one of those worthy and stalwart leaders at the bottom end of the stalls--hooting away with not a very strong voice--but to be relied on in moments of crisis. . . .

As far as the repertoire it was pretty wide for those days--we sang some Palestrina, we sang the old favourites--Noble in B minor, Walmisley in D minor, and the Stanford (all fine music in its own right--and thank God that we are getting over our prejudices against the Victorian and Edwardian church music)--and we also sang what was then the latest thing--Darke in F minor--a most exciting experience--Warlock carols, and even a piece by Britten which I didn’t like very much because it seemed so outrageously modern and cacophonous. And then there were many great occasions like the Stanford TE DEUM with Trumpets and Drums--and [Handel’s] Messiah for the first time. I was so completely overwhelmed--emotionally--by the Messiah that I was completely unable to control myself and had to escape from the stalls half way through. Curiously enough I have never heard the Messiah since.

On the whole what an extraordinary richness of musical experience it all was--and what a marvellous musical training!2

Wakefield Cathedral was a High Church of England establishment, and during these years, the composer had his first taste of plainsong. He clearly liked the old chants, and later they were sometimes used verbatim in his compositions. In other works, original themes cast in the plainsong mold were introduced. In the Cathedral Choir, he also sang sacred Tudor polyphonic music, which impressed him,3 and he used a modernized version of the cut and thrust of this style in his own counterpoint later.

In 1947, he was awarded a Hastings Exhibition to study Classics at Queen’s College, Oxford, and a year later he gained permission to continue with Classics, but to also focus principally on music under the direction of the Queen’s College music lecturer, Bernard Rose. Vaughan Williams, Walton, and Britten were Leighton’s idols at this time, and they were to have an effect on his music to a limited degree during the next few years. He learned much during his Oxford music studies, but perhaps the only lasting skill that he acquired was his immense contrapuntal technique.

During his six months of composition studies with Petrassi in 1951, Leighton became more aware of modern Continental musical styles, especially those of Bartók, Hindemith, Stravinsky, as well as the techniques of the Second Viennese School’s serial procedures, and, thereafter, Leighton adopted a much more highly chromatic, mid 20th-century style.

Compositional style

However, he did not adopt one style thereafter for all his compositions. For instance, the choral music, including the works for church services, is quite conservative. In the sacred scores, links with traditional musical style are maintained, yet they sound modern. He achieves this partly by retaining elements of tonal and modal music, while making little use of conventional functional harmony and key signatures. The highly dissonant chords, including cluster chords, in the sacred music have a modern ring to them, but most of these are coincidental, the result of linear counterpoint, not, primarily, vertical thinking.4 At least occasionally, in most of the church pieces Leighton likes to cadence on diatonic chords, which help underline his adherence to tonal/modal traditions. There is also a conventional versus forward-looking ambivalence in the voice leading in Leighton’s church music. This is the result of the contours of the vocal lines being essentially conventional, while at the same time there is a liking for such “dissonant” leaps as augmented fourths and major sevenths.

Almost a third of the ninety-six published works in The Kenneth Leighton Trust’s Opus Index are for use in church services. They consist of nineteen anthems, motets and carols; ten masses and communion services; eight canticles for matins and evensong; one set of preces and responses; five hymn tunes; and two hybrid works that may be sung at the Mass or as concert works.5

Like most 20th-century English church composers, he generally wrote for a four-part all-male choir consisting of trebles, altos, tenors, and basses, and quite frequently called for one or more vocal soloists. In his fondness for centuries-old poetry and prose of the highest literary quality, he showed decided insight into what words blended best with his elevated, emotionally intense musical style. In particular, he set many passages from the King James I version of The Holy Bible of 1611, and the Church of England’s The Book of Common Prayer, whose origins may be traced to 1552. The other old British religious writers whose work he set include Robert Herrick (1592-1674), George Herbert (1593-1633), Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and Christopher Smart (1722-71).

The organ parts in the church music are idiomatic and important, yet Leighton was not fond of the instrument. He revealed his feelings as early as 1952, when, after playing the new organ in Wakefield Cathedral, he wrote: “It is a very large instrument with five manuals but . . . I don’t like the organ very much. On this instrument, one can produce magnificent effects but I find it incapable of expressing those fine feelings which are the secret of a truly human music. It is an instrument without heart.”6 His reservations were reinforced later when he heard the criticisms of British Romantic/Orchestral instruments of his colleague in the Edinburgh University Faculty of Music, the celebrated organ historian, Peter F. Williams.7

Three Carols

Among the earliest works in the genre is the miniature a cappella Three Carols, Op. 25 (1948-56), for soprano soloist and SATB choir. The modality, occasional open fifth chords, and Picardy third cadences match well the archaic English language and imagery of the texts.

These points are illustrated in the second carol, titled Lully, Lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child. One of the composer’s most celebrated sacred choral works, it echoes, characteristic of his music of the late 1940s, with the style of Vaughan Williams. There is much word painting. For example, the introductory gentle rocking motion of the ostinato musical phrases, as the choir repeatedly sings the words “Lully, Lulla, thou little tiny child,” paints an intimate scene of Mary lovingly, and with gentleness, caring for the baby Jesus in the cradle. The music’s Mixolydian modal harmony enriched with seventh chords, and two cadences containing a Picardy third, enhances the ancient ambiance of the old words. In addition, the waves of close position concordant triadic upper vocal lines over a pedal in the bass capture in sound the image of the nativity scene, with the mother rocking her child to sleep in her arms. (Example 1)

In the second strophe, a loud setting of the words “Herod the king, In his raging, . . . All children young to slay,” the mood changes from the idyllic happiness of verse one to deadly chilliness. This iciness reaches a peak at the word “slay,” which is sung to a dissonant forzato chord consisting of two simultaneous augmented fourths.

With verse three, a setting of words beginning “That woe is me, Poor child for thee!,” there is an abrupt return to the mystical, cradle-song style of the first verse. The choir softly performs a varied version of the music heard at the start of the carol, with the harmony consisting of leisurely paced block chords, embellished with faster moving harmonic and non-harmonic tones. Over this rich four-part choral writing, the soprano soloist effortlessly floats a soaring obbligato line. The juxtaposition of contrasting sonorities, textures, and moods, such as exists in the three verses of Lully, Lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child, is a hallmark of Leighton’s style.

Works of the 1960s

The anthem Give Me the Wings of Faith (1962) is a setting of the All Saints’ Day hymn text of the same title by Isaac Watts. The performing forces are typical of much of the church music the composer wrote in the 1960s: soprano and baritone soloists, SATB choir, and organ. Overall, the anthem is written in a lean, prickly, non-functional harmonic language in which there tend to be many transient dissonances.

There is a mental struggle in Give Me the Wings of Faith, and the mood is complex. At the start, the tone is one of uncertainty and anxiety. Leighton seems to have found disturbing the notions of the human soul rising above into heaven and seeing the saints, who had, like us in our time, wrestled with sins, doubts, and fears. This is depicted in the soprano solo “Give me the wings of faith,” in which the organ accompaniment slithers snake-like in small chromatic intervals. However, the depressing mood, while never completely dispelled in the work, gradually gives way to a more optimistic tone as the saints find their eternal rest through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. The somewhat triumphant final section, which is perhaps best described as being “on” D major, rather than in that key (even though the D major key signature is used), is launched by the baritone soloist singing “They marked the footsteps that he trod” to a bold, wide-ranged melody. This theme is developed at length chorally, and the choir closes with a triumphant chordal setting of “Our glorious Leader claims our praise.” However, the full organ alone has the last word, blazing out majestically, yet with a trace of nervous uncertainty, on a B minor chord with an added C sharp.

A hallmark of Leighton’s style is idiomatic writing for voice, and this is certainly true in Give Me the Wings of Faith. The same could be said of the organ, whose role is to contribute to the singers’ word painting, and provide a continuous web of sound that links up the choral sections. A fondness is evident for flowing manual lines that have chains of parallel perfect fourths and fifths, supported by slower moving pedal parts.

His only arrangements of preexistent church music are O Leave Your Sheep (1962) and Wassail All Over the Town (1964).8 O Leave Your Sheep is a setting of the four-strophe French traditional carol text of the same title, and the tune with which it is usually associated, Quittez Pasteurs. For SATB choir and organ, the work is uncharacteristic of Leighton’s mature style in its tonal idiom, and the scaled-down technical demands. As such, it is accessible to the amateur choir and organist. The preexistent melody undergoes a limited amount of variation after the first verse, and is easily recognizable throughout. Verse one, in F major, is sung by a soprano soloist or by all the sopranos, with a light and transparent organ accompaniment that is almost entirely in the treble clef. In verse two, which is in D major, the melody is treated to four-voice imitation, with sustained organ chords in the bass register. The D minor, a cappella third verse is much more ruminative, almost improvisatory, and the preexistent melody is treated more freely. After this section of relative repose, an energetic mood is introduced by the staccato, highly rhythmic organ introduction to the last verse, and this is followed by imitative entries of the voices. The chordal vocal writing gradually increases in excitement and becomes exultant, while the organ accompaniment adds further to the joyous sound with long flowing chains of parallel thirds in the manuals over sustained bass notes in the pedals. O Leave Your Sheep ends ecstatically with a più largo block chord phrase and perfect cadence in D major alla Handel for choir and organ.

The ten-minute setting of the matins canticle Te Deum Laudamus (1964) for soprano and baritone soli, SATB chorus, and organ, is arguably one of Leighton’s first great liturgical masterpieces. It marked a major confluence in the development of the composer, where, at last, his creative inspiration was matched by his mastery of the tools of his profession.

Most of the hallmarks of his style are present in the work. Among these elements is the taste for soloists, with the traditional Church of England SATB choir and organ. Other aspects of his style, already noted in previous works, that are also found here include a freely dissonant, non-functional harmonic idiom; plainsong-like melismatic vocal embellishments; masterly imitative counterpoint and abundant word painting.

The opening is a good example of the style. Over a series of held, close-position cluster chords on the organ, each of which begins with a Scotch snap articulation, the soprano soloist declaims the words “We praise thee” over and over again, “praise” being embellished more elaborately with each repetition, much along the lines of settings of joyous words in Gregorian chant. One by one the choir sections enter and rise in excited acclamation as they surge forward to the first loud grand climax, a moment endowed with a sense of glorious revelation, at the word “everlasting” on an F major chord.

There is a lull in the rejoicing at the words “When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb,” which are set in a polymetric,9 syllabic style reminiscent of ancient chant.

The counterpoint is frequently linear and imitative, supported by a foundation of rhythmic figuration in the organ accompaniment. This may be seen, for example, in the setting of “When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death” (bars 83-91). Cruelly painful cut-and-thrust imitative counterpoint, in which simultaneous seconds create flashes of hard sharp dissonance, are heard over a backdrop of vaguely menacing syncopated, rhythmic detached chords in the organ manuals, and a more sustained pedal line. (Example 2)

The ancestry of such musical pathos might be traced to the choral settings of similar texts by late Renaissance and early Baroque English composers, such as Tallis, Byrd, and Weelkes. In passing, one might also mention the two-part polyphony in Example 2: sopranos and tenors singing the same line in octaves, altos and basses singing the other line in octaves. This was a type of doubling of pairs of voices at the octave that Vaughan Williams had utilized in contrapuntal passages in, for example, his Te Deum in G (1928), O How Amiable (1934), and the Benedicite (1939).10 Britten also wrote passages like this in such works as Antiphon (1956), a setting of sacred words by George Herbert for choir (with optional soloists) and organ. The Te Deum appears to be the first work in which Leighton used this texture. He was to use it many times in his subsequent church music, partly, one might suspect, because it sounds effective, but also because two parts are easier to sing than four parts, and this offers relief from singing in four real parts.

The bustle of the setting of “When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death” ends dramatically with fortissimo cluster chords on the organ that create a cacophony of sound, followed by general pause. After the silence, a volcanic blast of sound erupts as choir and organ present the words “We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.” Leighton obviously is struck with grave misgivings, possibly fear, at the thought of the Last Judgment, and the music of this short, highly dissonant passage, marked Lento sostenuto and fortississimo, is pervaded with a sense of bewildering awe mingled with anxiety. The emotionally distraught mood is initiated by a loud, low pedal point on the organ pedals, and twisting, snake-like chromatic counterpoint in the manuals. Then the voices enter in a five-part stretto-like point of imitation. (Example 3)

An element of prayerful hopefulness ensues at the start of the last section of the work, as the baritone soloist sings softly and with contrition in a plainsong-like chanting style “We therefore pray thee help thy servants.” The setting of “Day by day we worship thy Name: ever world without end” is bright and joyful, but this is halted abruptly by a sense of dread and fear in an acridly dissonant chord at the word “sin” in the phrase “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.” With reminiscences of the organ music with its Scotch snap rhythms that had been heard at the opening of the composition, the choir then presents “O Lord, have mercy upon us” with very expressive, pianissimo, ethereal phrases. Finally, after the choir’s last, prayerful entreaty, “O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded,” the organ ends the work with a whispered F-sharp major chord.

Less than a year after the Te Deum Laudamus, Leighton wrote an anthem on George Herbert’s hymn text Let All the World in Every Corner Sing (1965) for SATB choir and organ. Since both the Te Deum and Let All the World texts are joyous, and the pieces were composed close to each other, it is hardly surprising to note similarities between them. For example, at the start of the anthem he uses the two-voice canonic imitative style between the altos and basses singing the same line in octaves simultaneously, and the paired sopranos and tenors in octaves simultaneously, that was noted in the Te Deum. Such two-voice canonic imitation appears several times in the anthem, and there are also several passages in which, in like fashion, the four voice parts divide into pairs singing in octaves, though not in imitation.

In the first section, the organ has staccato, fragmented phrases against which the voices joust. As in the Te Deum, there is a departure from conventional, rhythmically square, metric writing. This occurs in the short polymetric setting of the words “The heavens are not too high, His praises may thither fly,” where the music slips quickly from 3/4+3/8 to 4/4, 7/8, 4/4, and 7/8, before settling in 4/4. (Example 4)

In the concluding passage of the anthem, the words and a variation of the music of the opening return in the manner of a recapitulation. However, here there is a much greater sense of excitement, of breathtaking denouement. Contributing to this sense of rousing celebration is the thickening choral texture to five parts, with the sopranos dividing into two parts, and all the voices being called upon to sing in their upper ranges. The organ also adds to the drive to climax. Far more flamboyant and bombastic than at the opening of the anthem, the instrument’s assertive role is to provide rhythmic excitement with short motivic groupings of ejaculatory cluster chords, punctuated by short general rests. In addition, the organ has numerous short joyous rushing ascending scales that are reminiscent, possibly, of one of Leighton’s musical heroes, Howells, who was fond of these embellishing figures as an expression of joy in his church music organ parts. After so much astringent dissonance, the organ brings down the curtain on the anthem with an appropriately shrill, dissonant chord: C-sharp and D major chords played simultaneously--in effect the simultaneous sounding of tonic and dominant harmony, a tonally ambiguous ending.

First Masses

In the 1960s Leighton composed his first Masses: Missae Sancti Thomae, Op. 40 (1962), Mass, Op. 44 (1964), Communion Service in D, Op. 45 (1965), and Missa Brevis, Op. 50 (1967).

The twenty-six-minute Mass, Op. 44, for double mixed chorus, is arguably a masterpiece. The first of only two Latin Masses by the composer,11 it is a cappella, except the Credo, which calls for organ, and is in the Palestrina style, as seen through a 20th-century prism. Among the innumerable remarkable passages in the Mass is the opening of the Kyrie Eleison, which starts with a solo voice singing in the minor mode, and surges irresistibly to an immense, fortississimo climax for double chorus at bar 17. The passage’s penitential, bittersweet opening that quickly changes to a great paean of confident optimism is so characteristic of Leighton’s mercurial nature. (Example 5)

An Easter Sequence, Op. 55 (1968) is a fourteen-minute piece in five movements, for boys’ or female voices and organ with optional trumpet. Considering the crème de la crème choir for which the work was written,12 one might have expected a more technically demanding, showy composition. In fact, the vocal writing is tonal; the melodic contours conventional, and there are no gallery-pleasing virtuosic fast melismatic lines. Nor is the organ part especially difficult. In the absence of a trumpeter, the solo trumpet part may be played on a trumpet stop, if one is available on the organ being used.

An Easter Sequence is not a sequence in one of the traditional music history or theory meanings of the word. It is a homogeneous series of pieces,13 setting in English of four Roman Catholic liturgical texts and Psalm 23.14 If the five movements are performed at Mass, they are to be sung as the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Communion, and Sortie. The work may also be sung on the concert platform.

One may notice similarities between An Easter Sequence and Britten’s Missa Brevis in D (1959) for three-part boys voices and organ, written for the boys of Westminster Cathedral Choir. As in Britten’s composition, there is much three-part writing for the voices, though single- and two-part music is more common. Several passages of canon-like imitation, and a number of ostinatos in the organ accompaniment in Leighton’s work are also Brittenesque.15 In addition, like Britten, the Yorkshireman is especially adept at word painting. For example, he captures the mostly joyous Introit text, “Alleluia. Rejoice in God our helper: Sing aloud to the God of Jacob,” with buoyant, dancing vocal lines that leap lightly, and with staccato articulation. See also the setting of Jesus’ words “Peace be with you” in the Gradual. This music is ethereal, and consists of a soft, glossy, heavenly halo of sustained four-part chords--the only four-part phrase in the composition. The pastoral imagery of Psalm 23 is captured immediately in the opening gentle, reflective organ solo. The melody, in the organist’s right hand, is a chromatic, sinuous, rhythmically complex line oscillating within a narrow pitch range. The left hand accompaniment consists of a close-position cluster-chord that undergoes slight alterations over a pedal point.

In the Sortie, the organ part is much heavier and dominant than in the earlier movements, and it shines forth in a most thrilling manner. This is illustrated in the instrument’s slow improvisatory introductory solo section, with its chromatic, serpentine lines. Then the main section of the movement begins, in the style of a very fast fanfare for voices, organ, and trumpet. Against a backdrop of brightly registered, rhythmic, often stabbing organ chords, the choir, in unison throughout, declaims in brief snappy phrases “God is ascended in jubilee,” and short trumpet obbligato phrases rasp out as the choir sings “and the Lord in the sound of the trumpet” in short, motivic, rhythmic fanfares.

This material is heard again in the coda of the Sortie. First, a greatly transformed variant of the chromatic organ introduction to the movement is presented over a pedal C. Then, the choir sings the stirring vocal fanfare-like phrases “God is ascended, and the Lord in the sound of the trumpet” that were heard early in the movement, while the organ pursues its own path of syncopated, rhythmic, stabbing, highly dissonant manual chords. As so often happens with Leighton, the organ (with trumpet) has the last words: an emotionally gripping tonic C major chord combined with the dominant chord.        

