Clarence Dickinson on YouTube

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Mississippi. His interviews with William Teague, Thomas Richner, Nora Williams, and Albert Russell have also appeared in The Diapason.

Introduction
The reputation of organist, composer, and educator Clarence Dickinson (1873–1969) has suffered undeserved neglect among American church musicians since the 1950s. By the time he retired as organist-choirmaster of the Brick Church in New York City, changes in taste and style had radically altered what was considered acceptable in church music and organ design. Following Dr. Dickinson’s retirement in 1960, the magnificent Skinner organ he played for over forty years was discarded, and his music gradually fell out of favor. Today his music lies largely forgotten. A recent search of a leading used music catalog produced 25 full pages of anthem titles by Clarence Dickinson that had been discarded by church music libraries throughout the country.
As we all know, styles are constantly changing, with one period of music, style of composition, or set of performance practices replaced by the next. Dr. Dickinson himself put the case well in his 1962 speech to the American Choral Directors’ Association:

    I suppose it is always a little rash to make any predictions about the future, because we seem always to be like the little boy who asked his mother whether the preacher was right when he said that we are dust, and will return to dust. When she said, “Yes,” little Johnny asked, “Is that pile of dust under my bed coming or going?”
    When I was a student in Berlin, Strauss was writing the latest of his tone poems. Heinrich Reimann, my organ teacher, played the first Berlin performance of the Brahms Chorale Preludes. When I got to Paris, Debussy was just beginning to be known. I prepared the chorus for a performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony and Choral Fantasy for Mahler in New York, at a time when Mahler’s music was considered very advanced. There have been many significant changes since that time.
    Our relationship to the repertory of the past will change. Thirty or forty years ago, who would have predicted the fashion for the baroque which seems now to be sweeping this country? I think it is likely that within a generation, only relatively little of this music will be used in churches. By that time, someone will have come up with some new period which captivates the attention of scholars and choirmasters, and then, who knows; we might even develop a mania for Barnby and Buck! I understand that the editor-in-chief of an important German reference work has said that the period which needs most research is the nineteenth—that’s right—the nineteenth century. When musicologists start work there, and doctoral dissertations are written about Stainer and his continental counterparts, how the picture of church music will have changed!

Recent trends suggest that the romantic style of music making has returned in full force: new church and concert organs are being built in the romantic tradition, with string divisions, abundant color reeds, and double expression, and the inclusion of romantic transcriptions has become acceptable even on degree recital programs in the major universities. Perhaps now is the time to reconsider Clarence Dickinson, surely one of the most influential figures in American church music in the first half of the twentieth century. This pioneering musician, composer, arranger, author, educator, historian, and concert organist set the standard for generations of church musicians and organists. He served as organist-choirmaster at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City for over fifty years and was founding director of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary and a founding member of the American Guild of Organists. As a composer, Dickinson was a master of form, counterpoint, and heartfelt melody. Working with his equally famous wife and partner, Helen A. Dickinson, he produced an important body of musical research, including hundreds of lectures on church music and music history, and published countless original anthems and historic editions. As his extant recordings reveal, he was also one of the great concert organists, with a dazzling technique and profound sense of color, drama, and musicianship.
Reminiscences, which is compiled from autobiographical sketches and speeches by Dr. Dickinson, is the first installment in a projected series of articles featuring items from Clarence Dickinson’s personal library, housed at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We are very grateful to Patricia Furr and Dr. Gene Winters, of William Carey University, for so generously providing access to this collection and granting permission to publish these important historical documents, preserving the legacy of Clarence and Helen A. Dickinson.
—Lorenz Maycher
Laurel, Mississippi

