The Art of Teaching: Joan Lippincott at 75

Michael Barone

Michael Barone is host and producer of American Public Media’s Pipedreams program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2007. Pipedreams can be heard on radio stations across the country, also on XM Satellite Radio Channel 133 and in Hong Kong on Radio Four. Barone is a native of northeastern Pennsylvania, a music history graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, and a nearly 39-year employee of Minnesota Public Radio.

John Weaver, one of the America’s finest concert organists, celebrates his 70th birthday on April 27, 2007. The following interview is offered in honor of this milestone.
Dr. Weaver was director of music at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City from 1970–2005, and served as head of the organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia 1971–2003, and also chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School 1987–2004.
His formal musical studies began at the age of six, and at age 15 he began organ study with Richard Ross and George Markey. His undergraduate study was at the Curtis Institute as a student of Alexander McCurdy, and he earned a Master of Sacred Music degree at Union Theological Seminary. In 1989 John Weaver was honored by the Peabody Conservatory with its Distinguished Alumni Award. He has received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2005 he was named “International Performer of the Year” by the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
In addition to his work at the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, he has taught at Westminster Choir College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Manhattan School of Music. He has written numerous articles for organ and church music magazines and has served as president of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians.
Dr. Weaver has been active as a concert organist since coming under management in 1959. He has played throughout the USA, Canada, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. He has performed on national television and radio network programs in the U.S. and Germany, and has made recordings for Aeolian-Skinner, the Wicks Organ Company, Klais Orgelbau of Germany, a CD on Gothic Records for the Schantz Organ Company, and a recording on the Pro Organo label on the new Reuter organ at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle. His most recent recording, “The Organ and Choral Music of John Weaver,” is available on the JAV label and features his own organ and choral compositions. His published compositions for organ, chorus/organ and flute/organ are widely performed.
He currently lives in Vermont and continues to concertize and lead workshops and masterclasses around the world. The Weavers love to climb the New England mountains, and have a tradition of an annual ascent of Mt. Washington. Marianne is an avid gardener, and John’s hobby is a deep fascination with trains, both model and prototype.
This interview took place July 11, 2005, at the Weaver home in the rolling countryside near West Glover, Vermont.

MICHAEL BARONE: How did John Weaver stumble into the world of the organ?
JOHN WEAVER: We moved away from the little town where I spent the first four and a half years of my life. I have very few recollections of that place, except one of them that’s very strong—the organ at the church where my father was the pastor had a wonderful sound on low E. Something about the 16' stop on that organ resonated in the room in a glorious way, and I fell in love with that. As soon as I learned how to play a few notes on the piano, my favorite thing was to hold down the sustaining pedal and play an arpeggio—slowly at first—and just listen to it ring like an organ. Something in me has always been attracted to that sound.
MB: With whom did you study and how would you characterize those years?
JW: My first organ lessons were with a wonderful organist in Baltimore, Richard Ross. He died at age 39 shortly after having given me a lesson on a Saturday afternoon—just failed to show up the next day at church. Ross was becoming one of the best-known and finest organists in the country. When I first went to him, at the age of 15, instead of auditioning me at the organ, he told me to go up onto the stage of the Peabody concert hall and play for him on the piano. Well, there was a big Steinway up there, but the thing that really interested me was the 4-manual E. M. Skinner. I could hear air escaping from it, and I coveted playing that instrument so badly that I can feel it still today.
Nevertheless, Ross told me that he wanted to hear me play something on the piano. So, I stumbled through my Mozart sonata that was not really very good at that point, and afterward he said to me, “I don’t want you to study organ yet. You need to study at least another year of piano and really work at it very hard.” And then he also said something that I’ve always remembered: “If in the meantime you study organ with anybody else, I will never teach you.”
Well, I took his advice, and I went back to my piano teacher and really did work for a year—then came back the next year and played for Ross again. This time I played the Beethoven “Pathétique,” and I played it pretty well. Ross said, “OK, now you can start studying organ, but you must continue to study piano as well.”
Fortunately I had a very good piano teacher, and I studied with Ross for about a year and a half, until his death. The Peabody Conservatory brought in George Markey as an interim to fill out the rest of that academic year. While I was studying with Markey, at this point as a senior in high school, he said “Where are you going to go to school next year?” I just assumed I would go to Peabody because we lived in Baltimore, and Markey said, “Well, have you considered auditioning for the Curtis Institute of Music?” And I remember asking him, “Where is that?” I was soon to find out a lot about Curtis and also about the great teacher there, Alexander McCurdy. I did audition and was accepted, and had four glorious years in Philadelphia.