This article will be continued.

Charlie W. Steele is director of music ministries/organist at Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church, Brevard, North Carolina, and an adjunct music faculty member at Brevard College, where he teaches applied organ. He holds BA (with Honors) and MA degrees in music from Radford University, Radford, Virginia, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Kentucky.

A significant part of America’s musical
heritage originating in the nineteenth century is the popular shape-note tunebooks that were an outgrowth of the “singing schools.” These collections, which, in their musical notation, used different shapes of note-heads for each syllable of a solfège system, are anthologies of the styles and genres of American music of the time, both sacred and secular. Nineteenth-century American shape-note tunebooks serve as sources for an important body of music—shape- note hymn tunes—which has been, and continues to be, assimilated into the late twentieth-century editions of the hymnals of mainline Protestant denominations.
The availability and popularity of the shape-note tunes in current hymnals has inspired organ composers to use them as cantus firmi for organ chorale preludes and variation settings. As a result, a wealth of organ chorale settings using shape-note hymn melodies has been published in the twenty-five years spanning 1980–2005. Many of these organ works were composed for use as voluntaries in the worship services of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century Christian church; moreover, some of the compositions are important contributions to the organ concert literature.

Origins
The shape-note phenomenon traces its origins to the psalm singing of New England. Congregational singing in the churches of the early eighteenth century had, in the opinion of the clergy and musicians of the day, fallen into a deplorable state. One person, eloquently describing the state of congregational singing in 1724, said, “The Singing appears to be rather a confused Noise, made up of Reading, Squeaking, and Grumbling, than a decent and orderly part of God’s worship.”1 In order to improve the state of congregational singing, a form of musical education, the “singing school,” was developed. Its purpose was to teach congregations the elements of music so the people could sing “by note, instead of rote.”2
One of the earliest books developed for use in singing schools was John Tufts’s An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes, which appeared in the 1720s. Tufts’s book utilized the four-note system of solfège (fa, sol, la, mi) that had been imported to America from England. Tufts used abbreviations of the syllables on the musical staff rather than traditional music notation. Tufts’s system, as it appeared in his book, is shown in Figure 1.
In 1801, William Little and William Small compiled what is considered the first shape-note collection, The Easy Instructor. Rather than using conventional notation, the two men devised a system in which the four syllables—fa, sol, la, mi—were each notated with a different note-head shape. The collection became so popular that, according to Marion Hatchett, thirty-four editions or printings of The Easy Instructor were published between 1802 and 1832.3 The shapes, as developed and notated in Little and Small’s collection, are shown in Figure 2. Using these four shapes, a major scale notated in shape-notes consists of the sequence demonstrated in Figure 3.
For the many Americans who had little or no formal musical background or education, this new approach to notation made music reading much simpler. The singers needed to know only the shapes of the notes; they did not have to deal with a music reading system in which locating the tonic note depended upon the ability to distinguish key signatures. The shape-note system did have one major disadvantage—no means was devised to indicate accidentals by using shapes. As many of the tunes used in the collections were diatonic in nature, this disadvantage evidently was not a major concern to either the compilers or the singers.

Collections
The invention of the shape-notes led to a proliferation of published music collections using the new notation system. During the first half of the eighteenth century, numerous compilers published editions of the shape-note tunebooks. George Pullen Jackson, one of the twentieth-century pioneers in the research of the shape-note tradition, lists thirty-eight collections published in the four-shape system between 1798 and 1855.4 Twenty-one of the books Jackson designated as works by compilers who lived in the South. Richard J. Stanislaw’s more recent research provides evidence of an even larger number of four-shape collections. Stanislaw lists some ninety-five tunebooks published in the four-shape system in the United States between 1798 and 1859.5
A significant contribution of the shape-note collections was their function as a repository of American tunes from the oral tradition. Though these types of tunes had appeared in hymnals or collections, such as the United States Sacred Harmony (1799) and The Christian Harmony (1805), the first shape-note hymnal to incorporate a large number of oral tradition tunes was John Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music: Part Second (1813).6 Irving Lowens observes that forty-four of the tunes in this collection were “folk hymns.”7 The Repository of Sacred Music: Part Second played an important role in the dissemination of these tunes. According to information provided by Lowens, Ananias Davisson, the compiler of the influential Kentucky Harmony and the Supplement to Kentucky Harmony, used fifteen tunes from Wyeth’s Part Second collection. William Walker, in his Southern Harmony, “borrowed” twenty of these tunes.8

Walker’s Southern Harmony
A significant source of the shape-note tunes found in today’s hymnals is Walker’s The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion (hereafter referred to as Southern Harmony). One of the most popular and successful of the nineteenth-century shape-note tunebooks, Southern Harmony stands as an important “anthology” of the musical styles and genres of its day. As Harry Eskew notes, it is probably the first shape-note collection to be compiled in the “Deep South.”9 The legacy and tradition of this popular collection continues even today at the “Big Singing Day” held annually in Benton, Kentucky.
Walker was born on May 6, 1809, in South Carolina, near a small village known as Cross Keys.10 Around the time he was eighteen years of age, Walker’s family moved to a small community called Cedar Springs, near Spartanburg, South Carolina.11 In 1835, Walker married Amy S. Golighty, the sister of Thurza Golighty, the wife of Benjamin Franklin White, who would become the compiler of The Sacred Harp.12 Not only is 1835 the year Walker married Amy, it is the same year he published his first and most popular shape-note collection, Southern Harmony.13 In addition to Southern Harmony, Walker compiled three other collections during his lifetime, including the Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist, The Christian Harmony, and Fruits and Flowers.14 Although Walker is considered the compiler of Southern Harmony and his name graces the cover, the work was initially a joint project of Walker and his brother-in-law, B. F. White.
After its introduction in 1835, Southern Harmony underwent several revisions, with the final one being the 1854 edition.15 During the years of its publication, the collection was obviously popular, as Walker later claimed that 600,000 copies of it had been sold.16
Harry Eskew cites several reasons why Southern Harmony is a significant shape-note collection: 1) its use as textbook to learn to read music, 2) its role in continuing early American psalmody, and 3) its function as a “musical companion for numerous word-only hymnals.”17 Eskew also notes that Southern Harmony is “significant as a repository of melodies from oral tradition” and that “Walker and other rural-oriented singing school teachers/compilers drew from the rich oral tradition of the Anglo-American folksong to provide melodies for many hymn texts.”18 Walker, in the preface to the first edition of Southern Harmony in 1835, states that he had “composed the parts to a great many good airs (which I could not find in any publication, nor in manuscript), and assigned my name as author.”19 It may be surmised that many of these “airs” were popular melodies or folk tunes of the day that were passed on by oral tradition. Hymnologist Austin C. Lovelace recounts that, “When Walker was going around doing singing schools, he always asked if anyone had some good tunes. He would then write them down and claim them as his own.”20
Sources of texts and tunes are indicated for some of the hymns, though often no source is documented for either. Glen Wilcox relates that approximately one-fourth of the hymn texts were by Isaac Watts.21 Of the 341 tune names in the index, Wilcox maintains that about 250 of them can be attributed to 110 composers, with the remaining tunes being anonymous.22 For the 1854 edition, Walker added 73 tunes to his collection. It is interesting to note that, according to Eskew, approximately half of the tunes Walker added in 1854 were “in the style of the folk hymn.”23
Southern Harmony incorporated some important “firsts” regarding several hymn tunes. The 1835 edition marked the first time the text “Amazing Grace” and the tune New Britain were joined together in a shape-note collection; the edition of 1840 contained the first appearance of the tune Wondrous Love with the text “What wondrous love is this;” and the 1854 edition has one of the early appearances of Dove of Peace.
The inclusion of the American tunes in this remarkable shape-note collection has helped to preserve them for future generations. Unlike its popular counterpart, The Sacred Harp, which has undergone a number of revisions over the years of its existence (even as recently as 1991), Southern Harmony has had no additions or corrections to its music since the final version of 1854. As it stands, Southern Harmony is a repository of musical styles and tastes of nineteenth-century America, particularly of southern and rural America. Eskew remarks that, “No wonder Southern Harmony was so popular: the hymns . . . were united with tunes which had circulated among the people for years in oral tradition, and they were furthermore printed in easy-to-read shape-notation!”24

New England “reforms”
As the shape-note tradition moved into the southern and western states, a mid-to-late nineteenth-century movement emerged in New England to eliminate American tunes, as found in shape-note tunebooks, from church hymnals and music collections. New England reformers, among whom were Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings, considered music and hymns of European background and influence to be superior to America’s “folk-style” music. Hymn tunes and music composed in the European style were “based on ‘scientific’ principles producing ‘correct’ harmonies.”25 It is ironic that the New England area, whose musicians gave America its singing schools and shape-notes, is the same geographic area that led reforms contributing to the demise of shape-note singing and the use of these tunes in hymnals.
Jackson, in White Spirituals of the Southern Uplands, devotes a chapter to the subject of the disappearance of folk-hymns as denominational hymnals began to emerge in the nineteenth century. Though the 1889 edition of the Methodist Hymnal contained a number of the tunes, the 1905 edition included only four of what Jackson calls “fasola popular tunes”—Lenox, Nettleton, Mear, and Greenville.26 Jackson’s research points out that the Service of Song (1871), a hymnal used by southern Baptists in more urban areas, embodied only nine tunes from the “fasola” tradition.27 Another hymnal used by Baptists in the early twentieth century, Modern Hymnal (1926), incorporated only seventeen of what Jackson refers to as hymns of “specific southern fasola making or adoption.”28
Jackson ascertains that the Philadelphia publishers, suppliers of hymnals to southern Presbyterian churches, “avoided all indigenous songs of the southern and western revival.”29 An examination of Presbyterian hymnals of the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century certainly underpins Jackson’s observation. The Presbyterian hymnals of 1874, 1895 (revised in 1911), and 1933 all contain some hymn tunes—just as today’s hymnals do—common to Southern Harmony and other similar collections. These tunes, however, are primarily ones with an identified composer—tunes such as Azmon, Coronation, and Duke Street. Based on this author’s examination of the index of tune names in each of these three editions of hymnals, Nettleton seems to be the only anonymous shape-note tune included in Presbyterian hymnals until the appearance of the 1955 edition of the hymnal.30
As late in the twentieth century as 1940, American shape-note tunes held little respect among some scholars who were interested in serious hymnody. Henry Wilder Foote, in Three Centuries of American Hymnody, spends little time focusing on the history or importance of the tunes. His writing contains remarks such as, “While in general their effect on American hymnody has been neither permanent or valuable . . . the folk hymn was suited to revivals and social gatherings like out-of-door camp meetings . . . and in any case they fall outside the main current of American hymnody.”31 As one can surmise from Foote’s statements, Raymond Glover’s supposition that the efforts of musicians like Mason created a standard whose “effects may still be seen in today’s mainline hymnals” is certainly supported.32 Fortunately, these effects initiated by the “scientific” musicians of the nineteenth century experienced a reversal in the late twentieth century.

Twentieth-century acceptance
Five Protestant denominational hymnals—Southern Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran (ELCA), Presbyterian (USA), and United Methodist—were selected to be surveyed as to their inclusion of shape-note tunes. These particular hymnals were chosen because of the importance each denomination places on hymnals and hymn singing and because of the reputation each denomination enjoys regarding the quality of their hymnals. The survey included an inspection of ten hymnals to discern the number of tunes that appear to be of shape-note origin. African-American spirituals, frequently designated as American folk tunes or melodies in older hymnals, were not within the parameters of the research. The numerical results of the American tune survey, shown in Table 1, verify the thesis that there is a definite increase in the number of shape-note tunes in the current editions of mainline denominational hymnals compared to the previous editions. In the Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian hymnals, the growth in the number of tunes is significant. Though there is an increase in the number of shape-note tunes in the most recent hymnal of the Methodist Church, the percentage does not indicate an increase because the hymnal contains a larger number of total hymn tunes. The 1966 edition contains only 417 hymn tunes, whereas the 1989 edition includes 504 tunes.
Because denominational hymnals use various sources for their tunes, some of the shape-note tunes included in hymnals have indications of possible composers. An example is the tune Nettleton, identified in two hymnals as being composed by John Wyeth.33 The tune did appear in the 1813 edition of Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, but it originated from the “camp-meeting repertory of Methodists and Baptists.”34 Given that the tunes were sometimes part of an oral tradition before they were notated in hymnals, it is difficult for musicologists and historians to trace their exact origin.
Among the various shape-note collections of the nineteenth century, William Walker’s Southern Harmony serves as an important source of American shape-note tunes, especially in the more recent editions of the selected hymnals. In each denomination, the number of hymn tunes attributed to either William Walker or Walker’s Southern Harmony shows a significant increase. The frequency of their attribution as a source may be observed in Table 2.

Factors in 20th-century
acceptance
Based on the information and statistics indicated above, it is clear that there is a significant increase in the number of shape-note tunes included in recent hymnals. This phenomenon prompts one to reflect on what factors may have led to the increased presence of these tunes in the hymnals of the late twentieth century. Communications by this author with several persons who served on editorial boards of different hymnals help provide some possible answers to this question.
David W. Music, a member of the editorial board of The Baptist Hymnal (1991), suggests three main factors he believes are responsible for the growth in the number of shape-note hymn tunes incorporated into recent hymnals. Outlining these factors, Music states:

The increase in the number of shape-note tunes is due to a number of factors including: 1) the bicentennial of the USA in 1976 with church musicians seeking to honor their country by searching out some of its native expressions. I think this parallels the English folk song recovery that occurred with the 1906 English Hymnal; 2) the broadening of the base of congregational song to include a wider diversity of styles and types than before (including black spirituals, world hymnody, American Indian pieces, Taizé, Iona Community, plainsong, newly-written hymns, etc.); 3) in a few cases these melodies have become familiar outside the church (or at least outside the hymnal) and have subsequently been incorporated into them; a good example is Resignation (“My shepherd will supply my need”), which everybody learned from the Virgil Thomson choral arrangement, later realizing what a great congregational text and tune combination this is. Perhaps related to this was the increased respectability gained by these often very simple tunes through their use by significant American composers such as Thomson and Aaron Copland.35
The factors that Music considers significant are echoed by others who have been involved in the editorial process of recent hymnals. Carlton Young, editor of the 1966 and 1989 Methodist hymnals, refers to the 1906 English Hymnal and the increase in diversity in hymnals as significant factors in the selection of tunes. Young asserts that “most mid-20th-century mainline USA Protestant hymnals followed the lead of R.V. Williams” and “reflected the work of folklorists such as Cecil Sharp.”36 Young also observes that “The increased number of USA folk melodies in TUMH ’89 [The United Methodist Hymnal] continues this trend in mainline hymnals, but is also related to the increased number of Native American, Latino, African-American, Asian, and gospel songs.”37
Ray Glover, editor of The Hymnal 1982, affirms that “The inclusion of a goodly number of American folk tunes in The Hymnal 1982 was, I believe, our response to the growing awareness of the great, rich repository we have in, largely though not exclusively, Southern folk hymnody from the shape-note tradition.”38 Likewise, Carl Schalk, who initially served on the editorial board of the Lutheran Book of Worship, feels that the inclusion of American folk hymn tunes was a way to become more American, much in the same way Vaughan Williams used the English folk song.39 Schalk considers the American folk tunes a source that “had not been tapped before” and a “looking back to some kind of heritage.”40 The editor of The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990), LindaJo H. McKim, echoes a similar sentiment, observing that “The tunes really are a part of who we are and for that reason need to be included in any collection coming out of the Americas today.”41 Marion Hatchett mentions the influence of Vaughan Williams and comments that the inclusion of three American folk tunes in the 1906 English Hymnal made it “respectable” for Americans to use these type of tunes in their own hymnals.42

The organ chorale prelude
The genre of the organ chorale prelude is helping to perpetuate the unique body of tunes stored in the nineteenth-century shape-note tunebooks. The term “chorale” originally referred to the tune used with a hymn text in the sixteenth-century German Protestant Church.43 Over time, the distinction between “chorale” and “hymn” (“a song in praise of God”) has blurred to the point that the two terms are now used interchangeably.44 Today, “organ chorale” and “chorale prelude” are generic terms referring to pieces composed in the tradition of the chorale prelude, whether they are based on a chorale, a Protestant hymn tune, or even a religious ethnic folk song. They may still serve as introductions to the singing of hymns or chorales. More often than not, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first-century liturgical setting, a chorale prelude functions as service music. It may be performed as a prelude, a postlude, as a selection during the collection of the offering or the serving of communion, or as music covering movement in other parts of the liturgy.
The performance of chorale preludes is not limited to liturgical use. Chorale preludes occupy an important role as part of the literature performed on organ recitals and concerts. A scanning of the recital programs listed each month in The Diapason reveals that various works of this genre are included in many recitals. The works may range from the large settings of J. S. Bach to the jazz-influenced pieces of Johann Michel. For example, of the 20 recital programs listed in the February 2010 issue of The Diapason, at least 24 of the total selections performed appear to be some form of a chorale prelude.45
Because the hymnals of the early-to-mid twentieth century contained very few, if any, American shape-note tunes, it was not until their inclusion into mainline hymnals that they became familiar to many organists and to the general concert or church audience. Even though the tunes were neglected by hymnal committees during the first half of the twentieth century, some significant organ settings of American shape-note tunes did appear around the middle of the century. These settings, however, were not inspired by the composer’s familiarity with tunes found in a denominational hymnal; instead, they seem to be the result of the composer’s acquaintance with a shape-note collection, primarily The Sacred Harp.
Twentieth-century American composer Gardner Read composed a number of organ works, among which are two collections of shape-note hymn tune settings. Read relied on a copy of The Sacred Harp as the source of the tunes used in his collections. In the scores of both collections, Read notes that the “preludes are based on authentic old hymn-tunes found in the 1902 edition of ‘The Sacred Harp,’ a collection of white spirituals and Southern hymns, first published around 1850.”46 Eight Preludes on Old Southern Tunes, opus 90, was published in 1952, and the publication of Six Preludes on Old Southern Hymns, opus 112, followed in 1963. Of the fourteen tunes Read employed in these two notable collections, seven of them are found in Southern Harmony.
Samuel Barber’s Wondrous Love: Variations on a Shape-note Hymn, written in 1958 for the inaugural recital of the new Holtkamp organ at Christ Episcopal Church, Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, is primarily a concert piece.47 As the publication of the work predates any inclusion of the tune into a mid-to-late twentieth-century denomination hymnal, one could posit that Barber’s piece helped contribute to the popularity of the Wondrous Love tune. In his reference to the tune’s source for the composition, Barber notes in the score that the tune was “published in the ‘Original Sacred Harp,’ Atlanta, Ga., 1869.”48 The score also contains a reproduction of a four-part harmonization of Wondrous Love, probably taken from the 1911 edition of The Sacred Harp, as the copy credits the alto part to “S. M. Denson, 1911.”49

