Alternative Organists

by James B. Hartman

James B. Hartman is Senior Academic Editor for publications of the Distance Education Program, Continuing Education Division, The University of Manitoba. His recent publications include articles on the early histories of music and theater in Manitoba. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews and articles to The Diapason.

                  All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

--Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677)

 

The organ has been a prominent feature of the musical life of Canada since the earliest days of the first European settlement. The first organs were brought from France to Québec City around 1600 and organbuilding flourished mainly in Québec and Ontario from the mid-nineteenth century onward.1 Growth in organbuilding accelerated in the years 1880-1950 following the establishment of Casavant Frères in 1879 in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec. Therefore it is not surprising that organists became prominent around the same time.

As soon as trained musicians began arriving in Canada, usually from England, many of them opened music studios to offer private instruction in piano, voice, organ, and violin. Some were also active in community orchestras or served as church organists and choirmasters. A few took employment in local music stores to supplement their meagre income from professional duties. With the advent of silent films in the early 1900s some organists obtained positions at theaters that had installed pipe organs where they played improvised or specially arranged accompaniments to the events unfolding on the silver screen.

Although the great majority of organists were known only in their local communities, some gifted individuals achieved wider recognition by making exceptional contributions to the musical culture of the country. This article will chronicle the careers and accomplishments of seven such outstanding organists who were active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Frederick H. Torrington (1837- 1917) was born in Dudley, near Birmingham, England, where he received his early musical training. Later studies in piano, organ, theory, and choral music led to his position as organist at St. Ann's Church in Bewdley at the age of sixteen.

Torrington moved to Canada in 1856, first working as a piano tuner in Montréal then as organist-choirmaster at St. James Street Methodist Church. He taught privately and at several schools, and conducted instrumental and choral groups, including the Montréal Amateur Musical Union. For three years he was bandmaster of the 25th Regiment, Queen's Own Borderers. In 1869 he organized the Canadian section of an orchestra that performed in the First Peace Jubilee in Boston. In the same year he settled in Boston to become organist at King's Chapel and to join the New England Conservatory of Music as teacher of piano and organ; he also conducted various choral groups and was violinist in the Harvard (later Boston) Symphony Orchestra. He gave organ recitals in Boston, New York, and other eastern cities.

In 1873 Torrington returned to Canada to become organist-choirmaster at Metropolitan Methodist Church in Toronto and conductor of the Toronto Philharmonic Society 1873-94. His influence on the musical life of Toronto included conducting choral-orchestral works and organizing musical festivals. Other activities included director of music at the Ontario Ladies' College in Whitby, conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Society in the 1880s, and founder of the Toronto Conservatory of Music in 1888, serving as its director until his death.

In the late 1880s Torrington became president of a group modelled on the Royal College of Organists, founded in England in 1864, dedicated to uniting organists and raising the standards of the profession. Although his group did not last for long, it was a predecessor of the Canadian College of Organists, founded in 1909. Torrington's work with various amateur orchestras led to the formal establishment of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1906. He left his organist post at Metropolitan Church in 1907 for a similar position at High Park Methodist Church.

It should be recalled that in these times the organ was regarded as a substitute for the orchestra; consequently, organ recital programs usually included a number of transcriptions. For example, one of Torrington's recitals in 1869 included Rossini's William Tell Overture and the Andante from Beethoven's Septet on the same program with Mendelssohn's Organ Sonata No. 1. Nevertheless, Torrington championed the music of Bach, and his performances of the master's works were enthusiastically received by his audiences. He composed several patriotic songs, a choral work, and some organ music.

Herbert A. Fricker (1868-1943) was born in Canterbury, England, where he received his early musical training as a chorister, and later as assistant organist, at Canterbury Cathedral. In London he studied with Frederick Bridge and Edwin Lemare. His subsequent career in Leeds included city organist, symphony orchestra founder and conductor, and festival choirmaster, along with other positions as organist in various churches and schools, and as a choral society conductor.

Fricker came to Canada in 1917 to become conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, a position he held until 1942. His cross-border musical activities began immediately with his choir's program with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski in 1918; this reciprocal association continued for seven years. Under Fricker's leadership the choir gave Canadian premieres of several major choral works by such composers as Beethoven, Berlioz, and Walton. Fricker served as organist at Metropolitan United Church, Toronto 1917-43, organ instructor at the Toronto Conservatory of Music 1918-32, staff member at the University of Toronto, and conductor of the Canadian National Exhibition chorus 1922-34. He was an active organ recitalist and adjudicated many competition festivals. He was president of the Canadian College of Organists 1925-6.

Fricker composed several organ works and made arrangements for organ, all published by various London firms. His choral pieces included both sacred and secular works. Over his lifetime Fricker accumulated an extensive library of books and musical scores that were given to Toronto libraries after his death.

William Hewlett (1873-1940) was born in Batheaston, England, where he was a choirboy at Bath Abbey before moving to Canada with his family in 1884.

In his new country he enrolled at the Toronto Conservatory of Music where he studied organ, piano, theory, and orchestration, graduating in 1893 with a gold medal for organ playing and extemporization. While in Toronto he served as organist-choirmaster at Carlton Street Methodist Church at the age of seventeen. In 1895 he moved to London, Ontario, to become organist-choirmaster at Dundas Centre Methodist Church and conductor of the London Vocal Society 1896-1902. Later he moved to Hamilton, Ontario, to become musical director at Centenary Methodist Church 1902-38; his Twilight Recitals on Saturday afternoons were a significant aspect of the Hamilton music scene for about twenty-five years. He was one of the founders of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and served as its first accompanist 1895-7, and he accompanied the celebrated singers Ernestine Schumann-Heink and Dame Clara Butt when they visited Canada. He was one of the co-directors of the Hamilton Conservatory of Music and served as its sole principal 1918-39; during this time he travelled widely in Canada as adjudicator and examiner. He conducted the Elgar Choir, which was frequently joined by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. In 1927 he conducted a 1000-voice choir in a celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Confederation of Canada.

Hewlett was a prolific composer in the smaller forms; he contributed to the Methodist Hymn and Tune Book (1917) and was one of the compilers of the United Church Hymnary (1930). He was one of the most respected Canadian organists of his generation and an expert on church organ installations. He served as national president of the Canadian College of Organists 1928-9.

Healey Willan (1880-1968) was born in Balham (later part of London), England, and was taught music at the age of four by his mother and his governess. At the age of eight he entered St. Saviour's Choir School, Eastbourne, where he studied piano and organ. By the age of eleven he directed the choir and alternated with the incumbent organist in playing evensong services. After private organ study in London he served as organist-choirmaster at three churches in various parts of England in succession 1898-1913. During this time he developed a reputation as an authority on plainchant in the vernacular (i.e., English, not Latin).

Willan came to Canada in 1913 to head the theory department of the Toronto Conservatory of Music and to become organist-choirmaster at St. Paul's Anglican Church, Toronto. His recital programs around this time exhibited his comprehensive repertoire, including much English music. In 1914 he was appointed lecturer and examiner for the University of Toronto and served as director of the university's Hart House Theatre, writing and conducting music for plays. He was vice-principal of the Toronto Conservatory of Music 1919-25 but his position was terminated as an economy measure and possibly on account of internal politicking involving Ernest MacMillan (see below). In 1921 he became organist-choirmaster at the Anglican Church of St. Mary Magdalene, an association that continued until his death; while there he introduced an Anglo-Catholic style of service music.

Apparently Willan possessed a facetious brand of wit: he was heard to say that the organ was a dull instrument, that organ recitals bored him, and that he was unable to play his own major compositions. On being elected president of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto in 1923 he promptly set its constitution to music.

Willan held many influential appointments: member of the Arts and Letters Club for fifty years, president 1923; president of the Canadian College of Organists 1922-3, 1933-5; honorary president and life member of the Royal Canadian College of Organists; university organist at the University of Toronto 1932-64 and teacher of counterpoint and composition 1937-50; president of the Authors and Composers Association of Canada 1933; chairman of the board of examiners of Bishop's University; summer guest lecturer at the University of Michigan 1937, 1938; chairman of the British Organ Restoration Fund to help finance the rebuilding of the organ at Coventry Cathedral 1943; summer guest lecturer at the University of California at Los Angeles 1949; co-founder and musical director of the Gregorian Association of Toronto, 1950; founder and musical director of the Toronto Diocesan Choir School; and fellow of the Ancient Monuments Society of England. He was commissioned to compose an anthem for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, the first nonresident of Britain to be so honored.

Willan's public honors included the Canada Council Medal 1961, Companion of the Order of Canada 1967, and a diploma from the Province of Ontario in recognition of his role in Canadian musical life. A group of his admirers formed the Healey Willan Centennial Celebration Committee to encourage activities marking the centenary of his birth in 1980, and the Canada Post Office issued a commemorative stamp bearing his portrait.2

Willan was a prolific composer. His works encompassed dramatic music, vocal music with instrumental ensemble, works for orchestra and band, chamber music, piano works, organ works,3 and choral works; many of the latter have been recorded by groups in Canada, the USA, and England. He also wrote twenty-four articles on church music and organ playing.4

Lynwood Farnam (1885-1930), who became a legend in the organ world, was born in Sutton, Québec, a small town southeast of Montréal. Following basic musical training he continued his studies for three years as a scholarship student at the Royal College of Music in London, England, beginning in 1900. He held several church positions in Montréal and taught at the McGill Conservatorium until accepting a post at Emmanuel Church, Boston, in 1913. The story is that he impressed the audition committee by presenting a list of 200 pieces that he had committed to memory, stating that he was willing to perform any of them; he was hired immediately.

After overseas service during the war Farnam became organist-choirmaster at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, in 1919. By the time he played his last recital there in 1920 he had given 500 organ recitals. As a concert organist his performances were noted for their flawless technique, infallible memory, and profound musicianship. His reputation was consolidated among his colleagues by a dazzling performance for the American Guild of Organists in 1920. In 1925 he made organ rolls for two companies that manufactured player organs. 

Farnam's New York fame gained him an appointment in 1927 as head of the organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, where he taught weekly until his death at the age of forty-five. His pupils included a number of prominent Canadian and American organists. At the climax of his career in 1928-9 he played the complete organ works of Bach in twenty recitals in New York, repeating each program at least once in response to public demand.

Although Farnam did no improvising and composed only one piece for organ, he was one of the great interpreters of his time, introducing North American and European audiences to contemporary organ music, particularly that of French and American composers, as well as to the forerunners of Bach. Louis Vierne dedicated his Organ Symphony No. 6 (1931) to Farnam's memory.

Ernest MacMillan (1893-1973) was born in Mimico (Metropolitan Toronto), the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who became an internationally recognized hymnologist. He began his organ study at the age of eight with the organist of Sherbourne Street Methodist Church in Toronto and performed in public shortly thereafter. He accompanied his father to Edinburgh, Scotland 1905-8, where he had the opportunity to take lessons from Alfred Hollins, the noted blind organist, occasionally substituting for him at St. George's West Church, Edinburgh. Around the same time he enrolled in music classes at the University of Edinburgh in preparation for his first diploma. Upon returning to Toronto, now at the age of fifteen, he took an appointment as organist at Knox Presbyterian Church, where he remained for two years. He then returned to Edinburgh and London to complete his work for the Fellow, Royal College of Organists diploma and extramural Bachelor of Music degree at Oxford University, both awarded in 1911 before his eighteenth birthday. Back in Toronto he served as organist-choirmaster at St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, commuting on weekends.

Thinking that his piano training had been neglected on account of his concentration on the organ, he went to Paris in 1914 for private study. While visiting Germany at the outbreak of war he was detained as a prisoner of war; there he befriended other English composers (including Quentin Maclean, see below), organized a camp orchestra for musicals, and concentrated on composition, including a work later submitted as part of the requirements for his Doctor of Music degree from Oxford University.

Back in Canada in 1919 he embarked on a lecture-recital tour of the west in which he played organ pieces and described his experiences as a war prisoner. In 1920 he began teaching organ and piano at the Canadian Academy of Music, and in 1926 became principal of the amalgamated Toronto Conservatory of Music. As an examiner and festival adjudicator, he travelled extensively throughout Canada offering stimulation and encouragement for musical development in small centers. In the following year he became dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, initially a titular position.

By this time MacMillan had moved away from the organ as an exclusive preoccupation; his new interests included education, administration, and developing systems and policies, although he continued to conduct and to compose new music and arrange old music as required. One of his unusual projects, in collaboration with an ethnologist in 1927, was recording and notating music of native peoples in northern British Columbia. In 1931 MacMillan became conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a position that enabled him to develop an unused potential. In 1935 King George V knighted him for his services to music in Canada. In the late 1930s he gained fame as a conductor in the USA, appearing in such prominent series as the Hollywood Bowl concerts and with the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

1942 was a banner year for MacMillan: first, he was offered, but did not accept, an invitation to succeed Donald Francis Tovey in the Reid Chair of Music at the University of Edinburgh; second, he succeeded Herbert Fricker as conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (see above). In 1945 he filled conducting engagements in Australia, and in Rio de Janeiro in the following year. Also in 1946 he was instrumental in establishing the Canadian Music Council and served as president of the Composers, Authors, and Publishers Association of Canada until 1969; one of his first projects was the organization of a concert of Canadian music for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. As part of his renewed interest in the piano he performed piano concertos with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, gave recitals, and made radio broadcasts. In 1950, during a weeklong festival to celebrate the Bach bicentenary, he offered a lecture-recital on the Clavierübung, playing all of Book 3 from memory. Although he resigned as conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1956, and of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in 1957, he still accepted conducting engagements with other musical organizations, travelled throughout Canada to initiate new projects to encourage young musicians, and acted as a classical disc jockey for a Toronto radio station.

MacMillan was a productive composer of musical works for the stage, orchestra, orchestra and choir, band, chamber groups, keyboard, and choir and voice. His writings included works on music instruction, articles in music journals, and other publications. He has been the subject of numerous articles by other writers.