This matter of age is a queer thing: for a goodly number of years, if you start early, people keep saying “Is it not wonderful that such a young lad can handle a great organ?” Then, through the middle years, when you are working your hardest, they just take it for granted that you do your job. After you hear yourself for the first time referred to as an octogenarian (an awful shock), people say, “Isn’t it wonderful that the old boy can handle that great organ at his age?” I thought you might be interested to know how I got started on this road.
Lafayette, Indiana, was a wonderful place for a boy to grow up in the latter part of the nineteenth century: one went up Ninth Street hill and almost immediately found himself in the country. The woods were full of nut trees: hickory, black walnut, and butternut, and it was such fun to gather bags of nuts for the winter. There were small caves in the hills through which you could crawl adventurously. In winter, if your school was at the top of one of the city’s hills, you could coast down home on your sled or skates, for there was much snow and ice. Of course, you had to be careful to stop before you reached the railroad track that wound around the city at the foot of the hills. My older brother, Richard, coasted down icy Ninth St. hill on his sled at such speed one day that he could not possibly stop. He arrived at the crossing at the very same moment as a freight train, and slid safely under the moving train, as he was lucky enough to strike the very center of a car. He never told anyone of this adventure until long afterwards, or I feel sure he would have made the first page of the Courier.
Many exciting things happened in those days: one was the flood where the water reached the level of the city streets. The old wooden covered bridge was in danger of being swept away. Mr. Goldsmith, the bridge builder, a perfect giant in the eyes of a small boy, was directing its rescue. The men attached a great cable to the bridge and fastened it around a large brick house which stood at the end of the street, so that if the bridge should be carried off its stone piers it would swing around alongside the shore and be salvaged. They knocked out a great number of the boards at the sides of the bridge and allowed the water to race through over its floor so that it did not offer much resistance to the raging current. It was not swept away, but it certainly was an exciting sight for a small lad!
We lived in the large Presbyterian brick manse on Columbia Street, which was, in my young judgment, most admirably situated, as all processions passed by the house every summer; the circus parade and the marches at election time, in which men carried swinging gasoline torches, their great wicks giving off light and smoke.
When I was about seven years old I made my first and only business venture. My allowance was 5 cents a week for carrying in kindling wood, and one of my classmates informed me how I could double my income by going down to the Courier office in the late afternoon and buying two copies of the paper for a nickel and then selling them for 5 cents apiece. I did this one day all on my own, and was much surprised when my family was not enthusiastic over the venture. It was probably just as well, as the nervous strain of wondering whether I would really recover my initial investment proved rather great for such a young man.
I began piano study with my two older sisters, Martha (Mattie) and Sarah, in those early days. My father, The Rev. William Cowper Dickinson, D.D., was the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, and my earliest memory of that church is of the great golden organ pipes standing so imposingly in front of me at my sister’s wedding. I suppose my future was settled right then. When I was ten years old, my father accepted a call from the College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. It was like going home to him, because he had spent his boyhood in Walnut Hills, Cincinnati. My grandfather, Baxter Dickinson, had moved to Lane Seminary to be associate director of the seminary with Lyman Beecher, so that my father had as playmates Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher (later Stowe), who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Baxter Dickinson had been a professor at Auburn Theological Seminary, where he wrote a very famous paper called the “Auburn Declaration,” which separated the church into the old school and new school, the conservative and the advanced. He lived to see the two churches unite on that same basis—the old church had caught up with the new. When I came to the Brick Church and sat down at the piano in the room that served as social room and chapel, I looked up at a picture over my head, and there was my grandfather standing on the steps of the old Church of the Covenant, which later became a part of the Brick Church, at the assembly which brought the two churches together.
In the summer of 1883, our church in College Hill was just putting in a new organ, and since the manse was next to the church, I was kept busy watching the erection of the organ. I spent all my time watching this, and learned much about the organ. I “helped” in various ways, occasionally pumping the wind into it for tuning, and part of the time holding the keys down for the tuning. When the men were away, I would pump the organ full of wind and race around to the front and play till the wind gave. I had a terrible time trying to decide whether to play for a couple of minutes on the softest stop or whether to have a great burst of glory with full organ for a few seconds. When the day came for the dedication of the new organ, a famous organist came up from Cincinnati and found this lad performing this act. He very kindly went around to the rear of the organ and pumped for me, so for the first time I could finish my piece. It was a very kind and wonderful thing for a great artist to do, and I doubt whether, in all my life, I have ever had a more exciting experience.
Soon after, I was allowed to play some of the Christian Endeavor services on the small organ in the chapel, and came to know the hymn book very well, as my father was rather strict, allowing no secular music to be played on Sunday. I was studying piano, and enjoyed the Mozart and Clementi sonatinas, but I gloried especially in a little book of operatic transcriptions my older sister had left behind when she married, enjoying immensely the showy arpeggios and splashy effects, in Martha, for instance. When I was twelve, I made my debut as a pianist and conductor in the Town Hall wearing little old folks’ concert dress. There I sat with my ruffled shirt, blue velvet coat, and white curly wig, conducting a chorus of children and the “orchestra,” which consisted of a piano and one violin.
When I was fourteen, in June 1887, my father retired, and we all went to California to live in Pasadena for ten months, where I grew 10 inches in 10 months, a good advertisement for the California climate. It happened that we took our dinners at the same boarding house as the quartet of the First Presbyterian Church, a church which has remained famous for its music ever since. By this time I had learned to play the piano well, and when the quartet, which included the beautiful soprano soloist, Mae Staats, was asked to sing after dinner, I was the only one who could play for them. This was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn all the well-known solos, duets, and quartets. (Years later, when Mrs. Dickinson and I were holding music conferences in the three universities—University of Los Angeles, University of California, LA, and Occidental College—notices of the conferences were in all the papers. I received a letter from Mae Staats in Northern California asking, “Were you the little boy who used to play for me so many years ago?”)
But it happened that my best friend was going to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and he persuaded me to join him there in the preparatory school, which had just reopened after being closed from the Civil War to that year. Here I had the good fortune of being appointed University Organist at age fifteen, gaining my first experience in playing major services and accompanying anthems. This was an exciting winter because my friend and I occupied the room General Harrison had occupied when he was there, and this was the fall in which he was elected President of the United States.
The president of the college, President Warfield, started athletics that year, and we all had to play. I played on the scrub football team against the real team, on which the faculty played. One chilly afternoon, with players swarming the field, President Warfield, who was six feet, four inches tall, broke through the line, knocking men right and left, till I was the only one between him and the goal! I can still hear the spares yelling, “Hold him, Dickie! Hold him!”—but he knocked me sprawling. My friend unfortunately gave the mathematics professor a black eye during one game, and he was flunked owing to that black eye. I barely passed with the lowest successful mark possible.
When the year was over I joined my family in Evanston, Illinois, and entered Northwestern University in the fall of 1890 as the youngest member of a class of 125. When I showed my bad mark to the professor of mathematics at Northwestern, I was told I should have to take that course again. This was disheartening, as it was the one course in which I had no interest. Nevertheless, I attended the first meeting of the class. The professor finished with an amusing story, which he thought very, very funny. Naturally we all laughed uproariously, and while he was almost choking with laughter at his own joke, I shoved my application under his hand, and he signed it without putting on his glasses. You have all seen the play “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.” This shows you how to enter college with one bad mark!
I had started a classical course, in line with what most of my ancestors and relatives had done, with the idea of becoming a professor of Greek and Latin. But I was still interested in music, so right away I got an appointment as organist of a small church in Evanston—the South Presbyterian—and began the study of organ in earnest with Professor Cutler, organist of the First Methodist Church, of which I became the organist quite a number of years later for a short time, following Peter Lutkin. With the experience I had, it did not take me long to eat up the instruction book which Prof. Cutler gave me, and when I asked, “What next?” he replied, “You should have some Bach.” I said, “What shall I get?” He said, “Oh, get Volume I of Bach’s works in the Peters edition.” Bach’s Volume I contains the six organ sonatas which he wrote to complete the education of his son, Friedemann Bach. It was like being thrown into deep water and being told to swim. But I was always thankful, because when later I came to study the big preludes and fugues, they all seemed comparatively simple and easy.
At the Methodist church in Evanston, I not only practiced and years later became organist and choirmaster, but made my debut as a concert organist after only three months of study—a great occasion, naturally, for a young lad, but why it called for the purchase of my first stiff Derby hat, I do not know, as I could not wear it at the console. My number came in the middle of the program, so I sat in the front pew, and, when the time came for me to play, I left my new Derby, the pride of my heart, on the seat to keep my place. The audience was kind, and I returned to my seat during generous applause, feeling quite elated, but lost all consciousness of the pleasant sound when, to my horror, I saw what seemed to me the largest woman I had ever seen sitting in my place. “But where is my hat?” I cried. “I ain’t seen no ’at,” was the reply. I finally persuaded her to rise, and there it was, my precious Derby, crushed flat as a pancake, never to rise again! A lesson for life: you may have as many as three successes in a row, but then comes the inevitable “bump” to bring you down to earth again.
Organ study was quite expensive, because I not only had to pay $1.50 for a lesson, but I had to pay $.10 an hour to a pumper. My pumper was what we called a “Bib,” that is, a student at Garrett Biblical Institute of Northwestern University. He was a solemn young man, and would pump with his right hand and read a book held in his left. If I pulled out too many stops, he would quit pumping and come to the front of the organ, gazing at me very reproachfully over his glasses, so I would have to withdraw the larger stops.
The organ pumper was a very important being in those days. Dr. Isaac Woodbury, of Boston, the writer of some of our well-known hymns, used to speak of his pumper as a very skillful inflator of the bellows. If he did not pump steadily, he could spoil your playing by letting the wind run down, then pump fast and furiously to fill the bellows again, thus shaking the tone. When I was growing up in College Hill, we were fortunate to have the village blacksmith as our pumper. He was used to blowing up the bellows with one hand and then striking the red-hot horseshoe on the anvil, which made it very easy for him to pump steadily.
I remember substituting in a Baptist church one summer when vacationing from my own church. The morning service was quite exciting because they had baptisms. The leader of the choir would take hold of my coat tails, and as the victim stepped into the water, he would pull my coat tail very gently, gradually harder and harder, until he gave a sharp pull and I would come out with full organ to hide the splash.
This was summer, and the evening service was very quiet. After the sermon, I gave the signal to the blower for the concluding hymn, but there was no response, even after a second vigorous bump on the board which a certain stop struck. So I had to get off the bench, go back and wake up the young lad. He came to, saying, “I was just sneaking a little snooze.”
The best blower I have ever known was in Dublin. I naturally was anxious to see the organ that Handel played when he gave the first performance of the Messiah, so I went to that church. It was locked, but I found a reluctant sexton who opened the door. When I asked to see the organ, he said, “We never show the organ.” I told him I had come all the way from America just to see the organ that Handel had played. So he finally unlocked the organ console and said, “Of course, no one is allowed to play this organ except the organist of this church.” I sat down and put my hands on the keys, while he objected. I said, “I only want to see how hard the action is in this old tracker organ.” Then I pulled out a few stops, saying, “I just want to see how far one has to pull them. Sometimes they are very long in these old organs.” Suddenly the organ gave forth sound. He looked as though he had seen a ghost and dashed around to the rear of the organ. There was Mrs. Dickinson, pumping away. So he finally relented and said, “What’s the use of fighting these Americans.” He took over the pump handle so that I could play some of the Messiah and one of the concertos of Handel which I hoped might have been the one Handel played between the parts of the oratorio. When we came away, I gave him an extravagant tip and we parted good friends.
In my first position, at South Presbyterian Church of Evanston, where I was organist from 1890 to 1892, I received what was to me a fine salary; $100 for the first year. The second year they raised it to $10.00 a month.
In 1892, I saw an advertisement in a newspaper, “Organist Wanted,” for a big church in Chicago, Church of the Messiah, where they had just installed a beautiful Roosevelt organ, the most up-to-date in the city, with an electric blower, making it possible to play as long as one wanted. I applied for the job and got it. There I met a lady, Mrs. Proctor Smith, who immediately took an interest in me. She insisted that I must devote myself to music, and worked on me for hours, trying to convince me that I had enough natural ability to devote my life to it. She also later secured a $3,000 loan for my study abroad, and practically forced me to try my hand at writing music. So the Greek professorship went out the window. Mrs. Smith knew a great deal about art, poetry, and music, and put an interest in it all in me. She possessed a beautiful soprano voice, and studied in London, and later in Boston with the great singer and conductor, George Henschel, conductor of the London Philharmonic, and later, for one year, to get it started, the Boston Symphony. With such teaching, and her own natural feeling for the text, as well as the music, she was a wonderful interpreter, and so was the great inspiration of my young life. I dedicated my first set of songs, set to poems by my cousin, Emily Dickinson, to Mrs. Proctor Smith. These were written when the discovery and publication of Emily Dickinson’s poems was still creating much excitement and discussion.
It was at Church of the Messiah, where I was organist from 1892 to 1897, that I gave what was the first entire organ recital from memory, an innovation that called for much comment for and against. Clarence Eddy, internationally known as the leading organist of America, had brought up a pupil, Harrison M. Wild, to be a rival in Chicago. Although I substituted occasionally for Mr. Eddy, I was attracted more by Wild’s playing, and so studied with him. He gave a series of Sunday afternoon concerts to large audiences, and occasionally asked me to play a group of pieces.
When a young German organist, Wilhelm Middelschulte, arrived in Chicago, friendless and moneyless, he came to Wild for help. Wild secured for him a good position as organist of a leading Catholic church, and invited him to play a group of numbers on his recital series. Middelschulte played these from memory! Wild then said to me, “This will become the custom, I am sure. Get busy and play your first recital from memory.” I did.
Clarence Eddy attended the first half of the recital. He left at intermission, and the Tribune critic came in. The Tribune critic gave me a very enthusiastic review, insisting I played much more freely and better, not being hampered by notes. The next Sunday paper published a letter from Clarence Eddy, saying that my playing from memory had been a mistake—that there were so many things to attend to on an organ that I was nervous, and I would have played much better if I had had a score before me. All very true, and his presence did not help! But, by the time he left, and the critic entered, my nervousness had disappeared. Other leading organists wrote to the Tribune, and the discussion was carried on in the New York Sunday papers, all this to explain why I was the youngest organist asked to be one of the founding members of the AGO. It was at this time that John Hyatt (High Hat) Brewer, a very fine and quite pompous organist, came out from New York to organize the Chicago Chapter of the Guild.
Church of the Messiah closed for two months every summer. By great good luck I became the substitute organist for the summer months at the services of First Church of Christ, Scientist, substituting for Frederick Root, who, with his father, wrote many of the songs of the Civil War. The church held its meetings in the Chicago Auditorium, with its great five-manual Roosevelt organ, giving the young college boy a chance to amuse himself with what you would call “romantic registration.” This organ had the first crescendo pedal, which was an enormous barrel with projecting metal tabs which struck other tabs as it revolved and drew the stops in succession. This was really comparable to a music box on a tremendous scale.
It is interesting to see how inventions develop: when I was a student in Berlin, young Josef Hofmann, the brilliant pianist, was much interested in inventions, and asked me over to see his latest. Foolishly, I did not go. You all know one: he made a device for orchestral players to turn their music, controlled by the foot. The Boston Symphony adopted it for one season, but Hofmann made a great deal of money by later turning it into the windshield wiper for automobiles.
After five years at the Church of the Messiah, in June 1897, I moved over to St. James Episcopal Church—now Cathedral—for one year as organist. Then my friends insisted that I must go abroad to study. One of the older vocal teachers had been kind to me in Chicago, and having learned of my proposed trip, took me to supper at Theodore Thomas’s home after the Saturday night orchestra concert. Mr. Thomas, the conductor, very kindly gave me some important introductions to great musicians. He was in a good mood and reminisced with a number of amusing stories. The one I remember particularly was the one about the trombonist and the tympanist. The trombonist had borrowed $10.00 from the tympanist and had been very slow in returning it. The tympanist importuned him very strongly, and the trombonist said, “I’ll pay you Saturday night.” Just before the tympanist was to play a very long roll, the trombonist turned around and began tossing pennies across the drums which, of course, bounced high in the air and made a continuous shower, to the amusement of the audience as well as the orchestra. It must have been a great sight.

To be continued

William Carey University, Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Donald E. (Gene) Winters is in his 29th year of teaching at William Carey University, Hattiesburg, MS. He holds the B.M., B.A., and M.M. in church music and music education from William Carey (College) and the Ph.D. in music education from Florida State University. He serves as professor of church music and voice at the university, and his particular association with the Clarence Dickinson Collection stems from the fact that his father and mother, Donald and Frances Winters (founders of the Winters School of Music at WCU), were responsible for the collection being housed at William Carey. Their inquiry to Dr. Dickinson’s second wife, Lois Stice Dickinson, after Clarence’s death (concerning the possibility of WCU purchasing some of Dickinson’s books) met with favorable response from Lois and long-time family friend, George Litch Knight, a former student of Dickinson. Dr. Knight and Mrs. Dickinson had hoped that the entire collection could be kept intact and serve as a memorial to the Dickinsons’ life and work. After Dr. and Mrs. Winters visited Mrs. Dickinson and Dr. Knight in New York, the determination was made that William Carey (College) should house the entire collection. Dr. Gene Winters has worked behind the scenes to raise monies for the preservation and electronic cataloging of the collection (work recently completed by Dr. Paul Powell, library archivist and preservationist) and for the showcasing of the collection. In addition, he coordinated the fund-raising campaign to purchase an Allen organ for Smith Auditorium, Thomas Fine Arts Center, on the Carey campus.
All of the photos (except that of Dr. McLelland) were taken by Gene Winters.

In the early 1970s, William Carey College became the new home of the books, manuscript papers, artwork, antique piano, and hymn memorabilia of renowned organist Clarence Dickinson after the death of his second wife, Lois Stice Dickinson. A recent renovation of the room that houses the historic items in the Clarence Dickinson Special Collection has created renewed interest in the collection, in the life of Clarence Dickinson, which it illustrates, and in the art of organ performance. The first Clarence Dickinson Memorial Organ Festival, which was held in January 2007, featured a lecture about the life and work of Clarence Dickinson and his first wife, Helen Adell Dickinson. Stephen Garner, an alumnus of William Carey College and assistant professor of music at Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas, was the featured scholar. Dr. Garner is writing a biography of Dr. Dickinson, and he is utilizing materials from the collection and numerous recordings of personal interviews taken with former students, colleagues, and friends of Dickinson in New York City and elsewhere. In conjunction with that first event, the Dumas L. Smith/I. E. Rouse Library on the William Cary University campus (which houses the collection) hosted an open house to showcase the collection.
The second annual Clarence Dickinson Memorial Organ Festival was held on January 17–19, 2008, at the Winters School of Music on the Hattiesburg campus. The event featured an organ recital and masterclass by Dr. Jeff R. McLelland, organist/choirmaster at Independent Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, as well as the event’s first organ competition, with divisions for beginners and for advanced players. The beginners were required to play a Bach prelude and fugue or a contrasting piece and a hymn; the advanced players were required to play a Bach prelude and fugue, a contrasting piece, and a hymn/hymn arrangement. Representatives from both divisions participated in the masterclass. Judges for the competition were Jane Butler, organist of Trinity Episcopal Church, Hattiesburg, and Lorenz Maycher, organist/choirmaster at First Trinity Presbyterian Church, Laurel, Mississippi.
Six entrants participated in this initial competition. Playing in the beginner division were Pearl Choi, sophomore music therapy major at WCU from South Korea; David Harrison, high school junior from Ocean Springs, MS; Marissa Hipp, high school junior from Grenada, MS; and Carlena Speed, senior piano performance major at WCU from Seminary, MS. David Harrison was the winner of the beginner’s division and received the cash prize and a certificate, and will be presented a Clarence Dickinson medallion for his performance in May.
Playing in the advanced division were Christopher Ray, a freshman music major at Mississippi College, Clinton, MS, and Patrick Scott, a senior organ major at Birmingham Southern College, Birmingham, AL. Scott and Ray, both judged as outstanding entrants, tied for first place in the advanced division, and each received an equal share of the cash prize and a certificate. They, too, will each receive a Clarence Dickinson medallion.
The medallions, which feature Dr. Dickinson’s image on one side and the seal of the university on the other, will be presented to the winning competitors in May by one of Dickinson’s students and current AGO president, Frederick Swann. Swann will present a lecture/recital on May 2 at 7:30 pm. (Full details are listed in the “Here & There” column of this issue.) All of the winners have been invited to play next season in a joint organ recital as part of the Laurel, MS First Trinity Presbyterian Church’s Concert Series.
Coordinating the festival and this event are Kathy Vail, assistant professor of Music, WCU; Patricia Furr, director of libraries, WCU; and Gene Winters, professor of church music and voice, WCU. For further information about future festivals, competitions, and events please contact the Winters School of Music, William Carey University, 498 Tuscan Avenue, Campus Box 14, Hattiesburg, MS 39401. Those interested in next year’s competition should write or call (601/318-6175) the Winters School of Music and ask to be added to the competition’s mailing list; or e-mail: <[email protected]> or <[email protected]>. For information about visiting the newly reopened Clarence Dickinson Special Collection at Carey University Libraries, contact director of libraries, Patricia Furr at <[email protected]>.