Growth since 1980
In late twentieth to early twenty-first century America, the publication of chorale preludes based on shape-note tunes has increased significantly. This trend, during the period from 1980 to 2005, can be confirmed by consulting reference books that list published organ works and chorale settings. In a repertoire list compiled by this author, a total of 238 organ pieces, based on 46 different tunes found in Southern Harmony, were documented. Of the works in the repertoire list, only 46 (19%) were composed prior to 1980. The significant number of organ chorale preludes based on these tunes is a direct result of the growth in the number of shape-note tunes appearing in recent hymnals.
Five shape-note tunes found in Walker’s Southern Harmony (1854)—Foundation (The Christian’s Farewell in Southern Harmony), Holy Manna, New Britain, Wondrous Love, and Dove of Peace—are popular tunes found in hymnals of the late twentieth century or, as in the case of Dove of Peace, have recently become popular. The information shown in Table 3 compares the inclusion of these hymn tunes between the previous and present editions of the five selected denominational hymnals.
A look at the occurrence of these five popular shape-note tunes as cantus firmi for organ chorales helps illustrate the growing use of the tunes by composers of organ literature. For example, Jean Slater Edson’s book, Organ Preludes: An Index to Compositions on Hymn Tunes, Chorales, Plainsong Melodies, Gregorian Tunes and Carols, published in 1970, contains a meager listing of published organ works based on shape-note tunes. For the five tunes considered, Edson’s index identifies the following number of chorale preludes: Foundation – 5; Holy Manna – 1; New Britain – 4; Wondrous Love – 5; and Dove of Peace – 0.50
In 1987, Dennis Schmidt published the first volume of An Organist’s Guide to Resources for “The Hymnal 1982.” Compared to Edson’s book of 1970, Schmidt’s number of listings indicates a slight increase in the quantity of published organ settings using the five tunes. In Schmidt’s first volume, the number of works cataloged for each of the selected tunes includes: Foundation – 4; Holy Manna – 4; New Britain – 7; Wondrous Love – 6; and Dove of Peace – 0.51
A second volume of Schmidt’s An Organist’s Guide to Resources for “The Hymnal 1982” appeared in 1991. Compared to the first volume, the second volume confirms a continued increase in the number of organ settings of American tunes. For the five tunes, volume two lists the following number of organ settings: Foundation – 23; Holy Manna – 7; New Britain – 30; Wondrous Love – 15; and Dove of Peace – 0.52
The repertoire list of organ compositions based on shape-note tunes from the Southern Harmony, compiled by the author, substantiates the growth of these published works between 1980 and 2005. The number of organ works in the repertoire list using the five selected tunes as cantus firmi is summarized below:
Foundation (The Christian’s Farewell) – 22, 3 published prior to 1980
Dove of Peace – 7, all published since 1996
Holy Manna – 15, 1 published prior to 1980
New Britain – 33, 5 published prior to 1980
Wondrous Love – 30, 4 published prior to1980
The phenomenon of many new shape-note based organ works is, no doubt, a result of composers discovering shape-note tunes as they began to appear in new editions of hymnals. Robert J. Powell, retired organist/choirmaster of Christ Church, Greenville, South Carolina, and a well-known composer of organ and choral music, is the contributor of a number of individual pieces and collections based on shape-note tunes. These tunes are an important source for Powell in his work as a composer. Powell states:

Because many American folk hymns appear in present-day hymnals, I have found they have been influential in my compositions, not only because there are so many from which I have created anthems and organ pieces, but also for their use of modal melodies and uncompromising harmonies.53
Michael Burkhardt, formerly a member of the music faculty at Carthage College and currently on the staff of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Livonia, Michigan, is the composer of a significant number of chorale preludes for the organ. Included in his output are several settings of shape-note tunes. In a personal correspondence with this author, Burkhardt supports the thesis that the growth in the use and appearance of the American tunes in hymnals is a contributing factor to the increasing number of organ compositions utilizing the tunes. Burkhardt comments that:

An increase in the number of early American tunes in hymnals has certainly been an impetus for my settings in the American Folk Hymn Suite and in various other organ publications. But an even greater motivation for me is that these hymns are truly hymns of the people and, more specifically, hymns birthed by the people of this country. I love the ruggedness of the tunes as well as their unique qualities, individualities and the texts with which they are associated. . . . I hope that perhaps in some small way an organ setting or two of mine might excite someone regarding this great genre of hymnody.54
Samuel Adler, professor of composition at the Juilliard School of Music, has composed a set of organ chorale preludes based on early American tunes, one of which is Foundation. Entitled Hymnset: Four Chorale Preludes on Old American Hymns, the work was premiered in 1984 and published in 1987.55 In correspondence with this author in reference to Hymnset, Adler states that “I have always felt that we do not have enough Chorale Preludes on these beautiful hymn tunes and so while I was in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts I wrote one of these Preludes a week.”56 Clearly, Adler’s sentiment that there is a need for more chorale preludes using American tunes is one that echoes in the minds of other American composers and organists. The result has been a profusion of chorale preludes representing various levels of difficulty, length, quality, and effectiveness. This particular body of organ literature deserves to be both performed and recognized for the continuing role it plays in exposing both church and concert attendees to the music of Southern Harmony and similar nineteenth-century collections.

Summary
The heritage of American tunes contained within the shape-note tunebooks of the nineteenth century, whether they are called shape-note, folk-hymn, or American folk tunes, represents an important body of music, which, in the past thirty years, has been reclaiming its rightful place in American hymnody. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the rediscovery of this music prompted mainline Protestant denominational hymnal editors and committees to include many of these tunes into their new editions of hymnals.
The current availability of shape-note tunes in the hymnals of mainline Protestant denominations has, since 1980, significantly affected organ literature. A number of tunes once unknown are now common in many hymnals; as a result, organists and composers have been, and continue to be, drawn to them as fresh sources of cantus firmi. This growing body of organ literature represents music of a wide range of difficulty, effectiveness, compositional creativity, and usefulness.
The shape-note collections of the nineteenth century, including the popular and significant Southern Harmony, helped preserve the tunes and harmonizations that are part of our American history and hymnody. The hymnals of the late twentieth century, with their inclusion of a representative body of American shape-note tunes, have assisted composers, organists, and concert and church attendees in rediscovering this music. The organ literature resulting from this rediscovery will assist in the preservation of these tunes for new audiences and generations to come. ■

James McCray, Professor of Music at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, retired after more than 40 years of teaching. He taught for 25 of them at CSU, and for 10 years he was the Chairman of Music, Theatre, and Dance Department. He has published 25 scholarly articles in various national and international journals such as The American Organist, Music Educator’s Journal, The Choral Journal, and several others. He served a two-year term as the head editor for The Choral Journal. For over 30 years he has written a monthly column on choral music for The Diapason. He is the author of three books; a fourth will be published sometime next year. As a composer, Dr. McCray has published over 100 choral works. He has had commissions from Yale University, Florida All-State Choirs, Texas Music Educators’ Association, and many other colleges, public and private schools, and churches throughout the U.S. He has received the Professor of the Year award from two separate universities (in Virginia and Florida). Dr. McCray was one of 11 Americans designated for the 1992–93 Outstanding Music Educator Award, and in 1992 he received the Orpheus Award, the highest award given by Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. The award read “For significant and lasting contributions to the cause of music in America.”

How did choral music start in the United States?

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.
—Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass1

Prologue

Unlike political history, American choral music did not immediately burst forth with significant people and events. Choral music certainly existed in America since the Colonial Period, but it was not until the twentieth century that its impact was significant. The last half of the twentieth century saw an explosion of interest in choral music unprecedented in the history of the country. American choral music came of age on a truly national level, and through the expansion of music education, technology, professional organizations, and available materials, the interest in choral singing escalated dramatically.
It is possible to trace the history of American choral music from its two most basic perspectives:
1. Music that had a functional purpose (sacred)
2. Music created for artistic purposes (secular)
In the early days of America, issues such as food, shelter, and clothing were foremost in the minds of the people. As America became more affluent, the need for greater diversions increased. Music’s purposes reached beyond the amateur, and geographical tastes dictated ever-changing styles and requirements.
Of course the true native Americans were American Indians, but their music remained localized. As an oral tradition, preservation through notation was not a major factor. They and their culture became a minority, and, in many regrettable ways, an unfortunate footnote in American music history. For a detailed account of this true American music see Daniel Kingman, American Music: A Panorama,2 and “Native Pioneers” in Gilbert Chase’s American Music.3 Their influence on the development of American choral music is negligible, although twentieth-century composers have employed some of its characteristics in selected works.
The veritable seeds of American music can be found in the religious traditions carried to the new world by transplanted Europeans. The settlers came seeking religious freedom, but, in so doing, they helped create a narrowly focused view of choral music, which took many years to nurture and broaden. In a penetrating study, The Anthem in England and America by Elwyn A. Wienandt and Robert H. Young, the authors point out:

Austerity also characterized Puritan religious musical expression. While it is true that Puritans have been unjustly accused of a general negative attitude toward the arts, it nevertheless remains that their practice of church music could be sung in unison without accompaniment, and nothing more.4

The early pioneers who came to this country brought with them two types of music: religious and folk. Both played major roles in the musical milieu, but the functional need for church music helped promote choral works. Nearly forgotten are the Huguenot settlements in Florida, which occurred almost fifty years before the landing of the Pilgrims; their music was transplanted and certainly not an original American style. The Puritans in seventeenth-century New England imported the Psalm-singing traditions of the Reformation. Since religion dominated their lives and the lives of everyone in the community even if they were not members of the church, religious music naturally took precedence over that of the secular world. Percy Scholes, in The Puritans and Music in England and New England, corrected the unfortunate stereotype of the Puritans as being universally opposed to music and the fine arts in general.5 Folk music was used on special occasions, but church music was always present. The folk music that survived continued to be transformed throughout succeeding generations, and American folk art prospered and changed during the growth and expansion of the new civilization.

Overview: the 18th century

As the eighteenth century progressed, New England established a more solid, humanized social identity, and it is here where the true “art music” had its foundations. European thinking continued to dominate the music, but because American amateurs were the creators and re-creators, a less professional posture evolved. These stalwart American composers began to create a new personality that represented their culture.
Some of these “native” American musicians are familiar to today’s choral directors, not because of the compelling quality of their music, but more often as an historical contrast to the sophisticated European music of that time. It is highly doubtful that most conductors who program early American choral music do so because they and their audiences are attracted to the beauty and ingenuity of the music, but then that is true with many types of concert music. A high quality level of this music should not be expected—these composers were “Yankee tunesmiths”,6 as labeled by H. Wiley Hitchcock, because they did not have the cultural development and training of their professional European counterparts.
Some of the early American composers whose music remains modestly present in today’s choral repertoire include:
Supply Belcher (1751–1836)
William Billings (1746–1800)
Elkanah Kelsay Dare (1782–1826)
Jacob French (1754–1817)
Christian Gregor (1723–1801)
Uri K. Hill (1802–1875)
Oliver Holden (1765–1844)
Jeremiah Ingalls (1764–1838)
Stephen Jenks (1772–1856)
Justin Morgan (1747–1798)
Timothy Olmstead (1759–1848)
Daniel Read (1757–1856), and
Timothy Swan (1758–1842).
They had professions other than music. For example, Supply Belcher was a tavern keeper; William Billings, a tanner; Oliver Holden, a carpenter; Justin Morgan, a horse breeder; and Daniel Read, a comb maker. Their music is available in performing editions because of the research and effort of musicians in the last half of the twentieth century such as Leonard Van Camp,7 Irving Lowens,8 Lawrence Bennett,9 Kurt Stone,10 and others.
Today it is William Billings whose music receives the greatest frequency of performance, and he has become a standard representative for music of this period. The year 2000 was the 200th anniversary of his death, and choral works such as Chester, A Virgin Unspotted, David’s Lamentation, Kittery, I Am the Rose of Sharon, and The Lord Is Ris’n Indeed received numerous performances in concerts by church, school, community, and professional choirs. Billings generally is acknowledged to be the most gifted of the “singing school” composers of eighteenth-century America. His style, somewhat typical of the period, employs fuguing tunes, unorthodox voice leading, open-fifth cadences, melodic writing in each of the parts, and some surprising harmonies.11 By 1787 his music was widely known across America.
Billings was an interesting personality as well. Because out-of-tune singing was a serious problem, he added a ’cello to double the lowest part.12 He had a “church choir,” but that policy met resistance from aging deacons, although by 1779 a gallery was placed in the church for “the singers”. It was Billings who proclaimed:

He who finds himself gifted with a tunable voice, and yet neglects to cultivate it, not only hides in the earth a talent of the highest value, but robs himself of that peculiar pleasure, of which they only are conscious who exercise that faculty.13
It would seem that problems often faced by today’s church choir directors were also present in the eighteenth century.
Extensive research in the music of this period has provided contemporary conductors with understanding of the style, and background for performance. Two important studies are Alan C. Buechner, Yankee Singing School and the Golden Age of Choral Music in New England, 1760-1800,14 and Dickson D. Bruce, And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845.15

Overview: the 19th century

In the late nineteenth century, a group of composers came to be known as “The Second New England School.” They included George W. Chadwick (1854–1931), Arthur Foote (1853–1937), Mrs. H.H.A. Beach (1867–1944), and Horatio Parker (1863–1937). Parker, professor of music at Yale from 1894–1919, was possibly the most important American choral composer of the century. He, like many Americans, had been trained in Europe (Munich). His oratorio, Hora Novissima (1891), is a major work that established his place in the history of American music. After its 1893 performances in New York, Boston, and Cincinnati, in 1899 it became the first work by an American to be performed at the famous Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, England. This resulted in commissions for prestigious English choir festivals and the acceptance of an American compositional school by the international community.
Parker’s music is rarely performed today and exhibits Teutonic rather than American tendencies, yet his influence through his teaching of such noted composers as Douglas Moore (1892–1969), Quincy Porter (1897–1966), and the quixotic Charles Ives (1874–1954), indirectly makes him the father of twentieth-century American choral music. Parker, and to a somewhat lesser degree Dudley Buck (1839–1909), serve as transitional figures from the rudimentary choral music that preceded them, to the more solid styles and schools that came after them. In teaching Charles Ives, Parker’s conservatism proved to be more negative than positive, and Ives eventually abandoned the Romantic spirit and style of Parker to become America’s first great composer.16
Parker, a dedicated musician, wrote in a variety of genres, including orchestral and operatic; however, it is in church music where his contributions seem to be most recognized. Erik Routley boldly states that Parker’s Mount Zion is “probably one of the best hymn tunes of its age.”17 His musical style, prudent and old-fashioned, still represented an elevation in the quality level of American choral music at the end of that century. He had developed a solid craft that gave his music more depth than others of his generation or before. His ability to write in larger forms raised the appreciation of the American composer in the international forum.
The only other truly significant American choral composer between Billings and Parker was Dudley Buck. Typical of many nineteenth-century American composers, Buck studied in Europe. As with Horatio Parker, Buck wrote useful, yet conservative, anthems employing solo quartets in alternation with the full chorus. Before 1870 it was customary to write anthems for solo quartet without the choir, and Buck had a “concern for the differing characteristics of quartet and choral music.”18 He composed in all musical forms and was highly regarded in his lifetime. Wienandt and Young suggest that:

Although Dudley Buck was not a threat to the superiority of European composition, he was the best that America could then bring to the field of church music. . . . The American examples of this period are shabby at best. 19
There were, however, productive and relatively important nineteenth-century composers in other fields of music. Men such as Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), Stephen Foster (1825–1894) and Edward MacDowell (1861–1908) were successful in their areas of interest. Gottschalk’s music is considered to be among the best of the century. As a piano virtuoso, he toured Europe extensively. His adaptation of Creole melodies brought elements of the New World into the salons and concert halls of Europe and South America. This paved the way for the acceptance of an American style, which, even today, is very elusive.20
Undoubtedly, the most prominent choral musician of this middle period was Lowell Mason (1792–1872), although his primary compositional contributions were in hymns and singing books. He helped fashion a more refined style of American hymnody, different from the popular camp meeting songs of the time. His vital gift, however, was in the development and advancement of music education. His career reached a pinnacle in 1838 when he became the Boston Superintendent of Public School Music, which was the first such position in the United States.21
For choral music, though, it was the church that continued to provide the backbone for growth. Protestant Church Music in America, by Robert Stevenson, is a brief but very thorough survey of people and movements from 1564 to the present. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a steady rise in denominations and numbers of churches in America. Each had its own perspective on what was needed musically for their services of worship. Some of the more active denominations producing music of merit were the Methodists, the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterians. Men such as James Lyon (1735–1794) and William Tuckey (1708–1781) helped develop church music through composition, but their choral contributions were not particularly important. The use of organs in churches was mildly controversial in some denominations, but eventually that came to be common practice for most. Part of the problem was finding someone who could play the organ. According to Irving Lowens,

As late as 1714, when after much discussion an organ imported three years earlier by Thomas Brattle was installed in Boston’s King’s Chapel, an organist had to be brought from England to Play skillfully thereon with a loud noise.22
As in the preceding century, Protestant church music was the primary vehicle for choral music in America during the nineteenth century. Much of the music was developed through music collections, and often these publications contained European music, which helped to make them more commercially profitable. Of the composers not previously mentioned, some of the most important were William B. Bradbury (1816–1868), George Kingsley (1811–1884), Joseph P. Holbrook (1822–1888), Thomas Hastings (1784–1872), and George K. Jackson (1745–1823).
In the first half of the century, European music dominated concert halls and other professional musical venues, but American church music flourished. Anthem collections by American composers steadily increased. However, as the sophistication levels rose, particularly in the North, there was a need to have more refined music than that in the standard “native” American repertory. Stevenson explains:

Already by 1850 the American denominations had so drawn their social lines that some ministered to the wealthy and elite in big cities, while others served the common folk on farms and frontiers. Speaking of one ‘elite’ denomination in a course of historical lectures given at Berlin in 1854, Philip Schaff claimed that the Protestant Episcopal Church had addressed itself ‘heretofore almost exclusively to the higher classes of society, and had rather discouraged the poor man from joining it.’ With such a constituency, the music published for use in Episcopal churches at mid-century sounded quite a different note from that prevailing in publications for frontier churches, or even for middle-class urban churches.23

Church repertoire
Arguments persisted regarding the function of a church choir. Some felt that it should be to assist congregational singing, while others wanted a group that had its own identity and quality. These opinions on choir function have not ceased, and even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, impassioned cries of support or lack-of-support can be heard from some denominations and/or members within them. After 1865 churches developed their own hymnals, so that styles of music associated with certain denominations became even more established. Congregational singing always was important, but stylistic differences at this time were not limited to the Protestant churches, and in the late twentieth century, even the Roman Catholic hymnals moved toward a more folk-like or gospel-style inclusion.
In most American churches today, the anthem serves as the standard vehicle for choir performances. As traced by Wienandt and Young,24 its history has been long and varied. It is not an American invention, but its development and use was an important factor in the spread of choral music. The anthem is an English derivative of the Latin motet, and as such was more musically complex than simple hymns sung by the congregation; therefore, more accomplished singers and preparations were needed for use in the service, and that concept has been in existence since ancient times.