Recognized as Canada's musical elder statesman, in later years MacMillan served as a member of the first Canada Council 1957-63 on account of his extensive participation in the musical arts. He participated in the formation of the Canadian Music Centre, serving as its president 1959-70, and of the Jeunesses musicales of Canada, serving as its president 1961-3. He received the Canada Council Medal in 1964. He was recognized by many public tributes on his seventieth and seventy-fifth birthdays, and these events were marked by special publications and revivals of his works. In 1970 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Quentin Maclean (1896-1962) was born in London, England, and studied organ there in the early 1900s and with Karl Straube (organ) and Max Reger (composition) in Leipzig 1912-14. During World War I he was interned in Germany where he met Ernest MacMillan (see above). In 1919 he served as assistant organist at Westminster Cathedral, then toured British theaters with newsman Lowell Thomas, providing background music for a lecture-film on Palestine. He was theater organist at many English cinemas 1921-1939 and began to broadcast regularly on BBC radio in 1925.

Maclean moved to Canada in 1939 where he continued his theater organ career in Toronto for ten years. He became one of the best-known organists of his time for his frequent radio broadcasts of background organ music for plays, poetry readings, and music for children's programs. He was organist-choirmaster at Holy Rosary Church 1940-62 and taught at the Toronto Conservatory of Music and at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto.

Maclean composed concertos for organ (two), harpsichord, piano, electric organ (two), harp, and violin; works for solo organ (eight), pieces for orchestra and other solo orchestral instruments, a string quartet, piano pieces, a cantata, and other choral works, among others. He was noted for his diverse musical interests, technical skills, musical memory, and high standards in the composition and performance of serious music, secular and liturgical.

*

Two features are noteworthy with respect to the individuals surveyed here. With the exceptions of Farnam and MacMillan they were born in England and received their early musical training there, which undoubtedly influenced their later musical orientation. Two of them lived for some time in the USA: Torrington 1869-73 and Farnam 1919-30, periods in which their careers flourished. The wide range of the experience and achievements of the seven organists is impressive. Taken collectively, they exhibited exceptional competence in a broad variety of activities: church musician, concert recitalist, teacher, lecturer, composer, arranger, conductor, festival organizer and adjudicator, examiner, writer, academic administrator, academic staff member, president of a professional organization, and expert on organ installation. At least one became a recognized authority in a specialized field (Willan, plainchant). All of them can be counted among those who have contributed significantly, in their specialized fields, to the musical life of Canada. 

 

Notes

                  1.              For a brief history of organbuilding and the major manufacturers, see James B. Hartman, “Canadian Organbuilding,” The Diapason 90, no. 5 (May 1999): 16-18; no. 6, (June 1999): 14-15.                 

                  2.              With Canadian soprano Emma Albani (1847-1930), who was commemorated in the same way at the same time, Willan was the first Canadian musician to be honored in this fashion.

                  3.              Willan made significant contributions to music for the organ. His monumental Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue (1916) was described by Joseph Bonnet as the greatest of its genre since Bach. Other works combine Englishness and European chromaticism reminiscent of Reger and Karg-Elert. After 1950 his works became more contrapuntal, and chorale preludes became his most frequent form of expression.

                  4.             See, for example, “Organ Playing in its Proper Relation to Music of the Church.” The Diapason 29, no. 10 (October 1937): 22-23. He discusses the different--but sometimes overlapping--functions of concert organists (excelling in technique) and church organists (beautifying the liturgies or verbal forms, supporting the congregation, accompanying the choir, and welding the entire service into an appropriate whole). “As a general rule, I do not like large organs, large choirs or large noises of any sort, but there are occasions when grandeur is not only appropriate, but positively necessary . . .” (23). 

 

The biographical information in this article is derived from the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, Second Edition, and is used by permission from the University of Toronto Press.

by James B. Hartman

 

Anyone familiar with the biographies of distinguished composers and performers throughout music history can never fail to be amazed at the impressive stories of children exhibiting exceptional talent. Musical ability often manifests itself early in life, and many of these early bloomers go on to significant and sustained achievements in later years. The accounts of their creative childhoods are a source of interest not only to music lovers generally, but also to psychologists who have studied the progress of such individuals in an attempt to understand and explain these extraordinary phenomena. The following survey will chronicle the highlights of the emergence and development of musical talent in a selected group of musical prodigies from the 16th to the 19th centuries whose abilities were later realized in the fields of organ music composition and performance.1 Some concluding generalizations, derived from the writings of psychologists who have studied this fascinating topic, will end the presentation.

 

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), the son of a musician in Ferrara, Italy, became one of the greatest organists and keyboard composers of his time. As a boy he possessed a remarkable voice and went from town to town singing, followed by crowds of admirers. Although little is known of his early life, he studied organ with a court organist and occupied his first position as organist at the age of 14. At the age of 25 he went to St. Peters in Rome where he also spent his final years. This prolific composer was later described as "father of the organ style" that prevailed in England and other countries for over a century. His compositions were central to keyboard study as well. Froberger studied with him for several years and J. S. Bach copied out his Fiori musicale (1635), a publication of liturgical organ music.

William Crotch (1775-1847), born in Norwich, England, was a remarkable child prodigy who was able to play at the age of 2 the tune to "God Save Great George Our King" on an organ made by his father, a carpenter. He gave his first concert at the age of 3, played before the royal family at 4, and was exhibited by his mother on tours of England and Scotland until the age of 9. At the age of 10 he played his own harpsichord concerto in London and began composing an oratorio. At the age of 11 he went to Cambridge University where he assisted the professor of music and was organist at two colleges. He transferred to Oxford University at the age of 13 and was appointed organist at Christ Church within two years. He took his D.Mus. at Oxford at the age of 24. Some of his Oxford lectures were published in 1831. While at Oxford he composed the "Westminster Chimes" for a church clock in Cambridge; this tune was used in the Houses of Parliament following 1860. His later years were mainly academic, including various professorships in music as well as a ten-year term as Principal of the Royal College of Music from its founding in 1822. His compositions include organ works, piano pieces, songs, and choral works. He was also a watercolorist of considerable ability.

George Washburne Morgan (1823-1892), whose name is largely unknown today, was believed to be the first famous organist heard in the United States in the late 19th century. Born in Gloucester, England, he exhibited remarkable musical gifts at a very early age, playing his first church service when only 8 years old, later becoming assistant organist at Gloucester Cathedral. Following his arrival in the United States in 1853 his remarkable playing generated much enthusiasm, particularly due to his phenomenal pedal technique. He served as organist in various New York churches and gave many concerts both in New York and throughout the country. His performances of "concert music"--an unknown factor in organ music prior to his arrival--placed him at the head of his profession.

William T. Best (1826-1897) became one of the world's most prominent organ recitalists of the 19th century. The son of a solicitor in Carlisle, England, he studied organ in his home town where he was assistant organist at the local cathedral, followed by a post at Pembroke Chapel at the age of 14. While still in his twenties he occupied a number of prestigious positions in London, moving to Liverpool at the age of 29 to preside at the organ in St. George's Hall. Following several appointments elsewhere he returned to Liverpool where he remained until his resignation in 1895. He performed extensively beyond England, including the inaugural recital on the new Town Hall organ in Sydney, Australia, in 1890 (both the Hall and the Hill & Son's organ were the largest in the world at the time). Best's orchestral use of the organ included many of his own transcriptions along with other original organ works and he edited editions of the works of Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn. During his own time he was described as the "Prince of Organists."

Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1887) was born into a family of French organists and organbuilders in Boulogne. Although largely self-taught, his first lessons were from his father, substituting for him at the organ of St. Joseph's in Boulogne at the age of 12. There he exhausted several organ blowers during his daily practice sessions, sometimes as long as ten hours. He succeeded his father as organist at the age of 22. Following study with Lemmens in Brussels he began giving recitals in Paris at the age of 25. His later career included European and North American tours, inaugural recitals at many large organ installations, and appointments at the major cathedrals of Paris: St. Sulpice, Notre Dame, and La Trinité. He was one of the founders of the Schola Cantorum and succeeded Widor as professor at the Paris Conservatory where several of his pupils (Bonnet, Boulanger, Jacob, Dupré) achieved fame in their own right. Perhaps the most prolific composer of organ music since Bach, he also published collections of pieces and edited much older organ music. In 1893 the President of the French Republic nominated him a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in recognition of his achievements.

Joseph Rheinberger (1839-1901), born in Vaduz, Lichtenstein, began music lessons at the age of 4. At the age of 7 he played the organ at a local church where a special set of extended pedals were installed to accommodate his short legs. Soon afterwards he composed a three-part mass with organ accompaniment. At the age of 12 he was sent to the Munich Conservatory where he studied until he was 19. Later, at the same institution, he became a noted teacher of organ and composition, becoming one of the most sought-after composition teachers of his time. He was appointed director of the Conservatory at the age of 28 and was also director of church music to the court. During his lifetime he composed in many different genres--operas, masses, symphonies, chamber music--but is most remembered for his organ music, especially two concertos and twenty sonatas.

Auguste Wiegand (1849-1904), born in Liège, Belgium, developed his musical abilities so rapidly that he was appointed organist at a local church by the early age of 7. He entered the Liège Conservatory at the age of 10, winning several prizes and medals for his accomplishments before the age of 20. As professor at that institution he also served as organist in several other cities, travelled to England many times to inaugurate organs there, and performed throughout Europe. He later studied organ at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. His major success was that of the first city organist at the Town Hall, Sydney, Australia, 1891-1900, where he played over 1,000 recitals during that period. His broad-based recital programs on the huge Hill & Son organ included many arrangements and transcriptions; his concerts were received with great enthusiasm by large and appreciative audiences. Following his departure from Sydney he again toured Europe and spent his final years as organist of Oswego, New York. His compositions include a "Storm Idyll," a popular form of organ entertainment at the time.

Clarence Eddy (1851-1937), born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, showed marked musical ability at the age of 5. He held his first church position at the age of 14, then went to Hartford, Connecticut, to study with Dudley Buck at the age of 16. At the age of 20 he studied in Germany with Professor Augustus Haupt, the most prominent teacher in that country, who gave him a written recommendation as "undoubtedly a peer of the greatest living organists." Following a successful European recital tour he settled in Chicago and developed a reputation as a leading American organist. He played more dedicatory recitals than any other organist of his day. While director of the Hershey School of Musical Art he gave a remarkable series of one hundred weekly recitals without repeating a number; he was 25 years old at the time. His many concert tours included playing at various expositions in the United States and abroad. He published two multi-volume organ methods to supplement his teaching activities, in addition to a number of original works. As a founder of the American Guild of Organists, Eddy became affectionately known as the "Dean of American Organists."

Edwin H. Lemare (1865-1934) was born on the Isle of Wight where his father, the organist of a local church, was his first teacher. He won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of 13 and was awarded an Associateship at the end of his studies there. Following graduation he occupied church positions in Sheffield and London. After the death of W. T. Best in 1897 Lemare was acclaimed Best's successor as the greatest living English organist. Following his American tour in 1900 he served as a very highly paid municipal organist in several cities in the United States over a period of thirty years. He had considerable influence on organ playing in America on account of his legendary registration of orchestral compositions and transcriptions of Romantic composers, especially Wagner. His own 126 original compositions ranged from the simple and sentimental to complex concert pieces; the best known of the former type is his "Andantino in D-flat," later arranged as the popular song, "Moonlight and Roses." He had a remarkable musical memory and was a gifted improviser.

Alfred Hollins (1865-1942), born in Hull, Scotland, became blind when still in infancy. Nevertheless, he exhibited exceptional musical abilities, including absolute pitch, from an early age. At the age of 2 he could play tunes on the piano and identify notes or chords played by others; by the age of 6 he could improvise. Following lessons from a family member and at an institute in York, at age 13 he entered the Royal Normal College for the Blind where he developed into a brilliant pianist. He played for Queen Victoria when he was 16 and gave his first public organ recital shortly afterwards. Later he studied piano with Hans von Bülow in Berlin and toured Germany with a repertoire of piano concertos; on one occasion he played three piano concertos in a single concert. He learned his music by listening to his wife play each part through, which he then rapidly committed to memory. His longest church appointment was at St. George's in Edinburgh, which he held for forty-five years. As an active organ recitalist he toured widely throughout the world. In addition to composing fifty-five organ works Hollins also published church music, songs, and piano music. His book, A Blind Organist Looks Back (1936), contains many insights into the life of a touring concert organist in the early 19th century.

Marcel Dupré (1886-1971), was born in Rouen, France, into an intensely musical family; his father and both grandfathers were organists and his mother was a cellist and pianist. Family connections included friendships with the organbuilder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and organists Charles-Marie Widor and Alexandre Guilmant. He studied with both Widor and Guilmant at the Paris Conservatory where he received many prizes. At the age of 11 he was appointed organist at a church in his home town. At the age of 20 he became Widor's assistant at St. Sulpice in Paris. At the age of 28 he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome, the greatest distinction a French musician could attain. In 1920, at the age of 34, Dupré startled the musical world by playing from memory the entire organ works of J. S. Bach in a series of ten concerts. This celebrated performer and improviser performed in various countries over the years. He published a quantity of solo and ensemble music for organ along with works for other instruments. He also wrote several books on organ playing and published editions of Bach, Franck, and others.

 

  *     *     *

Psychologists who have studied the phenomenon of exceptional musical talent2 have noted a number of distinguishing factors that are exemplified in many of the preceding biographies. The musical abilities referred to may include a variety and range of acoustic and musical capacities: perfect pitch, identifying intervals and chords, reading at sight, playing from memory, playing from a full score, transposing, improvising, and composing (although not to the level of form and harmonization of more mature artists).