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Mississippi. His interviews with William Teague, Thomas Richner, Nora Williams, Albert Russell, and Robert Town have appeared in The Diapason.

The first installment in this series, “From the Dickinson Collection: Reminiscences by Clarence Dickinson, Part 1: 1873–1898,” was published in the July 2008 issue of The Diapason; next appeared “From the Dickinson Collection: Memorizing Controversy,” September 2008; “From the Dickinson Collection: Reminiscences by Clarence Dickinson, Part 2: 1898–1909,” February 2009; and most recently, “From the Dickinson Collection: Speech to the St. Louis Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, by Clarence Dickinson,” June 2009.

Introduction
“Music and Worship” is the fifth installment in The Diapason’s “From the Dickinson Collection,” a series of articles featuring items from Clarence Dickinson’s personal library, housed at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We are very grateful to Patricia Furr and Dr. Gene Winters, of William Carey University, for so generously providing access to this collection and granting permission to publish these important historical documents, preserving the legacy of Clarence and Helen A. Dickinson.
—Lorenz Maycher
Laurel, Mississippi

•

Whether we belong in the pulpit, the choir loft, or in the pews, the music in the church service is bound to be a matter either of interest or of concern to us, since it is a constant part of worship. In the past, in most churches, the music just happened; it was not chosen with any particular idea in mind. Something was sung, something was played. Now this has in large measure been changed; a great deal of thought is being given to the subject.
The sermon naturally gives the theme to a church service; that is to say, it gives “direction” to the worship. The great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, once said, “The sermon is an extension of God’s revelation of Himself in His Word, and is in truth, a sacrament.” The music must reinforce the message of the sermon, must imbue it with appeal and with an emotional quality which will win the heart when the mind does not follow. As that old Dean of Bristol said 300 years ago, “A song may find him who a sermon flies.” But music must do something more: it should create the spirit or the atmosphere for the whole service. It should lift up the hearts of those present into the very spirit of worship, be so sensitive to the significance of meeting in the house of God that the intellectual and spiritual illumination of the sermon shall be intensified into a message from the Most High.
A service is held for the purpose of bringing the people consciously into the presence of God. They should feel that, as Martin Luther said, “Here, God speaks to us through His Word,” and further, “The people speak to Him in prayer and song.” This bringing of men into the very presence of God, awakening in them the consciousness that He is in their midst, is the ideal of every service; and the degree to which a service achieves this is a measure of its value. With this as its purpose, the service must build up a sort of crescendo of interest; it must have, first, a pictorial or dramatic quality, and second, movement toward a climax.
We are coming around to the idea that a church service ought to be a unified, integrated whole. As the Federal Council’s Commission on Worship said some years ago in a report, “We have at last come to realize that a miscellaneous collection of devotional items does not constitute a service.” A service should be a perfect and united whole, and, to ensure this, the music must not be hit and miss, chosen according to the mood of the director or to the repertory of the choir. It must be perfectly integrated with the service in an inner unity; the texts must be in the thought of the service, the music in its mood. And this thought and this mood are determined by its center and climax, which is the sermon.
For the opening of the service, a song of praise seems to be most fitting: as the Psalmist sings, “Enter into His courts with thanksgiving and into His gates with praise.” Praise was one of the earliest worship-emotions which stirred the heart of man when he began to realize the majesty and glory and power and might of God. The early church opened its services with praise. There is in a great opening song of praise an emotional exhilaration which lifts us out of every-dayness, out of petty thoughts and cares, and into a mood of worship.
With the consciousness that we are in the House of God, that we are come into His presence, comes the realization not only of His power and majesty, but of His holiness. As we stand in the white light of that holiness, we are conscious of our own littleness, our earth-bound outlook; we see with appalling clarity of just how entirely we “have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and have done those things which we ought not to have done,” and we cry out for mercy; and God, the loving Father, always hastens to meet penitence with forgiveness. For this we thank Him, remembering also His many past mercies, in Psalm or Hymn or Anthem.
The realization of God’s love and compassion strengthens our desire to know Him better, to learn something of His will and His purposes for mankind, and how best to requite His great love by serving Him. This we learn through the Scripture lessons and the sermon, which is, as we have said, “an extension of God’s revelation of Himself in his Word.” As we thus come to know Him, we needs must adore; and we offer to Him all we are and have, consecrated to His service. This is the Offertory, which therefore, with the sermon, should constitute the high point of the service, a part of “the sacrament.”
Such a service has climax, and possesses the dramatic elements of movement and direction toward that climax. But the music can only heighten the climax and lend definiteness to the direction and emotional intensity to the movement if it is integrated with the service, in perfect inner unity.
Upon the consecration will follow the return, in joy, to everyday living, ready to do the will of God as servants in His eternal kingdom. The expression of this lies in the closing hymn, in the benediction, and, at the very end, in the organ postlude.
Often I have heard ministers and musicians alike regret that the postlude is practically lost in the movement of the congregation. It can indeed be a beautiful and uplifting thing when, at the close of a vesper service, for instance, ministers and congregation resume their seats silently for a short, lovely organ number. But this is not the function of the organ postlude to the morning service; its function is to say to the departing congregation, “Go forth into the world in peace and in joyful readiness for service. You are glad to have been in the House of the Lord; it was good to be here. And now, recharged by the dynamic power communicated by the service, go forth to make His ‘Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’.”
There are three great avenues of life and thought, as I feel it—three doors that make up the triune gateway to Heaven: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. The scientists concern themselves with truth, and the scholars and the literalists. The chief interest of the church’s ministry since Puritan days in this country has been goodness, or morality. But there is a third door, and many who “become as little children and enter the kingdom of Heaven” enter through the gate of pure beauty. And this is largely what we are called upon to do as musicians in the church. The beauty of music is not an ornament to the building we call worship; it is a portal. It awakens man’s sensitivities to the highest and loveliest things, it lifts him out of and above himself to their contemplation; it unites him with the things that are pure and holy through its emotional power. For this reason, we must have music that is worthy to be the portal to worship, and as beautifully and truly interpreted as possible, that it may not fail to be a gateway open to the presence of God.
I was deeply impressed by a sentence in an address given by that great missionary, the author of “The Christ of the Indian Road,” Stanley Jones, recently at Columbia University: “Beauty is as necessary to the soul as light to the eye, truth to the conscience.” Such beauty is not mere superficial ornamentation, but deep vision and thrilling impulse, through the perception of things of the Spirit, unseen, eternal. As William Pierson Merrill wrote of it, “Music is not a garnishment of the service, but a part of the food for the soul;” or as Walford Davies has expressed it, “Music is not an ornament to the service, it is not even a means of inducing the mood of worship; it is worship.”
That we may bring to God, the Creator of all beauty, our perfect worship, we must enrich it with beauty. That we may create and foster in men that spirit of worship, we must reveal the beauty of the Most High; as Ecclesiasticus has it, we must “put on the comeliness of the glory that cometh from God.”
Every great movement in the church, every signal victory or triumphant assertion of faith, every widespread renewal of trust and love, has found spontaneous expression in music. The almost passionate revival of religion in Italy led by Francis of Assisi can hardly be understood unless we know how all Italy burst forth into passionate songs of love and praise to the God whom Francis had, as it were, brought down again to man, that man might be reunited to God.
Again, think of Luther. How shall we realize the effect of his great fight for spiritual emancipation of the people, unless we hear them join “with heart and soul and voice” in the chorales of Luther and of the great Johann Sebastian Bach? In the Wesleyan movement, the atonement ceased to be only a dogma, and came to signify overwhelming love and self-sacrifice; how can we realize that more convincingly than in the sacred songs of Charles Wesley?
Now, out of my long experience, I should like to offer you a few suggestions:
First: Good music should not be regarded as synonymous with difficult music, and put aside as unattainable by the small church choir. Many beautiful anthems, lovely old carols, breathing beauty and love and consecration, may be had in very simple arrangements.
Second: What may be called expressive music is best confined to choir singing. Only on occasion, under special religious exaltation, will a whole congregation sincerely pour out its soul in words; but it will be moved to such an attitude by the devout, noble singing of such a solo as “If with all your hearts,” from Elijah, or “O God, have mercy,” from St. Paul.
Third: In spite of my earlier recommendation that the music of a service should express the theme of the sermon, there are times, in my opinion, when it is wise not to have all the music, especially the anthems, follow the themes too closely. It may be an advantage to have them different in sentiment so that some hearts that may not be attuned to the sermon that day may perhaps receive a message through the music. I have in mind a story, told to me by a minister, of a day when a heartbroken member of his congregation came to church for the first time after much illness and suffering in her own person and bereavement of those dear to her. The sermon and all the hymns (save the opening one of praise) bore on some such theme as the peace movement, but the offertory anthem, “Ye shall have a song in the night—The love that it revealeth—All earthly sorrow healeth—Ye shall have a song in the night,” brought the calm and solace that she sought.
Fourth: The organist and choirmaster should endeavor constantly to raise the standards of the music in his church. If a congregation has been in the habit of using commonplace music, it is unwise to break away from it at one fell swoop. It takes patience and repetition. But gradually a group may be led away from trivial music joined with words of no spiritual import, to the stately dignity, the noble sincerity, the glorious exaltation of inspired words set to harmonious music, with a resultant gain in the virility and dignity of the religious conceptions of the congregation. A hymn new to the congregation, or an unfamiliar tune to an old text, should be sung several times in close succession. In time it may become a favorite.
I have never found it necessary to play down to any age. If they are accustomed to good music, they come to expect it. I can still hear the choirboys at St. James Church, Chicago, when we had to sing the school hymn of a young man for his wedding. It was rather waltzy for an anthem, and the boys, accustomed to good church music, exclaimed, “Huh! Cheap!”
One can express adoration and praise in any musical language, but is it inspiration and exaltation put there naturally, or is the composer just trying to do something not done before and hanging it on sacred words? The church service is not the place for experimentation. The extreme modernists are making us familiar with new combinations of harmony; in fact, they overdo the use of certain combinations, so that one can become bored, not startled, with their use. Musicologists of today publish many dull, uninspired pieces from the past without troubling themselves with anything but perfection of technique. It is our job to find music inspired by faith and love.
We must keep ever in mind the power of music to lift the individual person out of his self-centered existence. When he joins in singing a hymn or listens to an anthem, he ceases to be wholly individual; the congregation becomes one, and he a part of it. Personal differences of creed, questionings, doubt, disbelief are forgotten as hearts and voices unite in gratitude, joy and aspiration. Music is a redeeming force in that it can free us from ourselves by setting us within a vision of beauty which unfolds all about us, and by giving us a glimpse of something which, while immaterial and non-corporeal, is yet eternal and infinite. A large element in Salvation, or redemption, is just this release from the tyranny of self and its demands, its smallness and its limitations. St. Chrysostom wrote to a friend after a time of terrible trial and strain, “I came up here to the mountains to get rest and refreshment, but I have not succeeded, because I brought myself with me.”
He who has known what it is to lose himself wholly in listening to a great symphony, or any great music, knows what I mean: the sense of entire oblivion to self and the material world, the sublimation of a sort of translation to another plane of being. In Koussevitzky’s address upon receiving an honorary degree at Harvard, he said, “We belong to those promoters of the ideal who lift men out of the grayness of their everyday living into a world of beauty and vision.” Thoreau describes it, “What is the prospect such strains of music open up to me? My life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death or disappointment at the end of it.” This is the redeeming power of music. It can give us release from self and from time, and make us realize our kinship with the infinite.
But, if these greatest messages in the world are imperfectly given, if the people do not get them because we do not communicate, we are failing in our duty to God. You cannot “put over” something you only half know; you are too busy with the notes to bring out the meaning. This means rehearsal for all of us; faithful, constant, regular rehearsal; and having something to say in our work, to know perfectly what we are going to say, and say it with all our heart. It is a big job we have before us, and it is up to us to work with might and main, beside the minister, to do our part through our messages of sacred song—messages of courage, cheer and faith, of hope, and love, and the certainty of Eternal Life!
“Whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; but there shall be music forever in the presence of God and His saints."