The word may be followed back to various forms of Antiphon, a term denoting the category of plainsong sung before and after psalms and canticles. It was the function of antiphons to amplify the text of scriptural material to which they were attached. They were numerous because such scriptural sections were used several times each day. References to the antiphon have been traced from as early as the beginning of the Christian era, but the various spellings, forms and meanings in English begin much later, perhaps not until around the eleventh century.25
Of special musicological interest is the word “antine,” which was used in American music in the early years. Kingman states:

There is no such word in English usage. Baring-Gould, collector of the first versions using it, postulates that it is a corruption of the French antienne, which means “antiphon.” Since an antiphon is a piece of liturgical music, the image of every grove ringing ‘with a merry antine’ is a plausible and indeed a rather happy one.26
As stated earlier, the concept of the anthem was brought to this country. In the 1760s the publication of American anthems by “native” composers (Francis Hopkinson [1737–91] and James Lyon [1735–94]) led the way to an ever-expanding market of this genre. In most churches today, the anthem serves as the standard presentation of choir performance. It became a work of several pages’ duration based on a scriptural or poetic text that may or may not be accompanied and almost always is in English.
In European Catholic churches, complete musical Masses were at one time very common, but today they are rare and generally found only in large and very musically active churches; even then, they may only be used on special occasions. Catholic churches throughout America most often celebrate Mass with brief musical intonations by a priest and congregational singing. Those choirs may prepare special music, such as an anthem, but their primary function is to help with congregational singing.
In many Protestant denominations choral singing is used in other places in the service (introits, responses, etc.). Some do not employ the term anthem, but, even if called special music or some other term, its function is that of an anthem. Often ministers and church choir directors differ on the function of the choir. For many ministers, church choirs are, above all, a help for congregational singing, and the preparation of an anthem is a bonus; for most church choir conductors, the opposite may be true. Regardless of their intended function, church choirs that have been successful serve in both capacities, and, for most people, the blending of these functions has been beneficial.
The rise of choral music in America owes much to congregational singing. Congregational response has long been a part of liturgy. Group singing in worship has been a vital part in the development of choral music, especially in America.
The prevailing aspect of congregational singing can be found in hymnody. Briefly, hymnody was an outgrowth of plainsong and originally a monastic technique. Musical hymns were melodies that were, at first, associated with the daily offices; they most often were Psalms, but other Scriptural texts were used as well. Their use continued to expand throughout the early centuries of Christianity, and in the hands of Martin Luther (1483–1546) congregational hymnody became a major segment of worship services in the Reformation. Melodies popular with the people thrived, and it is in this context that American hymnody took shape.27
Erik Routley, in The Music of Christian Hymns, states:

The American tradition of hymnody falls into clearly defined streams which before 1900 were culturally separate, and which during the 20th century began to influence each other . . . We classify these streams as (1) the New England Style (2) the Southern Folk Hymnody (3) the Black Spiritual and (4) the Gospel Song. 28
The New England tradition of hymnody was an outgrowth of Psalm singing, especially linked to the Scottish Psalter and the Ainsworth Psalter. America’s first printed book, the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, attempted to replace those psalters, and did so for many generations. An important feature of the New England tradition was the establishment of singing schools. The intent was to improve congregational singing, but they also can be seen as an endemic factor in the development of choral music in America, because as singing improved, so did the need for music other than simple hymns. In many ways, the interest in the singing schools led the way for church choirs. For example, through diligent rehearsals in the meeting houses, congregational members grew musically proficient and sought special recognition; eventually, people with training sat and performed together in the church’s “gallery,” today called the choir loft.

Musical literacy influences

Two important early writers were Thomas Walter (1696–1725) and John Tufts (1689–1750). Walter’s pioneer book of instruction, The Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained (1721), tried to provide rules and methods for sight-reading tunes. Tufts’ An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm-Tunes in a Plain and Easy Method was also available in 1721, and he tried to instruct through letters instead of notes.29
Throughout the eighteenth century, singing schools and singing school teachers brought music to interested people. Emphasis remained on sacred music; however, the inclusion of secular tunes became more common. William Billings, the most famous of the singing teachers, produced six tune books containing the robust, energetic musical style found in his anthems. Other later significant musical missionaries who contributed to the spread of musical education were Lowell Mason (1792–1872), Thomas Hastings (1784–1872), and Virgil C. Taylor (1817–1891).

Black spirituals, white spirituals, and gospel song

In the South, hymnody progressed in different directions. Folk hymnody was a rural development that heavily relied on the shape-note tradition; this focused on assisting uneducated people to learn how to sing. George Pullen Jackson has been a leader in tracing the history of folk hymnody; he has authored three books dealing with the music and style associated with this genre.30 The white spiritual was a term sometimes used for the hymnody of white settlers in southern states. Music books for this hymnody often use “shape note” characters to assist in reading the music. There were many publications of music which helped spread the shape-note concept. Some of those that merit attention include John Wyeth, Repository of Sacred Music (1810),31 Ananias Davisson, Kentucky Harmony (1816),32 William Walker, Southern Harmony,33 B.F. White and E.J. King, Sacred Harp.34
Black spirituals were transmitted through oral tradition. The first black college, Fisk University, began in 1866. A group of student singers known as The Jubilee Singers toured America, England, and other European countries. They were responsible for spreading the knowledge and interest in Negro spirituals.35
The gospel song was, as Routley indicates:

Hymnody reduced to its simplest terms, it is cast in the form either of a solo song, or of a solo song with refrain, and this it has in common with the Black Spiritual.36

This style of hymnody grew out of the revivals that were particularly popular in the South in the nineteenth century. Evangelistic music existed in the 1730s and is associated with Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), but the true gospel songs became a formidable style around 1859. Typically, they sustain one chord for an entire measure and remain restricted to the three basic triads of tonic, subdominant, and dominant. This permitted strong rhythmic fluctuations and improvisation, which helped generate and intensify the emotional drive, a primary feature of evangelistic denominations. Whereas the other three streams of hymnody (New England style, Southern folk hymnody, and Black spiritual) have roots in foreign cultures, gospel music seems to be an American contribution.
One of many religious groups that came to America and developed a music for their denomination was the Shakers, although this folk-like music was unison, not harmonized, and unaccompanied, and not pure choral music. Possibly the most important may have been the Moravian tradition, which dates from the fifteenth century and is rich in a choral heritage. These people settled in Pennsylvania before 1740 and established communities such as Bethlehem, Lititz, and Nazareth; by 1783 they had expanded south to North Carolina. Donald M. McCorkle, director and editor-in-chief of the Moravian Music Foundation suggests that:
Most of the early Moravian composers were clergymen who wrote music apparently as easily as they did sermons. . . . The anthems and songs created by the Moravians were influenced primarily by contemporary musical trends of Central Europe. Since most of the choral and vocal music by American Moravians is conceived for mixed voices accompanied by instruments, it is quite different both in structure and content from other sacred music written in 18th-century America.37

Their musical past has been preserved and made available through definitive editions released under the title Moramus Editions. Three of the more significant American composers were John Antes (1740–1811), Johann Friedrich Peter (1746–1813), and Johannes Herbst (1735–1812). Peter, perhaps the most outstanding of the Moravian composers, wrote over 100 anthems and arias, as well as six string quintets in 1789, which may be the earliest extant examples of American chamber music. Antes composed twenty-five sacred anthems and twelve chorales, and possibly made the earliest violin in America in 1759.

New secular directions

Less dominant influences on the growth of choral music in America may be seen in the development of secular organizations and events. A product of the singing schools, for example, was the formation of music clubs. Organizations such as the Stoughton Musical Society developed by 1786 and Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, which began in 1815, did much to stimulate interest in choral singing. Often competitions between organizations were held, which encouraged improvements in quality.
In the nineteenth century, conventions and fairs were held, and they helped promote choral singing in America. Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore (1829–1892), through his Peace Jubilees, promoted gigantic mass performances by choirs of 10,000! These festivals involved enormous bands and orchestras; a structure was built to house an audience of 50,000. Villages and towns throughout New England filled their quotas of singers, and each had a local leader who had been instructed in the tempos so that everyone was well prepared when they met together to perform.
There were world’s fairs held in Philadelphia in 1876 and Chicago in 1893, and singing played an important part at these international events. For the centennial, new choral works were commissioned from John Knowles Paine (A Centennial Hymn, text by John Greenleaf Whittier) and Dudley Buck (The Centennial Meditation of Columbia, text by Sidney Lanier). Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (which presented 36 choral concerts) featured music performed by some of the younger American composers, including G.W. Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, and Arthur Foote. Female composers were represented in a concert heralding the opening of the Woman’s Building, including music by Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.38
Another important development that fostered choral singing in America was the establishment of music schools and conservatories. Oberlin College had a Chair of Sacred Music in 1835. The first music courses at America’s oldest institution, Harvard College, were not offered until 1862. Other beginnings of note were: 1865, Oberlin Music Conservatory; 1867, New England Conservatory of Music; 1867, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and the Chicago Musical College. These American schools did not eliminate the continuing process of seeking a European musical education, but as they grew in quality and numbers, they made a musical education more accessible.39
Social amusements were the initial reasons for the development of singing on college campuses. Glee clubs were formed, which performed local concerts for friends, and later they toured to sing for alumni. Eventually, more sophisticated groups developed; they performed the standard European favorites by Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and others. Probably the earliest official ensemble was the University Choral Union of the University of Michigan in 1879. Northwestern University, in 1906, was the first school to have an “a cappella” choir—Peter Lutkin, dean of the music school at Northwestern University, founded the Northwestern A Cappella Choir.40
Availability of music was an important factor in helping to encourage music in America. Some noteworthy landmarks in the publishing of music included the 1698 ninth edition of the Bay Psalm Book, which contained the first music printed in New England, and the 1761 James Lyon collection Urania, which was the first published setting of Psalms and hymns by a native-born American. Lyon was also active in the establishment of the first public subscription concerts in Philadelphia, and in other early musical ventures.
John S. Dwight (1813–1893) was not a composer, but his work in advancing standards of excellence was important. He was America’s first music critic and editor of the first significant music journal, Dwight’s Journal of Music (1852–1881).
Opera and instrumental music also influenced the growth of choral music in America. While these genres did not have the benefit of the church to encourage their evolution and maturation, they were able to secure ongoing support from individual citizens. Most of the music before the middle of the nineteenth century was European; orchestras had been formed, but they performed repertoire by continental composers. By 1876 subscription concerts had begun in Philadelphia. It was common for orchestras (and opera singers) from Europe to tour in this country, and they too, perpetuated the standard works by recognized European composers.
Theodore Thomas (1835–1905) was an avid young conductor who did much to advance the professional American orchestra. His Theodore Thomas Orchestra, founded in 1862, toured for many years; in Chicago, Thomas’s orchestra gained a permanent home and evolved into today’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His pioneering helped encourage the formation of major professional orchestras, and before 1900 there were ensembles in St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other large cities. Most relied heavily on benefactors who subsidized them financially. Wealthy families such as the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, and the Morgans were vital to the development of professional orchestras needed to provide opportunities for the performance of large-scale choral works.41
Opera also depended on the contributions of rich patrons. The public in the nineteenth century had come to opera from a background in minstrelsy, so cultivation of understanding was slow. Even today opera remains a genre that has less universal appeal than many other musical forms. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, there were major opera houses in operation. They brought European performers to the States, which helped develop an established audience. In comparison with other major musical genres such as orchestral, choral, or chamber music, the number of composers who write in this medium remains limited. Cost, technical requirements, and available performances are restrictive factors that have not successfully encouraged a corresponding growth to this vocal art form, yet it did have a modicum of influence on the growth of choral singing.

Summary
The commentary above is a brief examination of some of the events involved in the establishment and evolution of American choral music. There certainly were many other elements that could be pursued in a discussion of this type, but space does not permit a more detailed survey. America is a blend of heterogeneous cultures, and throughout the entire history of the country, people from other places have continued to come to her shores; they brought with them religious, artistic, and social elements of their past, but the most significant factor in any study on the evolution of American choral music must be the influence of the church.
Clearly, choral music began primarily because it was needed in religious ceremonies. In essence, the history of American choral music can be traced through the expansion of musical settings of liturgical words into the secular arena. The twentieth century saw a profound growth of choral singing.
The church, which was the overriding force in the development of choral singing, is now somewhat less influential. In today’s society, one of the controversial issues in the choral field is whether to include sacred music as part of the repertoire of public school ensembles; this is a reflection of that secular expansion, even though a vast majority of quality choral works are based on sacred texts. This change of attitude is a reversal of the past. Singing schools were formed to help people learn to sing religious music, but beginning in the middle of the twentieth century some school systems or administrations began forcefully working to keep music with religious texts from being performed.
Nevertheless, the church remains an important advocate for music, especially choral, yet its interest in styles has seen a rapid shift during the past few decades. That shift has reduced the quality and amount of choral singing, as may be seen in the number of people in church congregations and ultimately church choirs. The church gave impetus to choral singing in this country, and today still is responsible for a large portion of choral performances, as well as the creation of new music. The difference is that it is not the primary leader in the proliferation of choral music, only an equal partner at best.
America was founded on the need and search for freedom in both religious and secular arenas. The church continues to evolve in society, and therefore its music, which has always been an important element, will also evolve. The same may be said for the secular side of society in which music is a vital component. The confluence of the two main forces (sacred/secular) will continue to be a major factor in the development of choral music in the twenty-first century, but the swing away from significant sacred choral music probably will increase just as it did in the twentieth century. 

A recording of William Billings' David's Lamentation

Other choral items of interest:

The Cathedral of St. John Celebrates Ten Years of Cathedral Commissions

Fela Sowande: The Legacy of a Nigerian Music Legend

The Carol and Its Context in Twentieth-century England

American choral music available online from Library of Congress

Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian organist-composer, church musician, pianist, choral conductor, and ethnomusicologist. He is the author of several books, including The Organ Works of Fela Sowande: Cultural Perspectives (2007), Intercultural Dimensions in Ayo Bankole’s Music (2007), and Joshua Uzoigwe: Memoirs of a Nigerian Composer-Ethnomusicologist (2007). Sadoh is presently Professor of Music at Talladega College, Alabama.

The arrival of the Christian faith in Nigeria around the mid-19th century introduced not only the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but also church music to one of the most populous African countries. At the turn of the 20th century, indigenous church musicians began to develop a repertoire of music for worship. The music included church hymns, chants for singing Psalms, versicles and responses, and choral anthems, as well as organ pieces. The pioneers of church music composition endeavored to write music that would be close to the cultural roots of the congregations through the incorporation of traditional music resources. Foremost among the first generation of composers was Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969), popularly referred to among Nigerian musicologists as the “father of Nigerian church music,” for his immense contributions to the development, growth, and stabilization of Christian music.

Short biography of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips

Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips was born in 1884 and he attended the Church Missionary Society Grammar School (CMS), Lagos. Phillips received his first organ lesson from his uncle, Johnson, who was an Anglican priest. At the age of eighteen he was appointed organist of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos, and served in this capacity for nine years. In 1911 he proceeded to the Trinity College of Music, London, to study piano, organ, and violin, becoming the second Nigerian to receive professional training in music abroad and the first Nigerian to formally study organ in a school of music (Robert Coker was the first Nigerian to study European music abroad in Germany in 1871).1
Upon his return to Nigeria in 1914, Phillips was appointed to the position of organist and master of the music at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.2 Phillips’ tenure marked a great transition and a period unparalled in the history of Nigerian church music. His accomplishments far outshone those of all his predecessors at the church. He led the Cathedral Choir to great heights within a short period of time, since the choir was established to be a model for other churches. The choir sets the musical standard for choral performance in the country. In this way, Phillips succeeded in revolutionizing church music in Lagos and in Nigeria as a whole.
Phillips embarked on a massive campaign to educate Nigerian congregations in the latest repertoire. First, he concentrated on an intensive training of his choir on sight reading, vocal production and blend, and modern techniques of chanting the Psalms. Second, Phillips established a musical journal of which he was the editor-in-chief. He used the journal to disseminate cogent information about sacred music to the Yoruba congregations in southwest Nigeria, including its role in worship and its relationship to the culture of the people. Third, Phillips wrote a treatise on the compositional devices of early Nigerian church music entitled Yoruba Music.3 In this monumental book, Phillips described methods that composers could use to create new forms of music that employ Nigerian indigenous music resources—such as melodies, scale, and rhythms—to which congregations could relate. Nigerian congregations tend to embrace and appreciate hymns, anthems, and instrumental works based on indigenous popular melodies and rhythms. According to Bode Omojola, Phillips’ views in his Yoruba Music are summed up in three salient points: 1) Yoruba music is often based on the pentatonic scale; 2) harmony rarely exists in Yoruba music; and 3) Yoruba music, like all other musical traditions, is undergoing an evolutionary process.4 Phillips’ book represents the first musicological research and documentation of African traditional music by a professionally trained native. His postulations and research findings were circulated among church musicians through public presentations such as lectures, conferences, and symposia. His Passacaglia on an African Folk Song for Organ and Variations on an African Folk Song for Organ are representative works based on the ideas from his Yoruba Music. Fourth, Phillips founded the Conference of Church Organists and other musical organizations such as the Association of Diocesan Organists, which was a forum for church musicians to interact and exchange ideas on various aspects of sacred music from congregational singing to choral training to organ playing.
Phillips frequently gave lectures, addresses, and demonstrations for the improvement of musical taste and development in the church. He wrote numerous articles on harmonium and organ playing as well as on the maintenance of these instruments. At his instigation, some of the sermons at the Cathedral Church of Christ during this period were directed towards enlightening the congregation on devotional and reverential singing. The historical background of some of the hymns was also incorporated into the sermons. All these efforts led to a tremendous growth in the musical standard of the choir and the congregation in Lagos State and other parts of the country. The Cathedral Choir rendered settings of canticles, responses, anthems, hymns, and diverse choral works by famous European and indigenous Nigerian composers.
When the church was to be elevated to cathedral status in 1923,5 the congregation decided to buy a bigger pipe organ. Phillips embarked on several concert tours at home as well as in London to seek funds for the instrument, and he was able to raise over half of the budgeted amount. Works performed by the choir during these tours included Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah, John Stainer’s Daughter of Jairus, and the Yoruba songs composed by Phillips. The money was used to purchase a three-manual pipe organ built by Abbot & Smith Co. in 1932.6 In 1964 Phillips was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for his contributions to the development of church music in Nigeria. Phillips also trained most of the prominent and internationally famous Nigerian musicians, such as Fela Sowande (organist-composer, 1905–1987), Ayo Bankole (organist-composer, 1935–1976), his son, Charles Oluwole Obayomi Phillips (organist and choir director, 1919–2007), and Christopher Oyesiku (singer, choral conductor, and broadcaster, 1925–).7 Thomas Ekundayo Phillips directed the music ministry at the Cathedral Church of Christ for 48 years (Trinity Sunday 1914 to Trinity Sunday 1962). He was succeeded by his son, Charles Oluwole Obayomi Phillips, who served as organist and master of the music from Trinity Sunday 1962 to Trinity Sunday 1992.8

