2015 Netherlands Organ Academies: Alkmaar and Amsterdam

This interview was first published in Dutch in Het Orgel 96 (2000), no. 5. Leonhardt had been made an honorary member (Lid van Verdienste) of the Royal Dutch Society of Organists in the previous year. Apart from small adaptations in the first few paragraphs, an occasional correction, and explanations, no attempt has been made to update the content of the article for this translation. The interview on which the article was based took place during the 2000 Leipzig Bach Festival. Leonhardt read the article before it went to the editor and was very pleased with it. I am grateful to the Royal Dutch Society of Organists and the editor of Het Orgel, Jan Smelik, for permission for its republication.*    

Gustav Leonhardt (1928–2012) was perhaps after Wanda Landowska—the most influential harpsichordist of the twentieth century. As Professor of Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory he introduced countless young musicians from all over the world to the interpretation of early music, especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. From his work with the Leonhardt Consort—with his wife Marie as first violinist—grew a limited but no less significant career as a conductor: Leonhardt’s contribution to the complete recording of Bach cantatas for Telefunken and his renditions of operas by Monteverdi and Rameau are milestones in the history of recorded music.

As an organist, Leonhardt has not become nearly as famous—perhaps because organists in general don’t tend to become famous in the way other musicians do, perhaps also because he limited himself to early music. Even among Dutch organists, Leonhardt remained an outsider. Therefore, his being made an honorary member of the Royal Dutch Society of organists in 1999 was an important recognition of a man who has helped define the way we have listened to and performed early music for more than half a century.

I spoke with Leonhardt in the summer of 2000 in Leipzig. He was chairman of the jury of the prestigious Bach competition for harpsichord; ironically, Leonhardt’s former student Ton Koopman held the same position at that year’s organ competition. I met the master after one of the competition rounds and we walked together to our hotels. Leonhardt is often said to have been formal; it is well known how he used to address his Dutch students with the formal pronoun u (pronounced [ü]; the equivalent of the German Sie); this must have come across as utterly prehistoric in the 1970s. But in fact, Leonhardt was extremely friendly; he conversed easily and openly about a host of topics. As we passed by the Thomaskirche, Leonhardt volunteered his opinion of the new Bach organ by Gerhard Woehl.¹ The conversation quickly moved from Woehl to Silbermann, and Leonhardt mentioned the organ at Großhartmannsdorf, which he played in the film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach: “You know, that Posaune 16 . . . ” His face and gestures spoke louder than a thousand words. I asked why no organbuilder today seemed to be able to make such a Posaune. “Look,” he said dryly yet firmly, “first of all, you have to want it.”

In 2000, at 72, Leonhardt was very much alive and well, still playing some 100 concerts a year. For a concert in Göteborg that year, he didn’t even have a hotel: he arrived in the morning, played a concert in the afternoon, and flew on to Portugal in the evening for a concert the next day. I asked whether he enjoyed traveling; he shrugged: “I mean, it’s simply part of it.” Leonhardt was happy to have the interview on his ‘free’ Friday, when there were no competition rounds. “But if you don’t mind, could we do it early?” What is early, 9 am? “Well, earlier would be fine too.” 8:30, 8 am? “Just fine.” It sounded as if 6:30 would have been OK too.

Jan-Piet Knijff: How did you become interested in organ and harpsichord?

Gustav Leonhardt: Through my parents, I think. They weren’t professional musicians—my father was a businessman—but they were enthusiastic amateurs. What was rather unusual was that, even before the Second World War, we had a harpsichord at home, a Neupert, a small one.² My parents played Beethoven and Brahms for pleasure, but from time to time also Bach and Telemann. Apparently they thought they had to buy a harpsichord for that. I had to learn how to play the piano as a boy; I mean, had to, it was simply a part of life. I don’t remember liking it very much. When the harpsichord came, they let me play written-out figured-bass parts. I didn’t care much for it, but of course, it must have shaped my musicality. During the last few years of the war there was no school, no water, no electricity. Marvelous, of course—especially that there was no school! Moreover, I turned sixteen that year, so I more or less had to hide from the Germans. My brother and I took turns being on the lookout. It was all very exciting. During that time, I was so attracted to the harpsichord. And since there was little else to do, I simply played all the time. And of course, there was the enormous love of Bach. Dad was on the Board of the [Dutch] Bach Society, where Anthon van der Horst conducted.³ At fifteen, I started studying music theory privately with van der Horst. Yes, that I enjoyed very much. I often pulled stops for him at concerts. That’s really where my love of organs comes from.

J-PK: You went to study in Basel. Would it not have been logical to study in Amsterdam with van
der Horst?

GL: Maybe, but harpsichord was high on my wish list too. And the Schola Cantorum in Basel was at the time the only place in the world where one could study early music in all its facets, including chamber music and theory. It pulled like a magnet: I had to go there.

That was in 1947, only a few years after the war, and Holland was really still a poor country at the time. There was very little foreign currency, so studying in Switzerland was not all that easy. Thankfully, my father had business contacts, so from time to time, I went on bicycle from Basel to Schaffhausen to pick up an envelope with Swiss francs . . .⁴ I studied both organ and harpsichord with Eduard Müller, for whom I still have the greatest admiration and respect.

J-PK: Can you tell me more about him?

GL: He was first and foremost an excellent organist, who in addition was asked to teach harpsichord, I think. He was the organist at a terrible organ, but whenever a new tracker was built—Kuhn or Metzler in those days—we went to try it out, right away, you know.

The way people played Bach on the organ was still pretty dreadful at the time, with many registration changes, swell box, that kind of thing. But even then, Müller played completely differently. For example, he would tell you that it was common to change manuals in this-or-that bar, but that that was simply impossible, because you would break the tenor line in two! So I learned from him to analyze very ‘cleanly’ and to use that as the basis for my performance.

Harpsichord playing was still very primitive in those days. The instruments I played on in Basel were simply awful. It wasn’t until later that I came to know historic instruments. The idea that you used different types of harpsichords—French, Italian—didn’t play a role at all. I did collect pictures of historic instruments, but really without wondering what they might sound like.

Strangely enough, Müller was not at all interested in historic instruments as far as harpsichords went. On the other hand, he was very precise with articulation. You had to play exactly the way Bach wrote. Bach was the order of the day. A little piece by Froberger or Couperin every now and then, but mostly Bach, really. August Wenzinger,⁵ with whom I studied chamber music, was much broader in that regard. He played the whole repertoire: French, Italian, and the seventeenth century as well. We also had to sing in the choir, Senfl and Josquin, but also monody. That was a revelation. We had Ina Lohr,⁶ who was the first to use the old solmisation system again as the basis of her theory classes. Everything was incredibly interesting.

Look, things were kind of black-and-white at the time. On the one hand there was Romanticism, and that was horrible, so you wanted something different. The Neue Sachlichkeit played an important role. I think I actually played very dryly in those days.

J-PK: Many people would argue that you still played dryly many years later.

GL: Everyone is free to think whatever they want, but I personally think I have allowed much more emotion in my performances over the years.

J-PK: Were there still others who influenced you as a young musician?

GL: [Immediately] Hans Brandts Buys.⁷ We lived in Laren, near Hilversum [between Amsterdam and Utrecht—JPK]. I played cello as well, and I sometimes played the cello in cantata performances he directed. I never studied with him, but he had an enormous library, most of all about Bach. In one word: a dream. I used to spend hours there, browsing, making notes. Brandts Buys also had a two-manual harpsichord, something quite unusual at the time. He had an enormous respect for what the composer had written. I learned that from him.

After my studies I got to know Alfred Deller, the famous countertenor.⁸ I had heard a tiny gramophone record of his and was incredibly impressed. It showed that singing could be more than a dead tone with tons of vibrato. Diction: that was what it was all about. The tone helps the diction. Deller was a master in this regard. That is incredibly important to me. We organists and harpsichordists have to think dynamically too. We have to shape the tone.

J-PK: After your studies you became Professor of Harpsichord in Vienna.

GL: Well, I mean, I taught there and yes, it was called ‘Professor.’ I actually went to Vienna to study conducting, even though it did not interest me very much. I don’t even remember now why I did it. It may have been at the urging of my parents. Organ and harpsichord, how was one ever going to make a living that way? With conducting one could at least pay the bills, that kind of thing.

But the most important thing in Vienna was the library. I’d sit there all day, from opening till close, copying music—by hand of course—and making notes from treatises. I still use that material today. Much has been published since, but not nearly everything.

J-PK: What kind of things did
you copy?

GL: Oh, everything. Froberger, Kuhnau, Fischer . . . Tablature too, I could read that easily back then—I’m completely out of practice now. I also copied lute tablatures, just out of interest.

In Vienna I got to know Harnoncourt.⁹ We were just about the only people interested in early music and played an awful lot together, viol consort also. That was relatively easy for me because of my cello background.

But after three years Leonhardt had had enough of the Austrian capital and returned to the Netherlands, where he was appointed Professor of Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory. At the end of the 1950s he became organist of the Christiaan Müller organ of the Eglise Wallonne, the French Protestant Church of Amsterdam.

GL: My wife is francophone and we both belong to the Reformed Church, so we went to the French church as a matter of course. I knew the organ already, but it was in very poor condition at the time. The action was terrible and it played very heavily. So when the position became vacant, I said that I was willing to do it on the condition that the organ would be restored properly. That was fine. I knew Ahrend already, so he restored the organ, with Cor Edskes as consultant.¹⁰ 

J-PK: How did you meet Ahrend?

GL: I don’t remember exactly. In any case, I had seen an organ they had built in Veldhausen.¹¹ That was a revelation back then, but I have recently played the organ again and it was still a revelation. That doesn’t happen very often, that one thinks the same way about an organ so many years later.

J-PK: What made Ahrend & Brunzema so special?

GL: I don’t know. They just understood organs somehow. They had ears and just knew how to get the sound they wanted.

J-PK: Ahrend has often been criticized for imposing too much of his own personality on an instrument when restoring it, for example
in Groningen.

GL: Well, I mean, he does have a strong personality, and in the Martini [the Martinikerk at Groningen—JPK], a great deal had to be reconstructed. In such a situation one can hardly blame anybody for putting his mark on a restoration.

J-PK: Was that also the case in Amsterdam?

GL: No. A lot of Müller pipes had survived in excellent condition and the new pipes Ahrend provided matched the old pipes very well indeed. Yes, the Waalse [Eglise Wallonne—JPK] is definitely the best-preserved Müller in my opinion—not that there is a lot of choice, unfortunately.¹² 

J-PK: You made a whole series of recordings on the organ, including composers such as Froberger, Couperin, and de Grigny . . . 