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Mississippi. His interviews with William Teague, Thomas Richner, Nora Williams, Albert Russell, and Robert Town have appeared in The Diapason.

The first installment in this series, “From the Dickinson Collection: Reminiscences by Clarence Dickinson, Part 1: 1873–1898,” was published in the July 2008 issue of The Diapason; next appeared “From the Dickinson Collection: Memorizing Controversy,” September 2008; and most recently, “From the Dickinson Collection: Reminiscences by Clarence Dickinson, Part 2: 1898–1909,” February 2009.

Introduction
As a founding member of the American Guild of Organists, Clarence Dickinson (1873–1969) was a frequent speaker at AGO functions throughout his lengthy career. In this speech given to the St. Louis Chapter in 1959, Dr. Dickinson reflects on playing the 1904 St. Louis Exposition organ, offers colorful memories of the chapter’s founding members and of Andrew Carnegie, reflects on his personal career as a church musician, and offers helpful advice to organists of all ages. Additional material has been incorporated into the text from a speech Dickinson gave at Westminster Choir College on October 1, 1968. All material in this series is taken from the Dickinson Collection, Dr. Dickinson’s own personal library, which is housed at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We are very grateful to Patricia Furr and Dr. Gene Winters of William Carey for granting access to this special collection, and for permission to use these items in this series intended to preserve the life and legacy of Clarence and Helen A. Dickinson.
—Lorenz Maycher
Laurel, Mississippi

I am delighted to be here with you tonight, and to share in the celebration of the Golden Anniversary of the founding of your chapter. Thank you, Howard Kelsey, for all these undeserved kind words. It hardly seems necessary to say anything, but just to stand here and let you imagine I am all things I should like to be. I am not much of a speechmaker. Whenever I find myself in the position of making a speech, I am reminded of Thackeray’s saying: “My wit is cab wit,” which means I always think of the bright things I might have said when I am in the cab going home afterwards!
My first acquaintance with Howard Kelsey came with his arrival at our school at Union Seminary. Many of the students were arriving in ancient, rather dilapidated Fords, which they had purchased for anywhere from ten to twenty-five dollars and then sold upon arrival. One of our students, now Dr. Allwardt, met him coming down the hall and said, “I suppose you came in your Rolls-Royce.” Howard answered very simply, “Yes.” He had driven the family car and sold it for enough money to carry him through the entire two years’ course.
I have been rather intimately acquainted with St. Louis—the town, not the saint—and your organization for a long time. I first came here to play at your Exposition in 1904. That was the year Mrs. Dickinson and I were married, and we had been in Europe (Spain and elsewhere) for a long trip, the last stop being England, where, a few days before we sailed, Lady Patterson gave a luncheon for us to meet Lady Penell. We were telling her of the trip ahead of us, how we would travel miles across the ocean, then take the finest train of that time, the Twentieth Century, up the Hudson. Lady Penell interrupted and said, “Oh, that is wonderful! Then you can tell me about my Hudson Bay stock.”
Arriving in St. Louis, I had the pleasure of giving a number of recitals on the magnificent organ at the Exposition, which was designed by Dr. George Ashdown Audsley, the author of the greatest early book on organs and organ building. I remember the old gentleman’s coming to the house for dinner, bringing the two great volumes and putting them down very wearily, saying, “I have brought you twenty-seven pounds.”
The Exposition organ marked a great advance in organ building, with many new mechanical devices. I have always remembered playing Liszt’s “Evocation à la Chapelle Sistine” most effectively on it, as I was able to put more atmosphere into the playing of it than ever before or since. You may remember the main theme is that of Allegri’s “Miserere,” which has been sung every Good Friday in the Sistine Chapel since it was written, in diminishing light, until it is finished in complete darkness. The score and parts were held for use in this manner and were jealously kept secret until the twelve-year-old Mozart wrote it down from memory, and we have all had the wonderful privilege of singing it ever since. Liszt used the Mozart “Ave Verum” for his second theme. On your organ, it was possible to depict the darkness Liszt desired by using in the pedal stops 64′, 32′, 16′ and enough soft 8′ pitch to define the tone, with 32′, 16′, and soft 8′ on the manuals, gradually climbing upward till one could end the final triad at the top of the keyboard on a 4′ flute in an organ in the ceiling of the high auditorium. This is the organ which was later installed at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. In the foundation work, Dr. Audsley harkened back to the period of middle 19th-century tone that he advocated, although using a bit more color and control.
I would like to speak a bit about the changes in organ building during my lifetime. The first organ I played in my father’s church was made within the same period as the Exposition organ, as was the first organ of my own in the South Presbyterian Church in Evanston, and later the organ in St. James in Chicago. Organs of this period had clarity of diapason tone, and, in the larger instruments, had brilliance achieved through the reeds and mixtures. With the advent of electric action came the possibility of octave couplers, and the declaration by the Austin Organ Co. that nothing above a four-foot stop was necessary, which unfortunately gave us quite a long period of impossibly dull organs. Even in the large four-manual concert organs no number of super-octave couplers could infuse any life into them. With Mr. Skinner there came additional beauty of tone, which had its drawbacks, too, since many small organs sacrificed the real organ tone in order to secure some of his beautiful color stops—not so far as I remember, though, in his large organs: the Brick Church organ, built in 1918, contained six mixtures, and other overtones, on which a baroque program could sound as successful as much as one built today.
There have been several periods of what you might call “feverish organ building.” One increase in good organs throughout the country we owe to Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The building of better organs led to an increased number of good organists capable of handling the larger instruments, and then to higher standards of church music. This debt has never been adequately acknowledged. Mr. Carnegie gave 8,400 organs distributed all over the United States, and greatly helped the cause of good church music. I speak as one very grateful, since the hundred-rank organ in the Brick Church came to us in this manner. His insistence that the church contribute half the cost was wise, as it interested the members in an undertaking in which they had a part. Mr. Carnegie also had a very fine organ in his home, and maintained an organist so that he awoke to the music of an organ every morning.
I was quite well acquainted with at least three of the founders of your chapter: Ernest Richard Kroeger, the real founder, Charles Galloway, and James T. Quarles. The year before I went to Paris to study with Guilmant, Mr. Galloway had worked with him. Whenever I especially pleased Guilmant with my playing of some large number, he would say, “Mr. Galloway played that very beautifully!”
Mr. Kroeger and I were very good friends. One winter he came to Chicago and attended a rehearsal of my Musical Art Society. My accompanist, as it happened, was away that day, so I ventured to ask Mr. Kroeger if he would mind helping us out, which he very graciously did in wonderful manner. We were rehearsing Grell’s sixteen-part Mass, a mean piece to read at sight as there was no reduced score—just the sixteen-part score. The chorus had only their single parts. The first chorus gives out the first eight-bar theme, then the second enters singing the same bit. As this was their first look at it, trouble soon developed. After straightening it out, we started over again. When the third chorus entered the same thing happened. When I started for the fourth time, Dr. Carver Williams, who was the 2nd bass in the last chorus, threw his part down on the floor and cried out, “I’ll be darned if I will count 64 bars again!”
As you know, Mr. Quarles was organist at Cornell University for a number of years before he moved to St. Louis. Andrew Carnegie had given a splendid new four-manual organ to the university’s large auditorium. Quarles got the idea of having four organists play the dedication recital. So, on this occasion, Quarles opened the recital, Dr. Tertius Noble followed, and William Churchill Hammond, the Holyoke organist, came third. Hammond finished his section with a very soft, quiet number, during which Mr. Carnegie went sound to sleep. I came next, opening with full organ, at which Mr. Carnegie woke with a leap in the air. So I, for once, had the honor of awakening Mr. Carnegie from his slumbers.
I would like to make a few remarks as suggestions of how we, as musicians, may go forward to the new day. In the first place, build up good fellowship among all organists of the city, young and old, long-time residents and newcomers. Too often there are two or more separate sets of members, the older and the younger, with separate, perhaps even conflicting points of view. See if you can build a warm, personal relationship with each other. Let the joy of association help promote a more definite feeling of “togetherness” in what each of you, as individuals, and all of you, as a group, are trying to accomplish. As you cultivate generosity and appreciation of others’ efforts and talents, feelings of rivalry, or competition, of professional jealousy, of any semblance of strife among yourselves, will be minimized. Give emphasis to a spirit of cooperativeness, of encouraging one another, of striving, not separately, but together, toward achieving accomplishment of worthy goals. In the work of the Guild, remember we all either “hang together or we hang separately.” This may necessitate a bit of “giving in” on the part of everyone concerned, but the results will be well worth the effort and the sacrifice. Your Guild, planning and working together, brings harmony and unity, and will have a positive influence in your city. I am not suggesting here that there is any noticeable lack of this fine spirit among your members; rather, this is the very first bit of advice that I would offer any chapter, for I believe it to be a truly basic principle for our progress, and I believe that improvements can always be made in any of our chapters in this regard. It is very important that newcomers to our “fold” be made to feel welcome and wanted.
To my mind, one of the chief good works of the Guild is its bringing us all together, and not only within the confines of our own city, but city mingling with city. It is stimulating and enlightening, and furnishes us much of that in our country which has been one of the chief benefits of our European sojourns. In this connection I have a pleasant thought of such a visit, which I think would, as the Germans say, be “sympathetic” to this occasion. It is of a visit of a couple of hours duration with Georg Schumann, the Berlin composer whose organ “Passacaglia” and “At Evening” we play in this country, and whose motets are sung by all our Musical Art societies. He had been only a vague acquaintance, a composer, but when I came into personal touch, he was—I cannot convey to you how delightful. There was first, with much enthusiasm, the Bach manuscript to show me, which he had just found at the Singakademie, tucked away for centuries and lost to sight. Just as I was leaving and had reached the door, he exclaimed, “Ach, Himmel! I almost forgot! Come back, won’t you!” So I returned to my chair, while he disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared and passed through his study again, beyond the living room in which I was sitting. Then he called me in. On the wall hung Stuck’s famous “Mask of Beethoven,” which the artist had presented to the composer. It had been put away for the summer, but Schumann had gone to all the trouble of unpacking and re-hanging it, and, as we stood before it, in all its wonderful impressiveness, after a long silence, he said, “Now, whenever you see this in reproduction”—and one does so often, on the covers of all the Hugo Wolf things, for instance—“Whenever you see this in reproduction, you will think of me and of how this hangs just here in my study.”
And so the Guild brings us all in touch; to the newcomer in a city or chapter it means everything, in the unique opportunity it offers for getting acquainted; to the steady residents, it should mean the inciting to do ever better work, and in intercourse with other organists and composers, inspiration. I say organists and composers, for the organists are giving to the world the greatest body of church music; and this, I believe, will be, in future, more and more stimulated by the Guild.
Admittedly, the purposes of the Guild are manifold, and the accomplishing of all of them is no easy task, but let us not forget that one of our principal aims is the raising of church music standards. And, in this, I would offer a word of warning if you are to build wisely and effectively for the future: remember that progress, if it be real and lasting progress, is a slow process. It must be gradual, step by tedious step. It evolves. Rome was not built in a day, you know, but it was practically destroyed in a few hours under the leadership of a stupid, lackadaisical, “fiddling” ruler. In attempting to raise standards, therefore, work positively and confidently, but move patiently, calmly, understandingly, and cautiously.
The future of the world we live in depends on the rising generation. The future of music, as it affects our common life, depends on the ideals being shaped in the minds of our young people. Therefore, try to keep the music sung in Sunday school up to a high standard, as well as that used in the main church service. But, be patient. Do this gradually. After we sang Palestrina’s “Reproaches,” with its use of plainsong, in the Brick Church a good many years ago, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees came up to me and said, “That was a queer thing you gave us this morning.” Notwithstanding this implied criticism, we repeated it some time later, and then again. After the third repetition, without realizing that he had heard it before, the same man came up and commented almost enthusiastically, “That was a beautiful anthem this morning. I hope you will repeat it soon.” I never heard a more vivid reversal of opinion. So, do not get discouraged. But, make sure if it is old and modal, or very modern, that it is really inspired.
And while I am on the subject of high standards in church music, let me remind us that this may be accomplished through a varied musical program and that it is not necessary to limit ourselves merely to “Bach, or Pre-Bach,” as is suggested by one teacher I know. A question I should like to ask is “Why do some of us limit organ specifications to the point that we can play only linear music?” I admire Rembrandt’s drawings greatly, but that is no reason for me to deny myself, and others, the enjoyment of the color in his paintings, as well.
I feel like giving a suggestion to the young players here, as I did recently to the New York chapter when the treasurer had just announced a change of address for seventeen young organists, which meant they were moving from one church to another: When you go out to consider a new position, you look at the organ very carefully to make sure it is an instrument you will enjoy playing, and you examine the choir library to see what material there is to work with—probably also the piano in the choir room—but you do not examine the minister, the most important factor in your future happiness. Scrutinize your minister, because he can make or break your career in that church by loving and demanding rather cheap music, or backing you up on the use of beautiful music and helping you to raise the standards of the music used in that church.
It might interest you to know the one reason I have led a happy life as an organist and choirmaster is the fact that I have invariably been associated with kindly and sympathetic ministers. When I went to my very first church, the small one in Evanston, a big new organ was being installed. I was appointed permanent organist, but for the dedication of the new instrument, a well-known organist from Chicago was invited to play the opening recital. When the program was being arranged, the minister said to the visiting organist, “But do let the lad play the first number on his new organ.”
The minister of the next church I served in Chicago was a very brilliant young man who afterwards became dean of the Harvard Divinity School. He helped me by insisting I should play an organ number after his sermon that carried out the spirit of his text, sometimes quietly meditative, sometimes big and stirring. After a couple of other short associations in Chicago, I became organist and choirmaster of St. James Episcopal Church, and found a rector who was fond of the best, and very sympathetic to all I strove to do in presenting the use of fine music.
When I came to New York and the Brick Presbyterian Church, I had Henry Van Dyke, the poet, writer, and Ambassador to Holland during the First World War. The church was always crowded to hear him preach, yet he was a great enough man to say occasionally, “It hardly seems necessary to preach a sermon—the music has said it all.”
Then came William Pierson Merrill, who had been organist of Union Seminary when a student there, bass of the quartet in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where they always had distinguished soloists, and director of his own choir in Chicago. He also wrote very good anthems and hymn settings, and his text of the hymn “Soldiers of Christ Arise” had gone into practically all the English and American hymnals. You can imagine how interested he was in building a unified service by the fact that he took the trouble to cable from London the text for the first few Sundays in the fall.
In addition to our serious work together, we always had good times because of his keen sense of humor. He liked to tell of the Saturday before his first service as minister of the Brick Church. I was rehearsing the choir in the old building on Fifth Avenue in the first chorus of the “Elijah,” and was having great difficulty in getting the choir to enunciate the final letter P in the word “Help.” It was just at this moment that Dr. Merrill decided to visit the rehearsal and speak a word to the choir. He used to say, “Dickinson stopped them and cried out in a loud voice, ‘You’ll have to do that again—it sounds like hell.’” Dr. Merrill continued, and said, “I decided this was no place for me, and returned to my study.”
His two sons inherited his sense of humor. During the two years that the new Brick Church was being built on Park Avenue, we worshiped in a lovely little Gothic church on 85th and Park Avenue, where there was not room enough for the console in the chancel, and the organist sat in a little curtained room to the side. Ernest Merrill, as deacon, was passing communion, and brought me the bread in this little room. I then looked at my watch and found that I must leave at once to catch the one o’clock train to play a recital in another city, so put another organist on the bench for the finish of the service. When Ernest came in with the wine, his face took on a look of horror, and he asked the other organist in a sepulchral whisper, “What did you do with the body?”
Dr. Merrill and his family once had an audience with the Pope, along with a number of other people. Before the Pope entered, the majordomo went around and pulled down the sleeves, pulled up the collars, and saw that the women had something on their heads. Fourteen-year-old Billy turned to his father and asked, “Wouldn’t it be much simpler to just blindfold the Pope?”
It has been one of my goals to encourage all ministers to acquire knowledge of, as well as an appreciation of, music. I do not see how one can hope for a service of worship if the minister writes the sermon, someone else selects a miscellaneous lot of hymns treating three or four different themes, and the leader of music puts on some anthems he likes, or the soloist chooses a solo he likes. A good old Scotch Presbyterian minister once said, “I preach my sermon, and that’s all I want; I don’t care what they do with the music.” Such a minister deserves the fate of one who preached on the text, “Launch out into the deep,” after which the choir rose and sang, “Throw out the lifeline.”
We must keep ever in mind the power of music to lift the individual person out of his self-centered existence. When he joins in singing a hymn or listens to an anthem, he ceases to be wholly individual; the congregation becomes one, and he a part of it. Personal differences of creed, questionings, doubt, disbelief are forgotten as hearts and voices unite in gratitude, joy and aspiration. It is the privilege and the responsibility of the organist and choirmaster, working with the minister, to offer music so worthy, so noble, so universal in its appeal, that it will not only lift the congregation into closer fellowship with God, but will subtly re-establish in some measure the consciousness of the fellowship of all Christian souls.
Not long ago, one of my pupils gave me some advice, which I should like to pass along to you: “Keep practicing. Although there are no immediate dates pending, keep practicing.”