Issues in Nigerian hymn composition

The art of hymn composition in Nigeria is confronted with several related problems. The first issue to be tackled by a hymn writer is that of ethnic diversity—who is your audience or which of the ethnic groups is your primary target? Nigeria as a nation is made up of three major ethnic groups: Yoruba in the southwest, Igbo in the southeast, and Hausa to the north. In addition to this powerful tripartite caucus, there is a large body of minority groups including the Edo, Urhobo, Isoko, Ishekiri, Kwale, Efik, Tiv, Ijaw, Ibibio, and Fulani. All these groups speak different languages and hundreds of dialects. When you move from one small town to another, you might neither be able to understand nor speak the language there, even though you are a Nigerian.
For illustration, I am a Nigerian born to a Yoruba mother, but my father is from Edo State in the midwest region of the country.9 As a result of being raised in Lagos, I am very fluent in the Yoruba language; however, I can neither speak nor understand the local dialect of my father’s ethnicity. Each time I go to Edo State, I communicate in English, a language common to all or most Nigerians.
It follows, then, that a hymn composer in Nigeria must always have a targeted congregation in mind when writing a new song for worship. If the composer wants his/her songs to be sung in the southwest region, the hymn must be in Yoruba. And if the primary congregation is situated in the southeast, the hymn must be in Igbo. Alternately, a wise composer who wishes to reach a larger body of Christ that cuts across ethnic barriers, would write the hymns in English. With this approach, all the ethnic groups within the nation may be able to understand the message of the hymns.
Ironically, this procedure may even create a greater problem because there are some churches that have adamantly adhered to conducting services in their indigenous language and would not accommodate songs in any other language. Among these churches, there are some educated people who could communicate well in English, and there are also those who cannot read nor write the English language.
For instance, there are several Igbo Anglican (Episcopal) churches in Lagos, a Yoruba community. The Igbo Anglican churches were founded by Igbo priests who were confronted with fierce oppositions in convincing ministers in Yoruba churches to create English services to accommodate non-Yoruba speaking natives. The Igbo priests made this move to prevent further loss of Igbo Anglicans to other denominations.10
The only places where English hymns thrive are the newly founded evangelical churches, chapels on college and university campuses, and a few denominational churches such as the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, where services are conducted mainly in English. These congregations have a larger population compared to small parish churches because they are pan-ethnic and globally intercultural in their modes of worship. In most of the evangelical churches, you will find Igbo and Yoruba as well as other minority ethnic groups worshiping together. On college and university campuses, English is the official language of instruction; accordingly, services are conducted in English at all worship centers including student fellowship meetings.
The second problem a hymn writer may have to grapple with is the translation of hymn texts. This may be in the form of translating English hymns to any of the indigenous languages or the translation of a particular local dialect to another within the country. In the first situation, the composer may find it difficult to translate certain English words that do not exist in Nigerian culture. For instance, we do not have snow, winter, hail, or ginger bread in the Nigerian cultural experience. Therefore, the hymn composer will experience difficulty in translating these words into an indigenous language and choosing descriptive words that can best convey the exact meaning to Nigerian congregations. In another instance, when words are translated from one language to the other, there may be too many syllables to be inserted into a single note, or there may be too many words within a phrase that would not fit into the melodic phrase.
The hymn writer is then confronted with the problem of choice: which words are more important to retain and which are less important, to be deleted. A Yoruba Christian song, Kokoro Ayo lowo Mi, when literally translated into English becomes “The Key of Joy in My Hands.” There are several problems with this translation. The Yoruba text has eight syllables and melodic notes to go with it, while the English translation has only seven syllables. The composer will have to create an additional English word to complete the sentence or she/he may try to force two notes into a single syllable of the text. The other problem with this translation is that of positioning the important English words under the strong accents such as the first or third beats of each measure. In other instances, after creating a literal translation of the hymn text, the composer still has to rearrange the words.
The third obstacle to be addressed in composing hymns in Nigeria is the issue of melodic choice. The composer will need to choose between pre-existing tunes such as folk songs, traditional songs that belong to specific cults, popular dance tunes, or original melodies. Folk songs are generally acceptable because their texts deal with simple social life experiences, whereas traditional songs that are devoted to specific deities or divinities may be difficult to persuade Nigerian congregations to sing. The church members were taught by the early foreign missionaries to believe that such cultic songs belong to the devil, and, because of this, they should refrain from incorporating them into Christian worship. These songs are well known to the people; engaging in the singing of those songs may bring back to their consciousness the images of traditional gods and goddesses that they have disowned for the true God of the Christian faith.
Popular band songs on the other hand are perceived to be too “worldly” and mundane for true worship in the church. The argument here is that juxtaposing such melodies with sacred texts may bring back memories of “worldly” experiences that do not bring glory to God and Jesus Christ. In Nigeria, there has been a long controversy and debate on the issue of employing popular band tunes played at night clubs to accompany sacred texts. The Christian community has vehemently opposed this practice at every seminar, symposium, and conference. An alternative available to the composer is to write original melodies that align with new text or pre-existing words.
The fourth major problem confronting a hymn composer in Nigeria is melodic construction. After overcoming the issues of ethnic and language diversity, translation barrier as well as choice of melody, the hymn writer will still have to contend with the issue of tonal aspects of indigenous languages. Because all languages and regional dialects have tonal inflections, the composer must be mindful of the melodic shape of each note assigned to every syllable. Any discrepancies between the melodic contours and indigenous language can adversely dislocate the intended meaning to be conveyed to the congregation.
Most Nigerian dialects normally have three to four tonal inflections. Yoruba language has three main tone patterns on its words: the low, middle, and high tones. Consequently, if the tonal inflection of a word is high, the melodic contour must correspond to it by rising; if the inflection is low or middle on the word, the melodic contour has to move in that direction. In other words, the melodic shape of words in Nigeria has to run parallel with the rising and falling pitches of the local dialects.
Among the Yoruba, the word Ade means crown, and its tonal inflections are middle and high. Hence, the appropriate notes for the two syllables can be re–mi, mi–so, la–do, or so–la. If the hymn writer chooses a melody in the opposite direction, the meaning of the text will change and it will not make sense to the Yoruba congregation. By choosing different tonal pitches, this word can mean ade (crown), ade (to cover), ade (to tighten), or Ade (the name of a person from a royal lineage). The composer of indigenous Nigerian church hymns will have to take into account this problem in order to write meaningful and logical songs for Nigerian congregations.
The fifth problem a Nigerian hymn writer faces is that of harmonic organization. Nigerian traditional music has a concept of polyphony. Indigenous harmonic usages can be observed in both traditional vocal songs and instrumental music. While there is a predilection for thirds, fourths, fifths, and parallel harmonies in the musical repertoire of traditional music, one can also hear the clashing of seconds in tone clusters among the Ijesha and Ekiti from southwest Nigeria. Interestingly, the concept of harmony is more pronounced in the southern regions of Nigeria, such as the Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Ijaw, Efik, etc. The northern Hausa-Fulani sings mostly in unison or what Kwabena Nketia calls “polarity,”11 which is a very strong influence from the Arabic culture. The reason for this might be twofold: 1) the southerners have a long history of harmonic singing in their traditional culture, in particular, the Igbo and Midwestern regions; and 2) the church music introduced by the early missionaries from America and England was restricted mainly to the south. Consequently, the foreign hymns in four-part harmony simply reinforced the concept of polyphony among the southern peoples. As one may recall, the colonial policy encouraged the northern Muslims to continue in their Islamic faith, while the southerners fully embraced the newly found Christian faith.12
The final problem confronting hymn composition and congregational singing in Nigeria is that of instrumental accompaniment. During the early stages of Christian worship in Nigeria, especially in the 19th century, congregational hymns were accompanied mainly with organ, harmonium, or piano in most churches. Unfortunately, native worshipers could not easily relate to nor embrace singing songs without movement. They were used to dancing, hand clapping, and all manner of bodily movements in their traditional culture. The singing of European or indigenous hymns with the exclusion of the dance experience created a major hindrance and stumbling block to congregational singing. This impasse created schisms and eventually led to the fragmentation of the early church in Nigeria into various factions and denominations. From this fragmentation evolved indigenous independent churches such as the Aladura (Prayer) Church in early 20th century, where traditional musical instruments were fully utilized to accompany congregational singing of hymns.
In Nigeria today, traditional musical instruments are employed in accompanying congregational singing at various indigenous churches and established traditional churches such as Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Even European or American hymns are accompanied with indigenous drums, iron bells, sekere (shaking idiophone), and hand clapping. The only exception to this practice is to be found at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, where hymns are still accompanied only with the pipe organ and piano. The Cathedral Church is the only church in the country that strictly kept intact the European worship traditions in post-colonial Nigeria. The worship experience in the church is comparable to any of the British cathedrals such as St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey. In addition to instrumental accompaniment, services have been conducted exclusively in English, from the inception of the Cathedral Church of Christ in 1867 to the present. The only occasions when other types of musical instruments and indigenous language is tolerated are during special services dedicated to the youth of the church or during diocesan events. Even in these specialized services, Western musical instruments such as trap drum set, electric guitar, and electric keyboard are mostly used in accompanying contemporary praise choruses from America and Nigeria. These instruments are used to play music that the youth of the church would like to hear and sing. The Standing Committee of the Cathedral Church approved the use of foreign instruments in order to keep their youth in the church and perhaps attract more young men and women to their congregation. Prior to this era, which began in late 1990s, the Cathedral Church was losing a lot of their young people to the newly founded contemporary churches where those instruments were being used to accompany modern praise choruses.
Therefore, a hymn writer in Nigeria needs to recognize the important issue of movement in worship. The composer is compelled to write songs that can align with percussion instruments and inevitably move the congregation to dance. In Nigeria, dance is visualized as an act of worship to God. We may ask at this juncture: how did Thomas Ekundayo Phillips solve the aforementioned problems in the hymns he wrote, and how did the congregations react to his compositions?

Selected indigenous hymns
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips wrote several songs of worship for the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, and other smaller parish congregations. His hymns are in both English and Yoruba languages. Although services were conducted mainly in English at the Cathedral Church, Phillips’ compositions in Yoruba language were permitted for rendition during special occasions such as choir concerts, synod services, diocesan events, and ordination of a bishop or archbishop in the church. Such events attracted people from various backgrounds, both the well-educated and the less-educated. As the church was located in a Yoruba state, the majority of the guests from other parishes were Yoruba; therefore, they felt more at home singing songs in their own language. Phillips’ music represents the first generation of Nigerian composers. Works in this era are quite simple, short, and tonal.
Phillips’ Versicles and Responses (Awon Adura Kukuru ati Idahun Won)13 was specifically written for worship in the smaller Yoruba parish churches in southwest Nigeria. It is a canticle of prayer sung in morning and evening worship. The performance technique of the song is the African “call and response,” with simple organ accompaniment. The priest (Alufa) sings the solo while the congregation (Ijo) responds in unison. The organist plays the first note of the opening solo and the priest sings his line a cappella, but the organ accompanies the congregational response. Since the Versicles and Responses is in Yoruba language, it cannot be sung at worship in other regions of the country. The melody is original and in five-note pentatonic scale (do–re–mi–so–la), which is commonly found in Yoruba folk songs. The vocal compass of the song is nearly an octave, making it easy for the members of the congregation to sing without straining their voices. While the melodic line employs a pentatonic scale, the organ accompaniment uses a free diatonic harmony with occasional tonicization of the dominant. The melodic contour mirrors the tonal patterns of the Yoruba text throughout the music. The translation of the first page of the Responses is as follows:

Priest: Oluwa, Iwo si wa l’e te (Lord open our lips)
Congregation: Enu wa yio si ma fi iyin Re han (Our mouths shall sing forth Thy praise)
Priest: Olorun, sise ki o gba wa la (Lord make haste to save us).
Example 1 shows the first page of Phillips’ Versicles and Responses.
Phillips wrote a very short Yoruba Vesper hymn for the closing of evening service, entitled Baba a f’ara Wa (Father, we surrender ourselves). This hymn is usually sung at the end of evening worship before the recessional hymn is sung. The organist plays the first chord as written in the score, then the congregation sings the entire song as quietly as possible. Apart from one sub-dominant note, the melody is in five-note pentatonic scale (do–re–mi–so–la), and its range is a seventh. The melodic shape of the hymn strictly mirrors the tonal inflections of the Yoruba text, and it is an original hymn. Consequently, by observing the compositional rules, Phillips was able to retain the intended meaning of the Yoruba words. The congregation sings in unison, but the organ accompanies with conventional four-part harmony and closes with a plagal cadence. The song is a prayer for God’s protection at night. Below is a translation of the Yoruba text:

Baba a f’ara wa
Si iso re l’ale yi
Dabobo wa ko pawa mo
Titi ‘le o fi mo, Amin.

Father we surrender ourselves
Under your care tonight
Protect and keep us safe
Until tomorrow morning, Amen.

See Example 2 for Phillips’ Vesper Hymn.
Yoruba Magnificat in C (The Song of Mary) is another evening hymn composed by Ekundayo Phillips. The text of this hymn is derived from Luke 1:46–55 in the King James Bible. It is a Yoruba hymn-anthem for four-part choir, congregation, and organ accompaniment. The hymn is commonly sung during a synodical or any other diocesan service that involves the Cathedral Church of Christ and other parishes in the community. Compositional technique combines monophony, polyphony, and contrapuntal devices. Structurally, the hymn-anthem is in three-parts: A) the congregation sings with organ accompaniment in C major; B) alternation of solo passages with full chorus in the key of G major; and A) full chorus with organ. Phillips maintains strict observance of parallel motion between the melodic shape and the Yoruba text. The original melody mirrors the contours of the inflection of the words. As regards tonality, Phillips uses the conventional diatonic scale for the melody, while the organ has more notes. Harmonically, there is a preponderance of thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and unison in the vocal lines. In addition, he uses all types of dynamics—mf, f, ff, cresc., dim., as well as rallentando, allargando, etc. Example 3 shows an excerpt from the Yoruba Magnificat in C.
Phillips wrote several Antiphons to Psalms with organ accompaniment. These short songs are all in Yoruba language and they are meant to be sung in unison before, during, and at the end of the Psalms. The melodies use tetratonic and pentatonic scales, and they are generally within the range of an octave. The melodic contours strictly imitate the inflections of the Yoruba words. The organ accompaniment is simple and often closes with either a plagal or perfect authentic cadence. The composer gives clear instructions on performance technique and at which points the antiphons are to be sung in the Psalms. Example 4 shows the opening page of the Antiphons to Psalms.
From Glory to Glory is a four-verse English hymn by Ekundayo Phillips, written in four-part harmony with short organ interludes inserted between all the verses except the final. This hymn is frequently sung at evening services and festive occasions at the Cathedral Church of Christ. In this hymn, Phillips keeps the melodic construction simple and the harmonization diatonic. He is not compelled to observe the Nigerian indigenous creative principles because of the English text. In fact, the harmony briefly tonicizes C in the third and fourth measures. However, the singing alternates between monophonic and polyphonic phrases. Phillips’ Yoruba hymns were well received and are still popular today in most Anglican churches in southwest Nigeria, especially Lagos. In fact, the current Cathedral Church of Christ Choir recorded some of Phillips’ hymns and anthems in 2006 to celebrate his musical legacy. From Glory to Glory is shown in Example 5.

Conclusion
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips indeed is the father of Nigerian church hymn composition. He laid a solid foundation for the composition of indigenous hymns through his numerous compositions and his book, Yoruba Music. He continually strove to encapsulate the theoretical framework of Yoruba traditional music in his compositions for the Christian church in Nigeria. In the area of tonality, he uses the popular five-note pentatonic scale, occasionally deviating from this method in songs such as From Glory to Glory, which is in English. Therefore, it would not be wrong to admit that Phillips adheres strictly to pentatonality in his Yoruba hymns, but uses the diatonic scale freely in composing English hymns. Phillips solved some of the problems in composing indigenous hymns by writing original texts and melodies. This procedure enabled him to successfully juxtapose the two entities in which the melodic contours consistently mirror the tonal patterns of Yoruba text in order to convey the intended meaning to his Yoruba congregations.
A large number of Phillips’ compositions are in Yoruba language, meaning that his targeted audience was the Yoruba congregations in southwest Nigeria. This corroborates the prevalent ethnic diversity among the Christian congregations in post-colonial Nigeria. Subsequent generations of composers rely on his research from well-documented field work on Yoruba music found in his book and his compositions. However, some modern Nigerian composers are making efforts to alleviate the issue of ethnic conflicts by writing songs in diverse indigenous languages as well as borrowing folk and popular songs from various ethnic groups in the country in their works. My new hymn book, E Korin S’Oluwa,14 is a major contribution towards uniting the vast ethnic groups in Nigeria. The indigenous texts are in Yoruba, Igbo, as well as English language, and pre-existing songs are borrowed from all the major ethnic groups in the country. I am but one of a growing number of Nigerians who have been touched by Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips, and so his efforts to build the musical life of the Nigerian church continue after his death.