GL: . . . who really don’t belong there at all. You are totally right about that and I really don’t remember why we did it. Perhaps Telefunken wanted some diversity in the repertoire. On the other hand [he continues almost triumphantly], what should I have played on the Amsterdam Müller instead?

J-PK: The Genevan psalter, I suppose.

GL: [He laughs, covering his mouth with his hand.] Precisely—or Quirinus van Blankenburg.¹³

J-PK: As a harpsichord teacher, you have had a tremendous influence on a whole generation of harpsichordists from all over the world.

GL: Oh, come on . . . For a long time, I was simply the only one.

J-PK: Have you never wanted to teach organ?

GL: I’ve never really thought about that. But even for harpsichord I never had more than five students at the same time. That was more than enough. The rest of the time I was so busy with concerts and recordings.

[The conversation moves in a different direction; Leonhardt clearly wants to discuss something else.]

I don’t know if it’s on your list, but the difference between organ and harpsichord, I wouldn’t mind saying something about that. Look, the harpsichord has in a way stopped at some point in time. The organ went on, but changed completely. In my view, organ and harpsichord are intimately connected. To a large extent, the instruments shared the same literature and performers played both instruments. That stops at the end of the eighteenth century and in my mind it’s only because of its function in church that the organ has continued to exist. In other words, without the church, the organ would have died out as well. Interest in the organ at the beginning of the nineteenth century was practically zero, really.

All right, so the organ continued to exist. But over time, it changed so much that, really, it became a different instrument, at least in my view. That is a problem for the present-day organist that really does not exist for harpsichordists. How can a man serve so many masters? I don’t believe that is possible; at least, I can’t.

The problem is, we aren’t theorists. Musicologists can study different styles—that’s not a problem. But we musicians have to take the work of art in our hands . . . [an expressive gesture] . . .
and present it. That is something completely different; it demands much more ability to empathize. I have to say, when all is said and done, the colleagues whom I admire the most tend to be those who specialize at least to some extent.

[I mention an early-music specialist who at the same time is a jack-of-all-trades. Yes, Leonhardt agrees: a great musician.] But even so, you can hear that he plays so much other music as well.¹⁴ It’s a problem, of course. Take the flute: How much literature is there from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Three Bach sonatas! We harpsichordists can bathe in a wealth of early music. One can easily spend a lifetime with it.

J-PK: Don’t you think the old composers are so far away from us that it is more difficult to empathize with them?

GL: No, I don’t. If you really study the time and the art of the period in all its facets—painting, architecture, and so forth—a composer like Froberger can come just as close as, say, Widor. And look, Widor has become early music too by now. One has to study that just as well. It’s no longer our own time; it’s not self-evident.

J-PK: You had to practically put yourself in Bach’s shoes when you played the lead role in Jean-Marie Straub’s film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach.

GL: It wasn’t acting, you know. Performing in costume, that’s all. Just because I happened to do the same things as Bach did: playing organ and harpsichord, and conducting. Well, except for composing, of course. [A gesture of profound awe.] I found it a very respectful film, it was made with a lot of integrity, and I enjoyed contributing to it, also because Bach has determined my whole career.

J-PK: I think Frans Brüggen once said in an interview, ‘Leonhardt is Bach.’¹⁵ 

GL: [A gesture makes clear that he couldn’t disagree more.] I consider Bach the greatest composer who ever lived. But I also see him as a composer in his time, not just as some remarkable phenomenon. In that sense, I’m not a Bach man.

J-PK: Your career has mostly focused on harpsichord playing and conducting.

GL: Well, no, not conducting, that has always been a side path; I don’t do it more often than once or twice a year. The Bach cantata project, too, was really only one or two weeks a year. Conducting to me is in a way the same as playing chamber music, except I happen not to be playing.

J-PK: My point is that as an organist you have been relatively free to do whatever you wanted.

GL: That is true. The harpsichord is my livelihood; the organ is in a sense a luxury. It’s also a different kind of instrument. [Enthusiastically:] One can be crazy about an organ, I think. Harpsichords don’t really have that. That is because an organ usually has a much stronger personality than a harpsichord; that is part of what makes it such a fantastic instrument. On harpsichord, one has to work much harder to get a beautiful sound. A good organ does half the job for you if not more. A good organ dictates—in the best sense of the word—much more than a harpsichord.

J-PK: With all your interest in past centuries it seems that there is one aspect of our time that interests you in particular.

GL: I think I know what you mean.

J-PK: Fast cars?

GL: [Big smile—for a moment he looks almost boyish.] As the Germans say, Wenn schon, denn schon.¹⁶ If one needs a car at all, surely a beautiful one is better than an ugly one. I just got a new Alfa 166, three liters, and it really is a great pleasure. It’s a rather fiery one, you know, the kind that just wants to go out for a ride. In the city, he has to stay on the leash, but out of town . . . Yes, a real pleasure. ν

* I am also grateful to Hans Fidom, the former editor of Het Orgel who suggested that I interview Leonhardt. Finally, I thank my wife Brigitte Pohl-Knijff and the following colleagues, students, and friends for their comments on earlier drafts of this translation: Margaret Barger, Robert Brown, Jim Nicholls, Jodie Ostenfeld, and Paul Thwaites. For any dutchisms that remain I take sole responsibility.  

1. Gerhard Woehl built the new Bach organ (IV/61) for the Thomaskirche in the Bach year 2000.

2. The founder of the firm, Johann Christoph Neupert (who was apprenticed to Johann Baptist Streicher in Vienna) and his descendants were avid collectors of historic keyboard instruments. Still in business today, the firm built its first harpsichord in 1906.

3. Dutch organist, conductor, and composer Anthon van der Horst (1899–1965) was conductor of the Dutch Bach Society from 1931. He taught organ at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where his students included Albert de Klerk, Piet Kee, Bernard Bartelink, Wim van Beek, and Charles de Wolff. 

4. Schaffhausen, on the Swiss-German border, is some 60 miles from Basel.

5. August Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a cellist, viol player, conductor, and a pioneer of historically informed performance practice. He taught both cello and viol at the Schola Cantorum from 1933, where his most famous student (apart from Leonhardt) was no doubt viol player Jordi Savall, who succeeded him in 1974.    

6. Ina Lohr (1903–1983) studied violin in Amsterdam and theory and composition in Basel. One of the founders of the Schola Cantorum, she taught theory there on the basis of solmisation. She was also assistant conductor to Paul Sacher with the Basel Chamber Choir.

7. Johann Sebastian (Hans) Brandts Buys (1905–1959) came from a large Dutch family of musicians, which included some fine composers. A pioneer of harpsichord playing in the Netherlands, Brandts Buys was also active as a conductor. As a performer and musicologist he specialized in the music of his namesake, J.S. Bach. Brandts Buys had an unusually strong interest in historically informed performance and was the first in the Netherlands to conduct the St. Matthew Passion with a small choir and orchestra (1947). Leonhardt presumably took part in performances with the Hilversumse Cantate Vereniging (Hilversum Cantata Society), which Brandts Buys led during the war years 1943–1945.

8. The countertenor Alfred Deller (1912–1979) was central in reviving and popularizing the countertenor in the twentieth century. He founded the Deller Consort in 1948. Benjamin Britten famously wrote the role of Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Deller (1960), who recorded it with the composer conducting.  

9. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (b. 1929), cellist, later conductor, founder of the period-instrument ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien (1953, first public performance 1957). Harnoncourt’s Concentus and the Leonhardt Consort collaborated for a recording of Bach’s St. John Passion (1965) and shared the complete recording of Bach’s sacred cantatas for Telefunken’s Das alte Werk. 

10. Jürgen Ahrend (b. 1930), German organ builder, active 1954–2005. In the 1950s and ’60s Ahrend and his then-associate Gerhard Brunzema (1927–1992) were perhaps the most serious, consistent, and successful in reviving the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North-German organ style.  

11. In Bentheim county, Germany, near the Dutch border. The organ was built by Ahrend & Brunzema in 1957, and enlarged with a Rückpositiv by the Dutch firm Mense Ruiter in 1997.

12. Other surviving Müller organs include those in Haarlem, Leeuwarden, Beverwijk, and the Kapelkerk at Alkmaar. 

13. Apart from more imaginative works such as the cantata L’Apologie des femmes (The Women’s Apology, 1715), Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654–1739) published a Harpsichord and Organ Book of Reformed Psalms and Church Hymns (The Hague 1732).

14. Fortunately, I no longer recall whom I mentioned to Leonhardt.

15. The Dutch recorder player, flautist, and conductor Frans Brüggen (b. 1934) performed extensively with Leonhardt in such groups as Quadro Amsterdam and the trio with cellist Anner Bijlsma.

16. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’

In the second half of July, leading figures from the international organ world gathered again in Haarlem, the Netherlands, for the 49th edition of the Haarlem International Organ Festival

Stephen Taylor was a chorister at Bristol Cathedral and organ scholar of Jesus College, Oxford. In the Netherlands he studied with Ewald Kooiman, Nico van den Hooven, and Jan Welmers, and was awarded the Prix d’Excellence in 1977. He was organist of the Nicolaïkerk in Utrecht for more than twenty years and is active as a soloist and continuo player and as an author and translator. Taylor joined the Haarlem Festival organization in 2007. His translation of Ton de Leeuw’s Music of the Twentieth Century was published by Amsterdam University Press. In 2006 he was awarded the St. Martin Medal of the city of Utrecht for his contribution to its cultural life. His three-volume tutor on practical harmonization, The Lost Chord, has recently been published for the first time in English.

In the second half of July, leading figures from the international organ world gathered again in Haarlem, the Netherlands, for the 49th edition of the Haarlem International Organ Festival. It was here, in this wonderfully picturesque town very near Amsterdam, that the first Haarlem improvisation competition was held in 1951. Four years later, in 1955, the summer academy was launched, and the two events were held annually until 1986, and thereafter biennially. 

Improvisation competition

The competition is unique in its focus on contemporary improvisation. In each round, after an hour’s preparation with pencil and paper only, competitors offer a 10-minute concert improvisation. Eight participants from France, Poland, the USA (Jason Roberts, Connecticut), and Holland were selected in the spring of 2012 by means of submitted recorded improvisations on short motifs by Louis Maillié (Lyon and Paris). In the first two rounds, all eight selected competitors showed their skills first on the monumental Müller organ in St. Bavo’s and then on the Cavaillé-Coll instrument in the Philharmonie Concert Hall. The theme in Round 1 was a melody from the 16th-century Antwerp Liedboek. Round 2 was something of a surprise: instead of a musical idea, a semi-abstract, 90-second film served to inspire the competitors! The three finalists were presented with the following theme from the hand of the Viennese organist (and Haarlem veteran!) Peter Planyavsky. 