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Mississippi. His interviews with William Teague, Thomas Richner, Nora Williams, Albert Russell, and Robert Town have appeared in The Diapason.

Introduction
Clarence Dickinson (1873–1969) had one of the longest and most influential careers in the history of American church music. The first installment in this series of Dickinson’s own writings, Reminiscences, appeared in the July issue of The Diapason and covered his early childhood and musical awakenings in Lafayette, Indiana, his formal study, and his first recitals and church appointments in Evanston and Chicago, where musical friends urged him to study abroad.
Reminiscences, Part Two, begins with Dickinson’s arrival in Berlin in 1898 and traces his musical studies in Europe with Reimann, Guilmant, Moszkowski, and Vierne, his meeting and falling in love with Helen Adell Snyder, and his return to Chicago, where he became an overnight success as organist-choirmaster at St. James Church and founding conductor of the area’s most prominent choral societies. All material used in this series is taken from the Dickinson Collection, Dr. Dickinson’s own personal library, which is housed at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We are very grateful to Patricia Furr and Dr. Gene Winters of William Carey University for granting access to this special collection, and for permission to use these items in this series intended to preserve the life and legacy of Clarence and Helen A. Dickinson.
—Lorenz Maycher
Laurel, Mississippi

Dr. Heinrich Reimann, the organist of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis-Kirche in Berlin, took only one pupil a year. I was fortunate enough to arrive in 1898 just as the last year’s pupil, Karl Straube, had left to become organist of Bach’s old church in Leipzig. I had gone to Reimann because of his reputation as the greatest organist in Germany, but did not know of him as musicologist, composer, and scholar. Reimann was up-to-date with all the French technique of the day, but had an exalted interpretation of the masterpieces of all organ repertoire. He wrote the program notes for the Philharmonic, and was librarian of the Royal Music Library, which contains such a large collection of manuscripts of the great early composers. He collected many folk songs for a series of historical recitals by Amelie Joachim, one of the great singers of the day, many of which Mrs. Dickinson and I later edited for church use. Reimann gave an organ recital while I was in Berlin, which Kaiser Wilhelm and his old court attended. It was the only organ recital I have known where it took a cordon of police to keep the overflow crowd out.
In the middle of the winter, Reimann said to me, “I have broken my rule and have taken one more student, a young girl from America whom I heard playing a very good piano transcription of one of Bach’s chorale preludes. I was so struck with it that I told her she should study some organ,” which she did. I never met her while abroad, so when I returned to America I kept looking for news of this brilliant organist whom I had never met. At an A.G.O. dinner I sat next to a charming young lady and we discovered we had been studying in Berlin at the same time. I told her of my experience with Dr. Reimann and that he had taken on a young lady student whom I had never met, and she replied, “I was that young lady.” It was Olga Samaroff, the brilliant pianist, who of course became too busy with her tours as a concert pianist to continue with organ study, but felt that it had helped her piano playing greatly.
I also studied theory and composition that year with Otto Singer, most widely known as the arranger of Wagner opera accompaniments for the piano as published by Schott. Singer was a friend of Strauss, taking the first rehearsals of his new tone poems, as he did for the first performance of Ein Heldenleben. I heard the Berlin premiere, and the critics made fun of Strauss for making himself the “Helden” by using the themes of his own works. I remember Singer defending him by asking, “Whose themes could he use?” Singer said Strauss worked the entire composition out in his head before he put a note on paper, and then had made only slight changes in the arrangement of voices in the brass parts.
Singer put me through Rischbieter’s Harmony book, which puts each given theme to be harmonized in each of the four parts, the alto and tenor being much harder to harmonize effectively than I had heretofore done. Singer sat at the side of the piano smoking his pipe, criticizing me very severely. He seemed to be an old grouch to me, but it was wonderful training and invaluable assistance when I later came to improvising fugal bits with Vierne in Paris. And, when I returned to Chicago to teach theory in first the Columbia Conservatory, and then my own Cosmopolitan School, I used the Rischbieter themes in the same manner in my class, using the soprano, alto, and tenor clefs, which helped when it came to score reading.
In Berlin, I lived on Wilhelm St., and was awakened practically every morning at six as the Kaiser rode by at the head of his troops, out for their daily drill. I did not have the financial struggle so many musicians have. Only once did I not have enough to eat for a period. I roomed in the home of Fräulein Schumann, a distant relative of the composer. The roomers were all men: a Dane, a Norwegian, two Germans, and two Americans. The other American was a student at the university who had run out of money and could not get back to St. Louis, where he said a position was awaiting him. He said he would receive money as soon as he arrived, but could not get any sent to him in Berlin in advance. If I loaned it to him, he would send it back immediately. So I drew my balance in the bank that was to take care of me for the next few months, keeping just enough for the next few weeks. The money never came, and I was afraid to write home for more, for fear they would think I had squandered it “in riotous living,” as so many of the students were doing. So I got down to one roll and a cup of coffee at the automat. At that time, I was taking part in a play to be given for the benefit of the American Club, and we were invited to the apartment of Andrew White, the American Ambassador to Germany, for an evening rehearsal. Afterwards, we were given a most sumptuous supper of all kinds of rich foods. But I was in such a condition that I could not touch a bit of the food that I needed so much. Fortunately, the next day I received a large check from my father, with a letter saying, “I’m quite sure you have plenty of money for the winter, but I want to make sure.” This kind fatherly letter was the last I had from him, as he died very suddenly soon after.
Berlin, at this time (1898–1899), was the great music center of the world, and for a mark and a half (37 cents), we heard the leading conductors of the day: Felix Weingartner, Arthur Nikisch, Karl Muck, Richard Strauss, and Siegfried Ochs. I felt they taught me the control of a proper accelerando and ritard in the building of a climax. When I came home, my former teacher said, “Well, what is that?—just a little faster, and a little slower.” Siegfried Ochs, with his chorus of 1,000 and the Berlin Philharmonic, brought out every detail perfectly, but also the great majesty of such numbers as the “Sanctus” and “Cum Sancto Spiritu” given as Bach undoubtedly heard them in his conception. I do get very impatient with these critics who say you cannot have this music properly done with more than thirty singers, which is but a pencil sketch, like the preliminary drawing for a great Rembrandt, with its glorious light and color.
In Berlin, not only did we have great orchestral concerts and operas, but we had the debuts of many young players. Rebling, the assistant conductor of the Philharmonic, was sadly overworked. We not infrequently feel that a conductor has gone to sleep, but poor Rebling actually did go to sleep at the switch. During a very long cadenza in a piano concerto, he laid down his baton and leaned heavily on the stand, dropping lower and lower. As the cadenza’s end drew near, the orchestra began raising their instruments, with the concertmaster finally raising his bow to bring them in on time with the crash of full orchestra. Poor Rebling, leaping into the air, rubbing his eyes and grabbing his baton frantically, tried to find out where they were, to the great delight of the audience.
Of course, many of these concerts were wonderful treats. Busoni, the great pianist of the day, gave a series of four historic concerts with the Philharmonic, playing fourteen concertos (*) on four successive Saturday nights. The house was full of the greatest musicians in Berlin. At the end of the last concert, Busoni came out and played an encore—his own arrangement of the Bach D Major Prelude and Fugue—in tremendous style, turning to look at the audience, and ended on a C-natural, after a month of perfect playing when you could criticize nothing. I heard Widor do the same thing while in the loft with him one time. Among his visitors that day was a very beautiful young lady standing at his right. As he finished a big number in F Major, ending with a run in the pedal, he turned to her saying, “My dear countess,” and landed on an E-natural that rang out from the pedal Bombarde. I have used this as a warning to my students—do not relax until the last note is played.
After my winter with Reimann in Berlin, in the summer of 1899, I took a trip with a friend, Arthur Burton, who was later to become a well-known baritone and vocal teacher in Chicago. He had been studying with William Shakespeare, the great conductor and vocal coach in London. At this time there arrived a very lovely old lady from Hamilton, Ontario, who was going to meet a young lady, Helen Adell Snyder, in Heidelberg and travel with her. As Arthur and this older lady had become very good friends, and discovered they were to be in Switzerland at the same time, they decided to leave a note at Cooke’s Travel Agency in Lucerne so that they might see each other. Arthur and I found such a note in Lucerne. We called on them at their hotel and had lunch together, but they were just leaving for Geneva. Unfortunately, Arthur and I had just sent out our laundry and had to wait for “the wash,” or we would have joined them on the same train. We caught the first train possible and had three very delightful days with them. I said to Arthur, “You can have your old lady. I’m going to take the girl,” and at the end of the third day Adell and I were engaged. We each had two more years of study—she to get her Doctorate at Heidelberg (from which she graduated summa cum laude in 1901, the first woman to do so in the Philosophy Department), and I to study in Paris. When I met Adell, I knew that here was inspiration in a young and beautiful woman who also possessed great knowledge. However, that was not the reason I had the courage to ask her to wait for a poor organist who would probably never make more than $2,000 a year; it was just intense love at first sight. I believe the real thing comes that way, though, of course, it can come slowly, I suppose, as has been described in many stories, without the individual being aware of it for a long time.
In the fall of 1899 I moved on to Paris, intending to study with Widor, who could play in tremendous style, but, if he were not particularly interested, could be very dull. Meanwhile, I discovered Guilmant, who was at the height of his career. One of the first concerts I heard in Paris was the dedication of a new organ shared by four organists: the organist of the church; Gigout, one of the most brilliant players of the day; Widor, third; and Guilmant, last, showing his greatness in every way. I studied with him for the next two years, and never regretted it. That first year I also studied composition with Moritz Moszkowski.
The second year, I went to Vierne (who had just been appointed organist of Notre Dame, and possessed a lovely organ in his home) for composition, improvisation, and plainsong accompaniment. How he ever got the notes of his compositions on paper I do not understand, as the head of a quarter note was as large as the end of a little finger because of the little sight left in him. I had a pedal piano in my room in the Latin Quarter, and the use of an organ in the Cavaillé-Coll organ factory and that of the American Episcopal Cathedral, where I was organist and an Englishman was director of the boy choir. I wrote my first organ piece, “Berceuse,” during the year I studied with Vierne, and dedicated it to Helen Adell Snyder. Professor Peter Lutkin, of Northwestern, sent it to H. W. Gray for recommendation for publication. It was refused. I then sent it to Schirmer and Ditson, who likewise returned it. (After returning from Europe, I later played it in a recital on the Ocean Grove Auditorium organ, and had the fun of having the same three publishers come up and say they would like to publish it!)