Musical prodigies are distinguished by the following childhood characteristics:

* The most obvious feature is that musical ability emerges early in life, usually in the first decade; this, of course, is the definition of a child prodigy. Interpretative talent, including instrumental technique and playing in public, appears first, often before the age of 8, followed by compositional talent somewhat later, except in very rare cases, earlier. As much as ten years of composition experience may be needed for the production of excellent musical works. Musical capacity continues to expand during the third decade of life.

* Heredity above average: parents often make significant contributions to the extraordinary success of their children. The importance of an early home and educational environment, including inspiring social contacts, is prominent in such cases. In fact, ability may be less important than interest, devotion, encouragement, and appropriate educational opportunities. Heredity sets limits, but within these limits and with adequate training, gifted individuals may rise to the stature of outstanding members of the musical profession.

* Unusually high intelligence.3

* Persistence of motive and effort, confidence in their abilities, and great strength or force of character.

* The manifestation of exceptional abilities in infancy is more consistently found among musicians than in other fields. The reason for this lies in the nature of music itself. Music, due to its abstract, formal nature, creates its own material independent of words. It is not fed from the outer world and interaction with others or from external experience and practice. Rather, the subject matter of music is from within, an embodiment of uniquely musical feelings and emotions that are quite independent of other mental qualities.

 

*     *     *

There are no grounds for judging whether organists, as a group, exhibited more or less musical ability in their early years than other musicians in the period just surveyed; comparative evidence is lacking. However, mature organists were probably more prominent in the public eye due to the central place the organ played in musical culture at the time. As for prominent organists of recent years, their early musical talents and abilities are not generally publicized. However, musical talent is not just a thing of the past. It is a common characteristic of today's children that must be fostered by constant encouragement, proper atmosphere, and by a combination of expert tuition and appropriate education facilities if they are to become important artists in the future. n

 

Notes

                  1.              Some explanation should be made for the omission of several major musical figures from the following list. The lifelong career of Johann Sebastian Bach is so well known that it does not need repeating here. The significant fact is that the Bach family was perhaps the most remarkable and important of all time, and the young Bach received a thorough grounding in music from his father and brothers. Although Bach's family life was permeated with music, specific biographical information is lacking on his very early abilities or achievements that would classify him as a "prodigy" as the term is applied to other figures throughout this article.

Biographies of George Frideric Handel reveal that although as a child he had a strong propensity to music, his doctor father opposed his son's inclinations, considering music a lowly occupation, and intended him for the study of law. However, when Handel was 7 an aristocrat heard him play and persuaded the father to allow his son to follow a musical career, which began with lessons in composition from the age of 9 years.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an outstanding example of a musical prodigy, according to tests in sight reading and extemporization administered to him at the age of 8 by Daines Barrington, a scientifically inclined man who reported his findings to the Royal Society in 1779. Mozart's musical memory was most remarkable; at the age of 14, upon hearing in the Sistine Chapel one performance (perhaps more) of a complex choral work, Allegri's Miserere, he wrote it down from memory with only a few errors (Mendelssohn accomplished a similar feat). Although Mozart became an accomplished organist, apart from a few short pieces and seventeen "Church Sonatas" his "organ" works are three pieces written for mechanical clock.

                  2.              Important studies include:

Carl Emil Seashore, The Psychology of Musical Talent (New York: Silver, Burdett, 1919). His discussion of the musical mind covers various dimensions: pitch, intensity, time, rhythm, timbre, consonance, auditory space, voluntary motor control, musical action, musical imagery and imagination, musical memory, musical intellect, and musical feeling. Even so, he asserted that these do not operate in isolation; the musical mind is a unity that works as an integrated whole.

G. Révész, The Psychology of a Musical Prodigy (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925). This work, the first of its kind, attempts to portray the early development of a richly endowed pianist, Erwin Nyiregyházi (1903-1987). It covers such topics as the early appearance of musical talent in general, diagnostic tests, elementary acoustic and musical faculties, specific forms of musical ability, compositions, and the progress of the pianist's development as shown in his works. Although some aspects of Erwin's childhood progress resembled Mozart's, his musical career failed to proceed and eventually he worked for film studios in Los Angeles.

Lewis M. Terman, ed., Genetic Studies of Genius (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1926), 5 vols. The volumes in the series deal with the mental and physical traits of gifted children (vol. 1), the early mental traits of three hundred geniuses (vol. 2), follow-up studies of a thousand gifted children (vol. 3), twenty-five years' follow-up of a superior group (vol. 4), and thirty-five years' follow-up of the gifted group at midlife: thirty-five years' follow-up of the superior child (vol. 5). The fields surveyed are extensive; musical ability receives only minor consideration. Perhaps the most relevant volume to this present discussion is Catherine Morris Cox, The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses, which mentions musical prodigies and musicians as a group. In the preface Terman observes: "We are justified in believing that geniuses, so called, are not only characterized in childhood by a superior IQ, but also by traits of interest, energy, will, and character that foreshadow later performance" (ix).

Articles include:

R. A. Henson, "Neurological Aspects of Musical Experience," in Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music, ed. Macdonald Critchley and R. A. Henson (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1977), 3-21.

Tedd Judd, "The Varieties of Musical Talent," in The Exceptional Brain, ed. Loraine K. Obler and Deborah Fein (New York: The Guilford Press, 1988), 127-155. The technical discussion covers the psychology and neuropsychology of musical abilities, relation to other skills, musical memory, and relationships among musical skills.

Donald Scott and Adrienne Moffett, "The Development of Early Musical Talent in Famous Composers: a Biographical Review," in Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music, ed. Macdonald Critchley and R. A. Henson (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1977), 174-201. The focus is on Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Bach, along with several other prodigies studied by Daines Barrington, reported in 1781: Charles and Samuel Wesley, William Crotch, and Lord Mornington.

The following summary draws upon some of these sources.

                  3.              For example, Catherine Morris Cox, The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses, vol. 3 of Genetic Studies of Genius, estimated the childhood/young manhood IQs of several eminent composers: Bach, 140/165; Handel, 160/170 Mozart, 160/165, and others.

 

James B. Hartman specialized in philosophy, psychology, and the aesthetics of music in his doctoral studies at Northwestern University. He is Associate Professor, Continuing Education Division, The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, where he is Senior Academic Editor for publications of the Distance Education Program. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews to The Diapason.

Catching up with a well-traveled recitalist

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of THE DIAPASON.

Advocate and proponent of new organ music as well as transcriptions of older works, Stephen Tharp is one of today's most active concert organists, having already made over twenty intercontinental tours throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia since 1987. He has held positions at New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral and St. Bartholomew's Church, but at present forgoes a church position in order to focus exclusively on performing, recording and teaching. As a champion of new music, he commissions and premieres numerous new organ works--many of which are dedicated to him--including compositions by Thierry Escaich, Jean Guillou, Anthony Newman, Martha Sullivan, and Morgan Simmons. Stephen Tharp also promotes the transcription, having adapted, and often recorded, works from a variety of styles and eras, from Bach and Handel to Shostakovich and Stravinsky. The most recent of his six recordings, made at St. Sulpice in Paris, was the first commercially released recording by an American organist on that instrument. Stephen Tharp is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists.

We recently spoke with Stephen as he was preparing for another trip abroad.

JR: How did your interest in the organ begin? What was your early training?

ST: I first "responded to" music at the age of three, playing Christmas carols by ear on the piano from the radio and records. It was finally church music, however, that sparked the interest in the organ. I recall hearing this colorful, powerful instrument and thinking about how I absolutely had to learn to play it. Of course, my first teacher started me on the piano, which I think made me a little unhappy at the time. That was at the age of six. By age eight, the same teacher started me on the organ, and the two of us worked together on both instruments for the next several years, mostly at my home in Chicago.

JR: Age eight is an early start! --I'm thinking of the pedals here.

ST: I spent two years in piano. At age six I couldn't reach the pedals. By age eight, it was still a bit of a challenge, but I could start. My organ playing improved along with the piano playing. The transition time from doing one to doing both was actually kind of short. And at eight years old I was just barely able to reach the pedals too!

JR: So what things were you playing? Were you playing any repertoire, perhaps really easy things where you just had a pedal note here and there?

ST: I think the first real pieces of music were the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues, and not all of them. I've never practiced right hand, then left hand, then pedal, then do right hand and pedal, then left hand and pedal--because then you leave one out. You have to develop all three together. So I never did part practicing. No matter how long it took or how slow I did it, it was always everything at one time. Another thing was that I never went through method books per se, doing scales and things like that. There should be a musically relevant reason to attack any given technical issue. So if you have a particular technical challenge you want to hit, find a piece that targets it so that musically there is relevance to it.

By age eleven, I switched to a teacher named James C. Thunder, the director of music at Christ Church in Des Plaines, Illinois, again studying both organ and piano with him. It was Thunder who introduced me to a great deal of the mainline organ composers and their music, recordings of their music, and so on. After working with him for a few months, he made me a sort of "music assistant" at Christ Church, and in this capacity I learned and played on the organ many major anthem and oratorio accompaniments--Handel's Messiah and the Brahms and Mozart Requiems were among the first.

I stayed with James Thunder and Christ Church through 1985 when, at age fifteen, I became a private organ student of Wolfgang Rübsam at Northwestern University, perhaps to this day the person who, for many reasons, has had the greatest influence on my artistic temperament. It was Rübsam who introduced me to the discipline of intricate fingerings (somewhat ironic now, as I rarely ever write in fingerings at all), stylistic awareness and articulation in Baroque music and, most powerfully, the kinds of phrasing, rhapsodic gestures and rhythmic idiosyncrasies possible in Romantic music. I returned to Rübsam to do my graduate studies at Northwestern University in 1993, after four years at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois for my B.A. in music. There I was very lucky to work with two wonderfully musical, insightful and imaginative teachers: Rudolf Zuiderveld in organ and Garrett Allman in piano, accompaniment and conducting. So many of my thoughts on lyricism, projecting musical structure and balance, etc., come from my time with them, and I must say that at a small liberal arts school I had access to perhaps a wider range of study than might have been the case elsewhere. This proved to be invaluable later, especially as I began traveling more and more to Europe. It was also at Illinois College that my interest in new organ works began. I had many opportunities to play a lot of music that was unpublished at the time. One particular performance at Illinois College of William Albright's 1732: In Memoriam Johannes Albrecht for Organ and Narrator, with Albright himself narrating, stands out. Jean Guillou's Hyperion and William Bolcom's Gospel Preludes Book IV are two further examples. There are many others.

JR: You were based in Chicago and then moved to New York and held positions at both St. Patrick's Cathedral and St. Bartholomew's Church, respectively, over the course of seven years. You then made the decision to "fly solo" as an artist without any church job. What prompted this?

ST: My move to New York City came in 1995, when I was appointed associate organist and director of cathedral concerts at the Cathedral of St. Patrick, where I stayed for two years in a prestigious but very busy position. I decided to leave there when my own career became busier and busier, at that point maybe two or three trips to Europe per season interspersed with U.S. concerts. I can honestly say, however, that much of what really boosted the success I was having already in Europe to another level was the position at St. Patrick's, and the people I met while I was there. Booking all the solo organ recitals was part of my duties as concerts director; there were occasions when organists would reciprocate by extending to me performing invitations overseas, and it was then that perhaps three tours a year began turning into five and six, a schedule that I maintain to this day. In late 1997, I became the associate organist at St. Bartholomew's Church, but only in a part-time capacity, which allowed me to continue my concert schedule. Of course, as the church continued to grow, so did the size of the position, and eventually I became full-time. Altogether, I was at St. Bartholomew's for just over four years. The music program there--everything from Praetorius and Carissimi's Jephthe, to Christmas concerts with The American Boychoir and Jessye Norman, to the U.S. premiere of James MacMillan's Cantos Sagrados and the N.Y. premiere of Howells' Hymnus Paradisi--is truly staggering for a church of its size. Therefore, when I made the decision to leave there in 2002, it was far from an easy one. But my performing schedule became simply too large to manage alongside a full-time position. It came time for me to focus all of my artistic (not to mention physical!) energies in one direction instead of several.

JR: These days it seems your career is based more in Europe than in the United States. Is this by choice? How did it come about?

ST: It is ironic that, as an American organist who plays about 60 concerts a year, the majority of them are elsewhere in the world. This was never really intended, but strangely enough, it has turned out that way. For one thing, I began playing publicly on a large scale much earlier in Europe than I did here. My first European concert was in London in 1989 at The Royal Albert Hall. Subsequent trips to England, then The Netherlands, then Germany, then France, really got things going, and they continued like a domino effect.

There is also what is known as an "association factor." I think that without having something like a major competition prize or a well-known teaching post, you don't necessarily get the same kind of attention for what you do. In an ideal world, this should not be such an important factor, but marketing is never that simple. Thanks to JAV Recordings and the Organ Historical Society, especially their websites, all six of my commercial recordings are very easy to find and obtain. And it goes without saying how wonderful it has been with Karen McFarlane Artists since 1998. Of course, we live in an era when massive amounts of information are bombarding you from all sides.

JR: How much are you on the road? What kind of performing schedule do you keep?

ST: It really depends. There are factors such as how many concerts are a part of any given tour, how many different tours are planned close together, how much travel is happening back and forth from the U.S., and what is going on in between--in other words, is there "down time."