The five-member jury (Lionel Rogg, Wolfgang Seifen, Naji Hakim, Joost Langeveld, and the Dutch composer Klaas de Vries) reflected different schools of thought. Winner of the 2012 competition was the Frenchman Paul Goussot, who competed in the grand finale against French colleague Noël Hazebroucq and the Polish organist Edyta Müller (at last, a female improviser!). The Dutch national daily De Volkskrant wrote: 

Although the three finalists were a good match, Goussot achieved the most convincing balance between the virtues of ‘organistic’ freedom and the binding power of the theme. He employed lucid rhythms, well-sounding harmonies, and did not shy away from adventurous harmonic progressions. Just before the end, chords erupted from the pipes like flashes of fire, but then he suddenly slowed, finishing his improvisation in a whispering coda. This winner of the 49th improvisation competition is a man who combines musical instinct and craftsmanship with a sense of theatre. 

Another leading national daily added: “With the Haarlem International Organ Improvisation Competition many great organ careers have been launched . . . ” 

The International
Summer Academy

The Haarlem Summer Academy 2012 offered an 11-day program of masterclasses plus a two-day symposium. In daily two-hour sessions, capita selecta from more than four centuries of organ repertory were discussed in depth. Center stage in the academy is the Müller organ in St. Bavo’s (where the gallery fortunately accommodates up to 30!) But other important historic and modern instruments in the town are also used, all within walking distance. 

Teachers at the 2012 summer academy were Harald Vogel on Sweelinck, Margaret Phillips on early English music, Ton Koopman, Jean-Claude Zehnder, Jacques van Oortmerssen and James David Christie on J. S. Bach, Olivier Latry and Louis Robilliard on French and German Romantics, Martin Sander on Max Reger, Roman Summereder on contemporary ‘keystones’, Zsigmond Szathmáry (working with young composers), Jos van der Kooy and Peter Planyavsky on improvisation, and Leo van Doeselaar on repertory for organ and strings.

This year’s academy was attended by 85 students from 27 countries and five continents. In addition to a group of young Russian players (regular guests for some years), a new group of Chinese students included young teachers from Beijing and Shanghai. Previously officially a postgraduate program, the academy now accepts undergraduate music students, reflecting the festival’s policy to attract the very best young players. Daily lectures and discussions allowed both students and the general public to meet and hear all the academy teachers. 

Festival symposium

Midway between the two academy weeks, the festival symposium “From Sweelinck to Bach” took the entire academy to the famous organs at Oosthuizen and Edam and to Amsterdam (Oude and Nieuwe Kerk), where lectures and recitals were given by Harald Vogel, Margaret Phillips, Jean-Claude Zehnder, and Christoph Wolff, among others. 

Young talents

For the second time, the Haarlem summer academy included a six-day course for young talents aged 13 to 18. After an international call, six players were selected on the basis of a written recommendation from their teachers and a submitted recording (a fast movement from a Bach trio sonata and a Pièce de Fantaisie by Vierne). In six two-hour sessions, the young players (from Holland, Germany, France, Croatia, Ireland, Portugal, and the USA) were coached by Olivier Latry and Margaret Phillips. These young organists made good use of the opportunity to attend all festival activities and to visit other masterclasses. No fewer than three of the young talents from the 2010 course returned to Haarlem to take part in other masterclasses—the Haarlem disease is highly contagious!

Young composers

The Haarlem young composers’ course took place again under the inspirational direction of the Hungarian-German Ligeti pupil Zsigmond Szathmáry. After an international call, three new organ pieces by young Dutch and German composers were selected for discussion during the six-session masterclass. Important considerations in the selection process were composition technique, originality, and whether a work was idiomatically suited to the organ. The new works were discussed with the composers (two of whom performed their own works) and presented to the public during a festival recital in St. Bavo’s. 

For the second time, the Leipzig Summer Academy will include this concert and a preparatory course under Szathmáry in its 2013 program. Thus young composers are assured of repeat performances of their new works at prominent international venues. 

New music

The festival concert programs featured many premieres: Zsigmond Szathmáry’s Fukushima Requiem was broadcast live on Dutch national radio; Dutch premieres included EOOS for organ and panpipes by Klaas de Vries, Radulescu’s Madrigali, Kagel’s Phantasie für Orgel mit Obbligati for organ and tape, Der Dom und das Meer for organ and tape by Mesías Maiguashca, and Szathmáry’s Leichte Brise—grosser Orkan. In a spectacular closing recital, Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee performed Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. 

50th anniversary

The 50th edition of the Haarlem International Organ Festival will take place July 11–26, 2014. Newcomers to the festival—and Haarlem veterans—will be warmly welcomed!

Note

Many of the items referred to in this article, including competition themes (and film), academy repertoire, and audio and video recordings of recitals and concerts (including Fukushima Requiem and The Rite of Spring), are available through www.organfestival.nl, where news of the 2014 festival will appear in the coming months.

John Brombaugh was a student of Fritz Noack, Charles Fisk, and Rudolf von Beckerath between 1964–68. He worked as an organbuilder in Germantown, Ohio, from 1968–77, and in Eugene, Oregon, from 1977–2005. 

Cor (Cornelius Herman) Edskes, noted organologist, left this world on September 7, 2015, from his hometown, Groningen, in the northeastern corner of the Netherlands, where he was born on August 1, 1925. He is survived by two younger brothers, Herman and Bernardt, the latter who has been building organs in Switzerland for many years. Another younger brother, Bram (Hilbrand Albert), who was an optometrist and organized many organ concerts and excursions for over 60 years, passed away in March 2013.

Cor Edskes was a leader in organ building from its Romantic twilight through the Organ Reform/neo-Baroque movement of the 1920s through 1960s into the compelling search for historic authenticity in building new organs and restoring historic instruments much as his friend, Gustav Leonhardt, and others such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Christopher Hogwood led musicians into the historically informed performance of the music of earlier times.

Edskes received his first organ lessons from Johan van Meurs, the organist at Der Aa-kerk in Groningen who had taught many others, such as the Haarlem Bavokerk organist, Klaas Bolt. Edskes later studied with many others including Helmut Walcha. Around 1940 he became church organist on the 1700 Schnitger organ in Uithuizen, Province Groningen and moved ca. 1942 to the Mennonite church in Groningen, where he served until very late in his life, and where he had a new Marcussen organ installed in 1961. He was appointed to the Organ Commission of the Netherlands Reformed Church in 1957 and in 1963, moved on to assist Hendrik Oussoren, the organ consultant for the Netherlands national Monumental Heritage. In 1954, he began working with Het Orgel (the Dutch equivalent of The Diapason), and became that monthly journal’s chief editor from 1957 to 1963.

Living in the region surrounding the Dollart bay where the Ems flows into the North Sea put Edskes next to the largest collection of extant historic organs of any style in the world. (See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgellandschaft_Ostfriesland.) Because the area had lost much of its source of wealth as a medieval shipping center during the Hanseatic ascendancy, funds needed for constant upgrading as organ styles changed had not been available for centuries, so these instruments tended to be left in remarkably unaltered condition. As Germany recovered from World War II, it was ready to spend funds making necessary repairs to poorly maintained historic organs. As part of such work, the organ advisor for the Reformed churches in the Emden, Ostfriesland area asked the Jürgen Ahrend & Gerd Brunzema organ shop—newly founded in nearby Leer in 1954—to restore a late Renaissance organ in Larrelt as their first job. Living not far from Leer, Cor Edskes was to discover their seldom-found skills. This developed a productive friendship between Edskes and A&B that instigated the re-introduction of meantone and restoration of the short-octave keyboards for the first time in our modern era when they restored the 1642 Jost Sieburg organ in Westerhusen in 1955. The team continued restoring other nearby historic organs such as Rysum (1457, which was to be found the world’s oldest known organ that was in virtually original condition) and Uttum, ca. 1660. Edskes was consequently able to advance important ideas working with the small, young firm that was not hindered by resistance to change so typical of the established large, production-oriented firms. (See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jürgen_Ahrend_Orgelbau.)

Cor Edskes and Gustav Leonhardt also became good friends early on. This influenced Leonhardt to encourage his many American Fulbright students to visit the historic organs in the Groningen/Ostfriesland region. Being able to see, hear, and play such a wealth of historic organs unlike those anywhere else had an enormous effect on their musical ideas. Edskes also worked with young organists—e.g., Harald Vogel—who were interested not only in learning to play in the historic manner, but in the construction of the historic organs. 

This prompted Vogel to encourage builders to adapt their work to the ideas found in the extant organs so prevalent in Groningen/Ostfriesland. Certainly that happened when this writer—by fate—was urged by Vogel to make his first visit to the Groningen/Ostfriesland region in May 1968. Vogel introduced me to Edskes as we went to visit the 1702 Schnitger organ in Der Aa-kerk in Groningen. Needless to say, hearing that organ with Edskes sitting at my side changed my life. But I am not unique; the same has happened with many younger builders after learning of my fate with Vogel and Edskes. Such was particularly the case when my former partners, George Taylor and John Boody, had their first visit with Edskes in Fall 1977. Realizing their skills, Edskes quickly summoned them to dismantle the Schnitger organ in Der Aa-kerk’s high brick Gothic building, which was approaching a structural collapse that could also ruin the exceptional organ in its nave. T&B moved all parts to the nearby Martinikerk. By 1990, Der Aa-kerk was completely restored and its organ could be put back to use with almost no alterations. After my first visit to Der Aa-kerk, Vogel, Edskes, and I walked across town to the Martinikerk to hear the mid-15th-century organ of Groningen origin that Schnitger revised in 1690 as his first project in the Netherlands. This muach-recorded organ is the only Schnitger that has its original pedal façade Præstant 32′ pipes (which, however, begin with the 24′ F with no lower bass pipes).