Other articles of interest:

History of the organs of the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Nigeria

Centennial of the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir, Lagos, Nigeria

Fela Sowande: Nigerian Musician Legend

Thomas Ekundayo Phillips: Nigerian composer

Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Expensive as national conventions of the American Guild of Organists have become, it was still a bargain to be in eastern Minnesota enjoying an extensive program of musical treasures from France, England, and Germany, without the financial challenges of elevated euros or precious pounds. Add the Twin Cities advantages of near-perfect cool summer weather, many events scheduled within walking distance of the central city hotels, and a well-organized charter bus transport package available for travel to sites farther away, for further incentives to participate in the morning-to-midnight musical marathon detailed in the lavish (and heavy) 252-page program book.
Each of the nearly 1800 registrants attending the AGO’s 49th biennial gathering (held June 22–28 in Minneapolis and St. Paul) will have unique impressions of the meeting, based not only on individual tastes, but also on which of the presentations were heard. Many recitals and all workshops were offered concurrently. This report describes what I chose to experience, in this, my 50th year of attending such national meetings. Comments about several events I did not attend are treated as “convention buzz.”

From France: Messiaen Plus
France was represented with quite a lot of music by Olivier Messiaen: it is, after all, the centennial year of his birth. The first organ recital heard on Monday, the first full day of the convention, was played by Stephen Tharp, who gave a masterful account of Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecôte as the climax of his all-French program on the bright and forthright 2001 Lively-Fulcher organ in St. Olaf Catholic Church. Tharp’s brilliant playing recalled again the visceral shock of this music when first encountered at Oberlin, presented by Fenner Douglass as very recent music. Even now it is not possible to hear the most evocative and accessible movement of the cycle, the Communion Les Oiseaux et les Sources (The Birds and the Springs) without remembering Douglass’s trenchant, if acidic, review of a 1972 performance in a non-reverberant Dallas sanctuary: “The birds . . . called out weakly as they died on the branch, and the drops of water more resembled curds of old cottage cheese.”1
I suspect the late, lamented Professor Douglass would have been happier with Tharp’s account! This time the birds sang jubilantly and chirped ecstatically before flying off into the stratosphere, while the springs burbled gently as they descended to subterranean depths at the piece’s ending.
Following a riveting performance of the final movement from Widor’s Symphonie Romane and works by Jeanne Demessieux, the Mass served as a bracing reminder of just how much hearing a dose of Messiaen’s organ music helps to balance some of the pabulum so often served up as modern church music. But it does remain difficult listening, and oft times more fun to play than to hear. Tellingly, a perusal of the entire convention program revealed no other organ works by Messiaen listed for performance during the entire week! For National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance [NYACOP] contestants, for the Rising Stars organists, as well as for more established recitalists, the French notes of choice were most often penned by Langlais, Dupré, or Naji Hakim.

. . . at Orchestra Hall
Kudos to the convention program committee for making certain that nearly everyone got some exposure to works by one of the 20th century’s most eminent masters when the entire convention attended the most discussed program at Orchestra Hall on Tuesday evening. All-Messiaen, the concert contained no organ music at all (not surprising, since there is no organ in this major symphonic space); live music was followed by a post-concert showing of Paul Festa’s mesmerizing 52-minute documentary film, Apparition of the Eternal Church.
For more than two hours the assembled church musicians and organists heard readings of three poems by the composer’s mother Cécile Sauvage and secular pieces by Messiaen, performed almost exclusively by women. These were all early works: Theme and Variations for violin and piano, 1932; voice (selections from Poèmes pour Mi, (1936); three of the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus for solo piano (1944); and, best of all, two of the eight movements from the composer’s chamber masterwork, Quartet for the End of Time (1940–41)—Abyss of the Birds for solo clarinet; and the final eight-minute transcendent Praise to the Immortality of Jesus, for violin and piano—performed with maximum expressivity and intensity by clarinetist Jennifer Gerth and violinist Stephanie Arado with Judy Lin, piano.
Programming the 35-minute closing piece, Festival of Beautiful Waters (1937) for a sextet of Ondes Martenots, provided a probable once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear this work expertly played by L’Ensemble d’Ondes Martenot de Montréal. The delicate electronic instruments, their sounds inspired by the changing frequencies of radio dials, produced tones somewhat like Benjamin Franklin’s eerie glass harmonicas (tuned water goblets). Capable of playing only single notes, the keyboard instruments have considerable dynamic and touch-sensitive possibilities. The audience dwindled markedly as the clock approached ten, and passed it: sad, because the short explanation and demonstration of the Ondes Martenots following the performance was both instructive and charming.
I missed the first part of the subsequent film showing while attending a posh Eastman Organ Department reception in the Orchestra Hall Green Room, an especially celebratory event since the first place NYACOP winner this year was current Eastman doctoral student Michael Unger. Something—perhaps as simple as not wishing to walk back alone to my hotel—led me to look in on the film in progress. I stood, totally engrossed, for the remaining third (arriving just as the late harpsichordist Albert Fuller described an early life-changing experience in the low C pipe of Washington Cathedral’s Skinner pipe organ. The unexpected sight and story grabbed my attention!).
A program book disclaimer read, “Please note that the film deals frankly with sex and violence in explicit language . . . However, DVDs are available for sale [at an Exhibition booth], should curiosity get the better of you afterwards.” The filmmaker, Paul Festa, writing of his creation, explained that Messiaen regarded one of four tragedies, or “dramas” of his life experience, to have been that “he was a religious composer writing, for the most part, for nonbelievers.” This film concerns “what . . . the nonbelievers see when they hear his music,” in this case the 1931 organ composition Apparition of the Eternal Church. The film shows responses to Messiaen’s creation by 31 individuals. They range from Yale professor Harold Bloom and filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell to fringe culture and drag figures, as well as Fuller and the composer Richard Felciano, a student of the French composer.2

. . . and in workshops
Messiaen’s music was the featured topic for a pedagogy track during the workshops, a new concept implemented to replace the pre-convention pedagogy workshops of previous years. Charles Tompkins filled in as master teacher for the indisposed Clyde Holloway. His “Windows on Lessons” featured students Brent te Velde (Trinity University), Tyrell Lundman (University of Montana, Missoula), Julie Howell, and Erin MacGowman Moore (both from the University of Iowa).
Youthful scholarship was represented in two juried papers, selected by the AGO Committee on Continuing Professional Education (COPE). I attended the presentation by Yale student Christopher White—“Creating a Narrative in Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur”—in which he assigned certain extra-musical associations to various individual pitches and chords (an example: E=Jesus, E Major=Jesus on earth, as human) and made a convincing case for such an analysis of Messiaen’s nine-movement Christmas cycle. The University of Iowa’s David Crean followed with a complex discussion of “Messiaen’s Sixty-four Durations” (from the extraordinarily complex Livre d’Orgue, possibly the composer’s most abstract organ work).
Indiana University faculty member Christopher Young gave a workshop on “Understanding the Theory Behind the Art in Messiaen’s Organ Works.” However, it may have been the quiet mysticism of the Frenchman’s lush Communion motet O Sacrum Convivium, sung as the opening work at Thursday’s finale concert, that made the most friends for Messiaen’s elusive art.
A fully subscribed workshop (on a non-Messiaen topic) was musicologist John Near’s “The Essence of Widor’s Teaching: Interpretive Maxims.” I arrived slightly after the appointed starting time, learning later that I had missed a brief recorded example of Widor’s voice! Pithy exhortations from the composer—“Let’s learn to breathe,” “Derive tempo from the space in which you are performing,” and an oft-repeated “Slow down” (borne out by each subsequent lowering of the metronomic indications for the composer’s signature work, the Symphonie V Toccata) as well as his instruction to “Respect the work, not the performer”—all ring as true today as they did in the previous century! Dr. Near, currently working on a biography of Widor to complement his stellar editions of the composer’s organ symphonies, continues to do service to our profession by reminding us of the basic root values underpinning the French symphonic tradition. Nearly all the auditors stayed on to engage in further questions and comments.

A French recitalist
French organist Marie-Bernadette Duforcet Hakim’s opening de Grigny Ave Maris Stella was more effective than a jolt of double-strength espresso as a wake-up aid for her early-morning recital on the House of Hope’s large C. B. Fisk magnum opus. This organ’s Grands jeux, weighty, noble, and thrilling, provided a filling mass of sound in this Presbyterian Gothic edifice, which unfortunately lacks an extra five seconds of reverberation that would allow the loud and brilliant organ to bloom. That virtual coffee may have had an adverse effect on the recitalist, resulting in an overly brisk tempo for Franck’s Pièce Héroïque (after all the composer did mark it Allegro maestoso). Mme Hakim’s nuanced performance was stylistic, but any majesty was decidedly of the jet age. It seemed perverse, as well, to be hearing this beloved Romantic work on such unforgiving sounds, when directly before us stood the sanctuary’s other organ, an 1878 instrument by Merklin, created in exactly the same year and country as Franck’s composition.
Like most fine instruments, the Fisk took on the character of its player and served her especially well in her own composition Vent Oblique. After hearing an abundance of bright upperwork, it gave pleasant aural relief to encounter warm and lovely 8-foot sounds in the mid section of Jean Langlais’ Jésus, mon Sauveur béni, based on a hymn popular in his native Brittany. The program concluded with a set of well-crafted short variations on Pange lingua by husband Naji Hakim, and an improvisation that seemed to be based on the Ave Maris, but with an unexpected appearance, near the end, of the hymn tune Ein’ feste Burg as an offering, apparently, to the many Lutherans who call Minnesota their home.

English visitors
From St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, the choir of men and boys was in residence for three convention appearances, repeating a highly successful visit to the 1980 national meeting in the Twin Cities. Mark Williams, a former assistant sub-organist and director of music at the Cathedral School, stood in as the choir’s conductor, replacing an indisposed Andrew Carwood. Visually arresting in black cassocks, with bright red stoles and music folders, all seemed in good shape chorally (save for the occasional trumpeting tenor), and organist Tom Winpenny displayed his sensitive musicianship over and over again, both as soloist and impeccable choir accompanist.
The Monday evening concert took place in the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul—the most apt of venues, a magnificent 1907 Wren-like domed structure blessed with ample reverberation. Major offerings of early English motets by Weelkes, Peter Phillips, Orlando Gibbons, and the Mass for Five Voices by William Byrd were interspersed with organ works: Fantasia in G by Byrd, and the Fantasia of Foure Parts from Parthenia by Orlando Gibbons. The cross relations in these Tudor pieces sounded forth pungently from the three-stop portative organ in the chancel.
Employing the cathedral’s gallery and chancel organs for maximum surround sound, the second part of the concert offered Judith Bingham’s Cloth’d in Holy Robes (2005), an entirely engrossing and striking setting of a poem by Edward Taylor, with spinning wheel-evoking accompaniment supporting both the opening lines and subsequent allegorical references to clothing in this beautiful text. Anthems by Gerald Hendrie (Ave Verum Corpus, sung by the men of the choir) and Stephen Paulus (Arise, My Love) were separated by Paulus’s challenging Toccata for Organ, given an absolutely flawless and viscerally exciting performance by young Mr. Winpenny, who then returned to his accompanying duties for Benjamin Britten’s cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, a performance made particularly memorable by the male treble soloists in the fourth and fifth sections “For I will consider my cat Geoffrey” and “For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.”
Is there anything more sublime in Britten’s choral output than the quiet “Hallelujah” that ends this memorable setting of Christopher Smart’s idiosyncratic poetry? It provided an inspired conclusion to an enchanting concert.
Back on the other side of the river, the choir sang both Matins and Evensong in the Minneapolis Basilica of St. Mary. The afternoon program on Tuesday gave us baroque music of John Blow (Cornet Voluntary in D Minor) and his prize pupil Henry Purcell (Hear My Prayer, the anthem Jehova Quam Multi Sunt Hostes Mei, and Evening Service in G Minor) with responses by Thomas Tomkins. The hymn, Bishop Thomas Ken’s 1695 text “All praise to Thee, my God, this night” was sung to the familiar Tallis’ Canon tune (for one retrospect of the Renaissance), the psalm to a 20th-century chant by Walford Davies, and the closing voluntary brought us back to the baroque with music by Purcell’s Danish contemporary, Dieterich Buxtehude, his oft-played Praeludium in G Minor, BuxWV 149, in a stylish, virtuoso performance by Winpenny. The basilica was overflowing with rapt conventioneers who had arrived by bus before our walking group made it to the church. Seated in a far rear pew that was probably in another zip code, it was difficult to hear much except a soothing, but beautiful, wash of reverberated sound.
Matins, early the next day, was quite another matter (conventioneers like to party till the wee hours, so there were only a third as many worshipping at this morning service). I found a pew with good sight lines only several rows back from the chancel; both sound and repertory were worth the early rising! A full program of British 20th-century cathedral music, from Herbert Howells’s Rhapsody in D-flat, complete with a seamless decrescendo at its conclusion; Edward Bairstow’s I Sat Down Under His Shadow, the ecstasy of Bernard Rose’s responses, one of William Walton’s most inspired canticle settings, Jubilate Deo for double chorus (who would not be joyful in the Lord with such music as this?), and the somewhat less inspired, but serviceable Te Deum in G of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord was the anthem, its extended organ introduction beautifully rendered, and the service concluded with organist Winpenny’s brilliant traversal of Fernando Germani’s Toccata, opus 12. That evening the Londoners flew back to Britain, these three convention appearances their sole purpose for the trip across the Atlantic.

Otherworldly Holst
What a gem of an organist is Peter Sykes! Perhaps even better, what a fine musician, whatever instrument he plays or music he chooses to program!3 His own transcription of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets was beautifully made and impeccably realized in a Wednesday recital at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. From the lowest rumblings of the opening movement (Mars, the Bringer of War), with growling reeds and a flawless quick crescendo, to the final Vox Humana above strings (a most satisfactory sound for evoking Holst’s wordless female chorus) as Neptune, the Mystic subsided in echoes of the spheres, Sykes missed nary a nuance with his clever use of organs fore and aft (perhaps most fittingly in Mercury, the Winged Messenger). The Welte/Möller/Gould and Sons organ was an apt partner (continuing this convention’s fine record for careful pairing of instruments and players), but then, how could one go wrong with an instrument possessing a Divine Inspiration stop?4

A welcome German recitalist and some Americans playing
German music
My second recital of the convention introduced an outstanding German artist new to me, Elke Voelker (whose U.S. connections include study with Wolfgang Rübsam at the University of Chicago). Ms. Voelker is the first to record the complete organ works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert. Her program in the Basilica of St. Mary utilized a good-sounding four-manual Wicks organ (1949), greatly enhanced by the spacious six-second reverberation of this domed, marble-interior building, America’s first basilica (according to pew cards in the church). Two major works by Karg-Elert, his Symphonic Chorale: Ach, bleib’ mit deiner Gnade and the monumental Passacaglia (55 Variations) and Fugue on BACH, opus 150, were flanked by Wagner’s Festival Music from Die Meistersinger and Bach’s celebrated Air from Suite in D, BWV 1068, both in arrangements by Karg-Elert: so, in essence an entire program of music by the German impressionist.
Elke Voelker made convincing music from these many notes, handling the organ with panache and ease, managing her own page turns, and giving us many thrilling moments. The opening Wagner brought chills to the spine at the pedal entrances in familiar music from the opera, and the addition of the Chamade Trumpet to the final chord was a capping effect. The Symphonic Chorale, one of the composer’s better-known works, is of a reasonable length and very appealing. As for the lengthy BACH work, I am pleased to have heard it, but would not seek to repeat the experience in the near future.
Further musical highlights of this “German theme” were provided by the sterling American artist Stewart Wayne Foster (winner of the first Dallas International Organ Competition). I have never heard Foster play poorly, and his concert for the convention (heard in its second iteration on Thursday) was another example of superb results made possible by his carefully calibrated articulation always employed in service to the musical line. Foster’s attention to each voice, including the bass, reflects his extensive background in harpsichord continuo playing.
Partnered with the 2004 Glatter-Götz/Rosales two-manual organ of 50 stops, Foster showed what a small number of keyboards could be made to accomplish with skillful use of a sequencer coupled to an ear for color and utilizing stops in various octaves. Karg-Elert again, this time three of his lovely Pastels from the Lake of Constance (not necessarily what one would expect to be played so idiomatically on a two-manual tracker instrument) were prefaced by an attention-gripping reading of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 535, and a rhythmically infectious treatment of Buxtehude’s baroque dance-based chorale fantasy on Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, brightened with two appearances of the Zimbelstern, the second as counterpart to an improvised cadenza leading into the final cadence.
Three North American works, especially Rising Sun by Brian Sawyers, provided the “wow” factor for this program. It was good also to hear two of Samuel Adler’s Windsongs, and the winning work of the AGO organ composition competition, Canadian Rachel Laurin’s Prelude and Fugue in F Minor, with its reminiscence of the Dupré opus 7 work in the same key. Foster’s overall theme for the program, “Atmospheres: A Prayer for the Environment,” demonstrated his special affinity for unusual thematic programming. The organ, with both 16-foot flues and reeds on all divisions, and added 102⁄3 flue and 32-foot reed in the pedal, possessed a gravitas that was welcome in the favorable acoustic of Augustana Lutheran Church, St. Paul.
More German offerings were, of course, to be found in various convention programs. One could characterize Carla Edwards’s program as Germanic (Buxtehude, Bach), or German-inspired (Planyavsky’s lively Toccata alla Rumba, neatly dispatched on the recent two-manual Fisk organ in Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Shoreview; and Petr Eben’s astringent take on the ubiquitous Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C, his Hommage à Dietrich Buxtehude). A non-Teutonic exception was provided in Triptych of Fugues, an early work by Gerald Near. Though Minnesota-born, Near seems often to be curiously under-represented in programs featuring Minnesota composers. His three lovely contrapuntal movements were played here without the requisite suppleness of line needed for this composer’s idiosyncratic amalgam of lyricism with strict fugal form.
And, of course, the convention buzzed about Cameron Carpenter’s version of THE Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, an arrangement using selected added material from Romantic-era transcriptions by Busoni, Friedman, Godowsky, Grainger, Liszt, Tausig, Stokowski, and Sir Henry Wood, that turned the possibly-not-by-Bach work into a “ . . . sort of cumulative celebration flinging wide the gates of possibility.”5 I did not hear Mr. Carpenter’s program (there were simply too many concerts in one day), but his awesome technical prowess and showman’s style may mark a return to ”the good old days” of the Virgil Fox versus E. Power Biggs opposites in America’s concert life. Carpenter’s popularity seems a positive development if it signals a healthy resurgence of bankable diversity in organ playing. Anyone who can attract more people to organ concerts has my admiration and support. And having fun at a recital? What a great concept!