Let me give you an example of how extreme it can become by describing my activities during the fall of 2002. Fall seems to be the heaviest time for traveling and playing. Following late August recording sessions at St. Luke's in Evanston, Illinois, I began in early September (four days after the recording) by playing an organ and orchestra concert in Krakow (Bielsko-Biala), Poland, consisting of the Piston Prelude and Allegro for Organ and Strings, and the Jongen Symphonie Concertante. This was followed by a few concerts in the Czech Republic and Germany with a more "mixed" general program, including Mendelssohn, Handel, and Karg-Elert. Next was a concert at St. Laurent's Church in Diekirch, Luxembourg (the oldest church in Luxembourg) on a beautiful new North German-style instrument by the builder Seifert of Kevelaer, Germany. That concert consisted of Bach, Bruhns, Buxtehude, and Murchhauser. Three days later were two concerts as part of the Merseburg Organ Festival, but with all American music, which they requested. This particular invitation arose at the last minute, while I was in Chicago recording at St. Luke's. Karel Paukert, who had been scheduled to play but had to withdraw at the last moment, graciously recommended me as his replacement for the concerts. I was lucky because these two dates, back-to-back, happened to be within a gap between Luxembourg and the other concerts that followed Merseburg elsewhere in Germany, although it was now necessary to "cram" in music that, in a few cases, I had not actually played in quite a while, and with only two days to prepare before the first of the concerts. Those consisted of Buck, Paine, Parker, Hurd, Newman and Sowerby. The rest of the tour (which spanned three and a half weeks altogether) meant a great deal of train travel and concerts roughly every two days as far north as Norden and as far south as Frankfurt.

During October, I went back to Europe with a second fall tour that began at the Passau Dom, which houses the largest organ in Europe. The highlights there were the premiere of my newest commission at that time, Thierry Escaich's Trois Poèmes, and a superlative work by Jean-Louis Florentz called The Cross of the South. Two days later at the Arcore (Italy) Organ Festival, I played my organ adaptation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Thereafter came more of the Passau program in Innsbruck, several cities in southern Germany and then Strasbourg. To conclude this trip, I was in residence for a week at the Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen, Germany, at the invitation of organ professor Christoph Bossert, not only teaching his students in masterclasses on Vierne, but then performing as part of a theatrical concert of live improvisational dance with the dance department students, featuring live organ improvisation as the incidental music "in reaction to" the stage improvisation.

In November, I made my second trip to Australia, playing in Sydney and Adelaide, and concluded everything with a December Christmas concert at Spivey Hall in Atlanta, the last of several U.S. performances between the trips to and from Europe and Australia. In addition, I have been "guest teacher" at the Hochschule in Stuttgart when in Europe but not actually playing somewhere, and also at Yale University when in the States for a longer stretch.

This is not always the norm, but when it rains, it pours, and my upcoming calendar already indicates that this kind of agenda will happen more frequently. A lot of that has to do with the freedom with which I can now plan my concerts without a regular church job. Usually, larger tours are put on the calendar as far in advance as two years, and so a festival or organization will say, "Oh, this is your date and concert? Well, this is our theme, so you will play this and this and that." Put enough of those close together for when you are in Europe at one time, and your schedule fills very quickly! But, I love it.

JR: Do you find any differences between American and European audiences? You've said that they are larger in Europe.

ST: Right. In general that's true.

JR: Can you talk about European attitudes and their appreciation of your playing the organ, and how you plan your programs for a European audience versus here?

ST: It's very interesting. Of course, everything you do has to be accessible to your audience, but I don't believe that we're beyond being able to educate someone or at least spark their interest in hearing things that otherwise they wouldn't have considered. You know, when you push envelopes, other people who want to do something similar don't necessarily stretch themselves as far as you might, but they'll stretch themselves farther than they would have otherwise, just because they see a bigger realm of what's possible. I think more of that is ingrained earlier on in European audiences. Consequently, I have found that overseas you can get away with a lot more experimentation, and that allows you to be somewhat more adventurous with new music or transcribing.

Transcribing can mean so many things; I've seen people do transcriptions of Schoenberg on organ. I saw someone--Bernard Haas, from Stuttgart--do a transcription of one of the Five Orchestral Pieces of Schoenberg at St. Eustache the same week I was in Paris doing my St. Sulpice recording, which was October 2001. And he did it from memory, with double pedal, triple pedal playing, all of these things that were so intricate, yet he kept the dynamic level very contained and small, based on the chamber quality of the original piece. And people just ate it up, and in a sense it was the most adventurous thing on the program, and while there were many organists present, there also were a lot of people who came because it said "organ concert"--but it was a very intensive 20th-century program, with some Webern transcriptions, and some of Jean Guillou's pieces, and then the Schoenberg in the middle, and people were just perplexed by it. But there were more comments, questions, and curiosity about that work than anything else on the program, and it certainly was the most envelope-pushing piece.

To try to do something like that over here, it depends on how you present it and how you talk about it first to your audience. But it seems that certain kinds of transcriptions are much more popular here than 20th-century music and yet in some ways 20th-century music, especially in certain circles in Europe, has always been more popular than transcriptions. You hear a lot against transcriptions with these kinds of dogmatic black and white ideas about what a transcription should be: is it necessary, why are we doing this if you have all this music of Bach, is a transcription anything compared to that? I've found that I can introduce a transcription to a skeptical European the way you try to do the same thing with modern music for an American audience, and if you do it the right way, I think you can sell something new or at least get people curious.

JR: Tell us your thoughts on commissioning new organ works.

ST: I had a very special experience while I was still in high school. My earlier studies, both organ and piano, engaged fewer pieces for longer periods of time than would be the case later as my technique advanced. So, when I worked on a piece, I really lived with it for a long time before it went before anyone except my teacher.

At one point, I had spent about a year with James Thunder on Aaron Copland's Piano Variations when, one day, after a lesson, Thunder said to me, "You know, Copland is coming to Chicago to give a lecture at the Cultural Center downtown. I made some arrangements this morning on the telephone--do you think you'd be up to playing this for him next week?" Well, I was not about to be stupid and say NO (which Thunder knew), although the idea scared me to death (which Thunder also knew). Even at that age, I could grasp what it meant to play something important for the composer himself, much less Aaron Copland! After six more days of polishing my memorization, I attended the lecture at the Cultural Center and was introduced to Copland afterwards by my teacher. A half an hour later, I sat down in a private piano studio some blocks away at Roosevelt University and, nervous as a ninny, played the work for Copland. He was extremely kind, complimentary enough that I still enjoy talking about it, especially about the fact that I was, as he put it, "crazy" enough at my age to have memorized it, insightful on tempi, some phrasing, and so on. But, the one major awakening was how incredibly inspiring it is to sit down with the source of a creation and share thoughts on it, the ideas that sparked it, concepts and such related things. That was a turning point for me, as it also spawned a real hunger for more music that was new, different, fresh, and intense, sometimes vehemently intense.

At that age, I found pieces that were off-the-wall, learned them, and played them in recitals because I felt a need to do so. What I began to learn was that, when you present something "dicey" to an audience, even knowing that all or many of them may be hearing it for the first time, you get further with that audience by talking to them about what they will hear and why they would want to hear it, even again and again, than you do by just handing them written program notes. Once you do this, the audience feels that there are good reasons for being curious about something that will be not only unfamiliar, but also likely push a few envelopes too, and that this is a positive and enriching thing! If you play down to your listeners, especially with your choice of programming, like they're dumb, then they will respond that way a lot of the time. If you show them that you trust their minds and ears enough to KNOW that they can be interested in what you are offering them, people tend to be more open-minded for you. Despite a lot of thinking these days to the contrary, when it comes to "modern music," I still find this to be unmistakably true, if you as the presenter handle it the right way.

Put all of this together with the opportunities to meet and work with more and more living composers that really began at Illinois College, and the result is a list of varying and remarkable works that I feel privileged to play as often as I can. There is a very challenging three-movement pedal solo work called Sequentia Pedalia by Chicago composer Morgan Simmons, which he gave me in manuscript just prior to my appointment to St. Patrick's in New York; Anthony Newman, one of my best friends in the world, and one of my most devoted supporters, has written three very large but different works for me of brilliant intricacy (these get played perhaps the most frequently and are always very well received); there is Jean Guillou's massive and intense seven movement symphonic poem called Instants (his second largest solo organ work), improvisational but thematically interwoven, written for my concert at King's College, Cambridge; and a jazzy, witty piece based on Bulgarian folk rhythms for organ, percussion and women's chorus called Slingshot Shivaree, composed for a program at St. Bartholomew's called "Organ Plus" by my friend Martha Sullivan. She is an especially talented composer whose star is on the rise, with her works being performed all over the U.S.; there is the haunting and nostalgic 4-movement Sinfonietta by Philip Moore of York Minster, England; and the most recent to date, the Trois Poèmes by Thierry Escaich, works of pure genius, contained electricity with balance and proportion. There are more to come, the next being in 2004 from Bruce Neswick.

JR: About your championing of transcriptions: You've recorded a number of transcriptions, including a good half-dozen of your own.

ST: Right.

JR: What originally got you on the transcription bandwagon? And how do you prepare these? Do you write them down note for note, or do you just sketch them out for yourself? Would you consider having any of them published?

ST: There are several issues here. I have not actually written down anything per se; there's nothing that exists in any formatted way. Usually the bigger transcriptions are the most complicated ones that would take the most work--things that are orchestral versus piano, like a symphony, the Shostakovich 5, or the Petroushka dances, which are all marked from the full scores. You go through and find the things that are more important in the texture, and then find out by process of elimination what you have to take out, because obviously with two hands and two feet there's only so much you can play. So you must decide what to keep and what has to go--and how to eliminate things in an orchestral score so that you can play it on the organ without changing the piece or leaving out something important.

Through looking at a score that I've marked up, I work it up slowly and memorize it, and then essentially play the transcriptions from memory. So none of them are actually written out; they're just marked-up adapted full scores.

In the end, as crazy a process as that sounds, it ends up being easier come performance time, because there's too much to follow and certainly to have an orchestral score in front of you, to have someone try to page-turn that would be crazy. It's very distracting to try to read ten lines of a score while playing and doing registrations and keeping your focus in front of an audience. Anything that limits other senses is more focused--in other words, by playing from memory, the other senses become more acute, because the visual distraction of looking at a page and reading something takes away from the ear, takes away from things that are tactile. So playing from memory certainly hones in on what you feel under your fingers, what you listen to, in a different way. This is never more important than in a very complicated transcription. That's one reason I've never actually written anything down.

Another reason is that a lot of the repertoire is not really of interest to publishers; they don't think it's mainstream enough to sell. So, no, at this point, nothing is published. I think at some point, if either a publisher decides they would like something specific or if I could get a couple of players who were interested in a certain transcription, then I would take the time to write something down.

JR: Your repertoire is very diverse and you strive to present each piece with a sense of stylistic awareness. What then are your thoughts on organ transcriptions vs. organ repertoire, and on performance practices? As a performer, how do you strike a balance among these?

ST: I have some very specific and passionate thoughts on this. To start with, I think that the art of transcription is very important, and it is ironic that it gets both incredible support and simultaneously a great deal of criticism nowadays.

Realize that when we say transcriptions, we are not just talking about Danny Boy, Ave Maria and Flight of the Bumblebee. We are also talking about large-scale, often mainstream repertoire that demands as much care and subtlety from an organist as it would from a pianist, a singer or an orchestra. Art at a very high level transcends its chosen medium. It is not just a matter of whether or not the organ becomes an orchestra, a piano, or anything else.

A successful transcription should not sound like it is a transcription, but rather be idiomatically adapted to the new medium while preserving the soul and stylistic context of the original in a carefully struck balance, and this is why transcribing is such an art form and anything but trite. I would challenge those who flippantly dismiss transcriptions as circus tricks as not understanding these ideas on a very profound level, nor having experimented with transcriptions enough personally to see what is really possible, and how. Consider the Bach-Vivaldi Concerti, several Liszt works that began on piano or organ and then went the other way, in the composer's own hand nonetheless, or the most obvious example, Mussorgsky's piano work Pictures at an Exhibition (transcribed later by other composers for a medium of immense color possibility, and now part of the standard orchestral repertoire). So, ultimately, we do accept transcriptions--we always have. Moreover, awareness of style must be applied here too--transcription does not always mean swell boxes, string divisions and tubas. Take for instance Bach's Italian Concerto or his Goldberg Variations. I have had as much musical satisfaction from playing these on organs by Fritts, von Beckerath, Gabler, Fisk and so on, as I have had sitting at a great E.M. Skinner with the Liszt B-Minor Sonata or something as monumental as the Shostakovich Symphony No. 5.

For me, all of this leads to a larger issue, and that is how we often see performers "mixing menus," which just confuses everything. I once heard an organist pull out stops at 8', 4'and 2' on a neo-Baroque organ and make his way through Elgar's Nimrod on that one sound, and briskly at that, like it was just this pretty piece to play for the audience, and that was enough. It was evident that the player did not understand anything about the intimacy of this music, or that perhaps this was not the right organ for it. On the flip side, I recently heard a Bach prelude and fugue played with all the swell shades flapping around like window blinds in a storm, with as many pistons as there were notes and Romantic rubato everywhere. Although the result was extremely musical in its own way, the total change of esthetic was so foreign to the score tha

by Roy F. Kehl

Roy Kehl has resided in Evanston, Illinois, since 1969. He is a past member of the Bishop’s Advisory Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. From 1981–1985 he served on the Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church which compiled The Hymnal 1982. In that capacity he chaired a sub-committee on plainsong hymnody and consulted with Morgan Simmons in course of that work.

On March 24, 1996, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago celebrated the music ministry of Morgan and Mary Simmons, who retired after 28 years as organist and choirmaster and associate organist, respectively. The festivities included several motets sung by the Fourth Church Morning Choir and alumni of that choir, vigorous hymn singing accompanied by Morgan, organ works played by Mary, Roy Kehl, Richard Enright, and Margaret Kemper, and tributes by choir members, Richard Proulx, and the Rev. Dr. John M. Buchanan, senior pastor of the church, followed by a gala reception in Anderson Hall.