Cor Edskes continued working to understand the great historic organs in Northern Europe to the end of his life. As a result, he was to become the leading consultant for many significant restorations in this vast region. That included advising the Flentrop firm’s 1965 restoration of the 1671 Pieter Backer organ in Medemblik. As part of that work, Edskes required the Werckmeister’s III Well-Temperament to be reintroduced for the first time in our modern time. Upon hearing a recording soon after that work was done, this writer concluded in 1970 that this better way to hear and play organs must be used in his new work in America; that totally ended (except for his changeable-pitch continuo Positives) his use of equal temperament after finishing only one project in ET done while an apprentice in 1966. 

With Edskes’ connections with Leonhardt, he became advisor for A&B’s 1965 restoration of the 1680 Langlez/1734 Christian Müller organ in the Amsterdam Waalse Kerk where Leonhardt was organist. In 1981, Edskes supervised Marcussen’s restoration of the 1655 Schonat organ in the Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk where Leonhardt had moved to become organist. In 1984 Edskes worked with Jürgen Ahrend on the major renewal/restoration of the Groningen Martinikerk Schnitger organ that had almost been destroyed in 1939 by conversion to electric action and unfortunate attempts at neo-baroquizing the voicing in an attempt to bring it ‘up to date’. Fortunately, with Ahrend’s skills and with Edskes’ knowledge and his good working relationship with Ahrend, this very tenuous project turned into a grand success, as the many recordings on this organ show. 

From these significant improvements to the instruments he cared for, Edskes was being recognized elsewhere, and in 1991 he worked as adviser along with support of the cathedral’s organist, Kristian Olesen, when Marcussen restored the oldest extant organ in Denmark—at the Danish National Cathedral in Roskilde where all the Danish kings and queens back to the 1100s are buried—which was built in 1555 by Netherlander Hermann Raphael Rodensteen. In the 1990s, Edskes supervised restorations on organs in the Kongsberg Kirke and Røros Kirke in Norway and others in Scandinavia. Perhaps the most significant of all historic restoration work in northern Europe occurred when Edskes worked with Jürgen Ahrend to restore the largest of all remaining Schnitger organs, the 60-stop instrument in the Hamburg Jacobikirche that Bach played in 1720. This organ was re-inaugurated on Easter 1993 to an audience coming from all over the world to celebrate its 300th anniversary. The many recordings made since demonstrate Edskes’ knowledge as an advisor, achieving the finest restoration work found on any historic organ today. 

Among those describing Cor Edskes, Dutch builder Henk van Eeken states: 

His manner of working in which the organ builder had a central rôle, was striking. In his still phenomenal ‘Report on the organ in the Groningen Martinikerk’ prepared in 1972, he chose to re-create the state of the Martini organ as it was in 1740 (soon after Schnitger’s son, Frans-Casper, had brought his father’s work to its present state).

Van Eeken adds:

The possibility of restoring the organ in this way, it is vitally connected with the capability of the person chosen for the restoration, who shall have to satisfy the very highest requirements. If it is not possible to choose a restorer with these qualifications, then the execution of the restoration plan will be completely illusory.

A Groningen documentation film described 

. . . Cor Edskes, a sprightly 85 year old whose career was devoted to the restoration of the historic organs of Northern Europe. His vast knowledge and experience makes him probably the greatest living authority on the subject, and his sparkling personality makes this subject enthralling and entertaining.

Dutch organist Sietze de Vries writes in his “In memoriam Cornelius Herman Edskes (1925–2015)”: 

His ‘experience’ may be understood in a most literal sense: no organ consultant has left such pioneering and guidance work as he . . . Edskes was one of the most influential art and antiques experts of his time. When he came as an advisor to the reconstruction of the choir organ in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, an antiques fair was taking place. All fake glasses disappeared under the table.

Edskes often worked with Harald Vogel and others to publish important historic documentation, such as Arp Schnitger und sein Werk (Hauschild, Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89757-326-0). Much more information (such as many projects not listed here that Edskes was associated with) can be found (in German) at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_H._Edskes.

Although some think Edskes tended to keep most of his important information to himself—as almost no one was permitted into ‘his’ organ world—he was never secretive when sharing so much of his knowledge with this writer. In recognizing that knowledge, the University of Göteborg, Sweden, under the guidance of Hans Davidsson, crowned Cor Edskes’ achievements with the Doctor Honoris Causa on October 19, 1996. It was also a great privilege for us Americans that he shared his knowledge with us at the Westfield Center conference in Eugene, Oregon, in April 2010, Heer Edskes’ only visit to North America. His funeral took place on September 15, 2015, in his beloved Martinikerk in Groningen with his longtime friend, Wim van Beek, playing the great Schnitger organ that Edskes helped return to greatness and took so many of us to see whenever we could visit Groningen.

Peter Collins, British organbuilder, died October 24, 2015, after a brief illness. Born in 1914, Collins established his own organbuilding firm in 1954, after serving as apprentice with Bishops of London and Rieger of Austria. During his career he was well respected for his neo-classical mechanical-action instruments. Some of his more notable installations include instruments for St. David’s Hall, Cardiff; St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich; and Queensland Conservatorium, Brisbane, Australia. Other instruments made their way to Norway, France, Germany, the United States, China, and Korea. His final installation was finished in 2015 for the St. Albans International Organ Festival, his second for the festival. The earlier instrument, finished in 1989, was inspired by the work of Gottfried Silbermann.

Robert Morton Cundick, Sr., organist and composer, died January 7 at the age of 89. He was a long-time organist of the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he accompanied the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and was frequently heard on the weekly broadcast, Music and the Spoken Word. Cundick was born in 1926 in Salt Lake City, and by the age of twelve, he began service to his congregation as organist. He became a student of Tabernacle Organist Alexander Schreiner. After service in the United States Merchant Marine in World War II, Cundick attended the University of Utah, where he earned BFA, MFA, and PhD degrees from the university, the latter in composition. During his studies, he married Charlotte (Cholly) Clark, who was his organ student. In 1957, Cundick joined the faculty of Brigham Young University. In 1962, he was called to London, England, to serve as organist at the new Hyde Park Chapel of the Latter Day Saints, where his duties included a daily organ recital and broadcasts. After two years’ service there, he returned to Brigham Young. He served as an organist to the Mormon Tabernacle for 27 years. 

In 1970 he was the first recipient of the American Guild of Organists’ S. Lewis Elmer Award, granted each year to the person who attains the highest score in either the Associateship or Fellowship examination. Cundick oversaw the 1980–83 installation of a 3-manual mechanical action organ by Robert Sipe in the Assembly Hall, the 1985–89 renovation of the 5-manual organ in the Tabernacle, and the design of the 1993 2-manual Casavant organ in the chapel of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

Following retirement in 1991, Cundick and his wife served as Directors of Hosting for the BYU Jerusalem Center in Jerusalem, Israel. Cundick was an avid composer and supporter of Mormon and Utah composers. In 2004, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presented its Pearl Award of Lifetime Achievement to Cundick. Cundick’s compositional work spans numerous genres, including cantata (The Song of Nephi) and oratorio (The Redeemer). Robert Cundick is survived by his wife Cholly, children Robb (Laurel), Tom (Betsy), Ann Adams (Rob), Ruth Jackman (Dave), and Dave (Kim); brother Bert and sister Carol Hoopes (Grover), 23 grandchildren, and 38 great-grandchildren. 

Dutch organist, composer, and conductor Jacques van Oortmerssen died November 21, 2015. He was 65. Born in 1950 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, he studied at the Conservatory of Rotterdam, where he completed his soloist diplomas for organ, as a student of André Verwoerd, and for piano as a student of Elly Salomé; he did postgraduate study with Marie-Claire Alain in Paris. Awarded the Prix d’Excellence in 1976, he won the first prize the National Improvisation Competition in Bolsward, Netherlands, in 1977, and was runner-up in the Tournemire Prize in St Albans. 

Oortmerssen served as professor of organ at the
Conservatory of Amsterdam since 1979. In 1982 he succeeded Gustav Leonhardt as titular organist at the Waalse Kerk in Amsterdam, where he played the 1734 Christian Müller organ. Oortmerssen performed and taught at major festivals around the world and served as visiting professor at numerous European conservatories, as well as on the advisory board of the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt) at the University of Gothenburg. His many recordings include the organ works of J. S. Bach (only nine volumes were released), and the works of C.P. E. Bach and Johannes Brahms.

Dennis P. Schmidt, 66, of Narragansett, Rhode Island, died October 19, 2015, at Rhode Island Hospital. Born in LeMars, Iowa, he was the son of Ruth E. F. (Hilgeman) Schmidt of Omaha, Nebraska, and the late Rev. Walter K. Schmidt. A graduate of Dana College from which he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999, Schmidt earned master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Michigan and a Master of Divinity from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. Schmidt performed in recitals around the world; his programs included the complete organ works of Bach. An active member of the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Anglican Musicians, he served as a church organist in numerous parishes. Dr. Schmidt served as the executive director of the Bach Festival of Philadelphia and wrote two books to accompany the Hymnal 1982. He was the author of numerous reviews and articles for The Diapason.

Dennis P. Schmidt is survived by his wife, Susan E. Hoag-lund, his mother, daughters Julia G. S. Hoaglund and Anne Meiliu S. Hoaglund, both of Narragansett, sisters Linda B. Duda of Omaha and Diane Christenson of Marana, Arizona. Gifts may be made in Dr. Schmidt’s name to the organ program of the School of Music at the University of Michigan, 1100 Baits Dr., Ann Arbor, MI 48190. ν

When meeting Kimberly Marshall, one’s first impression is that of great energy. That impression lingers as one encounters her presence in written publications and recordings—she seems to turn up everywhere and indeed, she has performed and presented at American and European conventions and conferences, has written entries for Grove and other music dictionaries, recorded organ music from the 15th to the 21st centuries, and even made videos to illustrate exercises for organists (Marshall kindly produced one for The Diapason).

A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Kimberly Marshall began organ studies in 1974 with John Mueller at North Carolina School of the Arts. After studies in France with Louis Robilliard (1978–79) and Xavier Darasse (1980–81), she returned to North Carolina and completed her undergraduate studies with Fenner Douglass in 1982.

With a full scholarship from the British government, she pursued graduate studies at the University of Oxford (1982–86), earning a D.Phil. in Music for her thesis, Iconographical Evidence for the Late-Medieval Organ. During her time in England, she won first prize at the St. Albans Organ Interpretation Competition in 1985, leading to a contract with the BBC and a recital on the Royal Festival Hall series.

In 1986, Marshall was appointed assistant professor of music and university organist at Stanford, where she presided over organs by Fisk (dual-temperament, 1984) and Murray Harris (1901). Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1991, she continued her research and teaching at the Sydney Conservatorium in Australia. From 1993–96 she served as dean of postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music, developing a new master’s degree in advanced performance studies, awarded in conjunction with King’s College London. 