Final concert: Siegfried Matthus’s Te Deum (2005)
At 8:40 trumpets from the rear gallery sounded the opening fanfare to the ten-minute opening movement of Matthus’s monumental work, composed for the dedication of the reconstructed Frauenkirche in Dresden. One hour later the same trumpets signaled the start of the final movement (Amen), with most of the same music, though some appeared in different sequence. Most magical of all, the cathedral tower bells were used in the very last measures, gently dying away as the chorus quietly intoned over and over again Te Deum laudamus.
English visitors having departed, it was left to local singers to provide the choral forces for this great work. Magnum Chorum, the Minnesota Boychoir, the National Lutheran Choir, and VocalEssence Ensemble Singers and Chorus, each group garbed distinctively, comprised the voices assembled under the confident baton of conductor Philip Brunelle. There were six vocal soloists, plus John Scott (ex London St. Paul’s) playing the significant organ part, not the least of which was his fine rendition of the Bach Toccata in D Minor, above which composer Matthus had set a text from The Organ by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae, beginning “Listen to the rushing wind in the silently expecting organ which it is preparing for its sacred song.” Herr Matthus was in attendance for this highly successful first American performance. Ovations were lengthy, loud, and deserved.
The first third of this closing concert united the three European national strands together with a fascinating selection of choral music: the Messiaen motet mentioned earlier and an excerpt from Dupré’s early De Profundis; the curiously moving avant garde work by John Tavener (“Verses Written on an Ecstasy” from Ultimos Ritos) in which four soloists in the chancel, the Magnum Chorum behind us in the nave, with larger forces split on both sides of the transepts, provided a cruciform arrangement of choral forces. The singers mused in ever more significant phrase fragments based on an underlying taped performance of the Crucifixus from Bach’s B-Minor Mass, at first barely audible, but ultimately overwhelming by the end of this effective work. An intense rendition of Stephen Paulus’s modern choral masterpiece, the Pilgrims’ Hymn that concludes his church opera The Three Hermits, realized the exquisitely chosen harmonies that find the simplest of resolutions in the work’s octave unison Amens.
John Scott played a convincing first performance of an appealing organ work commissioned for the convention. Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi took his inspiration from a poem by Emily Dickinson, And Hit a World, at Every Plunge. In program notes the composer mused, “. . . it is certainly not a comfortable piece. At some point I realized that I was . . . harking back to the very first time I heard an organ piece by Messiaen.” Organized as variations on an underlying twelve-tone row, the piece is “restless.” In a disarmingly honest description the composer noted that “the variations are very different in character and length, from funeral march to moto perpetuo. Although [the piece] aspires to a triumphant ending, it never quite seems to get there.” Indeed the work ended with three tonal chords, interrupted by cluster-crashes, leading to an ultimately quiet culmination. I found it engrossing, a work I would definitely want to hear again.6
Another convention choral commission, The Love of God by Aaron Jay Kernis, suffered from pitch problems in its first performance. The pre-Matthus part of the concert ended with an audience sing-along of Hubert Parry’s O Praise Ye the Lord (1894), cementing the English choral music arc of the week.

Organ concertos, American and “Jacobean”
Benson Great Hall of Bethel University was the site of this convention’s organ concerto program: four works for organ and instruments, conducted by Philip Brunelle, with organists Stephen Cleobury and James Diaz. A fine American eclectic three-manual 67-stop instrument by Blackinton Organ Company dominated the ample stage and was well balanced in this large, yet intimate-feeling, auditorium.
Ron Nelson’s Pebble Beach, commissioned for the 1984 AGO national convention in San Francisco, opened the program. Diaz’s sparkling playing was abetted by brass and percussion in this loud, lively curtain-raiser. Winner of the 2000 Dallas International Organ Competition, Diaz was also the brilliant soloist for Stephen Paulus’s Grand Concerto (Number 3), a Dallas Symphony commission first heard in 2004 (with the most recent Dallas Competition winner, Bradley Hunter Welch, as soloist).
Paulus is a composer who not only knows his craft, but one who has something to say with that facility. This major work has many impressive moments from its beginning with the organ and lower strings, through a second movement featuring the organ’s Harmonic Flute, then orchestral flute and strings, and finally the organ’s strings—a lovely blend of timbres. Building to a climax, the movement ends with a reference to the hymn Come, Come Ye Saints (a favorite of the composer’s father) and pizzicato lower strings. In the final movement (marked Jubilant) there is joy in virtuosity, especially in the rapid jumping between manuals, a lovely bit of lyricism when the high strings introduce the folk melody O Waly, Waly, and a knock-your-socks-off pedal cadenza. The audience loved this piece, the only one requiring a complete symphonic complement of instruments. Woodwinds and brass having joined the strings, the orchestra made its best showing of the day in this culminating performance. Cheering and ovations were deserved.
The other two concertos were in the capable hands of Stephen Cleobury, who had a rather thankless assignment in Calvin Hampton’s Concerto for Organ and Strings. Understandably, the program committee chose this work commissioned for the previous Twin Cities national meeting in 1980. Preparing at that time for my own concerto program in Orchestra Hall, I did not hear this work by a dear friend from undergraduate days at Oberlin, although subsequently I learned that Calvin himself did not regard the piece highly. Hearing it now I did not find the string writing particularly apt, and I am sad that this was the only piece to represent such a gifted American composer during this 2008 convention. The ending, at least, is memorable, with organ arpeggios providing a bit of filigree above orchestra strings, which were, unfortunately, not well tuned.
Cleobury’s second stint on the organ bench was as soloist in Judith Bingham’s convention commission, Jacob’s Ladder—Concerto for Organ and Strings. (In her notes for the program book, she wrote that her inspiration was derived from the first view of a photograph showing the laddered effect of the attractive organ façade.) Four brief movements bearing programmatic titles showed a fine correlation of component parts to produce an appealing ensemble work. Once again the upper strings were quite messy.
Hindsight is, of course, always more successful than foresight, but it did seem as if three ensemble works rather than four could have allowed more rehearsal time for each, and in a day jam-packed with musical events, would have been quite enough for the audiences as well.
Pipedreams Live (and program long)
We all owe much to Michael Barone for his continuing contributions to the public awareness of the pipe organ, its wide range of literature, and many diverse styles of instruments, as heard weekly in the successful Minnesota Public Radio series. The service he renders to the profession is unparalleled in today’s media. That said, it was fortunate that this Wednesday evening audience in Wooddale Church consisted almost exclusively of the already convinced. Anticipatory at the beginning, fatigued or comatose after a two-hour and fifteen minute program without intermission, many of us would have appreciated an earlier employment of the organ’s cancel button.
As for repertory, it was a program in which the oldest piece heard was Joseph Jongen’s 1935 Toccata, opus 104, the program opener, given a brilliant rendition by this year’s NYACOP winner Michael Unger. Then followed a steady stream of new and unfamiliar pieces played by first-rate players who slid on and off the bench either of the movable console or of the attached mechanical-action one of the large Visser-Rowland organ: Herndon Spillman, Calvin Taylor, Barone himself, splendid jazz player Barbara Dennerlein, Ken Cowan, Aaron David Miller, and Douglas Reed (who brought the marathon to an end with William Albright’s Tango Fantastico and Alla Marcia, aka The AGO Fight Song!).
Along the way, Jason Roberts, winner of the National Competition in Organ Improvisation, perhaps sensing the encroaching weariness, gave a brief example of his art in a French Classic idiom; well-loved Lutheran church musician Paul Manz was warmly applauded after the playing of his chorale-improvisation Now Thank We All Our God by Scott Montgomery; and Isabelle Demers, in the penultimate program slot, played with consummate musicianship a gentle and moving Prelude in E Minor by Gerald Bales and Paulus’s As if the whole creation cried.

AGO business/The business of music
The business meetings of the Guild during national conventions have been fun and musically rewarding during the six years of outgoing president Fred Swann’s administration. This time the afternoon event was held at Central Lutheran Church, where Marilyn Keiser gave first performances of a prize-winning work and a commissioned movement to be featured at the Organ Spectacular (officially scheduled for 19 October 2008) during this International Year of the Organ: Bernard Wayne Sanders’ Ornament of Grace for organ and solo melody instrument (published by Concordia Publishing House) and Stephen Paulus’s Blithely Breezing Along, a seven-minute solo organ piece (available from Paulus Publications).
An impressive number of exhibitors (102) displayed their wares in the exhibition spaces of the Minneapolis Hilton Hotel. From Nada-Chair back slings (for organists with “Bach Pain”) one could wander to composer Stephen Paulus’s booth, often manned by father and son Andrew; or stop by the AGO national headquarters table, where a newly released compact disc of Conversations and Lessons with David Craighead preserves some taped lessons with Judith Hancock as well as more recent responses to queries about various pedagogical topics as posed by an unidentified interviewer. (Buzz has it that the interlocutor is Richard Troeger.) The purchase of this disc also triggered the bonus gift of “A Grand Occasion,” an AGO cookbook from the past. This brought on extreme nostalgia for several familiar figures who contributed some favorite recipes: Robert Anderson [caramelized carrots], Howard (Buddy) Ross [Shrimp Howard], and L. Cameron Johnson [Philly-Miracle Whip Dip]!
Some random items of interest found in various publishers’ displays: the recently republished Distler organ works in an “Urtext” edition at Bärenreiter; a reminder via a special brochure from Breitkopf that 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth; Calvert Johnson’s valuable new edition of Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali (with variant chromatic alterations from the Torino Manuscript) at Wayne Leupold; from ECS Publishing, free copies of their prize-winning anthem heard at the opening celebratory service, Stephen R. Fraser’s Rejoice, the Lord is King (SATB and organ), with its especially haunting, chromatic shift from a melodic F-sharp to F-natural between the second and third measures of the idiomatic and very effective organ accompaniment; from Oxford University Press, a special brochure on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, in commemoration of this year’s 50th anniversary of his death.
A pre-convention mailing had brought advance word of a special recording titled Real French Sounds to be had at the convention, the promotional gift from the Association of French Organ Builders. This two-compact disc set comprises an elegant set of performances by various French organists, including such well-known players as Olivier Latry, Daniel Roth, Thierry Escaich, and Pierre Pincemaille, playing fifteen historic instruments (restored by the firms Atelier Bertrand Cattiaux, Jean-Baptiste Gaupillat, Michel Jurine, Patrick Armand, Giroud Successeurs, Nicolas Toussaint, and Jean-Pascal Villard). It is, overall, a useful demonstration of some lovely organs.
American pipe organ builders were well represented here, as were makers of digital instruments. The Twin Cities provided good examples of outstanding organs from many of the exhibitors, as identified throughout this report. Happily, I acquired only one new trinket, a black stop knob key chain from the Wicks Organ Company. It joins useful previous white ones, giving my collection some needed diversity. A year’s worth of compact discs and DVDs were available for purchase, and all this commerce, especially that transacted during late night hours, was made more pleasant by an accessible cash bar.

Summary thoughts
I heard it expressed several times that “this was Philip Brunelle’s program.” The wide-ranging, often challenging exploration of new music (seventeen commissions and competition prize-winning works were listed on the Convention Evaluation Form), plus the programming of other recent works surely new to a majority of the convention goers, reflected both appetite and taste of the prodigious program chair, this year celebrating his 40th anniversary as organist-choirmaster of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. Brunelle certainly generated a great deal of musical excitement, not only as planner, but also as conductor for the two major orchestral and choral/orchestral programs.
That the music of Stephen Paulus held such a prominent place at this convention was particularly gratifying. Currently AGO’s composer of the year, the Minnesotan is one of America’s finest, an artist who consistently produces challenging music for organ and for choral forces as part of his ongoing artistic efforts. He is also a genuinely kind person whose many interactions with convention-goers was much appreciated.
A personal regret was that there was not at least a tad more celebration of Hugo Distler’s centenary, which actually occurred on Tuesday, June 24, right in the midst of this gathering. One workshop, one choral composition (the motet Singet dem Herrn, heard on two days at one of four concurrent worship services presented on Monday and Thursday), and that was all. In Lutheran territory? (At least St. Paul’s Luther Seminary had presented a March symposium on the composer’s life and works!)
Appreciated amenities: possibly the easiest to see, least self-destructing name tags of any convention in my experience, and a many-pocketed, multi-zippered convention tote bag with an external water bottle holder, the whole a classy production that also ranks with the best ever: no expense spared here, and usable at home, too.
And, certainly not least, a smoothly functioning hospitality/information center at the hotel, staffed by Twin Cities AGO chapter volunteers. There one could find nibbles, coffee and water, transportation schedules, gay pride guides, and the occasional leftover workshop handouts, among which two of the more interesting were on Latin American Organ Literature from Cristina Garcia Banegas and Organ Music from Czech Composers from Anita Smisek.

And finally . . .
A tally of convention events from Saturday afternoon through Thursday evening gave these numbers: three open performance and improvisation competition rounds; four evening concerts plus two performances of the daytime concerto program; fifteen organ recitals, each performed twice, plus two carillon concerts and nine Rising Stars organ programs; sixty-six workshops including choral reading sessions; an opening evening church service, four individual daytime worship opportunities, each given twice, plus Evensong and Matins services. [For complete details, refer to the convention website <www.ago2008.org&gt;.]
My apologies to artists whose programs I was not able to attend. Many are friends, or friends of friends, or students of friends. It must be obvious that no one person, not even the proverbial little old one in tennis shoes, could cover as large and event-filled a gathering as this national convention. The time in the Twin Cities remained enjoyable primarily because I did not attempt to do everything.
Throughout the week there were many cherished meetings with people not encountered often enough, individuals who trigger memories of shared experiences, ones who make such professional gatherings personal. To mention a very few of them: Marjorie Jackson Rasche, FAGO, now of Galveston, TX, whom I met at my very first AGO regional convention 52 years ago when both of us were young Ohioans; Carl and Kathy Crozier, of happy Honolulu memories; professional colleagues Jim Christie, Susan Marchant, and Cal Johnson; and new acquaintance, Alexander Schreiner’s son John.
Of memorable chats while traveling on the buses two stood out in particular: one with West Point organist Craig Williams; and another with Patricia Scace from Maryland, who told of acquiring a John Challis instrument that turned out to be the first harpsichord I ever played.
And finally, the realization that as the Twin Cities 2008 national convention became part of AGO history on Friday June 28, there remained only 735 days until the July 4 opening of the 2010 meeting in our nation’s capital city. Start saving up for it now!

David Kelley is Director of Music at Concordia Lutheran Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and Assistant Conductor of CoroAllegro, Delaware’s premier chamber choir. His compositions have been included in The Crowning Glory, a collection of hymn descants, and the Delaware Organ Book, a collection of solo organ works by Delaware composers. Mr. Kelley recently began doctoral study in organ at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.

An increasingly popular composer of organ and choral music, Craig Phillips was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1961. By the time he was in his early thirties, Phillips had won First Prize in the Clarence Mader Competition for organ composition (in 1994). Since then, he has published works with increasing frequency, and has completed commissions for the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, several American cathedrals, and such notable performers as the Chenaults and Tom Trenney. Phillips’s compositions are engaging and satisfying, and they demonstrate his understanding not only of the voices and instruments for which he writes, but also his audience. He recently launched a website about his work: www.CraigPhillipsComposer.com. Dr. Phillips and I spoke in February 2008.

David Kelley (DK): You have extensive musical training, including a doctorate among other things, but you were not trained as a composer.
Craig Phillips (CP): I was never a composition major; I did study composition when I was an undergrad, for two years as a minor. Then I was a theory minor at Eastman during my graduate studies. I also studied orchestration at Eastman and then coached with Byron Adams here in Los Angeles. Organ was my primary focus during my student years, but I also had been composing since the age of fourteen, and I wanted to keep it going all the time. I think I was mainly known as an organist, especially early on, and it’s just fascinating that I’ve ended up in some ways much more well known as a composer: that’s pretty much since the mid ’90s.

DK: What motivated you initially to start composing? Fourteen is a very early age to begin that!
CP: I’d been playing the piano since I was seven; I would just sit down and improvise and come up with little ditties and so forth; I decided to start writing them down on my own. Then I was encouraged a lot in that direction by the organist at the church I grew up in, a woman named Sharron Lyon, and then when I started studying organ as well, with Peter Fyfe, he also encouraged me in that direction, so that had a lot to do with it.

DK: The liner notes for your CD “A Festival Song: The Music of Craig Phillips” suggest that your theory background is a large contributing factor to the development of your style. Do you think that those studies really enabled you to grow as a composer—or do you even use theory when you compose?
CP: (laughs) You know, I don’t think about it that much at this point! It’s all in my craft, I guess, and because I studied counterpoint and all the theory courses, there is a very solid foundation.

DK: So do you use theory as a tool?
CP: As a tool? Definitely. It’s really the tool that allows you to look at and understand something of how the great masters put their scores together, which in turn can provide an underpinning and foundation for your own work. That being said, once you have that foundation, I think it ultimately frees you to “break all the rules” as it were and forge your own path.

DK: To my ear, one of the things that I admire about your style is its very fluent and mobile harmonic language. You travel very quickly to different places and move very easily.
CP: Yes.

DK: How would you describe your own style?
CP: Well, I don’t think it’s anything you could put a label on—yes, there are modal inflections and that sort of thing, perhaps a sort of romantic, lyrical leaning. I think it’s really an amalgamation of a lot of my influences: the music that I’ve loved growing up and as an organist as well. I think a lot of the organ composers influenced me to a large degree.

DK: I have often heard a little whispering of Herbert Howells, perhaps, in there; maybe a little Duruflé . . .
CP: Absolutely, others have said that as well. I play their music, I know their music—so that becomes a part of me.

DK: Are there any other composers that have been particularly influential?
CP: Of course—Bach—probably the greatest!

DK: The counterpoint?
CP: Yes, and then I’ve always loved the Romantic repertoire as well; I think that’s also a major influence on my style. And I listened to tons of pop music when I was growing up, and even that, I think, has a certain role in what ultimately makes up my style.

DK: Perhaps contributing to your ability to move from one place to another quickly?
CP: (animated) Maybe! I don’t know, because I grew up in the ’70s listening to all kinds of music, Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Bartók, and so forth, and lots of rock/pop—even film music had an influence I would say, so . . . who knows!

DK: (laughs)
CP: You know, I don’t sit down and analyze my own music that often.

DK: There probably isn’t time for that!
CP: (laughs) This is true, and I’d just as soon leave that to others! I tend to be very instinctive and intuitive about the whole process.

DK: Your organ works are very idiomatic, and they lie under the hands quite well.
CP: I hope so! (laughs)

DK: That indicates to me that you have a performing pedigree, if you will; I have to wonder if you do your composing at the keyboard, or if you do any improvisation—certain elements of the fantasy pieces, the Fantasy on Torah Song in particular, seem almost improvisatory in style. Do you bring those types of elements into your composition?
CP: Let’s see . . . I improvise, but not on that level—I really was not trained in improvisation—I could not just sit down and improvise a piece on the level of, say, the Torah Song. I have to work these things out very carefully, and usually at the keyboard; not necessarily at the organ, but at the keyboard most of the time. But yes, I do think there is an improvisatory aspect towards the way I develop a lot of my ideas—especially the fantasy pieces such as you’re talking about. So it doesn’t bother me if these pieces come off as improvisatory, I think that is just the way my imagination tends to work.