When my generous supply of money had run out in Paris, I felt I should begin to try and give out something, instead of always comfortably receiving, so returned home in 1901 with 125 pieces in my memory. So began the next portion of my life, first as director of the choir at McVickers Theatre, where Frank Crane, a popular minister in Chicago, was preaching on Sunday mornings, and the following year as director of music at First Methodist Church in Evanston. After only six months there, I became organist-choirmaster at St. James Episcopal Church in Chicago, with a boy choir of sixty. I enjoyed this choir very much for six years, although the strain of replacing eight or ten boys a year, along with the many rehearsals and discipline, was rather wearing. I rehearsed the boys alone twice a week at 4:30. They were out of school by 3:00, so I usually had to interrupt a game of baseball at an exciting moment, and it was difficult to get them in on time. After such an experience one day, I walked past Notre Dame Catholic Church and found the priest having the same trouble. He finally lost his temper and called out, “Any little boy who is not inside this door in two minutes I am going to send straight to Hell.” You should have seen them run! He had an unfair advantage over me. All I could threaten my boys with was the loss of a two-week encampment during the summer. This was the real pay for their year’s work.
Part of the job of running the boy choir in Chicago was putting on a light opera to raise funds for summer camp at one of the Wisconsin lakes. One year we chose the far end of Lake Mendota, north of Madison. It was near an insane asylum, and some of the harmless patients often walked through the camp and saw the boys. One of them always came swinging an alarm clock. When we asked her why she carried the clock, she replied, “Oh, they say time flies, but he’s not going to get away from me!” Another one was a very coquettish old maid who sort-of flirted with the boys, and they had fun drawing her on, nicknaming her “311,” but never telling her what it meant: “311” was the hymn “Ancient of Days.” Another hymn they delighted in, which our rector, Dr. Stone, often selected as a processional, had a line that always occurred just as the boys came in sight of the congregation. I could not stop them from always turning their heads towards the congregation, and roaring out, “My God, what do I see and hear.” There was another they delighted in: St. James was in the aristocratic north side of Chicago, and our principal rival was Grace Church, on the south side. The boys always emphasized in singing this line, “On the north side are the palaces.”
At this same time, I was offered the conductorship of the Aurora, Illinois, Musical Club without ever having held a baton or directed a chorus or orchestra. I went to Frederick Stock, the conductor of the Chicago Orchestra, who gave me a few suggestions. Of course, I always braced up my orchestra with a goodly number of players from the Chicago Symphony, which is really what put us over. This gave me very good experience, as we presented a different oratorio at every concert, never repeating anything in five years, giving the Chicago premiere of Davies’ Everyman and other such novelties, and ending with Wagner’s Tannhäuser in concert form. Aurora was a railroad center, down below the hills, so the train station was just filled with smoke. For one of the rehearsals I took the boy soprano soloist from St. James. “You don’t need to worry about my manners, Dr. Dickinson. My mother told me what to do and say.” When we alighted from the train in the midst of a great cloud of smoke, so that you could not see a thing, he said, “Aurora is a lovely city, isn’t it!”
To show you how busy I became: my weekly schedule soon meant catching a 5:30 train for the hour ride to Aurora, and getting dinner on the train. The train was a deluxe express—first stop Aurora—and the thru passengers were allowed to come into the diner, while those in the day coaches were kept locked up. Fortunately, I found a key that would fit the door, and so, when the headwaiter was at the other end of the dining room, I’d unlock the door and come in. He and the waiters were always startled to see me come in, but always served me, thinking me to be a member of the board. So, I always had my dinner and arrived at the hall in time to rehearse the orchestra for an hour, and the chorus for an hour and a half. Catching a ten o’clock train back to Chicago, I then crossed to another station and caught the sleeper to Dubuque, Iowa, where I taught for four hours the next day, then had rehearsals for the Bach Society of Dubuque, following the same routine of rehearsing the orchestra first and the chorus last. I then caught the sleeper back to Chicago, where I taught at the Cosmopolitan School, of which I was the director, until the middle of the afternoon, and then rehearsed the boys at St. James. I took the evening off! On Thursday, I was back at school for classes in the morning, rehearsal for the Musical Art Society at 2:30, a rehearsal of the English Opera company at 4:00, and, at 6:30, the chorus of the Sunday Evening Club rehearsal. Friday morning was given up to organ lessons at the church, and, in the afternoon I attended the concerts of the Chicago Orchestra. Friday evening was given over to rehearsing the men and boys of St. James for the Sunday service. Saturday morning was the service at Temple Kehilath Anshe Mayriv. In the afternoon, I practiced for various services. Sunday morning and afternoon was spent at St. James Episcopal Church. Once a month, in the afternoon, there was a large important festival service with a short organ recital following. Then came the Sunday Evening Club, a service held at Orchestra Hall, for which we had distinguished preachers from all over the country, a large chorus, and a fine quartet of soloists. I played a half-hour program of organ music, and then, putting another organist on the bench, conducted the chorus. Mondays I taught at the Cosmopolitan School until four o’clock, when I went to rehearse the boys at St. James. In the evening, I caught the train to Aurora, and the week began all over again!
Many interesting things happened along the way: One time, on the way to Dubuque, a deep cut between two hills was filled with snow. Our engine tried to ram it, getting stuck so tight it could not go back or forth. We were held there all night and most of the next day, with nothing to eat but a few chocolate bars. This spot had belonged to one man, but two little towns had grown up around it, so he named them after his daughters. We men on board decided we would send telegrams explaining our absence by saying, “Snow storm delay: spent the night between Elizabeth and Anne.”
Another amusing incident took place during the forming of the chorus for the Sunday Evening Club in Orchestra Hall, which was made up of the best soloists who sang morning and afternoon services in their churches. The men for the chorus proved easy, as practically all my men at St. James came. I had to advertise for women, and when I arrived for the auditions at my Cosmopolitan School of Music in the Auditorium building, I found the place full, much to the distress of my teachers. The first I took into my office was a mother and daughter. The old lady immediately said, “I am sure you want Jenny. She can sing higher and lower, and softer and louder than anyone you have ever heard. Jenny, show the gentleman your high C,” whereupon Jenny let out the loudest, wildest shriek you ever heard, like the sound of a wounded hyena. I could hear doors open and feet come running, and the manager opened the door to ask if he could be of any assistance. Of course, I told Jenny that nothing more was necessary. That settled it, but, as a matter of form, I told her I was compelled to hear the others who had come, and I would let her know. We did secure a beautiful chorus in the end.
In 1904, after being engaged for five years, Helen Adell Snyder and I were married. Following our studies abroad, she had become Dean of Women at the State College of Pennsylvania, and I had returned to Chicago $3,000 in debt—a good deal of money in those days. The first year I saved nothing; the second year I saved $1,500, and the third year, $1,500. I went to the wealthy young lady who had loaned me the money and said “Here’s the balance. However, I have been engaged for five years and would very much like to get married and go to Europe on our honeymoon. Instead of paying you back now, I am sure I can do it next year.” She very kindly consented, and Mrs. Dickinson and I sailed on the Romanic, although we preferred calling it the “Romantic.”
My older sister met us at Boston to say goodbye and said, “This is very nice. Our friend Miss Blanchard is sailing on the same boat with ten young ladies, who I am sure will want to meet you.” Naturally, we were not so sure and we engaged four steamer chairs—the two on the North side had our names on them; the two on the South side, where we always sat—nothing. So we dodged them until the last day.
We landed in Gibraltar, where there were men selling Maltese lace. Mrs. Dickinson was buying some for her mother. The man started the price at $10.00 and Mrs. Dickinson, having lived in Europe, countered with $5.00. Each gave in until they were only $1.00 apart, whereupon the man turned to me and said, “Father will pay the $1.00. What’s a dollar to Father?”
We took a boat to Tangier, and after a few days’ stay, another boat around to Cádiz, a very beautiful way to enter Spain, as it projects out into the ocean and the houses are painted pink, blue, and white—nice gay colors. At luncheon I asked for a glass of milk—not realizing that the only milk available would be goat’s milk, which one notices as soon as it enters the room. The waiter, of course, could not understand this request for milk, as this was my first day to use my Spanish, and he brought me several different articles until I took the menu and drew a picture of a cow, whereupon he immediately cried, “Si, Si, Señor,” dashed off, and came back with two tickets for the bull fight.
I played several recitals on the organs in Spain. The most surprising request I received was in Cordova, where the Gothic chapel is set down in the midst of the old mosque, with its 900 pillars of different colored marbles, creating a very mystical atmosphere. After I had tried the organ a bit, the priest organist said to me, “There is one American tune I have always wanted to hear. Will you play it for me?” I said, “Surely, if I know it.” He replied, “It is Yankee Doodle Dandy.” So, Mrs. Dickinson, who was not allowed to come up into the organ loft where there were priests and monks (so strict are the rules!), was rather aghast when she heard the strains of “Yankee Doodle” echo through and around the 900 columns! It was in Spain that we first began to collect folk songs. One of the earliest was “In Joseph’s Lovely Garden.”
The greatest choral group I ever had was the Musical Art Society of Chicago, which I organized in 1906. This society was made up of 50 leading singers of the city, and we performed the great choral music of the church, which had never been heard in Chicago. While I was in Paris, I was much fascinated by the beautiful singing of the 15th and 16th century music by the famous choir of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and longed for an opportunity to present these works, as well as modern music of the day. All this would require a chorus made up of very good musicians. Thus was born the idea of a society composed of the best soloists in Chicago. Mrs. Dickinson said one day, “Is this really your heart’s desire?” “This is the thing I want most.” She immediately turned to the telephone and called singers one by one, starting with personal friends who were among the top singers of the city, until fifty had agreed, most hesitatingly, to come to a meeting. This meant singing for pleasure, no money in it for anyone.
The devotion of the singers was marvelous. Individual members would go to New York to sing with the Philharmonic Orchestra, and then, if compelled to miss a rehearsal, hurry back for private rehearsals in order to prepare for the coming concert. Any one of them could sing over a big orchestra, and when you put them together, it was stunning. We could perform unknown music, old and very modern, in any language, and we gave Chicago its first hearing of works by Palestrina and Gabrieli, and the “Sanctus” and “Cum Sancto Spiritu” from the great B-Minor Mass in concert with the Chicago Orchestra. This was still in the day of the quartet, and this kind of music was new to them. They were very conscientious singers, and would study those runs at home. Three of the best altos in Chicago were sisters, one of whom was Mrs. Clayton Summy, and they would get together in her home and rehearse these difficult numbers. At their third rehearsal, they entered the room, and were greeted by Mrs. Summy’s parrot singing “Cum Sancto Spiritu,” the only parrot I ever knew that sang Bach.
I recall that for one performance of Messiah there, I had the bass and tenor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York, who had come out to sing at another event. It was very successful, and the visiting singers returned to New York and reported that it was the best performance they had ever heard. Word of this must have got around, for in 1909 I was invited to the Brick Presbyterian Church to succeed Archer Gibson. Because the salary was less than what I was making in Chicago, I was also asked to conduct the Mendelssohn Glee Club, succeeding Frank Damrosch, and was also organist at Temple Beth-El, located at Fifth Avenue and 76th Street (now merged with Temple Emanu-El). Even then I came to New York at a financial sacrifice, but for greater opportunity.■