From 1996–2000, Marshall was a project leader for the Organ Research Center in Göteborg, Sweden, where she taught and performed. Under the aegis of GOArt, she organized the first conference ever devoted to organ recordings, “The Organ in Recorded Sound,” and has edited its proceedings.¹ Appointed to Arizona State University in 1998, Marshall (now Goldman Professor of Organ) oversees the graduate organ studio and presides over the instrument by Paul Fritts (1992). 

Kimberly Marshall has performed and done research worldwide, from a sabbatical in Pistoia, Italy, researching early Italian organ music, to performing on many historic organs, including those in Roskilde Cathedral (Denmark), St. Laurenskerk, Alkmaar (Netherlands), the Jacobikirche in Hamburg, and the Hildebrandt instrument in Naumburg, Germany, which Bach examined in 1746. She has also presented concerts and workshops on early music in Sweden, in Israel, at the 2007 Early English Organ Project in Oxford, and at the Festival for Historical Organs in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Marshall’s publications reflect her eclectic interests. Examples include Rediscovering the Muses (Northeastern University Press, 1993), her edition of articles on female traditions of music making; entries for the Cambridge Companion to the Organ (1998), the Grove Dictionary of Music 2000, and the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (2012); and her anthologies of late-medieval and Renaissance organ music (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2000 and 2004). 

Marshall’s recordings (over a dozen, at this writing) cover a wide spectrum, including music of the Italian and Spanish Renaissance, French Classical and Romantic periods, and works by J. S. Bach. Her most recent CD, The First Printed Organ Music: Arnolt Schlick, celebrates the music of Arnolt Schlick on the 500th anniversary of its publication (2012). A CD/DVD set, A Fantasy through Time (Loft, 2009), featured the organ fantasy genre across five centuries, from Ferrabosco and Sweelinck through Jehan Alain. Marshall has collaborated as organist for a recording of Chen Yi’s organ concerto with the Singapore Symphony (BIS, 2003). Her recording of works for organ by female composers, Divine Euterpe, includes music by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Elfrida Andrée, and Ethyl Smyth.

While at Stanford and the Royal Academy of Music, Marshall gave performances of organ works by Ligeti in the presence of the composer, and she has been an advocate for music by Margaret Sandresky, Dan Locklair, and Ofer Ben-Amots. In a recent article, she described the new Gerald Woehl organ in Piteå, Sweden (“The ‘Organ of the Future’ in Sweden’s Studio Acusticum,” The American Organist, February 2013, pp. 62–65). Her publications and recordings can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberly_Marshall. 

Marshall also maintains a vibrant website (www.kimberlymarshall.com) and a Facebook page, and she can be found on YouTube performing everything from Christmas favorites to Widor. Marshall also has created exercise videos tailored to the organist, in which she demonstrates moves and stretches that work on muscles most used by organists. In person and even via the telephone Marshall communicates a passion both personal and professional, and we wished to explore the life and work that has ensued from such energy and enthusiasm.

Joyce Johnson Robinson: Do you come from a musical family? 

Kimberly Marshall: My mother is very musical and had a beautiful singing voice, but she had very little formal training. Her mother had played the piano, so when I was seven, she asked if I’d like to study the piano. We didn’t have an instrument in my home until my parents bought an upright piano for my practice.

What ignited your love of organ music? 

I had the great luck to be born in the town where John and Margaret Mueller were teaching. Margaret is a legendary organist, and she became my piano instructor when I was thirteen. She is a master teacher for young musicians, and she opened my ears to the expressive possibilities of the piano. John attended one of my piano recitals and invited me to study organ with him. What an honor! I began my studies with him on the beautiful Flentrop organ at Salem College, and the next year continued my work as a high school student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Dr. Mueller’s enthusiasm and the range of timbres available on the Flentrop organ sparked my passion for the organ.

What works were some of your first favorites?

I was very enamored of French music from the start, Alain’s Litanies and Franck’s Choral III being two of my early favorites.

You received a full scholarship from the British government for your graduate work at Oxford. Is that unusual for an American?

Each year, the British government awards up to 40 “Marshall” Scholarships to Americans to pursue graduate degrees at British universities. The Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission was set up in 1953 as a gesture of gratitude to the United States for the Marshall Plan. Scholars in many fields have studied on Marshall Scholarships—Thomas Friedman, William Burns, and Nannerl Keohane, to name three—but there have been very few musicians in the 60-year history of the awards. Perhaps the common family name helped me, although I’m not aware of any direct link to George C. Marshall.

You had a contract with the BBC. What did that entail?

This was part of my St. Albans prize, and it started with a recording of my prizewinner’s recital that was later broadcast on BBC. The first contract meant that I was on the books, so to speak, and I was later asked to do other projects, such as recordings at Birmingham Town Hall and London’s St. John’s Smith Square.

You’ve done a great deal of work in the areas of medieval and Renaissance organ music. What are the elements of early music that appeal to you?

My interest in early music was sparked by my experience with historical organs while an undergraduate in French conservatories. As a high school student working with John Mueller at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, I had focused mainly on Bach and French romantic music, which led me to continue studies with Louis Robilliard at the Lyon Conservatoire. Every day, I practiced Franck, Liszt, and Messiaen on the beautiful Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. François-de-Sales—it was a marvelous time in my life! After gaining the Médaille d’Or in Lyon, I decided that I should spend some time in Paris working on early music. I was planning to study privately with André Isoir, whom I had met during one of the Salem College summer organ academies, and whom several of my fellow French students had recommended warmly. 

I remember arriving early for the Sunday morning Mass at St. Germain-des-Prés, hoping to go up to the tribune with him, when who should appear but Isoir’s colleague, Odile Bailleux, who hurriedly invited me up the stairs so that she could start the prelude. During the course of the Mass, she played a number of French and English baroque pieces. I loved her playing and her personality and impulsively asked if I might study with her. She agreed, and so I began having lessons in early music with Bailleux at St. Germain. I also went to hear Chapuis play at St. Sévérin in the Latin Quarter whenever possible, and I attended Saturday workshops with him and Jean Saint-Arroman at Pierrefonds, near Compiègne, on an organ built in historical style by Jean-Georges Koenig in 1979. This was a terrific initiation into the performance practice of French Classical organ music, which, with Buxtehude and Pachelbel, was the first pre-Bach repertoire I learned.

So you began with French Romantic repertoire and then started playing the tape backwards, so to speak, moving back into French Classical. What specifically appealed to you about medieval and Renaissance works? 

Again, I was inspired to learn about Renaissance music because of my experiences with historic organs. I remember visiting the gorgeous Piffaro organ (1519) in Siena’s Santa Maria della Scala with Umberto Pineschi and Joan Lippincott in the late 1980s. We were enchanted by the gravitas of the 12′ Principale, by the shimmering beauty of the ripieno, and by the delicacy of the Flauto. But Joan and I didn’t know what type of music would have been composed for this instrument—the four-octave compass began at F (without low F# or G#) and was not conducive to baroque music. So we improvised and relished the sounds. Then I started doing some research, uncovering a treasure trove of 16th-century Italian music, including the first “St. Anne” Fugue, composed before 1570! (I published this in my Renaissance anthology for Wayne Leupold Editions, 2004.) 

The desire to demonstrate a historical organ with corresponding repertoire also motivated my research into Arnold Schlick. Years ago, I had the opportunity to perform on the 16th-century Genarp organ in the Malmö Museum, for which Schlick’s music is well suited. I’ll never forget that pedalboard because the sharps were so high that it made playing Schlick’s Ascendo ad patrem meum (with four parts in the pedal) easier than usual, although I had to take my shoes off to do it!

My interest in medieval music obviously did not come from playing historic organs, but rather from my study with John Caldwell at Oxford. As part of my course, I researched the early history of the organ, and I was naturally curious about the sort of instrument that would have accommodated the first surviving keyboard music—the Robertsbridge Codex, circa 1360. Caldwell is an expert on medieval music and English keyboard music, and he encouraged my efforts, giving me insightful suggestions about possible sources and the meaning of obscure Latin references. Another formative influence was my thesis advisor, Christopher Page, who founded Gothic Voices just a year before I began my studies at Oxford. Listening to Margaret Philpot and Rogers Covey-Crump recreating the music of Machaut and Dufay in New College Chapel transported me to new musical horizons. I was taken by the strange beauty of the music, and I wanted to reclaim the organ repertoire from this time. Page was the perfect mentor for me, a scholar/performer of the first order who was able to sell out major concert halls with a program of medieval motets and Renaissance chansons. I was inspired to include 14th- and 15th-century keyboard pieces on my own concert programs. 

Although I have had the chance to perform concerts at Sion and Rysum, I usually play late-medieval music on modern organs, trying to evoke something of its original creation through my articulation and registration. As I tell my audiences, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to medieval replica organs to bring this music to life in the 21st century. What if we hadn’t played Bach’s organ music until we had the perfect Bach organ?

You put a great emphasis on recital program design. Tell us how you approach programming.

I am fascinated by the many different types of organs that have been created and try to share this fascination with my audiences through interesting programming. My concerts often have a theme, such as A Fantasy through Time, a CD/DVD of organ fantasies from the 16th to the 20th century, or Bach Encounters Buxtehude, exploring through organ music the ways in which the Lübeck master might have influenced the young Bach.

I very much enjoy finding ways to link disparate types of music or to help the audience understand the development of a genre or organ type. Organ music preserved from the early 16th century shows the emergence of national styles, as German, Italian, French, and English musicians began exploring the organs they knew. So it’s a great way to demonstrate the distinguishing characteristics of organs in different European countries, many of which also correspond to some national stereotypes of the people in those countries!

Of course, the organ that I am playing must always be the starting point for any program to be successful. I try to show as much of each instrument as I can, sometimes finding unusual combinations that highlight the geographic or chronological variety of the music. If there’s a beautiful Quintadena or Regal, I need to determine how best to feature it. Because the compass required for 14th–17th century music is usually much less than that of contemporary instruments, it is often possible to play pieces up or down an octave, thereby employing different registers of the stop(s) than are normally heard. Building fine programs is like managing a restaurant, determining from day to day the best menus to take advantage of fresh, seasonal foods while also creating a special atmosphere for the establishment. Registering organ music is like being the chef, knowing the intrinsic tastes of each ingredient and finding inspired (and delicious!) ways to combine them.