Both Morgan and Mary Simmons are graduates of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, and have long been active in the AGO and the Hymn Society. During the Simmons' tenure, a number of innovations have taken place. Among them is the annual Festival of the Arts, which has featured such artists as Robert Shaw, Dave Brubeck, Paul Winter and Maya Angelou. Since the installation of the 125-rank Aeolian/Skinner organ in 1971, there has been an annual series of organ recitals performed by an international roster of musicians. The church has commissioned a number of anthems, several of which are included in the Fourth Church Anthem Series, published by Hope Publishing Company. Several recordings of the Morning Choir have also been released.  A recent major building campaign has included structural and acoustical renovations, as well as enhancement of the Aeolian/Skinner organ by Goulding & Wood.

This conversation took place on April 22 and 29 at the Simmons' home in Evanston, Illinois, shortly before they left on a trip to England.

Roy Kehl: Mary and Morgan, can you tell our readers something of your backgrounds, where you were born and raised, went to school, how you met, and how you came to Chicago?

Mary L. Simmons: Although I was born in Centralia, Illinois, I spent my growing up years in Carbondale where I was very fortunate to have a wonderful piano teacher  (Juilliard graduate) from the time I was five until I finished high school. At age twelve I began organ lessons with our church organist, but continued piano as my first instrument at the University of Illinois for my first two years when I switched to organ as a major. My teacher there was Paul Pettinga. In September of 1951 I enrolled in the master's program in sacred music at Union Theological Seminary in New York where I was a student of Hugh Porter and studied composition with Normand Lockwood. It was at Union where Morgan and I met and where we were married on May 17, 1953--two days before we received our degrees.

Our years at Union were very special times for us not only because of our developing relationship but also because of the lively stimulation that prevailed at the seminary and the city of New York. Clarence and Helen Dickinson were very much a part of the school's life as were Ethel Porter, Charlotte Garden, Harold Friedell, Madeline Marshall, Peter Wilhousky, Vernon deTar, and Robert Baker, to say nothing of the theological giants such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. The friendships which we made in those years with fellow students remain to this day.

Morgan F. Simmons: Andalusia, Alabama, is my home town. Although I was enthusiastic about music from an early age and had a reasonably good piano teacher from the time I was seven or eight, my music study was not very solid until my last three years of high school. During World War II my father was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where I had the good fortune of coming under the guidance of Union Seminary graduate Lee Sistare who put me on the right path to serious organ study. Simultaneously, I studied piano with a very fine teacher in Fayetteville.  During my senior year in high school we had moved back to Andalusia, and I made a twice monthly trip to Montgomery (85 miles away) to study organ with another Union graduate and a master piano teacher with an engaging southern name, Lily Byron Gill, who had been a student of Moszkowski and Ernest Hutcheson.

My undergraduate work was at DePauw University where I studied with Berniece Mozingo and Van Denman Thompson, the latter, one of the most gifted musicians that I have ever known. (He had completed a bachelor's degree at New England Conservatory in one year, done post graduate study at Harvard and was teaching at the college level by the age of 20.) I, too, entered Union Seminary in the fall of 1951, and, like Mary, I studied with Hugh Porter.  Following commencement and after two years in the army, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for study at the Royal School of Church Music in Croydon, England, where we spent a year.  Returning to the states I began a doctoral program at Union while serving as minister of music at the Bound Brook Presbyterian Church in Bound Brook, New Jersey, where we had a comprehensive program with six choirs. In 1961 I completed the doctorate in sacred music at Union with emphasis on hymnology, and in January of 1963 I accepted a joint appointment as minister of music at the First Methodist Church of Evanston, Illinois, and as assistant professor of church music at Garrett Theological Seminary. I continued at First Methodist until the summer of 1968 and maintained my relationship at Garrett until 1977.

On September 15, 1968 we began our work at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago--I as organist and choirmaster and Mary as associate organist (although she was not officially listed as such in the early days).

RK: What did you find when you arrived at Fourth Church in 1968? What was the program like at that time?

MFS:  We found a church with a long and impressive history of church music.  Eric DeLamarter had been the director of music from the time of the completion of the present church and its E. M. Skinner organ in 1914 until his retirement in 1935. His distinguished associates included Leo Sowerby, Palmer Christian, Walter Blodgett and Barrett Spach, who succeeded him, remaining at the church until his retirement in 1959 (with a one year's absence from the position). The organ was in a sad state with 240 dead notes and a lot of blanketing in the chamber to use in case of ciphers.  Plans were already under way for a new instrument at the time I was hired.

There were two choirs: the Morning Choir with 34 paid singers and the Evening Choir which had about 30 volunteers. The professional choir left a great deal to be desired since there were a number of singers who really should not have been there, and it took several years to build an ensemble that came close to my ideal of what a really good choral group should sound like. I discovered early on that it takes much more than finances to foster a truly effective musical program. The volunteer choir drew on the large singles' groups which were a hallmark of the church at the time, and there was a good pool of talent from which to draw.

The Morning Choir provided music for eleven o'clock worship and the Evening Choir sang for the 6:30 vesper service. The two choirs combined for a Christmas pageant and for the Spring Choral Festival which was held in May.  In addition the Morning Choir did a Fall Choral Service and a major work on Good Friday Evening. This schedule of special services had dated from the tenure of Barrett Spach, and I did not change it appreciably.

RK: What changes have taken place in the music program at Fourth Church during your tenure?

MFS: After our first Christmas we abandoned the rather old fashioned Christmas pageant and began the tradition of Nine Lessons and Carols, and we soon began an 11:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service which we named A Festival of Banners and Light, which necessitated the fabricating of banners to fill the very large space. Over the years we have been through three sets of banners and the service has grown in popularity so that there is now standing-room-only .

In 1988 a second morning worship service meeting at 8:30 a.m. was added to the existing 11:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. services. Vocal music for that service was provided by an octet from the Morning Choir, including one of the soloists. An assistant organist was subsequently added to the staff to direct the Evening Choir and play for the vesper service.

For most of the choral programs we used instrumental accompaniment more than had been done by our predecessors and performed a wider variety of music.  Some of the works performed included:

To St. Cecelia (Dello Joio), Missa Brevis (Kodály), Requiem (Fauré), St. John Passion (Bach), The Great Organ Mass, The Creation, and Stabat Mater (Haydn), Requiem (Brahms), Mass (Stravinsky), Mass in E Minor (Bruckner), Requiem, Grand Mass in C Minor, and Vesperae de Domenica (Mozart), Requiem (Duruflé), Israel in Egypt and Messiah (Handel) as well as lesser known works by contemporary composers.

After the organ was rebuilt and expanded in 1971 we began a series of organ recitals: four evening recitals by outstanding guest performers as well as noonday recitals on the Fridays of October, Lent and June by organists in the Chicago area--many of whom are of stellar caliber.

RK: Share with our readers the way in which you and Mary have shared the leadership of the music ministry.

MFS: Although Mary was not officially designated as my assistant or associate when we first went to the church, she functioned as such, and without her special talents the program could never have gotten off the ground. As I stated to the congregation on our final Sunday, March 3: "Mary has been my ears, my fingers, my best critic and my best friend." Her gifted ear and fine keyboard skills far surpass mine, and she graciously used those skills in a very unassuming manner to undergird the music making that took place at the church. She is a superb accompanist and acted in that capacity at choir rehearsals, morning worship and concerts. Because of her abilities we were able to perform music that I could never have programmed otherwise. We complemented each other's talents; she lent her ear for pitch and intonation to my ear for color, balance and interpretation. She offered steadiness to my exuberance. I did most of the planning and selection of the repertory as well as the registrations for the accompaniments, and she did the execution. In addition she is the organizer of the pair and managed the large and developing music library.

During our early years at the church she had the responsibility of our three children. Later she was employed for eighteen years as a full-time executive with one of the national boards of The United Methodist Church which required a lot of travel and energy. Fortunately, she had flex time and was able to be at the church by noon on most Thursdays for preparation for choir rehearsals. During my first nine years at the church, I still had responsibilities at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston and did occasional teaching in hymnology at Northwestern University's School of Music. That meant that there were many seven-day weeks.

RK: What were some of the challenges you faced at Fourth Church?

MFS: There were and have been few major challenges to the music program of the church. We enjoyed unparalleled support from the clergy and the congregation and were free to express ourselves almost without restraint. For many years there was no music committee as such, and the level of trust that was placed in our judgment was amazing. I did my best never to betray that trust.

One problem which the church in general has faced through the years is the matter of image. Many people have a distorted view of Fourth Church--that it is an elitist institution which caters to the very wealthy and that its financial resources are unlimited. At one time there were rumors that my salary was $100,000 a year, that the pastor had a chauffered limousine, a yacht and a bevy of servants. Actually, the church ministers to a wide variety of people from all economic strata, and its per capita giving has lagged behind the national average for many years. Its location on North Michigan Avenue in a space referred to as "the magnificent mile" and the very handsome Gothic architecture which was made possible by some of Chicago's past wealth reinforces the false image.  During a large part of my tenure, I handled the church's publications and publicity, and I constantly battled to correct the image and to get the message across that this is an all-inclusive community of faith which is open to all.

RK: What are some of the high points of your ministry at Fourth Church?

MFS: That is something of a difficult question to answer because there was a steadiness to the life of the church.  Fourth Church is atypical; we never went through the slump that so many churches experienced during the late sixties and seventies. In fact the membership of the church grew during every year that we were privileged to be a part of its ministry, and when we left we were at an all-time high membership--almost 4100. But there were some peaks along the way: the establishment of the Annual Festival of the Arts in the fall of the year which exposes the church and the participating artists to the important intersection between the arts and religion, the installation of the Aeolian/Skinner organ in 1971 and finally the enhancement of that instrument and the improvement of the acoustics which were completed in 1995. The close relationships which we have had with members of the choir were heightened by three European tours: Germany and Austria in 1987, England in 1990 and Italy in 1994. Singing in the Dom in Salzburg, conducting the choir in Bruckner's Virga Jesse at St. Florian Abbey where the great Austrian composer is buried, and conducting and playing for evensong at Bath Abbey are a few of the highlights of those overseas trips which we will always cherish.

RK: Tell us something about the history of the organs at Fourth Church and the recent renovations that you have referred to.

MFS: I've already mentioned the condition of the E. M. Skinner organ that existed when we went there in 1968.  This had been a landmark instrument when it was installed in 1914 and contained 59 ranks, among them the very first Kleiner Erzähler and Celeste which Skinner built. In the church archives is a letter from him describing the stop and its derivation. He said, "The result is a most beautiful combination, the most beautiful soft effect I ever heard." In 1946-47 the Aeolian/Skinner Company made several changes to the organ, including the addition of a mixture to the Great, a replacement of the mixture in the Swell, the addition of two mutations to the Choir and a Pedal unit (16, 8 and 4). Barrett Spach was very unhappy with the results and never forgave G. Donald Harrison for altering the essential character of the original instrument.

Soon after I went to the church we engaged Robert S. Baker, then Dean of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, as consultant for an extensive rebuild and enlargement of the organ. He, along with Donald Gillett, president of the Aeolian/Skinner Company, and I drew up the specifications for the instrument that was expanded to 125 ranks. All of the mechanical parts of the organ and the solid state console were new, but certain ranks from the original organ and the rebuild of the 40s were incorporated.  Because we were under the restrictions to make no physical changes to the building, it was necessary to confine the pipework to the original chambers: the very deep (25 feet square) chamber to the left of the chancel and the old echo chamber at the east end  peak of the nave. In the new scheme the Swell organ was buried at the back of the chamber and spoke directly into the large pedal prinzipal pipes. Also most of the organ was on low wind pressure. These factors along with the poor acoustics of the church made for a less than satisfactory installation. When people heard that there were 125 ranks, they would ask, "Is that all there is?" after hearing full organ.  Another common remark about the musical performances was, "It's too bad that the building doesn't sound the way it looks."

When the church projected a major renovation and restoration of the facilities, I began to address the matter of the organ which was a "diamond in the rough" and also the problem of three inches of horsehair felt on the ceiling of the nave. In 1989 we began conversations with Thomas Wood, president of Goulding & Wood of Indianapolis, to determine how some of the problems of egress and enhancement might be accomplished. We also worked with Kirkegaard and Associates related to the acoustics and secured the advice of Jack Bethards of the Schoenstein Company and the church's curator of the organ, Kurt Roderer. It was determined to relocate three divisions : the Swell, the Positiv and part of the Pedal. It was also decided to raise the wind pressures on the Swell, the Positiv and the Antiphonal divisions. A new 32' pedal reed was added as was a new prinzipal for the case of the Positiv which now speaks directly into the nave by way of the south balcony. A subbass of larger scale was added to the Pedal, bringing the total number of ranks to 126. A large part of the organ was revoiced and everything was regulated and finished to complement the new acoustic. The results are dramatic and have fulfilled my dream of leaving the church in a much better state than I had found it in 1968.

RK:  Could you tell us more about the acoustical and architectural renovations?

MFS:  As part of the restoration of the sanctuary of the church, which included extensive cleaning of the stone, refinishing of the pews and all other woodwork, repairing the stained glass and updating the antiquated lighting, it was happily decided to improve the acoustics which had been hampered from the beginning by the application of three inches of horsehair felt to cut down on the reverberation of the spoken word at a time when sound enhancement systems did not exist. The felt was removed and insulation was installed, covered by sheet rock and then hard wooden panels which were decorated to match the handsome polychrome beams.  Although there is not a long reverberation as a result of this work, there is far more warmth and clarity of sound so that the organ, the choir and the congregational singing are all wonderfully improved.

Another aspect of the renovation included the relocation of the Blair Chapel where there was a two-manual Austin organ which had been greatly enhanced in recent years by Brantley Duddy of Pennsylvania. The new chapel balcony will not accommodate the large  Austin chests and so the pipework, much of which is new and viable, has been put in storage in the hope that some of it can be incorporated in a mechanical action organ for the new space. 

The building is now almost totally handicapped-accessible with the addition of two elevators, a wonderful ramped loggia which is ideal for art exhibits, and expanded areas for day care, our very large tutoring program, the day and church schools and expanded administrative facilities. The former chapel space has been converted into a great hall which is widely used for after-church coffee hours, forums and large dinners.