DK: It gives them a spontaneity that is very enticing.
CP: Yes, I think that’s right, and I’ve written several pieces in that same vein actually—some recently—that aren’t yet in print. It seems to be a successful formula for me in terms of organ pieces.

DK: You compose on commission quite a bit.
CP: Yes. I am lucky to have pretty much a steady stream of commissions.

DK: How do you go about tailoring a piece for a commission? I would imagine your own technical ability might lead you astray if you’re writing for a particular audience. Is that ever a problem or something you keep in mind?
CP: Sometimes they stipulate the difficulty level of a piece or specific voicing and so forth. The commissions I’ve had don’t often put limits on me—but I think it’s great discipline to be able to write something that’s very simple if that’s what they’re looking for. I remember the Torah Song fantasy: I think the rules specified that it would be a concert piece, but of moderate difficulty, which is kind of an odd combination—I think I managed to strike a happy medium in that piece.

DK: And that one won a prize.
CP: Yes, the 1994 Clarence Mader Foundation prize in organ composition.

DK: How generalized must you be in assigning registrations to organ works, and how much leeway do you imagine your performers and interpreters having? Some composers, especially French composers, are very specific; many American composers give nothing more than dynamic indications. How do you make those types of decisions?
CP: I have typically put in registrations in most of my pieces, at least as a guideline, but I’ve always told the people I have written these pieces for that they should have leeway to do what works on their instrument, or if they feel strongly about doing something a certain way I’d like to leave a certain amount of freedom to the performer. But I usually suggest various colors or the kind of sound I’m thinking about, and a lot of my pieces do have that sort of French romantic registration ideal behind them.

DK: How much does the instrument at All Saints’ [Beverly Hills] influence—
CP: Oh, probably it does! (laughs)

DK: That’s where you spend most of your time, I imagine.
CP: So it does, I think—the colors that are on that particular instrument often influence what I indicate in my pieces—it’s a pretty comprehensive instrument, I might add! But they can be expanded on.

DK: Well, every organ’s different.
CP: Yes.

DK: I know you have been commissioned by the Association of Anglican Musicians, by Washington National Cathedral, and your works are often performed at All Saints’. Do you feel that you are part of a continuing Anglican musical tradition in the church?
CP: I think I could put myself into that category. Most of my choral commissions have been from Episcopal churches or cathedrals. And the choir that I work with here at All Saints’ is one of the best—I don’t mind saying that I think it’s one of the best choirs in the country in the Anglican tradition, so that’s had a big influence on me, and on my choral writing. We perform a great deal of the English repertoire, as well as American music that flows from that tradition, and I think my own music certainly falls into that continuum.

DK: How would you describe the essential elements of that style?
CP: In terms of the way that I write for the choir, I’m used to a straight-tone sound, and really favor that sound. In the Anglican approach to choral singing there is also a great attention to word accentuation or localized word stress, and that is something that I pay a great deal of attention to in my setting of texts. And as far as texture goes, I use a combination of polyphonic and homophonic textures that ebb and flow—and not strictly one or the other.

DK: A hybrid.
CP: It is sort of a hybrid in a way.

DK: Many English organs are designed primarily as liturgical instruments and choral accompanying instruments, and that certainly has affected many of the composers coming out of those places; do you think that that’s something that you relate to as well, or are you more in that French category where the instrument is more soloistic?
CP: I think maybe I’m a hybrid as far as that goes as well, perhaps leaning to the French side. A lot of my commissions have pretty substantial organ parts—a lot of my choral pieces in general: I like to think of the organ and choir as basically equal partners most of the time, unless specifically it’s not intended to be that way. But, generally speaking, that’s the way I like to treat the organ.

DK: Do you think that there are specifically American traits to the Anglican tradition here that distinguish it from our British counterparts, and perhaps in your works in particular?
CP: I’m sure. I think we take their tradition and make it our own in certain ways, because we have our own unique set of influences—American folk tunes, jazz, spirituals, and popular music. I’m thinking of the New York composers Calvin Hampton, Larry King, and all sorts of people . . . David Hurd and others. I think a lot of that music flows out of that Anglican tradition but is also highly original and very much American, I pretty much see myself falling into that tradition.

DK: Perhaps there’s a little more adventuresome spirit in the American style?
CP: I think you could possibly say that. (pauses) Not to say anything negative about the English at all!

DK: No, no. Well, there’s that classic Anglican restraint, which sometimes we Americans don’t do quite as well.
CP: Probably we’re less restrained. Perhaps. (laughs) I don’t know!

DK: Do you have particular favorites among your own works, pieces that came off particularly well in terms of your expectations when you sat down to write them, or perhaps an organ piece that you like to play a lot?
CP: One of my special pieces is not a solo organ work, but the Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra, which was my first big commission, and it led to all sorts of other things and opened a lot of doors—I think of that as an extremely special piece. Well, I try to make every piece (laughs) something to think of in that way. The chorale preludes are in some ways among the most popular things that I’ve done, and I use those all the time. The Toccata on Antioch, for instance: I sat down and wrote that little set of pieces [Joy to the World: Three Preludes for Christmas] a few years ago, but I use them all the time, they’re very popular, they get played often. Also the Triptych [for Organ] that I wrote in the mid ’90s I use frequently. Those can be played together or separately; I use them separately all the time. They’re quite effective in the service context, and I’ve used them as recital pieces as well. Of my pieces for organ and instruments, the Suite for Organ, Brass [Quintet] and Percussion has certainly been one of the most successful for me.

DK: We spoke earlier about your Fantasy on Torah Song, which is one of my favorites; another I particularly like is your Fanfare. Can you tell me a little about the origin of that work—it was a commission, wasn’t it?
CP: It was commissioned by Pat Gillis, a parishioner at All Saints’, Beverly Hills when we installed a new fanfare trumpet on the organ. It’s a big high-pressure hooded trumpet—it’s quite a brilliant stop—and he actually was the one who paid to have it added to the organ. It was his wish to commission a piece to feature the new trumpet; also it was dedicated to his mother, who was a long-time church organist. So I designed this work to really “show off” the new trumpet stop. It’s basically a rondo with a “big tune” on the solo trumpet making several appearances, and other splashy, colorful things in between. That’s another piece that I think works extremely well as either a recital piece or in the context of a big service or what have you—if you have the right organ.

DK: So, what’s next for you? What’s on your horizon?
CP: Well, I just got today—believe it or not, it was today—confirmation of a commission for the 2010 AGO convention in Washington, D.C. This is for a new work for organ and instruments. It looks like it will be a piece for chamber organ and four winds, probably ten minutes in a single movement . . . the idea is still under development! (laughs) So, that’s kind of a big thing that’s coming up, and there are some other interesting things in the works.

DK: And I believe you told me that you’re launching a website?
CP: Yes, it’s actually up and running now, and has a complete list of my compositions, both published and unpublished, as well as a list of current commissions and other information. You can find it at
<www.craigphillipscomposer.com&gt;.

DK: When you get a commission, how do you decide what to do? I’m sure some of these commissions can be very specific, but others may be rather general.
CP: It depends. If it’s, for instance, a choral piece like what I’ve just been working on, the primary task is to come up with a good text. The people who commission a piece are usually looking for something for a particular occasion, so [we have to find] an appropriate text; usually something in the public domain, or, once or twice, we’ve done things where the text was commissioned simultaneously. So that can be fun, too.

DK: That would be a rather rare opportunity.
CP: I wrote a big Easter anthem a few years ago called On This Bright Easter Morn, which has been very popular. The text was also commissioned and written by a poet named Janine Applegate, who lives in Portland. I collaborated on two pieces with her, which was a lot of fun. But generally speaking I tend to go with things that are in the public domain.

DK: That’s always a safe bet.
CP: It’s a safe bet—less complicated. I’ve set a couple of works to texts by more recent poets—secular pieces—whose foundations, alas, don’t yet allow their texts to be set to music for publication. But they generally specify a length of a piece, and I ponder . . . (laughs) . . . ponder the text or whatever the idea for the piece is, and then just get going. Coming up with the initial idea for a piece, I think, is always the most difficult part—once you have it, and you know it’s right, things begin to flow. With most commissions usually people have a general idea of what they’re looking for. I received one recently through a church and an arts foundation: they’re going to send me some paintings from local artists to look at and then devise a set of pieces based on probably two or three of these paintings— it will be something totally different; I don’t yet know what I’ll do with that!

DK: It will be your own version of Pictures at an Exhibition.
CP: Very much; that’s the idea they had in mind. So that will be something quite different, at least something I have not done before.

DK: Is there anything that you would communicate to a young crop of organists, given the chance?
CP: I don’t know if many of them are interested in composition or not, but I would say it’s good to stay open—to new organ compositions in general, and to the idea that being an organist and a composer is a long, long tradition. Being a performer and a composer was really the norm until fairly recently in the scheme of things, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t still be that way, in my opinion. Being an organist and a performer and a composer . . . it all works together for me, so . . . (laughs) I think it’s a great combination.

DK: Well, it’s working for a lot of other people, too: they think it’s a good combination for you (laughs) as well!
CP: It’s a good combination for me, but others can do it!

DK: Thanks very much for speaking with me today, and keep up the good work!
CP: Well, thank you very much!

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Craig Phillips Organ and Choral Works, and Recordings
Organized by scoring and title, with publisher and catalog number

Organ Solo
Fanfare (Selah, 160-640)
Fantasia on the tune Finnian (Selah, coming soon)
Fantasia on Sine Nomine (Selah, 160-676)
Fantasy Toccata (Selah, coming soon)
Fantasy: Torah Song (Yisrael V’oraita) (Selah, 160-857)
Fantasy: Terra Beata (Paraclete Press, PPM00431)
Festival Piece (Selah, 160-860)
Glad Praises We Sing (Selah, 160-814). Four Preludes for Organ: Kremser, Hyfrydol, Nettleton, Engelberg
Joy to the World (Selah, 160-815). Three Preludes for Christmas: Divinum Mysterium, Forest Green, Toccata on Antioch
Organ Music for the Seasons, Vol. 4 (Augsburg Fortress, 9780800637507). Prelude on Richmond
Partita on Lobe den Herren (Selah, 160-691)
Partita on Veni Creator Spiritus (Selah, 160-440)
Prelude on Victimae paschali (MorningStar, MSM-10-513), from Three Plainchants for Organ, ed. Lynn Trapp
Psalm Prelude (Selah, 160-875)
Toccata on Hyfrydol (Selah, 160-675)
Tribute (A lullaby for organ) (Selah, 160-682)
Triptych for Organ (MorningStar, MSM-10-941)
Trumpet Tune (MorningStar, MSM-10-926)
Wondrous Love (Fred Bock Music Co., BG0945). 12 Preludes for Organ (includes “Aria”)
25 Harmonizations and Descants (Selah, 160.731). Volume XI of series

Organ and Instruments
A Song Without Words (E. C. Schirmer, #6750), for cello and organ
March for Trumpet & Organ (Selah, 160-970)
Night Song for Oboe and Organ (or harpsichord) (Selah, in preparation)
Pastorale & Dance (Selah, 160-975), for bassoon & organ
Prelude & Exultation for Organ, Brass Quintet, and Percussion (Selah, full score 160-985, organ score 160-986, instrumental parts 160-987)
Serenade for Horn and Organ (Oxford, 0-19-386763-X)
Suite for Organ and Brass Quintet and Percussion (Selah, full score 160-981, organ score 160-982, instrumental parts 160-983)

Unpublished Works for Organ Solo or Organ and Instruments
Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra (1995) c. 13 minutes. 2 flutes, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn in F, 2 trumpets, trombone, strings. Score and parts available on rental.
Sonata for Cello and Organ (2004). Score available for sale.
Sonata for Organ (1983). Score available for sale.
Second Sonata for Organ (2001). Score available for sale.
Variations on a Kyrie (1995). Concert work for organ duet. Score available for sale.

Choral
A Festival Song (E. C. Schirmer, #5440 & #5441), SATB chorus, soprano and baritone soli, and orchestra
A True Hymn (Selah, 418-624), SATB and organ (text of George Herbert)
And I Saw the Holy City (Oxford, ISBN 0-19-386712-5), SATB and organ
Antiphon: Let All the World in Every Corner Sing (Paraclete, PPM00435), SATB and organ
The Beatitudes (Selah, 410-516), SATB and organ
Benedictus Dominus Deus (A Song of Zechariah) (Selah, 410-887), SATB and organ
Christ, mighty Savior (Paraclete, PPM00538), SATB and organ (alternate version with strings and organ)
Dies Gratiae (Requiem Reflections) (Selah, 440-901), SATB, soprano and baritone soli, and orchestra
Festival Eucharist (Paraclete, PPM00624), choral score with congregational parts, with organ
Festival Eucharist (Paraclete, PPM00624FS), SATB, congregation, descant, brass quintet, timpani and organ
For God So Loved the World (Paraclete, PPM00606), SATB a cappella with solo soprano
Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken (hymn concertato) (Selah, 425-888), SAB, 2 trumpets, timpani and organ
Gracious God (Paraclete, PPM00132), SATB, organ and flute
Great Is the Lord (Paraclete, PPM00813), SATB and organ
Hodie Christus Natus Est (Trinitas, 4502), SATB and organ
The Holly and the Ivy (Paraclete, PPM00018), SATB and organ
The House of Faith Has Many Rooms (Selah, 410-691), SATB and organ
How the Grandeur of Creation (Selah, 410-639), SATB, organ (optional strings)
I Love All Beauteous Things (Trinitas, 4610), SATB and organ
Keep Watch, Dear Lord (Selah, 420-526), SATB and organ
Light’s Glittering Morn (Paraclete, PPM00427), SATB and organ
(A version with brass quintet and timpani is also available from the publisher)
Missa Brevis (Washington National Cathedral) (Trinitas, 4583), SATB and organ
Morning Glory, Starlit Sky (Paraclete, PPM00835), SATB a capella
On This Bright Easter Morn (Trinitas, 4501), SATB, organ, brass quintet
People, Look East! (Selah, 405-103), unison, organ, and optional descant
The Preces and Responses (Paraclete, PPM00211), SATB and organ
Psalm 34 (E. C. Schirmer, 5364), two-part treble and organ
Psalm 84 (Paraclete, PPM09729), SATB and organ
Psalm 103 (Trinitas, 4507), SATB and organ
Ride on in Majesty (Trinitas, 4580), SATB anthem with organ
The Risen Sun (Selah, 420-337)
Rorate Caeli (Trinitas, 4500), SATB a cappella
So Much to Sing About (E. C. Schirmer, #5365), SATB and organ
Teach me, my God and King (Paraclete, PPM00303), SATB motet, unaccompanied
Thee Will I Praise (E. C. Schirmer, #5718), SATB and organ
Version with organ and brass quintet (E. C. Schirmer, #5719 & 5719A)
There’s a Voice in the Wilderness Crying (Selah, 422-903), two-part choir and organ
Transfiguration (Selah, 405-390), SATB and organ
Two Advent Anthems (Selah, 405-146), SATB, organ and oboe
The Unsearchable Riches (Paraclete, PPM00625), SATB and organ
We Walk by Faith (Trinitas, 4611), SATB divisi and organ

Unpublished Choral Works
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life (2005), SATB motet, unaccompanied
Lord, You now have set your servant free (2006), SATB anthem, with organ, brass quintet and timpani
Magnificat (1993) c. 9 minutes, score and parts available on rental, SATB chorus, string orchestra and organ
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D (2003), SATB canticles with organ
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D-flat (2002), SATB canticles with organ
O Light Invisible (2003), SATB motet, a cappella
The Preces and Responses (A-flat) (2002), SATB, unaccompanied
Rune of Hospitality (2003), SATB anthem, unaccompanied
Send forth your light (2002), SATB anthem with organ, based on Psalm 43
Sweet Music, Heavenly Rare (2006), SATB motet, unaccompanied
The Passion According to St. John (2008), SATB chorus, three soloists, unaccompanied
Though every tongue shall spend its fire (2003), SATB anthem with organ
You Shall Know the Truth (2005), SATB anthem with organ

Recordings
A Choral Feast (2001) (Gothic, G-49126), The Choir of Men & Boys, Washington National Cathedral, Douglas Major, conductor. “Gloria” from Missa Brevis
A Festival Song: The Music of Craig Phillips (2004) (Gothic, G-49207), The Choir of All Saints’ Beverly Hills; Tom Foster, conductor; Craig Phillips, organist.
Song of Zechariah: Benedictus Dominus Deus
Teach Me, My God and King
Serenade for Horn and Organ
Psalm 34
Pastorale for Bassoon and Organ
The House of Faith Has Many Rooms
And I Saw the Holy City
Ride On in Majesty
Fanfare for Organ
Keep Watch, Dear Lord
A Song Without Words for Cello and Organ
A Festival Song
Be Still My Soul (2006) (Gothic, G-49251), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Dale Adelmann, conductor. The Risen Sun, Transfiguration, We Walk by Faith
Blasts from the Past Century (2006) (Pro Organo, CD 7197), David Heller, organ. Fantasy Toccata
Burnished Bright (2006) (Paraclete, GDCD 040), Gabriel V Brass Quintet, David Chalmers, organ. Suite for Organ, Brass and Percussion
Easter (1997) (Gothic, G-49097), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Thomas Foster, conductor. On this bright Easter morn
On A Sunday Afternoon (2005) (JAV Recordings, JAV 149), Todd Wilson, organ; Yvonne Caruthers, cello. A Song Without Words for Cello and Organ
Organ Americana (2004) (Pro Organo, CD 7196), Tom Trenney, organ. Toccata on “Antioch,” Prelude on “Kremser,” Fantasy on “Torah Song”
Seasons of Festivity (1997) (Arkay Records, AR6162), Marilyn Keiser, organ. Prelude on “Kremser”
Silence & Music (1993) (Gothic, G-49064), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Thomas Foster, conductor. Hodie, Christus natus est
Sinfonia Festiva (2005) (Summit Records, DCD 436), Paul Skevington, organ; Washington Symphonic Brass. Psalm Prelude, Fanfare, Suite for Organ, Brass and Percussion
Small Wonder (2003) (Pro Organo, CD 7190), Christmas at St. Paul’s, K Street, Washington, D. C. The Holly and the Ivy (arr. Phillips)
Spiritual Pairs (1996) (Pro Organo, CD 7067), Marilyn Keiser, organ. If you will only let God guide you