Has your methodology of programming changed over the years?

Yes, definitely. My changing approaches to programming relate to changing expectations of audiences during the past 30 years. When I started concertizing, I would try to include standards of the organ repertoire, always a major Bach work, another German work (perhaps Buxtehude or Pachelbel), something French (some Couperin, Grigny, Franck, Dupré, Alain, or Messiaen) and at least one “outlier,” some Spanish or Italian music, or a contemporary piece (Albright, Heiller, Sandresky, Ligeti). Organ music was more mainstream then, and audiences knew many of the major works. I would try to give them a sampling of music they would recognize and then add some rarer gems to spice up the program. 

As audiences for organ concerts became less familiar with the instrument and its repertoire, I decided that I needed to introduce verbally the music I was playing. This was difficult for me at first, but I forced myself to do it because I felt that it was important to make a connection with the audience and to tell them what excited me about a particular work. I got a lot of good feedback after concerts, when listeners would say, “I especially appreciated your comments,” or “You really helped me to hear things in the music that I otherwise would have missed.” So I persevered, always planning my comments meticulously and memorizing them. (I later discovered that Winston Churchill had similarly written out his speeches, even including indications concerning their delivery, and memorized them, so that it appeared to audiences that he had a natural gift for public speaking.) 

I found that it helped the flow of my comments to have an overriding theme for the concert, so I began to craft programs that related to a type of music (say, dances or organ fantasias) or that showed influence from one composer or national school to another (such as Bach and the Italian influence or organ music by female composers). With time, the speaking between pieces became easier and more natural, so that now, instead of dreading my time off the bench, I can enjoy looking out at the audience and communicating my ideas to them with words as well as through music. And my themes have become more imaginative, such as “War and Peace” (from early battle pieces through Messiaen’s Combat de la Mort et de la Vie), “Number Symbolism in Organ Music,” and “Bottoms Up!” (a program with my fabulous tuba colleague, Sam Pilafian). Sometimes I am asked to prepare a specific type of program for an event. This happened when I was invited to perform an organ recital for the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music in London two weeks before the 2012 Olympics. The festival organizers were using the theme of competition, so they asked me to recreate the competition between J. S. Bach and Louis Marchand that was planned but never took place. I believe that such a programmatic approach can help bring in new listeners for the organ as well as add new dimensions to the experience of organ enthusiasts.

Let’s discuss your teaching. How do you present historical contexts to your students? 

I have a three-pronged approach to this. We study surviving treatises and instruments to learn from them about playing styles. We then develop interpretations of pieces from different national schools and time periods at a specific organ, determining ways to adapt the historical material to real-life performance situations. Finally, I draw links between what is happening in a specific organ school and what was happening in the broader musical, political, and social contexts in which the music was composed. It is vital for my students to listen to great performances of vocal and instrumental music from each of the traditions we study, so that they have a sound ideal in their minds before they try to achieve it at the organ.

How do you integrate web-based information with traditional bibliographic research methods?

The most important web-based information in my teaching is the availability of fine recordings through the Internet. Our university subscribes to the Naxos Music Library, and my students are constantly finding new sources of recorded music (and not only organ recordings!) to inform their interpretations. I also investigate historical recordings as part of my research (as seen in my article in The Organ in Recorded Sound), so I use the International Historic Organ Recording Collection (www.ihorc.com) and the Centre for History and Analysis of Recorded Music at King’s College London (www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/music/research/proj/charm/) whenever relevant to a student’s interests. 

I think my students teach me more about what’s out on the Internet than I teach them, although I certainly add a critical element that can be lacking for the generation that grew up on Google. Just because there’s a video on YouTube doesn’t mean that it’s an authoritative performance! Of course, my students and I benefit daily from music editions available through the Internet, especially public domain scores through IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project: imslp.org). Again, one must exercise critical judgment about the context of the original edition, since many reflect the scholarship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is why they are in the public domain. In some cases the scholarship was very sound, but new sources and approaches during the second half of the 20th century may make old editions obsolete, so one must be cautious and not just latch onto the first edition that pops up in the browser.

Given the ubiquity of electronic devices and technologies, do you find that students have more trouble maintaining focus and patience? 

Since my teaching is specialized, I haven’t encountered this problem directly, but colleagues who teach more general courses often complain of the need to present material in “sound bytes.” Organists have great powers of concentration, so I’m not sure that my students are a barometer of what may be happening more generally with regard to attention spans in our culture. 

Do your students embrace early music as much as you do? 

Some of them do; others don’t. And that’s just fine, because each student is unique and has individual passions that I try to develop through my teaching.

You not only work to stay in shape yourself, but you have created short videos to educate others on ways of preventing pain and injury. What led you to promote exercises for organists? 

I am very committed to helping organists stay fit and able to play the organ without pain. To this end, I have been developing some simple exercises to combat the typical problems encountered by organists spending prolonged periods of time in bad positions.² By working to open the chest and strengthen the rhomboids—upper back muscles— it is possible to correct for the kyphosis (humped upper back) that often plagues organists. It is also necessary to make the hips more flexible and to strengthen the abdominal wall in order to have a stable core that grounds the body. [Kimberly Marshall has created a video for The Diapason demonstrating warmup exercises. Visit TheDiapason.com and look for Diapason TV.] With a strong core and good position at the organ, the arms and legs can move freely, enabling one to play for hours without repetitive strain.

How did you decide on the muscle groups to work on, and which exercises to do? Did you work with an exercise physiologist?

I have practiced yoga for about 15 years, and this has helped my flexibility and mindfulness. Breathing deeply is the key to so many aspects of our mental and physical performance, so opening wind passages and the diaphragm is top priority! I tend to gravitate towards restorative, yin poses in my yoga practice, so I try to balance that with strength training, especially for the core, shoulders, and arms. For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of working with a fabulous trainer, Larry Arnold. Larry has his own gym in Phoenix and a unique approach to fitness that is rooted in his understanding of the body (his website is www.labodycraft.com). He trains athletes at a very high level, but he’s amenable to improving body function in other activities. I am definitely the first organist he’s worked with, and I’ve taken students to see him as well. We all have the same issues!

Since you have a heightened awareness of physical issues, do you assess any weaknesses with your students?

Yes, my students are often kyphotic (hunched upper back), and they usually have tight lower backs from the strength required to support themselves on the bench during hours of practice. These are problems affecting almost all organists, which is why I developed simple exercises to help offset them. Usually, organists need to strengthen the upper back (so that it holds the shoulders down and back, creating a long, free neck) and to strengthen the abdominal muscles (so that the opposing muscles in the lower back can loosen). Individual students sometimes have other physical issues, so I try to create ways to help them with alignment, strength, and/or flexibility. 

How do you maintain your own fitness when you’re traveling and concertizing?

This can be a challenge, but mainly because of time constraints. Preparing concerts takes a lot of time and energy, so I focus on flexibility rather than strength training when I am touring. I maintain good flexibility through stretches and poses that don’t require lots of space or special equipment, and I’ve even become rather adept at exercising on the plane. You can do small abdominal crunches in your seat to help stretch out the lower back. Neck, shoulder, wrist and ankle rolls help to keep the circulation going and to prevent muscle strains, especially on long flights.

You heartily embrace new technology.

Although I’m of an older generation that actually did research in libraries looking at manuscripts and books, I have learned to embrace several aspects made possible by technological advances in the last 30 years. Scanning projects have made immediately accessible many of the musical sources that used to require air travel and long library stays. Manuscripts, music prints, and recordings are now accessible at the click of a mouse, and this facilitates aspects of my work. Nevertheless, one must be careful to verify information retrieved on the web and to develop a critical sense about the integrity of certain sites. 

I am currently collaborating with David Rumsey on a 4,000-article Encyclopedia of the Organ that provides articles on the history of the instrument in specific countries, with cross-referenced articles giving composers’ biographies, technical information, and organ specifications. We are investigating different online platforms for this in order to make it more user-friendly and to keep it updated. With the speed made possible by new technology, today’s readers are too impatient to look up articles in a book, so we hope to provide links that will pop up almost as quickly as the brain initiates the curiosity to investigate.

Of course, I am delighted to be able to share my own work through online articles, recordings, and videos. The facility of communication makes it easy to get feedback and to carry on stimulating discussions with colleagues. Very importantly, I can now give lessons via Skype with organists who want some tips on playing specific pieces or types of repertoire. This is a great boon to disseminating ideas and to giving instant feedback to those who are experimenting with new techniques.

How have the Skype lessons worked out? 

Remarkably well! I was a bit skeptical at first about whether I would be able to have a good idea of someone’s playing through Skype, and then to convey my ideas back to them. But I have found that Skyped lessons can provide an effective way for me to hear someone playing a specific repertoire and to give them input on aspects of performance practice, such as articulation, ornamentation, and rhythmic alterations. I would not recommend Skype sessions for feedback on registration when preparing a recital or as a substitute for an ongoing relationship with a teacher. There is nothing better than being in the same acoustical environment when working together. But Skype enables me to introduce someone to a new style of playing or to help him/her prepare a specific piece without having to make the trip to Arizona. (In some cases, it inspires them to make the trip later!) 

You have worked all over the world. Are you multi-lingual? If so, do you find it helps your work (or if not, does that hinder you in any way)? 

I am a firm believer that organists should know several languages, and as my students will attest, I make linguistic study a priority. Reading is of course the most important aspect for research, and I help prepare my students for reading exams at ASU. When we travel together to see organs in Mexico and Europe, they see how important it is to be able to speak the local language when I am setting up meetings with colleagues, working out travel details, teaching and introducing my concert programs in Spanish, French, Italian, or German. I haven’t yet mastered Dutch and the Scandinavian languages, but know enough to read about organs in them. I think Mandarin is going to become an important language for the future, as we work to foster an organ culture in China. I’ve been there twice, and I am optimistic about the potential for developing Chinese organists and an enthusiastic following for them.

Is there any other area or type of music that you would like to tackle next? 