RK: You have spoken earlier about the organ recital programs. Who are some of the artists that have been included?

MFS: Robert Baker gave the dedicatory program for the rebuilt Aeolian/Skinner in 1971, and Marilyn Keiser played the rededication recital in February of 1995. Among the other players have been William Albright, Arthur Carkeek, Robert Clark, Douglas Cleveland, David Craighead, Richard Enright, Michael Farris, Grigg Fountain, Robert Glasgow, Ronald Gould, Gerre Hancock, Charles Heaton, David Higgs, Wilma Jensen, Margaret Kemper, Charles Krigbaum, Joan Lippincott, Marilyn Mason, James Moeser, Thomas Murray, Bruce Neswick, John Obetz, Karel Paukert, Simon Preston, George Ritchie, Wolfgang Rübsam, David Schrader, Larry Smith, Frederick Swann, John Weaver, Todd Wilson and you. The list could go on for a very long time.

RK: You have commissioned a number of anthems. Who are some of the composers, and how did the Fourth Church Anthem Series come about?

MFS: Early on we commissioned Anthony Donato to write a piece for the centennial of the church which was in 1971. Subsequently, Gerald Near accepted a commission for one of our first arts festivals. Richard Proulx was asked by the church to compose a work to mark our twenty-fifth anniversary at the church in 1993. The Fourth Church Anthem Series is a joint venture with the church and the Hope Publishing Company, whose chairman of the board is Fourth Church member George Shorney. When I approached George with the idea, he very graciously accepted the challenge and suggested that the composers who were commissioned share a percentage of their royalties with the church and that those monies be used to help underwrite the Arts Festival. Composers in the series include Richard Proulx, Dan Locklair, Charles Huddleston Heaton, John Weaver, Walter Pelz, Kenneth Jennings and myself.  Last year alone over 3000 copies of the various anthems were sold--a very gratifying record for the promotion of good music in the church.

RK: Morgan, tell us something of your activities as a composer.

MFS: Much of the work that I have done has been for use at Fourth Church: a large number of vocal descants and responses as well as some free organ accompaniments. In addition I have composed works for several visiting organists including Cityscape for David Schrader, Metamorphosis for David Craighead, Conversation Piece--Pan and Cecilia Do Sums and Division for John and Maryanne Weaver, and Recitative and Variants on Fourth Church for Marilyn Keiser. I also composed a piece for oboe and organ for Ray Still of the Chicago Symphony as well as Prelude on a Melody by Sowerby which is inscribed to Mary.

RK: You alluded to your interest in hymnody and the teaching that you have done in that area. Tell us more about your association with the Hymn Society and the work that you have done for recent hymnal revisions.

MFS: Cyril V. Taylor, the composer of one of the most beautiful twentieth- century hymn tunes, Abbot's Leigh, was warden of the Royal School of Church Music when I studied there in the 50s. He taught a course in hymnody in such a fascinating manner that I was hooked and have maintained an abiding interest in the subject. My doctoral dissertation was "Latin Hymnody: Its Resurgence in English Usage," a study of the effect of the Oxford Movement on hymnody and the introduction of plainsong melodies to the English church during the 19th century.

Back at Union Seminary I came under the influence of Ruth Ellis Messenger who served, along with Carl Parrish, as my dissertation advisor. Through her urging I became active in the Hymn Society, serving as a member of its executive committee for a number of years and eventually as its vice president. Later I was secretary-treasurer of the Consultation on Ecumenical Hymnody for several years.

You will recall that in 1987, with your help, I compiled a small spiral bound volume of 87 hymns, Again I Say Rejoice, to introduce the congregation to some newer hymn texts and tunes that were not in the 1933 Presbyterian Hymnal. This collection proved to be a good bridge to the denominational hymnal that would appear in 1990.

I was a reader/consultant for The Hymnal 1982 as well as for The Presbyterian Hymnal of 1990, and I contributed a large number of essays on texts, tunes, authors and composers to the Companion To The Hymnal 1982.  That hymnal also includes two plainsong accompaniments which I was asked to compose, and 100 Hymns Of Hope includes my tune Fourth Church which is sung at Fourth Church every Sunday at the presentation of the offering.  The hymn writer Carl Daw, Jr. was commissioned to write the text for that response.

RK: You and Mary have long been active in the American Guild of Organists.  What have been your involvements with the Guild?

MFS: Mary and I joined the Guild when we were undergraduates at the University of Illinois and DePauw respectively. Mary is a past Dean of the North Shore Chapter and is currently an ex officio member of the board. We were both founding members of the Columbus Georgia Chapter when I was stationed at Fort Benning. I served as Dean of the DePauw University Chapter, Sub-Dean of the Columbus Chapter, Dean of the North Shore Chapter and am currently Director of the Committee on Denominational Relations on the national level.

RK: What is the work of that committee and how does its concerns reflect your thinking about the current state of church music?

MFS: The committee seeks to be a sounding board for the wide spectrum of concerns that face church musicians in various churches throughout the country. One of those concerns is the matter of the use of pre-recorded music for worship. You may have seen the statement on that issue in The American Organist. That statement was the result of a lot of work by our committee to address the critical matter of the sidelining of the human dimension in worship.

We are also concerned about the vapidity and banality of much that is being espoused by those who are advocates of the church growth movement.  This is a movement that considers the organ an antiquated means of enhancing worship and one that dismisses much which we as traditional church musicians hold dear, and declares them to be irrelevant to the so-called "seekers." Personally, and I think I speak for the members of the committee, I feel that there is an abdication on the part of many church leaders to do the hard work of providing substantive elements for worship whether it be in provocative preaching or mind-stretching hymn texts set to solid music. I like to think that is what has taken place over the years that we served at Fourth Church. The commitment to excellence at every level of the church staff is evident and the fact that we are at a record membership says that the church does not have to aim at the lowest level of mentality and taste to have a vital and vibrant community of faith.

RK: Your interests are not confined to the musical sphere. Let's talk about your gardening and needlepoint projects.

MFS: Gardening predates my musical interests. I began gardening at the age of four, but I wouldn't describe myself as a horticultural Mozart, even though I have taken a number of blue ribbons at African violet and rose shows. I have a small greenhouse which gives me a lot of pleasure and allows me to enjoy this abiding hobby year round. In it I have camellias and azaleas which keep me in touch with my Alabama roots. I also have orchids and other plants there. Since retiring I have already expanded the garden to include two new flower beds. We are looking forward to visiting the Chelsea Flower Show in London at the end of May.

Needlepoint has been a hobby from the end of my high school days and I have done quite a bit. As part of the renovation for the church I designed and stitched seven cushions for the chancel as well as a wedding kneeler, and now there are six more chancel cushions on the drawing board which will be begun upon our return from England.

RK: What are some of your retirement plans?

MFS: We hope to do more travel and visiting with our three children and six grandchildren. I plan to continue composing, to do some serious writing and get involved in some volunteer work-- perhaps with children. I have missed the contact I had with young people at the two churches we served prior to going to Fourth Church. As I said at our retirement celebration on March 24, there are still many roads left to travel. There is a lot of gas left in the tank, and I plan to continue to exceed the speed limit.

We look back on our active days as church musicians with a great sense of fulfillment and have remarked many times that we are among the most blessed in this our chosen field.

Thank you for the opportunity of sharing some of our thoughts with you and the readers of this venerable magazine which I have been reading for almost fifty years!               

A conversation with Steven Egler

Steven Egler

Steven Egler is Professor of Music at Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1976. He was a student of Robert Glasgow from 1969 to 1981, during which time he completed the B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees at The University of Michigan. Egler is also Councillor for Region V of the AGO.

Robert Glasgow, Professor of Music at The University of Michigan, will celebrate his 80th birthday on May 30, 2005. In honor of this occasion, I was delighted to be invited by Jerome Butera, editor of The Diapason, to interview Professor Glasgow, and did so on February 12, 2005. We had a wonderful afternoon at his organ studio in the School of Music, and he answered many questions about his life and career. Thanks to Prof. Glasgow for the interview, and we wish him Godspeed upon the occasion of his birthday and best wishes upon his forthcoming retirement.

Robert Glasgow has taught at The University of Michigan since 1962, after teaching at MacMurray College in Illinois and having graduated with distinction from the Eastman School, where he was also awarded the Performer’s Certificate. MacMurray College named him an honorary doctor of music, and his Michigan colleagues honored him with the Harold Haugh Award for excellence in the teaching of performance. He has concertized abroad several times, has toured the United States and Canada every season, and has appeared as a featured performer, lecturer and clinician at numerous national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. Mr. Glasgow was named International Performer of the Year in 1997 by the New York AGO Chapter.

 

Personnel coded as follows:

SE--Steven Egler

RG--Robert Glasgow

RB--Robert Barker, who also took the photos that accompany this article.

SE: Bob, please tell us about your childhood in Oklahoma City and your early music training. Did you come from a musical family?

RG: I would say so. Both my parents played musical instruments. My mother was a pianist and somewhat of an organist. My father played violin rather well and also clarinet. In fact they played piano and violin in the church orchestra, and that is where they first met.

My mother heard about a new Presbyterian church being built in Ada, a little town in southeast Oklahoma. They were going to have a new organ; it was going to be a Hillgreen-Lane. When my mother learned about it she called to ask if they needed an organist. Of course, being a little town out there in the middle of nowhere, they said, yes, they needed an organist. My mother decided to take some organ lessons and be down there in about six weeks. So she did; took six lessons from a lady in Oklahoma City and learned how to play the pedals and the manuals--enough to play a service. So she became organist of that church.

SE: So your mother was an organist?

RG: She was a natural musician and she had a lot of piano study. When she was in high school, her piano teacher told my grandmother that she didn’t think that she was making the progress that she should. She said, “Your daughter has too much talent for her own good . . . that it was too easy for her.” By the way, when I started to play the accordion, she learned the accordion herself; then she’d listen to things on the radio and then she’d play them to me, and I’d learn them by ear. She’d learn them by ear and then transfer them to my ear when I’d come home from school. It was great fun!

Well, it’s easy! It’s the easiest way to learn music rather than read through all of those notes--the printed page! I still think that there’s something to be said for learning by ear at a young age. In the first place, making music is perfectly natural. It’s not going to become any more natural than it is right then.

You want students who can play with great persuasion and do not sound affected and contrived. Those who do play this way started off as youngsters playing by ear, singing tunes they’ve heard, listening to the radio.

SE: Who were some of the organists who inspired you as a young man?

RG: The organist at First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Mrs. J. S. Frank. Mr. Ken Wright of radio station WKY, who played a 4-manual Kilgen organ in the radio station studio--this organ produced some very beautiful sounds. His playing was very tasteful, he had good organ technique, and presented a good variety of popular style repertoire. For every broadcast he played his own theme song that was not published, but I learned to play it by ear. Jesse Crawford, a very famous theatre organist of the time. I had many of his recordings. Marcel Dupré came to Oklahoma City in 1939 to play a recital at First Christian Church. He had just played the wedding of the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII) and Mrs. Simpson. The recital was a sell-out event. He brought his daughter Marguerite on the tour, and they played Franck, Dupré, etc.

SE: Did your parents encourage music study as a boy?

RG: Well, I guess so. They didn’t discourage it. It was a perfectly natural thing in our home when I was growing up. I was an only child.

SE: What instruments did you play?

RG: Accordion! I wanted to study and play the organ, but I could not reach the pedals, so I talked my folks into buying me an 80-bass accordion. That’s how I learned to play the pieces my mother taught me by ear--on that accordion.

SE: So that’s as close as you could get to the organ sound.

RG: Yes, it’s like an organ. It’s a wind instrument. I loved doing it, and I got pretty good at it. I was popular playing for church basement suppers and things like that.

SE: You were well known early on.

RG: Oh yes, I started playing at age nine, and by eleven I was hot stuff!

SE: Who was your first teacher?

RG: My mother. She taught me some piano. We had a little baby grand. She taught me how to read the notes. I had these little pieces that I was supposed to learn, but I’d sort of half learn them and I’d fill them in myself and fix them up. Mother would say, “You’re not playing what’s there.” I told her one time, “My way is better!” Talk about cheeky!

SE: So you learned your notes then after you played the accordion: you learned the accordion by ear.

RG: Almost everything that you played on the accordion had to be arranged for the instrument anyway. There was very little written for the accordion all by itself. My piano book had wonderful illustrations in it with the keyboard going up into the sky. It was wonderful, lovely, and all very visual. But the last piece in there was the Minuet in G of Beethoven. It has a B section--all 16th notes--and I looked at that and thought, “Oh boy, if I ever get to play that piece I’ll be really good.” That was the last piece in the book, and if you got that far you were a finished pianist.

SE: So you were done. That was it!

RG: Yes. All done.

SE: Then you were ready for the organ, the real thing.

RG: I was ready, but I still couldn’t reach the pedals, and I hadn’t enough piano according to the piano teacher. Our church organist was a wonderful musician--Oberlin-trained from way back. She took me later on, but she said then that I didn’t have enough piano.

We’re missing a very important part right in here when I took up the string bass, and that’s had much more of a lasting effect upon me than anything else. The junior high school orchestra wasn’t all that good, but by the time we got to high school, the orchestras were very good. We went to state competitions at the University of Oklahoma and won A-1 ratings. We played Mozart Symphony No. 40 and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik--music of that caliber--and also the Franck D-minor Symphony.

SE: So did you just start playing the string bass?

RG: No. Oklahoma City Public Schools offered instruction in strings: first of all, violin, some viola, and you got free lessons, class lessons. This was fourth grade and there were little-sized instruments. I didn’t care anything about that: I wanted to play the big strings. By seventh grade, I could do string bass or cello, so I took up string bass because I liked the look of the scroll at the top. I’d take that instrument home on weekends and practice it and learned to play it.