* Busoni piano concerto series
October 29, 1898: Bach D minor, Mozart A major, Beethoven G major, Hummel B minor
November 5: Beethoven E-flat, Weber Konzertstück, op. 79, Schubert Fantaisie in C major, op. 15, Chopin E minor
November 12: Mendelssohn G minor, Schumann A minor, Henselt F minor
November 19: Rubinstein no. 5 in E-flat, op. 94, Brahms D minor, Liszt A major

To be continued

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Mississippi. His interviews with William Teague, Thomas Richner, Nora Williams, Albert Russell, and Robert Town have appeared in The Diapason.

The first installment in this series, “From the Dickinson Collection: Reminiscences by Clarence Dickinson, Part 1: 1873–1898,” was published in the July 2008 issue of The Diapason.

Introduction
On March 28, 1893, Clarence Dickinson, age 19, performed a recital at Church of the Messiah in Chicago in which he played his solo repertoire from memory. The following day’s favorable review in the Chicago Tribune sparked a heated debate among prominent Chicago organists, carried out in letters to the editor. Two months later, the journal Music published a symposium on the subject based upon these letters. The following article presents the original Chicago Tribune review and the symposium from Music, documents found in Clarence Dickinson’s personal library, housed at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. (Clarence Dickinson’s own words concerning the memorizing controversy may be found in “Reminiscences by Clarence Dickinson” in the July 2008 issue of The Diapason.) “Memorizing Controversy” is the second installment in a series of articles featuring items from Dr. Dickinson’s library.
—Lorenz Maycher
Laurel, Mississippi

From the Chicago Tribune
March 29, 1893
Clarence Dickinson’s last free organ concert this season took place last evening in the Church of the Messiah. The selections by the young organist included a Bach Fantasia and Fugue, Ritter’s Sonata, op. 19, an Offertoire by Batiste, Buck’s Triumphal March, Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” the Gavotte from “Mignon,” and Volkman’s Allegretto from op. 63. All these were played from memory, and the freedom in expression and increased animation revealed in the player’s work, by reason of his being unhampered by notes, lent unusual worth to the performance, and demonstrated that organists, like pianists, are heard at their best only when they have memorized the compositions they play. Mr. Dickinson was especially successful in the Buck March, the Volkman Allegretto, and the Batiste Offertoire. Miss Meeker and Mr. Root were the assisting vocalists, and Mr. Wild joined Mr. Dickinson in the performance of Jensen’s “Festival Prelude” for four hands and double pedal.

From Music
May, 1893
Organ-Playing from Memory
A Symposium
The time has gone by when a pianist dare present himself before an audience for a recital from notes. The example of Rubinstein, Tausig, Buelow, Paderewski, Joseffy, Liebling, Sherwood, Mme. Rive-King, Miss Aus Der Ohe, Mme. Carreño, and many others, some of them mere pupils, combine to show that there is nothing at all of an impossible character in memorizing some hundreds of pieces and playing at a moment’s notice. Some who teach much more than they devote themselves to public playing do this. Here in Chicago are Sherwood and Mr. Liebling, either one of whom is able to play at a moment’s notice any one of, perhaps, three hundred compositions you may chance to call for. Frequently, these artists never refer to the notes of some of these pieces for years together; other pieces may momentarily fade out of consciousness, but a few minutes at the keyboard will generally recall them.
But organ playing without notes is much less common. There are organists, such as the late Arthur Creswold, Frederic Archer, and Harrison Wild, who occasionally play without notes, while the majority of their public appearances are made with notes. It happened a few weeks since that a young Chicago organist played an organ programme from memory, and the critic of the Tribune commented upon the fact favorably. This elicited the following letter:

By Mr. Clarence Eddy:
Your issue of today contains a report of an organ concert which took place in this city last evening. After mentioning some of the selections contained in the programme, your reporter makes the following assertion: “All of these were played from memory, and the freedom in expression and increased animation revealed in the player’s work, by reason of his being unhampered by notes, lent unusual worth to the performance, and demonstrated that organists, like pianists, are heard at their best only when they have memorized the compositions they play.”
As an organist of considerable experience, and a personal friend of many distinguished players of the organ, whose views on this subject coincide with mine, I take exception to the import of the above statement. In only one particular is the organ like the piano—namely, that the keyboards are similar. The structure of the organ is vastly more complicated than that of the piano, while its scope and tonal resources are incomparable. In order to completely master a large organ, one must not only have a perfect command of the manual keyboards, but of the pedals and the vast array of mechanical accessories. He must not only comprehend the instrument as a whole, but thoroughly understand the workings of every detail. It is often necessary to prepare certain combinations of stops long before they are brought into action, and the mind is constantly forced to act far in advance of the fingers and feet.
Now, to burden the mind with memorizing the notes in addition to these requirements is as harmful as it is useless, and I maintain that organists are heard at their best when they are unhampered by the mental strain attendant upon committing to memory the compositions they play. The “increased animation,” which your reporter discovered last evening, I observed to be rather a frequent hurrying and unsteadiness of the tempo, caused by nervousness, which rendered the work of the player indistinct and inaccurate.
In my opinion, greater “freedom of expression” might have been attained if the player had referred occasionally to his notes, while the value of his performance from an artistic standpoint would not have suffered in the least. Among the most noted organists of my time, whom I have known personally and with whose playing I am quite familiar are: August Haupt, Gustav Merkel, A. G. Ritter, W. T. Best, Alexandre Guilmant, Theodore Dubois, Eugene Gigout, Charles M. Widor, Dudley Buck, Samuel P. Warren, John K. Paine, Eugene Thayer, Frederic Archer, George E. Whiting, and George W. Morgan.
As a rule, all of these artists have been in the habit of playing from notes in public, and even their own compositions. Who can say they were at such times not “heard at their best?”
It would be better for critics to confine themselves to a plain statement of facts than to express an opinion at variance with sound judgment based upon a practical knowledge of the subjects they write upon.