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been relishing the opportunity to play a wide repertoire on many different types of organs. I’ve become known for my work in early music, which is very gratifying, but I don’t want to be confined to that, unless, of course, the organ I am playing dictates a specific style of music. I’ve always played romantic and contemporary music, so I’m coming back to some of the 19th- and 20th-century works that dominated my student days as an organist. Hopefully I’m playing them now with greater insight resulting from the intervening musical experience! What excites me about playing the organ is the amazing variety of sound possibilities available. What other instrumentalist can play 14th- and 15th-century music in Sion, Switzerland, and a month later (and 3,000 kilometers north) perform music from a seven-century spectrum on a futuristic organ with over 100 stops?³ 

Perhaps the most extreme example of this “stylistic schizophrenia” occurred this past summer. At the end of June 2014, I performed during the Boston AGO Convention on the Fisk organ at Wellesley College, in ¼-comma meantone tuning with short octave and split keys. Six weeks later, after a wonderful stay in southern France, I appeared on the Spreckels Organ in San Diego’s Balboa Park, complete with tibias and percussion, playing a program of music by Parisian composers. And that, in a nutshell, is why I love the organ. Vive la différence! ν

Notes

1. The Organ in Recorded Sound: An Exploration of Timbre and Tempo. Göteborg: Göteborg Organ Art Center, 2012. Available from the author or from www.ohscatalog.org.

2. Some of these may be found at https://www.facebook.com/KimberlyMarshall.
organist. 

3. “The ‘Organ of the Future’ in Sweden’s Studio Acusticum,” The American Organist (February 2013): 62–65. 

Kimberly Marshall’s forthcoming recording, A Recital in Handel’s Parish Church, features concerti and passacaglias performed on the new Richard-Fowkes organ in St. George’s, Hanover Square, London. All tracks will be available online in September.

October 4–6, 2015

Marcia Van Oyen earned master’s and DMA degrees at the University of Michigan, studying organ with Robert Glasgow. She is currently minister of music, worship, and fine arts at First United Methodist Church in Plymouth, Michigan.

The 55th annual University of Michigan Organ Conference, with the theme “Organ Music of Central Europe,” took place October 4–6, 2015. Following Michele Johns’ retirement celebration in 2014, and the Marilyn Mason fête the year before, this conference was a quieter affair, attracting mostly local Michigan alumni and current students. 

Renovation and expansion of the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance

Beautiful autumn weather on Monday permitted lunch outdoors, on the terrace of the new William K. and Delores S. Brehm Pavilion, part of a $29.5 million renovation and expansion of the Earl V. Moore Building, designed by Eero Saarinen and originally opened in 1964. Lack of funding when the structure was built led to compromises, and Saarinen’s original vision was not fully realized. The building was never able to accommodate the school’s full spectrum of music courses or faculty. Some of the building’s limitations were addressed in 1985 with the addition of the Margaret Dow Towsley Center, which added the McIntosh Theatre and Blanche Anderson Moore Organ Hall. 

The new Brehm Pavilion includes a rehearsal hall for large ensembles, a music technology center, a state-of-the-art lecture hall, percussion practice rooms, and new classrooms. Substantial renovations resulted in additional practice rooms, a public commons, acoustical, aesthetic, and functional improvements to existing rehearsal, performance and studio spaces, and faculty offices. 

 Sunday conference events

Sunday afternoon at Hill Auditorium, Douglas Reed played a superb concert, “A Tribute to William Albright and William Bolcom.” It was an ambitious program, to be sure, and not for the faint of heart performer, but Reed was more than up to the challenge. He began with two works of Albright’s “public” music, Carillon-Bombarde and Hymn, both published works, then provided a contrast with what Albright considered his “private” music—“Whistler (1834–1903): Three Nocturnes,” which remains in manuscript form. The nocturnes need the reference of Whistler’s three paintings in order to be appreciated, and Reed provided these, in color, in the program. Each painting portrays a scene at twilight, offering variations of light and shade, which is reflected in the music. 

Next, Reed included his own transcription of the last two sections of Bolcom’s Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (originally for SATB chorus and organ), which was composed in memory of William Albright and dedicated to his son, John. Bolcom’s miniature on Abide With Me followed, then the gospel prelude on Amazing Grace. Reed’s articulation was both precise and expressive, elucidating the subtleties of the dense scores, and he deftly negotiated their copious technical demands. 

The last section of the program returned to Albright with selections from Organbooks I and III, which are particularly representative of his works as “a new means of idiomatic expression for the organ.” Albright described them as “part of a much larger scheme implying many more pieces each of which explores other sound and style capabilities peculiar to the instrument: some simple, some complex, some even working with popular idioms; all, however, hopefully demonstrating the richness and variety of organ sound.” Again Reed proved to be more than up to the task of presenting these works in all their intricacies with precision and ease, playing “Underground Stream,” “Melisma,” “Basse de Trompette,” “Jig for the Feet (Totentanz),” “Nocturne,” and the unpublished “Chorale Prelude,” intended to be the fifth movement of Organbook I. This entertaining work served as a reminder of Albright’s penchant for injecting humor into his writing (he includes quotes from film music) and the juxtaposition of opposites. 

Fourth annual Michigan 

Improvisation Competition

The fourth annual Michigan Improvisation Competition took place Sunday evening at the First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor, providing contestants with the ample resources of the church’s Schoenstein organ (III/42). The Ann Arbor AGO chapter provided a dinner beforehand for conference attendees. 

Preliminary round judges Joe Balistreri (a member of The Diapason’s “20 under 30” Class of 2015), Gale Kramer, and Darlene Kuperus evaluated recorded entries. Each contestant created a set of variations on a hymn tune and a free improvisation on an assigned original theme. From a field of thirteen entries, five contestants were invited to the final round, which involved similar improvisational challenges—a set of variations on the hymn tune Salzburg and a free improvisation on a given original theme. Final round judges Huw Lewis, Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, and Scott Hyslop evaluated players on thematic development, musical form, stylistic consistency, control of harmonic language, rhythmic interest, and effective use of the instrument. Having heard the final round each of the competition’s four years, I can attest to the fact that the level of playing has improved each year, rendering the judging challenging. 

First prize was awarded to Matthew Koraus of New York, second and audience prizes to Alejandro D. Consolacion, II of New Jersey, and third prize to Brennan Szafron of South Carolina. Additional finalists were Robert Wisniewski of Ohio and Benjamin Cornelius-Bates of Pennsylvania. It is interesting to note that most of the finalists are also composers. The prizes were sponsored by the American Center for Church Music. 

Monday lectures

The opening lecture Monday morning took place in Blanche Anderson Moore Organ Hall. Andrzej Szadejko of the Gdansk Music Academy, Poland, gave a lecture-recital, “The Less Known Pupils of Bach: Why we (don’t) care about our masters or generation changes,” sponsored in part by the Poland U. S. Campus Arts Project at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Szadejko has performed extensively in northern Europe, made nine recordings, published articles in Polish music journals, and was awarded a prize for his thesis on two pupils of Bach—Friedrich Christian Mohrheim and Johann Georg Müthel. Mohrheim, who was the copyist for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, was music director at St. Mary’s Church in Gdansk, and composed chorale preludes and trios for the organ. In contrast to the music of Bach, Mohrheim’s works are characteristic of the style galant and empfindsamer Stil. Müthel’s works are very dramatic, in the Sturm und Drang style. Szadejko played works by Volckmar, Gleimann, and Gronau to demonstrate the style prevalent in northern Europe—a mixture of north German, Italian, and new ideas—then works by Mohrheim and Müthel. Szadejko is a skillful, expressive player, and his performances were the highlight of the session. He is deeply immersed in his research, delving into all the details, and one got the feeling he would have happily shared his findings as long as he had a listener.

Joseph Gascho, assistant professor of harpsichord, gave an engaging session on playing continuo in Watkins Lecture Hall, a room outfitted with a grand piano, harpsichord, and portative organ, as well as the ability to project examples from a computer. Gascho asserted that the shape of the bass line drives a piece, referring to it as a “vertebrate being.” In his teaching, he uses singers and dance to illustrate unequal emphasis on notes, or the sense of strong and weak beats. In this session, he worked through a recitative from Messiah and Purcell’s “Lord, What Is Man” from Harmonie Sacrae with graduate student soprano Ariane Abela, demonstrating how the continuo player’s choices affect the singer’s performance and the expression of the piece. His advice to the audience was “You’ll play better with an unrealized continuo part” and “Take the challenge of finding the joy in making decisions regarding what to play.” He discussed different ways to realize continuo and their effects, soliciting feedback as to whether organ or harpsichord was better suited to the music demonstrated. Gascho’s personable approach made this an enjoyable and valuable session. 

Student recital and masterclass

James Kibbie and Kola Owolabi’s students played a recital Monday morning on the Fisk organ in Blanche Anderson Moore Hall, which featured repertoire celebrating the 350th birthday of Nicolaus Bruhns. The complete extant works of Bruhns (six pieces) were supplemented with works by Böhm, Buxtehude, and Tunder to fill out the program. All the student performers—Dean Robinson, Paul Giessner, Sherri Brown, Jennifer Shin, Andrew Lang, Joe Moss, Mary Zelinski, Stephanie Yu, and Phillip Radtke—played well. At least half of them had been students of Michigan organ alumni. James Kibbie made a point of thanking the alumni in his introduction to the program, crediting them with helping to increase enrollment with student recommendations and scholarship contributions. 

Three students—Joe Moss, Mary Zelinski, and Jennifer Shin—had the privilege of playing for a masterclass with Diane Meredith Belcher later the same day. Belcher encouraged the students to do research about their pieces to provide context, and to practice piston changes, treating them as another note to learn. Working with Joe Moss on David Conte’s Soliloquy, she suggested conducting your own playing, breathing with the music, and attention to details to make the music come alive. With Jennifer Shin, who played Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, she recommended “skeletal” practice—playing only the strong beats to feel comfortable and insert rest into the process. For Mary Zelinski, who played the Grave from Vierne’s Symphonie V, Belcher recommended having your physical motions match the mood of the piece, and for romantic music, pushing through long notes and dwelling on shorter notes. Belcher also spent time talking about making sure you are grounded on the organ bench, using Wilma Jensen’s maxim of being able to bend and touch your nose to the keyboard without falling forward. She also suggested applying techniques from Feldenkrais movement to organ playing.

Monday performances

Late Monday afternoon, we returned to Hill Auditorium to hear Andrew Earhart, a fifth-year student pursuing degrees in organ performance and naval architecture and marine engineering, perform Petr Eben’s monumental The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, for organ and speaker. Eben’s final and largest organ work, it is a fourteen-movement musical allegory, originally improvised during an organ festival in Melbourne, Australia, in 1991. The work was inspired by a 400-year-old book, written by a Czech bishop named Comenius, which fascinated Eben. The book is a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress, relating the experiences and final redemption of a traveler encountering various people and situations. Eben says, “the whole atmosphere of the text is not an idyllic stroll through the world but a bitter, satirical, bizarre, and sometimes almost apocalyptic view of the world—and such is the character of the music.” 