SE: There must have been something about the bass notes.

RG: Oh yes, indeed. It was a physical thing. It was wonderful to play in an ensemble like that, and we really became quite good. Then they had a junior symphony (Oklahoma State Junior Symphony), and you had to audition to get into that. I got into it, and that was more fun than anything. We did get to play the major repertoire then.

That had a lasting effect. By the time I got out of high school, I was finished. I couldn’t keep using the string bass in the school. I didn’t have one. And, anyhow, guess what came on then?

SE: World War II?

RG: It was already going. But one thing that I got out of that was the GI Bill--a godsend for everyone of that generation.

SE: And that paid for your education at Eastman?

RG: Yes, just did. The amount of time you got was the amount of time that you had been in the service, and mine worked out just right. Eastman cost more than anything; in those days it was $500 a year!

I came back and I didn’t know what I was going to do where music was concerned. I thought I’d be an architect and was very serious about it. I kept drawing all the time. I couldn’t get away from it. I’d draw house plans, church plans, and outsides of buildings. Some were not bad, as I look back on that. I was about ten or eleven years old when I started drawing pictures of houses and floor plans.

SE: What sort of time was there, Bob, between your time in the service and going to Eastman? Was there much of a gap there?

RG: Well, I didn’t go to Eastman right away because it was too late by the time I got out of the service. It was March, and I had been working on Eastman for well over a year before that; there were thousands of GI’s out of the military service, and they all wanted to do something, go somewhere with the GI Bill. By that time, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do.

I decided I’d try for Eastman and then got the usual letter back stating, “No. We’re sorry, but you’re the low man on the totem pole. You’d be a transfer student.” That year I went to Oklahoma City University and was a piano major and had good teaching there. The faculty were all Eastman graduates. I then got busy with applications at Eastman and sent audition recordings of both my organ and piano playing.

I got this letter, “Sorry for you. You’re too late . . . way too many students . . . I don’t want to discourage you . . . but send your audition recordings to us right away.” Instead of sending it to the admissions office, I sent it to Harold Gleason. In days, I had this note back from him! The first big thrill that I had was that he wrote to me and said to check that I had all of my papers in, and that they wanted to have me there in the fall. WELL, that did it! He saw to it that I got in. So I found myself at Eastman that summer and got a church job right away. That plus the GI bill got me through without too much trouble or hardship.

SE: When did you start at Eastman?

RG: Summer of 1947. I started in with the program right then, but they classified me as a sophomore. Of course, I had the freshman year at OCU, and all that work was accepted. I took their basic exams.

SE: That must have been very exciting. 

RG: Well, it was! It was scary, too. I thought, “What am I doing here with all of these talented people? Good grief, they are going to find out about me. They are going to catch up to me and send me home.” I didn’t think that I was that good.

SE: It looks like that didn’t happen.

RG: It didn’t, fortunately. I was trying to figure out how I would explain it to the folks at home. It turned out that I stacked up pretty well with the rest, but at first I didn’t think that I was going to.

I went there because I had advice from people at home who were graduates of Eastman and who told me that there was only one place to go and only one teacher for me. There weren’t nearly so many organ teachers then and nearly so much good organ teaching then as there is now. 

SE: Who was your teacher in Oklahoma City?

RG: Dubert Dennis. He was an Oklahoma boy--Cherokee Indian--but he put me on the straight and narrow with the Gleason Method. I’ll tell you! Hand position. Finger action. I’d never had anyone be so fussy with me before. I thought, “I’ll get to Eastman. I’ll show them.” Turned out to be just the other way around, of course. I had to get off of my high horse. I did pretty quickly.

SE: We’ve all had someone like that in our background.

RG: You need to sit back where you belong and not where you don’t belong. It’s one of the best things a teacher can do for you sometimes. To say, “Wait just a minute. You’ll be there in a minute, but not right this minute.”

RB: Humility?

RG: I don’t think humility. It’s just honesty about where you are in terms of your development, and not imagining you are further along than you really are.  That’s often the trouble some students have: they think they are so much further along that they really are, and are unwilling to do “repair work.”

SE: That might be one of those later questions . . .

RG: Another big thrill while at Eastman was when I auditioned for the Performer’s Certificate. I thought that it would be fun to play with the orchestra. In those days you did not choose the concerto before you got accepted as a candidate for the Certificate.

I got chosen, and I thought that I would do the Poulenc, but it didn’t have any pedal cadenza. I wanted something that would show off the pedals. I found the Flor Peeters Concerto in a music store, so I chose that, and Howard Hanson liked it better than the Poulenc. Hanson was not a fan of Poulenc. 

He was a wonderful conductor and wonderful musician to work with on that concerto. It was the American premiere, and it did have a big pedal cadenza in it and a rousing climax. It just brought the house down. Flor Peeters knew how to write for organ and orchestra very effectively.

An interview with Elise Cambon, organist of New Orleans’ St. Louis Cathedral for 62 years

Marijim Thoene

Marijim Thoene received the DMA in Church Music/Organ Performance from the University of Michigan. She is currently organist at Church of the Immaculate Conception, “The Jesuit,” on Baronne Street, in New Orleans, and is an active recitalist.<span style=&quot;mso-spacerun:yes&quot;> </span>Her CD, “Mystics and Spirits,” recorded at St.
Joseph Abbey in St. Benedict, Louisiana, has recently been released by Raven
Recordings.

Elise Cambon, affectionately called "The First Lady of Sacred
Music," is a living legend in New Orleans. This spirited woman, who calls
herself a tiger, was born in New Orleans in 1917. Her accomplishments in church
music read like an entry in Who's Who in America normal'>; a summary of her life's work will be published in the 2004 edition.
She graduated from Newcomb College, part of Tulane University, in 1939. Her
first organ lessons began in 1939 with Ferdinand Dunkley, a graduate of the
Royal School of Church Music, a professor at Loyola and organist/choirmaster at
St. Charles Ave. Presbyterian Church. A pivotal moment occurred in her life
when she was playing as a substitute organist for a Boy Scout Mass at the St.
Louis Cathedral in 1941. As she played Widor's Toccata
style='font-style:normal'> as a postlude, Archbishop Rummel decided to offer
her the position of cathedral organist. As she is fond of saying "Timing
is everything." (See photos
#1 and #2 taken shortly after she became cathedral organist, dated 1944, 1946.)

While cathedral organist she taught music at the Ursuline Academy 1942-1951,
at the Ursuline College 1949-1951, and at the Louise McGhee School for Girls
1953-1961. (See photo #3 taken with choir from McGhee School, dated 1958.) She
was the founder and first Dean of the New Orleans Chapter of the AGO in 1942.

She received a Master of Music degree in organ performance in 1947 from the
University of Michigan where she studied wtih Palmer Christian. She continued
organ studies with Arthur Poister at Oberlin College and Syracuse University.
Throughout her tenure as organist at the cathedral she conducted choral
concerts and played organ recitals to a packed house. Photo #4 dated March 23,
1952, taken after one of her cathedral concerts shows from left to right Norman
Bell, Most Reverend Joseph Francis Rummel, Elise Cambon and Reverend Father
Robert Stahl, S.M.

In 1951-1953 she attended the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt as a
Fulbright fellow and studied organ with Helmut Walcha, harpsichord with Maria
Jaeger and conducting with Kurt Thomas. After her Fulbright she spent summers
studying Gregorian chant at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes and at Pius X
School of Liturgical Music in Purchase, New York. In 1959 she was invited to
teach at Loyola University and received a grant to found the School of
Liturgical Music. (See photo #5 showing, from left to right, the Rev. C. J.
McNaspy, S.J. dean of the College of Music, Frederick W. Salmen, president of
the foundation, and Elise Cambon receiving grant to found the School of
Liturgical Music at Loyola University.)

Not only did she obtain grants for two Holtkamp organs, but also funds to
install air conditioning in the practice rooms. She founded the New Orleans
Bach Oratorio Society in 1959. She earned her Ph.D. in musicology from Tulane
University in 1975 and was awarded first prize in musicological research from
Mu Phi Epsilon International Music Society for her dissertation "The
Italian and Latin Lauda of the 15th-century." She retired from teaching at
Loyola in 1982. Photo #6 shows Elise Cambon at the organ console in St. Louis
Cathedral taken the year she retired from Loyola University.

She received grants and raised funds for the St. Louis Cathedral Choir to go
on "Pilgrimages," to sing five concerts in Europe, England and
Ireland from 1987-1998. In 1987 she took the Cathedral Choir on a concert tour
to Italy and France and performed in Rome, Assisi, Florence and Paris. In 1991
the Cathedral Choir sang concerts in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. And
in 1994 she directed the Cathedral Choir as it performed in Spain and
Portugal. Her last two
"Pilgrimages" with the choir were in England in 1996 and in Ireland
in 1998. In England the choir sang at
St. Martin-in-the Fields, Clifton Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral, Ely
Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral and St. George's in Bloomsbury (London). In
1989 she became coordinator of five choirs plus a brass ensemble from the
Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra for "One Shell Square" for Christmas
concerts, which she continues to do.

These are the facts of her life, a life dedicated to learning, teaching and
performing music. It was a great privilege to interview Elise Cambon and hear
her tell of the forces that shaped her remarkable life. She describes in her
own words her life, her ambition, her passion for learning, teaching,
conducting and playing Bach, her life devoted to church music. Photo #7 shows,
from left to right, Marijim Thoene and Elise Cambon at Dr. Cambon's home on
July 3, 2003.

M.T. Tell me about growing up in New Orleans.

E.C. I was born February 27, 1917,
at home at 2004 Napoleon Avenue. My father's name was Maurice Cornelius Cambon
and my mother was Marie Camilia Murray Cambon, called "Camille." My
two sisters, Marie and Camille, were twins and were born on the feast day of
St. Cecilia on November 22, patron saint of music. They were fun to be around.

M.T. Do you remember about your first piano lessons? Did you have to
practice a lot? Did you want to practice?

E.C. Did I want to practice?! That
was when I got to Europe. I don't remember taking piano lessons until I was in
Europe and came back to the States.

M.T. Did your father get to see you conduct and play?

E.C. Oh, no. Things went bad. We
went to Europe when I was eight years old in 1925 and stayed until about 1930.
While we were in Europe, my father
rented a piano, and we started lessons with Albert Leveque, an
understudy of Cortot of the Paris Conservatory. In the meantime we also had a
French governess and she taught us French. She took care that we practiced the
piano and studied lessons in French. We studied mostly grammar and science,
natural science. We spoke only French. We were not allowed to speak a word of
English.

M.T. Did you have to compete with your sisters for practice time on the
piano?

E.C. No, I was on that piano bench
before any of them. I respected Monsieur Leveque and he liked me too, because I
could memorize anything that he wanted us to learn. My sisters liked the
keyboard, but not as much as I did. I was always on the piano. Everyday we were
assigned certain hours to practice the piano and to study French. The lady who
taught us French knew enough about the piano that she could supervise. My
teacher would play something and I would learn it from memory right away.

M.T. When you got back from Paris did you speak English?

E.C. Yes, but we were encouraged to
converse in French. We brought back a French governess. She stayed with us
until I was 13. Then I was sent to the Sacred Heart Academy, and I studied
Latin.

M.T. Was it really strict at the Academy? You had to work very hard?

E.C. Oh, yes. You see we lost all of
our money by that time. We lost it in 1929 in the Great Depression. In 1930 my
uncles committed suicide. They both owned the Cambon Real Estate Corporation,
and were grief stricken that so many people had lost money and there was no way
to repay it.

M.T. What did you study at Newcomb?

E.C. At Newcomb I majored in French
for the simple reason that it was easy for me. I didn't have to work on it. And
I had three positions: I had an NRA job with the government, I taught children
piano lessons every Saturday and I baby sat for them in the evening when
needed. I was able to pay my school tuition by means of this extra employment.

M.T. Where did you teach?

E.C. I taught the children of
professors in their homes. Sometimes they would bring me home, or I would take
the streetcar if it wasn't too late. It wasn't dangerous in those days like it
is today.

M.T. When did you start playing the organ?

E.C. My sister Marie sang at the
Church of the Immaculate Conception, "the Jesuit," on Baronne St.,
and Claire Coci was then the director. When I heard Claire play I was very
impressed. The next time I saw her
was when she was at Oberlin in Ohio. At that time I had already finished my
master's degree at Michigan where I studied with Palmer Christian. I stayed at
Michigan two and a half years. I studied with Arthur Poister at Oberlin one
summer, and I thought he was very good. Then he moved to Syracuse University
and I studied again with him.

M.T. Did you take lessons from Claire Coci at the Jesuit?

E.C. No, I never took lessons there.

M.T. When did you start taking organ lessons?

E.C. I started with an Englishman
here by the name of Ferdinand Dunkley who was organist at St. Charles Ave.
Presbyterian Church. He had a degree from the Royal School of Church Music and
was very, very smart. I studied a lot with him, and I got to the point that I
could play the Trois Chorals by Franck. So, he was my first organ teacher.

M.T. How old were you when you started organ?

E.C. About 22. I had lessons with
him for a long time. And I liked him very much, he was a genuinely fine man.
Then I went to the Loyola College of Music to study theory and other things at
night--Gregorian chant. Fr. Callans taught me that. He had studied at Solesmes.

M.T. What attracted you to the organ?

E.C. Claire Coci. I thought she was
a stunning performer. She was very dramatic. She made that organ sing. I'm not
saying that I wanted to play that way, but I love Bach very much. You can make
Bach's music sing. But so many people think Bach should be played in a very
strict manner; playing it so strictly causes it to lose all of its spirit. When
I went to Ann Arbor I started doing Bach. I love Bach and earlier composers--de
Grigny, Couperin, etc.

M.T. What do you think is the most valuable information Palmer Christian
taught you? What do you treasure most from his lessons?