By Mr. Harrison M. Wild:
In replying to Mr. Clarence Eddy’s letter in your issue of April 3, wherein he seeks to belittle the memorizing of organ music as well as the knowledge of the critic, I desire to acknowledge the questionable taste of taking up the cudgel against a former instructor, at the same time deprecating the motive that will prompt a great artist to take from one over a score of years his junior one word of the praise extended, or to question the desirability of possession on the part of the latter, or anyone, of an ability never, to the writer’s knowledge, publicly displayed by the former.
As for the critic, were he as capable of judging an organ performance as Mr. Eddy, the probability is that Mr. Eddy would find in him a rival organist, better say brother artist, certainly not the critic, an evident thorn in the flesh. The people who read criticisms know that they are but expressions of one man, or a few men. No critic’s criticism tallies with all his readers’ opinions, and the greater the critic, the more heinous becomes the crime of non-agreement. If a critic thinks as we do, let us bless him. If he doesn’t, let us curse our bad luck and hope for better luck the following time.
As to the young artist’s concert, I know it as his first attempt at public playing by memory, and, barring his pardonable nervousness, which resulted in a lack of clearness at times, more than compensating amends were made by results obtained in other parts of the works, by lightning-like changes of registration, and, greatest of all, by the effect produced upon the audience, as evidenced by its attention and applause and the verbal encomiums afterward by musicians not in any way interested in the welfare of the young musician.
As to memorizing, we can but look at that from two standpoints: first, the doing away entirely with the music. The mere mechanical portion of an organ performance is so trifling that the mind that can memorize the Bach G minor Fantasia and Fugue, or the Thiele Variations, or the Reubke Sonata, can in a few moments so fix the registration for a strange organ as to leave fantasy free. I make bold to assert that Mr. Eddy could write out within five minutes the registration of the foregoing three numbers for any specification submitted, and, having done it, would not have to think one beat ahead, since at any particular point a change could be thought of and made, when necessary for the effect at that point or further along. If Mr. Eddy will grant the possession of this ability, the remainder of the organ memorizing is placed upon the plane of piano memorizing, and who shall say that the piano performance, simple or otherwise, is not more artistic without notes than with them? That such memorizing is physically harmful none but the expert physician or personal experience can determine. That it is for best artistic results, Mr. Eddy will not deny, when he remembers the performances of artists such as Archer, Creswold, Middelschulte, and the like, who were, or are, tried in the fire of public appearance. I know Saint-Saëns plays by memory. A pupil of mine, who has studied with Guilmant, says Guilmant has a wonderful memory, and plays at a moment’s notice any one of a host of pieces. Best told a pupil of mine, when the rumor went the rounds of his failing eyesight, that he could get along without the notes now, since he knew by memory most of the music he would need. Mr. Middelschulte told me that Haupt knew by memory all of Bach’s works, and played them without notes.
But why continue? This surely is sufficient. Can it be said that anyone of the list of great organists given by Mr. Eddy, that for one entire season all performances were by memory? If not, then there was not a sufficient trial, there could have been no freedom acquired in the new medium of expression, and hence an opinion could be of little or no value, or might be summed up in the following words: “I find that I am too nervous without the notes to do myself or the composition justice,” or, “have not the time to adequately prepare, but must play, and hence must use the notes.” That others have not memorized and given such memory performances thorough trials is no sufficient reason why it should not be done in the future, any more than because no one discovered America in the fourteenth century Columbus should not have in the fifteenth.
The second way of memorizing is the partial way, needing but a glimpse here and there at the music. How many possess it? The one who can remove the eyes at any moment for any number of measures, can do without the music, and from personal experience I can say that there is much more trouble in finding one’s place after a piece is memorized than there is in keeping right on by memory.
Now, to close by answering the question sure to be put: “You do it with your piano playing, why don’t you do it with your organ playing?” If multitudinous duties, teaching and the like, could be laid aside and my income remain the same, I could be found any day between 9 and 5 o’clock upon the Unity Church organ bench, and every programme I played would be by memory, to my extreme satisfaction, and to the certain enhancing of all artistic effect to such a degree as to do a great share toward the lifting of that onus which clings to an organ performance in the minds of the majority of the people.

Mr. Louis Falk:
Clarence Eddy, Esq.: Your reply in yesterday’s Tribune in relation to playing at organ concerts from memory pleased me very much. In regard to memorizing: I question whether playing or singing from memory is under all circumstances the proper way of rendering music in public, for it very frequently leads the performer into faults, such as inaccuracies, interpolations and mannerisms entirely foreign to the sense of the composition. Witness the contortions of many pianists, violinists, and singers as living examples of my assertion. Again, why does not Theodore Thomas conduct his matchless concerts from memory? Does not the score, which he is constantly following, detract from his ability to properly direct his orchestra? Has he more work to perform than an organist sitting before the great Auditorium organ? Let us see. The conductor uses his brains and hands with which to guide from fifty to 100 players; the organist uses his brains, hands and feet to master five keyboards, 120 registers, and innumerable combinations; he is required to represent every instrument of a large orchestra, either individually or collectively, in the performance of some pieces. What would become of the player’s wits and his accumulative memory in case of the not infrequent mishaps to some parts of the organ during his playing? The chances are that he would wish to have his music before him. We shall probably have the pleasure of listening to many organists of world-wide fame during the coming summer, and I dare say they will, one and all, play with their music before them. Does it follow that masters like Guilmant and Best are incapable of memorizing what they purpose to play? Indeed, it seems to me that if anything, the efficient organist is better equipped and qualified to commit music to memory than any other specialist in music. He is, or ought to be, thoroughly familiar with the theory of music, from the simple chord to the intricacies of the double counterpoint, in order to properly assume the duties of his profession, especially in Catholic and Protestant Episcopal churches, where improvisation in accompanying plainsong is almost imperative. It may, therefore, be understood that the reason why an organist plays with the music before him is because he considers it to his advantage and not because of any defect in his musical training.

Mr. Wilhelm Middelschulte:
At your request I would say in regard to an organist playing from memory: The virtuoso is the interpreter of the idea of the composer; in order to interpret well, technical difficulty in performing must not exist for him, then, which is more important, he must be inspired by the idea of the composition so that the playing appears as a new creation and not as a studied piece. If he is able to do this, then he is a true artist, whose noble profession it is to send light into “the depths of the human heart” (Rob. Schumann). Can the virtuoso reproduce the composer’s idea better with or without the notes? I am rather inclined to leave this an open question. I should say, in order to play artistically, it is not necessary to play without notes. But if the organist prefers to memorize his pieces, I think it has its advantage—he bears the composition of great masters like precious jewels always with him, in his head and his mind—they are like dear friends to him—constantly in unity with him, they grow on him the more he knows them. In order to keep them constantly in memory it is not necessary to always practice at the instrument—while he is riding on the car or taking a walk, he can play them over in his mind—certainly a pleasure to him. And the more the performer gets familiar with his pieces, the more he likes them, he is not afraid that something might happen while he is playing them, for he knows his friends too well. Then, while he is playing, he is his own listener; he not only gives pleasure to others, but the first and best of all to himself. I have a blind friend in Berlin, who studied the organ with me; I found that the ear keeps good control, while the eye has nothing to do. At the same time, I do not deny the difficulty in playing polyphonic music without the notes. August Haupt, my teacher, played once in a concert, where Felix Mendelssohn was present, the F major “Toccata” of Bach by memory; while he was playing the second canon, the wind in the pedal stops suddenly gave out, which confused him for a moment. Mendelssohn, who no doubt noticed the little mistake, remarked, “The second canon occurred, compared to the first one, a little short.” Haupt told me that he, in his younger years, practiced every morning before breakfast the six organ sonatas of Seb. Bach, and knew them by memory, but never risked playing those difficult trios in public without his notes.
A good result of playing by memory would be that the too much neglected improvisation of organists will take more place, for the musical form of a composition goes into his flesh and blood and will give him power and confidence enough to express his own thoughts in appropriate form without much preparation. Especially the thorough musician will profit by this method.

The Editor of Music:
When the ground has been so covered by these eminent gentlemen, it is perhaps unnecessary to add anything; nevertheless, as there is a principle involved, Music makes bold to put in its oar. The principle of mentally acquiring the subject matter of whatever musical discourse one wishes to address to an audience is exactly the same as that involved in the reading of an actor or elocutionist. There was a time when actors had to depend upon the prompter; now an actor who does this is recognized as not “letter perfect” in his part, and therefore not arrived at the point where he is ready to begin to “interpret” it. Elocutionists have discovered for themselves that they are much more free and effective in their readings when they have the text securely in their mind, leaving them free to deliver it with all the emphasis and nuance of an original discourse.
Piano recitals would be impossible from notes. There is not an audience in the world that would sit through a recital played from notes. Not even Paderewski could hold his audience, were he hampered in this way. The reason that so many play without notes is that it is less strain. The mind is more free to feel the music. The interpretation comes home to the hearer. One reason for this may be that the player has to be much more master of his discourse than when he can depend upon the notes. He must have studied it more thoroughly. Few players realize how half-hearted is the quality of mental attention devoted to practice. When a player is trying to memorize, he has to pay close attention, and out of this attention grows a finer appreciation of delicate nuances and beauties of the piece.
Now this, which is so demonstrated in the case of the piano, is still more true of the organ, for, as Mr. Eddy says, the organ is a very complicated instrument. Besides using the feet for playing, there are many changes of registration, and not a little adaptation and substitution to do in order to realize or represent an effect which the individual organ may not have in its repertory. The player, independent of notes, has time to do this; the player, confined to notes, lets it pass. Moreover, there is the same question of quality of attention. When a man knows a fugue in the sense of knowing all the answers, all the modulations, all the little counter themes, which come in here and there, he is in much better condition to make the hearer realize them also. What kind of work would an actor make of the “To be or not to be” if he had to hold the book in hand while giving it?—or “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
The question why orchestral directors do not direct without notes may as well be answered here as elsewhere. They do! Mr. Nikisch, who is always a fine pianist, often conducts without notes; always, when he knows the work sufficiently well. And when he does conduct without notes, you will find that he is doing something very different with his men than when he is half the time keeping his place in a score where he has to turn a leaf at a precise moment once in about forty measures. Von Buelow often conducts Beethoven symphonies without notes, and they say that he plays them wonderfully. Mme. Carreño told the present writer that of all the privileges of Europe, she prized Buelow’s orchestral readings of Beethoven symphonies better than anything else. (But this was before she married D’Albert.)
Hans Richter, I believe, sometimes conducts without notes. All conductors of light opera do so; many conductors of grand opera do so when they have a run of a single work. Von Buelow has often conducted the “Meistersinger” without notes. Even Mr. Thomas, who belongs to an older school of conductors, sometimes conducts without notes, and it is safe to assume that if he had to begin again his career as leader at the present time, he would acquire the habit, in order to leave his eyes at freedom to control his men.
The perfection of orchestral playing would be where all the players were “letter perfect” in their parts, and played them under the eye of the conductor—such a conductor as Nikisch or Tomlins. I mention these rather than Mr. Thomas, not because I think them greater, but because they belong to a different school—the school of intense interpretation, where all the smaller parts of a piece are fully brought out, without intending to crowd them into the prominence of the grand parts.
In short, whether we take memorizing as a convenient method of sifting out the incompetents, or as the easy way for those who thoroughly possess a musical subject, the fact remains that it is the proper thing for all public performers, and for all private performers who care about making a living effect.
W. S. B. Mathews

To be continued