Despite Eben’s description, the music is basically tonal, though certainly full of chord clusters, spiky melodies, strident reed sounds, and sharp contrasts. The fanfare-filled prologue introduces some of the work’s musical themes, which are taken from chorales from Komensky’s Amsterdam Cantional. Excellent and emotive narration by Malcolm Tulip of the theater department helped bring the story to life. At about 80 minutes in length, the work is certainly taxing for the organist. Earhart ably handled the voluminous score, truly engaged in the music, and played with conviction and passion. 

Prior to James Kibbie’s performance Monday evening, I spoke with several people who had heard him perform the same repertoire in Grand Rapids and Detroit recently, and to a person, could not wait to hear the program again. Kibbie did not disappoint. His exquisite playing, from memory, provided no obstacles to a pure musical experience, and the thrill of hearing a performer completely absorbed in the music was a true delight. Kibbie is absolutely at home with the selections of Alain and Tournemire that comprised the concert. Alain’s sonorities are refreshing and light-infused, and hearing six of his works in succession was enlightening. The program began with the Première and Deuxième Fantasies, succeeded by the Première and Deuxième Preludes Profanes. The serene Postlude pour l’office de complies was followed by a dramatic rendering of Litanies to round out the first half. Kibbie’s tempo for Litanies was torrentially fast and frantic, but clear and crisp. He achieved Marie-Claire Alain’s directive that “this piece must be played with great rush.”

As with the Alain works, it was satisfying to hear Tournemire’s Cinq Improvisations all in one sitting, offering the listener insight into Tournemire’s style and idioms as an improviser. The Petite rapsodie improvisée sparkled and the Cantilène improvisée featured the organ’s sweet flute sounds. The improvisations on the Te Deum, Ave Maris Stella, and Victimae Paschali were declamatory and heroic in contrast, with the perfectly paced Victimae Paschali the most striking of the three. Again, Kibbie proved himself at one with the music, giving an authoritative performance, absolutely assured and stunningly played.

Tuesday lectures

Tuesday morning sessions were held in the lovely Assembly Hall in the Rackham Building, which was built in 1935 in Art Deco style. Departing from his usual organ music appreciation session often peppered with sonic curiosities, Michael Barone began with an overview of the most recent Pipedreams tour—Historic Organs of Poland—which took place in June 2015. His photo travelogue also included recordings of some of the instruments the group visited. Many of the instruments have beautifully ornate organ cases with gold leaf and intricate carvings, some still housing the original instrument and some now fronting new instruments. There is a wealth of information about this tour and the instruments visited on the Pipedreams website (see pipedreams.publicradio.org, “Polish Memories”).

Following Barone’s travelogue, Brooks Grantier gave a wonderful lecture, “Cornflakes and Cornopeans: the Collaborations, Collusions, and Collisions of W. R. Kellogg and E. M. Skinner.” His talk focused on the people, personalities, and relationships involved with buying and building organs, based on correspondence from the Kellogg Foundation Archives. Grantier established the scene by relating the tale of W. K. Kellogg’s older brother, who ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, which became world famous for promoting healthy living. W. K. was the financial manager, discovering corn flakes by accident when some wheat paste was left out overnight. Kellogg refused to market the new “cornflakes” beyond the sanitarium. Following C. W. Post’s theft of the recipe and subsequent success with Post Toasties and Grape Nuts, W. K. Kellogg started his own business, out-marketing Post selling cereal and becoming tremendously successful with the Kellogg Company. 

Having built a lovely home in Battle Creek, Kellogg—not a musician, but a faithful church attendee—sought a house organ. Professor Edwin Barnes, who lived next door, recommended E. M. Skinner to build the house organ. It was to be the finest player organ in the country, fully automatic, and one of the largest house player organs Skinner built. Kellogg also helped fund instruments for the Presbyterian and Catholic churches in Battle Creek, contingent upon them being built by Skinner. When he purchased a home in Pomona, California, Kellogg had Skinner build another house organ there. He also funded the large Aeolian-Skinner organ (four manuals, 72 ranks) in Kellogg Auditorium in Battle Creek, completed in 1933 and designed by E. M. Skinner. This project helped keep Aeolian-Skinner afloat during the Great Depression. Lively, spirited correspondence between Kellogg, William Zeuch, and E. M. Skinner provided insight into the wrangling and strong opinions that were part and parcel of the interactions among these three men. Brooks Grantier is an engaging and entertaining lecturer, and the fascinating tale of Kellogg and Skinner made for delightful listening. He closed by noting that E. M. Skinner died in financial hardship with his work repudiated, while Kellogg died in comfortable circumstances, known for his unparalleled philanthropy.

After lunch, Elizabeth McClain, graduate student in musicology, shared some of her dissertation research in the session “Messiaen’s Pre-war Organ Works: Organist, Theologian, and Non-Conformist,” illuminated through a study of L’Ascension and Les Corps Glorieux. She gave a detailed analysis of the organ works, but it was her commentary on neo-Thomism, neo-scholasticism, ressourcement, and non-conformism in Catholicism in the early twentieth century in France that provided the most insight into Messiaen’s music and world view. McClain asserted that Messiaen’s choice of style indicated his political leanings and discussed how he expressed the totality of human experience through the lens of spirituality, transcending the bounds of sacred and secular. Her rapid delivery made me long for the opportunity to read and digest her material, but her rigorous research is a great contribution to Messiaen scholarship.

Scott Hanoian, director of music and organist at Christ Church Grosse Pointe and conductor and music director of the University Musical Society Choral Union, offered a choral reading workshop at First Congregational Church. At Hanoian’s request, Cliff Hill (of Cliff Hill Music, a highly recommended and knowledgeable music supplier) selected a dozen recently published anthems, which he provided in complimentary packets for conference attendees. As Hanoian led the group in reading through the anthems, he offered suggestions on how to rehearse each piece and when it might be useful. 

Tuesday performances

Kola Owolabi played a program of interesting works on Tuesday afternoon at Hill Auditorium. He began with Fantasia on Sine Nomine by Craig Phillips, a very attractive set of continuous variations, featuring Phillips’s characteristic rhythmic gestures and irregular meters, transformation of themes, and piquant harmonies. The sixth and final variation is a fugue on the opening phrase of the tune, which morphs into toccata figuration to close the work. Bairstow’s Sonata in E-flat, the largest of his thirteen organ works, followed. It employs the full dynamic range of the organ and typically English solo sounds. The first movement has a wandering, pastoral melody, while the second, in stark contrast, is energetic with fanfare-like figures played on a solo Tuba. The third movement, a fugue, is in the form of an elevation—starting softly and calmly, increasing in energy and volume, then ebbing away.

Owolabi began the second half of the program with the rousing Concert Piece in the Form of a Polonaise by Lemare, a bombastic crowd-pleasing work. Next up was Capriccio by Polish composer Mieczyslaw Surzynski. This work is the first movement of Surzynski’s Ten Improvisations, published in 1910. It is romantic in style, with some striking harmonies. Calvin Hampton’s Three Pieces rounded out the concert. “Prayers and Alleluias” is reminiscent of Dupré’s Cortège and Litanie, employing a similar form. “In Paradisum” pays homage to Alain’s Le Jardin Suspendu, while “Pageant” takes cues from both Alain and Mathias. Owolabi’s playing throughout the program was polished and assured. He performs with nonchalance and ease, which allows the music to speak without the performer getting in the way. This was a polished, enjoyable program of refreshing and not often heard works.  

Before the evening concert, Tiffany Ng played a carillon concert consisting of works composed in the last eight years, including two world premieres. Ng has joined the Michigan faculty as assistant professor of carillon and university carillonist. Young and enthusiastic, Ng brings a strong interest in contemporary music and innovative approaches to carillon concerts. She has pioneered models for interactive “crowd-sourced” performances. While in California, she arranged for the collection of data from the Hayward seismic fault, ocean levels, and climate change, which involved hundreds of people sending in information. The data was translated into a musical score, which she sight-read for a concert. She says, “Now that we no longer need the unilateral time-keeping function of the carillon, I like to have a conversation with the audience.” She hopes to initiate collaboration with the engineering school just across north campus and adjacent to the Lurie carillon. A new outdoor gathering area surrounding the area currently under construction has the potential to provide a built-in audience for collaboration. Additional carillon music was heard the previous evening, played by Dennis Curry, carilloneur of Oakland University and Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills.

Diane Meredith Belcher’s concert attracted the largest audience of the conference events, attesting to her stature as an internationally renowned performer. She began her program with Passacaglia on a Theme by Dunstable, composed by one of her teachers, John Weaver. A powerful and well-written work on the Agincourt Hymn, Belcher played it with rhythmic tautness, seamless transitions, and passion. Belcher dedicated Franck’s Prière to victims of gun violence in the United States, particularly children and families. Her music slid to the floor as she got on the bench, and in unflappable style she quipped, “I’ll be a minute.” Though her tempo was a bit deliberate, from the outset she established a long flowing line, sometimes conducting with her arms. The Hill Auditorium organ provided the requisite beautiful sounds, and though she played with much conviction, the piece remained earthbound, lacking in ecstatic fervor at its climax. She was very much in her element in the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, however, playing with subtle yet crystal clear articulation, absolutely at ease.

The second half of the program included three movements from Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux—“Force et agilité des Corps Glorieux,” “Joie et clarté des Corps Glorieux,” and “Le Mystère de la Sainte-Trinité.” Belcher performed them with precision and clarity. She closed the program with Organ, Timbrel, and Dance by German composer Johannes Matthias Michel. “Swing Five,” based on the chorale Erhalt uns Herr, borrows rhythm from Dave Brubeck’s jazz classic Take Five, while the “Bossa Nova” (based on Wünderbarer König) is typical of that genre, although its harmonies are quite conventional. The “Afro Cuban,” using the tune In Dir Ist Freude, is largely a toccata based on rhythms borrowed from Bernstein’s “America” from West Side Story. The rhythmic gestures in these pieces, which Belcher handled well, bring them into the realm of jazz, but the tonal palette, though sprinkled with bluesy chords, is too vanilla to fully enter the style. The set of three energetic pieces made for a fun and unexpected end to an excellent concert, though, and a rousing close to the conference.

Kudos to conference administrator Colin Knapp (also a member of the “20 under 30” Class of 2015), who does an excellent job keeping on top of all the conference details, making sure things run smoothly, and thanks to the Michigan Organ Department faculty for collaborating to continue offering the conference.