E.C. Well, Palmer Christian
impressed me by his dignity. He was a gentleman to the core. He played at the
English Church in Paris before he came back to the United States. He truly was
a highly refined man. He meant business. He wasn't mean, just very dignified.

M.T. And you had a lesson
every week from him?

E.C. Oh, yes.

M.T. Did he have studio classes where the students would play for each
other?

E.C. Yes, once a week. I remember
playing the Bach D Major Prelude and Fugue.

M.T. What did he tell you to do to handle stage fright?

E.C. Stage fright? I was never
afraid.

M.T. You were never nervous?

E.C. I always thought I could be
better. But I never felt nervous. I never played when I thought I didn't know a
piece. I'd better know it, or I wouldn't play it.

M.T. When did you begin directing choirs?

E.C. At the cathedral, I had a boy
choir. They were cute as buttons. I would rehearse them one half hour before
the Mass out in the garden in front of the cathedral.

M.T. How old were you when you started directing the choir at the
cathedral?

E.C. It was before I got through
Newcomb. I think I was 24, maybe it was 1941. I was playing for a Boy Scout
Mass and Archbishop Rummel was there. It was the first time the archbishop had
heard me play. I played the Widor Toccata and the archbishop said
to the priest, "Who is playing that organ today? I want to meet the
performer." The man who had been organist was ill, and when he was unable
to return I was offered the job. I was there 62 years this past year.

M.T. What were the biggest challenges you faced as organist/choir
director?

E.C. Following the edicts of Vatican
II. The people were encouraged to sing the Ordinary of the Mass. The goal was
to have the people understand what was going on at the altar.

M.T. What was it like to study at Pope Pius X School of Liturgical Music
in NY?

E.C. It was wonderful. I got to know
my teacher, Dom Gajard, a visiting Benedictine monk from Solesmes.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> When the Gregorian Chant Choir of Spain
sang at the cathedral in January, 2003 to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase, I
discovered that the conductor of the choir had studied with Dom Gajard and had
met me in the 1950s.

When I had finished studying in Germany on a Fulbright grant in 1953, the
Archbishop wrote me, "You've been studying enough in Protestant
churches. I want you to go to
Solesmes." And he paid my way. I stayed there for six weeks. I was really
impressed, people were serious, they really tried to learn. I went to Pius X
each summer for four years. Every time I had a vacation I went there. I studied
with Mother Morgan and there was another nun who taught how to conduct chant.
We sang chant in the Mass everyday.

M.T. What led you to teach at Loyola University?

E.C. I had been in Europe on a
Fullbright and I met Fr. McNasby. He said, wouldn't you like to teach music and
Gregorian chant at Loyola University? Fr. McNasby invited me to teach
liturgical music. He invited me to teach summer school.

M.T. Why did you decide to work on a Ph.D. in musicology?

E.C. I decided if I was going to
teach music history I had to have a fine understanding of the development of
music, from its origin in Gregorian chant to the present. So I took classes all
during the winter time. I took classes in Renaissance, etc., but chant I studied
at Solesmes. In chant stress was determined by the accent of the text. It was
like dancing, and I liked that.

M.T. Why did you decide to write a dissertation on the Italian and Latin
lauda of the 15th century?

E.C. Well, I loved Latin and I
studied Italian for a couple of summers in college. I had had four years of
Latin in high school and college. I didn't like the music particularly. I did
it because I had done so much work with the lauda when I studied
early music. I had a lot of material on it.

M.T. How did you survive working under five archbishops?

E.C. I got along with them like two
peas in a pod. Archbishop Rummel treated me just like a daughter. The next was
Cody. He stayed only two years and so I have a short remembrance of him and I
think the one who followed him was Archbishop Hannan. He was a very genteel
man. He got along with people, and most people liked him very much. He couldn't
carry a tune in a bucket. And so there was no relationship that way. But he was
always nice to me and he respected my way. I loved also Archbishop Schulte, he
was a great guy. When he was archbishop the cathedral ceased being operated by
an order of missionary priests to a single rector. Fr. Hedrich was the first
rector of the cathedral and became a monsignor later. When Archbishop Schulte
introduced me to the new rector, Fr. Hedrich, the Archbishop told Fr. Hedrich,
"Now you're the liturgist, don't forget that, but Dr. Cambon is the
musician. When it comes to music she is the musician." And he meant it. He
respected my knowledge of first-class religious music. And I like very much
this new bishop, Moran, the one that was just made a bishop.

M.T. What would be your advice to any young person thinking about going
into church music?

E.C. I would say to them go to the
church and perform for a church that really believes in God. Do it for God
because you love the music. God deserves the best. However people are very
important and you shouldn't be a cantankerous individual and if you can't get
along, get out. And then I would say if you respect the people you work for,
never talk about them, never call them down to other people. As long as I have
been at the cathedral I have never had a priest under an archbishop that I
couldn't find something very rewarding about them. But you do run into
characters, and that you can't help, because everybody is different and maybe
they don't agree with the music you like. Try to be in a place where you can do
the music you like without any arguments.

M.T. Do you have any regrets?

E.C. None.

M.T. How did you build up the choir at St. Louis Cathedral?

E.C. I started out as the organist
in 1940 and then I had a boy choir. The man who trained the boy choir became
ill; his name was Roland Boisvert. After he left the cathedral he became organist
at St. Joseph's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in St. Benedict, Louisiana, a
short distance from New Orleans. They saw how loyal I was at St. Louis
Cathedral. I was always there for the evening services. I was playing weddings,
and working my tail off, trying to keep up. I had to train the boys to sing the
Mass on Holy Days. And I would say to them. "All right kids I want to see
you Sunday morning at 7 o'clock and we will go over the Mass so that you will
be good." And they came very religiously and on Friday morning we had Mass
and do you know some of those kids became priests of the order of Mary
Immaculate. They were the order that was at the cathedral. They are missionary
priests.

M.T. Did you rehearse them everyday?

E.C. I would rehearse them at lunch
time. They would come in from playing ball to rehearse the music. They would
prepare the music for the Mass they were planning to sing on the first Friday
of the month and on some Holy Days. After the rehearsal I would throw up as
many pennies as I had on me to give them a reward for coming, and do you know
one of them is now a priest, Rev. Msgr. Ignatius M. Roppolo at St. Rita's in
New Orleans. The oblates of Mary Immaculate had a school and the boys in the
choir came from that school.

M.T. When did you begin directing the adult choir?

E.C. It grew out of the school
choirs I was directing and the girl choir that Fr. Lorengan directed. When Fr.
Lorengan retired I was given both choirs to direct. I had just begun teaching
at Ursuline Academy and some of the kids from there wanted to come over and
sing. And eventually we got some men. They came from Loyola University. Some of
the girls brought some boys they knew from Jesuit High School.

M.T. So the adult choir at the cathedral came from other choirs you had
trained. Did you pay them?

E.C. No, no indeed.

M.T. When the choir grew, did you pay the singers?

E.C. Not for a long time because
they loved the music. In those days people were more religious, more people
went to church. I had a lot of people from Ursuline who were interested, and
they are still singing in my choir at the cathedral.

M.T. When did you start paying singers?

E.C. When we started giving a lot of
concerts.

M.T. What year was that?

E.C. I think that was in 1982. One
of them was Marilyn Bernard. I paid her because she was so good. She was an
excellent soprano. She came for the love of music.

M.T. And your sister Marie helped you raise funds for choir trips?

E.C. Yes. She knew the people. She
came down to the cathedral when I played the 12 o'clock Mass on Sunday. When I
finally got the choir moving they sang the High Mass, and I played all the
Masses, all the Benedictions that they had on weekdays.

M.T. When did you start playing so many Masses?

E.C. I started in 1940.

M.T. How many Masses did you play on Sunday?

E.C. The 9, 10, 11 and 12.

M.T. What about weekday Masses?

E.C. The children sang once a week.
I went down there to direct them. They really didn't need me. I used to go down
there at night and play the evening Mass too on Sunday night at 6 pm.

M.T. As choir director did you do any 20th-century repertoire?

E.C. No. They didn't like it. My
choir now does not like esoteric music that they do not understand. They like
Benjamin Britten, Randall Thompson. Their preference is for Gregorian chant and
music of later periods that shows organization and beauty. They will not sing
modern music. They are used to doing 16th-century polyphonic music.

M.T. What about the Brahms Requiem normal'>?

E.C. We have sung it and enjoyed
doing it.

M.T. Do you have a favorite 20th-century composer?

E.C. I love Randall Thompson, his
"Alleluia," and Benjamin Britten.

M.T. When you were playing organ recitals what repertoire did you play?

E.C. Bach, the Passacaglia
and Fugue, Prelude and Fugue in D Major, the Prelude and Fugue in A minor,
the C Major.

M.T. Did you play pre-Bach repertoire? Nicolaus Bruhns? Buxtehude,
Sweelinck?

E.C. Oh yes.

M.T. Did you play any 20th-century repertoire?

E.C. Yes, I played Marcel
Dupré's Preludes and Fugues, and Jehan Alain. I played
Messiaen's Celestial Banquet.

M.T. Did you study with Dupré?

E.C. No, I just heard him play.

M.T. What about Franck? Did you play his music?

E.C. Oh, I like Franck. I did the Trois
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Chorals, the Pastorale
style='font-style:normal'>, and Pièce Héroïque
style='font-style:normal'>.

M.T. And what about Hindemith?

E.C. I played his sonatas.

M.T. What about Tournemire?

E.C. A great man. I played some of
his music. I didn't play a lot of Tournemire because I didn't think the people
would enjoy hearing it. I think you must play music that people understand, not
just what you like to play.

M.T. What did you play at the cathedral? Did you play Brahms?

E.C. Yes, I love his chorales.
Beautiful. I played Couperin, de Grigny, Clérambault, Sweelinck, and we
sang Sweelinck too.

M.T. Did you play Mendelssohn?

E.C. Yes, but I think he is boring.
His music doesn't do anything. It's too old fashioned. I like music that says
something to people, and that has a wonderful sound. I was lucky to have the
cathedral organ.

M.T. Tell me about the restoration of the organ. I know you are
responsible for its restoration.

E.C. I paid for the whole thing.
It's being restored and added to by Holtkamp Organ Company of Cleveland, Ohio.

M.T. When did you find time to practice the organ?

E.C. At night, often I practiced
until midnight. And I took a cab home. It wasn't dangerous then.

M.T. You were alone?

E.C. Yes, usually, I couldn't expect
someone to stay down there with me.

M.T. Were you able to play organ preludes every Sunday?

E.C. Yes.

M.T. Did you play the organ during Advent and Lent?

E.C. No. In those days it was
forbidden. I was always under the supervision of Fr. Stahl. He was the director
of the seminary choir and could play the organ and wrote compositions for the
Notre Dame Seminary. I got my instructions from him. I followed the rules of
the Catholic Church, and there was to be no organ music during Advent and Lent.

M.T. And when you did play a prelude, was it always soft and meditative?

E.C. Not at all.

M.T. Really?

E.C. No. That's a lot of
foolishness. I would play big works, like the Passacaglia. And at the end of
the service, pieces like Toccata and Fugue in d minor.

M.T. When you played the Toccata and Fugue in d minor
style='font-style:normal'> for the prelude, nobody complained that you were
interrupting their prayers?

E.C. No, they came just to hear it.

M.T. Do you have any organ students who are pursuing church music as a
career?

E.C. Many. I have one boy who is
blind and is in Florida. One just gave a recital at St. Dominic's Church,
Marcus St Julien. I taught Fr. Carl Davidson, a former seminarian at Notre Dame
Seminary, Fr. Tom O'Connell and Dreux Montegut who is the music director, director
of the Cathedral Choir and Cathedral Boy Choir at St. Louis Cathedral.

M.T. Do you have any advice to an organist who is starting out?

E.C. Learn the music the way I was taught by Walcha: to play various voices
and the pedal and sing the other voice, to learn it from memory and know
everything that is going on in the piece. Make it the most important thing in
your life, to study and perform music like the composer meant it to be played.
And the first one in my book is Bach, and then of course polyphonic music of
the 16th-century, music of Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus, Orlando Gibbons, Byrd,
and Sweelinck, and composers today such as Vaughan Williams, Randall Thompson,
Benjamin Britten. The music must have form, direction and emotional strength. You
are saying something when you are writing a piece of music.

M.T. Do you have any advice for a choir director? How to deal with
people?

E.C. You have to love people with
your whole heart and soul. And that's why you are strict. You want them to be
the very best they can be. And you treat them as though they are part of you,
and not just an operation to show off.

M.T. What about someone who talks during rehearsal?

E.C. Well, I can't put up with that,
but you remember people are human. They need to have a break and talk. Give
them time to do that, and when it's time to rehearse, it's time to rehearse.
You can't talk and rehearse at the same time. You should make the rehearsal so
exciting and intelligently planned that they feel they are really accomplishing
something and there isn't time to talk.

M.T. What is the best way to conduct a choir rehearsal? Do you have them
sight read through the score?

E.C. I always say if people are
absolutely unable to read they should divide among voices, the women together
if there are two voices, the men together if there are two voices, if there are
six voices in groups of threes, so that nobody has to wait while one person has
to learn his part. People don't mind waiting a little while someone else learns
his part. But if they can't read at all take them by themselves. And if they
can't get in tune with each other it's much better to practice without a
keyboard. The keyboard is just there to teach them the scale and intervals.
Teach them to sing the intervals. Pick a simple piece and have them sing each
interval. If they cannot do this, and they are monotones, well, fare-thee well.
It's not a joke to sing. Do you think people teach this?

M.T. No.

E.C. You cannot learn to sight sing
if you can't sing intervals. You may not have to sing intervals in another
choir, but you're going to do it in this one. I love my choir. I hug them. You
tell the choir, "Either you learn to do it, or try to adapt yours