MB: McCurdy is something of a legend, and the stories about him are numerous. I expect you have more than a few.
JW: I’ve described him on numerous occasions as an Old Testament figure. He was someone you both loved and feared at the same time—certainly, not one to suffer fools. If you went into a lesson unprepared, you were sure to get a dressing down that would do a drill sergeant credit. But when words of praise came, they were so precious and so rewarding that they could light you up for a whole week. He was a very liberal teacher in that he did not insist on playing any piece of music in any certain way. Within that department at that time we had about six students—there was one student who was very much a disciple of E. Power Biggs, and there were others of us who were much more in the Virgil Fox camp. That was sort of the nature of the department, but McCurdy was as enthusiastic about the fellow who was a Neo-Baroquist as he was about the rest of us. That person, by the way, is Temple Painter, who is one of the leading harpsichordists in the city of Philadelphia and still plays organ as well.

MB: What were McCurdy’s techniques to get the best out of students? What did he create in you that might not have been there before? And then how did you take what you learned from McCurdy and shape that with your own personality?
JW: McCurdy had several ways of getting the best from us. I’ll never forget my first lesson: he assigned a chorale prelude from the Orgelbüchlein, which I had not played, and he said, “Mr. Weaver, I’d like you to play this next week from memory in organ class.” Well, right away it was jump-starting; and seven, eight hours a day of practicing became the norm. At my second lesson, he assigned the Vierne Cantabile, from the second symphony, and said, “I’d like you to play that next week in organ class in front of your peers.” Well, that was really a struggle. And he did that for about three weeks at the beginning of the four years. After that, he never assigned a piece again. But he got me into the habit of learning—I knew he expected that kind of production from week to week.
That’s a Curtis tradition that was started by Lynnwood Farnam, continued by Fernando Germani and by McCurdy, and I believe is still the case—each student comes every week with a new piece memorized to play in class. This could be a little one-page chorale prelude for manuals alone, or it could be a major prelude and fugue, a big romantic work, or a modern work—you could repeat something from previous classes, but you always had to have a new piece also. It got us into the habit of assuming when you started to learn a piece that you were eventually going to play it from memory. There are some pieces that I have never been able to play from memory. I’ve memorized a fair amount of Messiaen, but with more atonal pieces, I find that I am just not comfortable playing without the score.

MB: The challenge for the organist, of course, is that each instrument is different from the next and requires its own learning process. The traveling recitalist comes to a church, gets used to the instrument, gets used to the instrument’s response in the room, and then tries to make music with the repertoire that you’ve brought to town. Perhaps it’s no wonder that fewer organists want to memorize these days, but there’s still something about a performer totally connected to and deeply involved in the music that is missing when a score is being read.
JW: There is always the problem of the page-turner—or, if one turns one’s own pages, that has its risks as well. Page-turners can sometimes pull music down off the rack inadvertently, or pull a page right out of the book, or turn two pages—there are lots of risks. Page-turners also have a tendency sometimes to hum or to tap their foot. I’ve even known some who think it’s safe to step on the pedalboard to reach a page that’s far out of the way—that really does produce a catastrophe.
I guess it doesn’t make a lot of difference if the console is completely hidden. I wouldn’t know if someone was playing from memory or not, but pianists, violinists, singers are expected to walk on stage and play from memory. It’s harder for organists, yes. I like to have 12 to 15 hours at an instrument before I’m ready to play a recital on it. If I had 20 hours it would be better still. If I had 25, I would find a few more things to make that instrument come across in the very best possible way and the music to be the best that I could do. That kind of time is rarely available, but 12 to 15 hours is a norm.

MB: I always get the sense watching you that you really enjoy playing. Now is this actually true or are you just a very good actor?
JW: If it looks like I’m having fun, I’m glad for that because in a way, I am. I also am constantly aware of the pitfalls—how many things might happen that you don’t want to happen and sometimes do. But I do enjoy playing. I love playing recitals, though it scares me, and five minutes before the recital I ask myself “Why did I ever agree to do this?” But once I start playing, why, that departs and I really do settle down and enjoy what I love about the music that I play—hoping that people will catch something of what I’m feeling about that music and my devotion to it.

MB: How did you, a former student at the Curtis Institute, come to be the head of the organ department at Curtis?
JW: One fine day Alexander McCurdy called me up and said, “Mr. Weaver, I’m going to retire from the Curtis Institute, and Rudolph Serkin would like to meet with you and see if you might be an appropriate successor.” (Rudolph Serkin at that point being the director of the Curtis Institute.) Needless to say, I went down to Philadelphia and met with Serkin, and he suggested that I play a recital in Curtis Hall—it was never called an audition recital, but I think they wanted me to clear that hurdle before giving me a green light. Curtis Hall is one of the hardest places to play. It is totally dry acoustically, with a 118-rank Aeolian-Skinner in a room that seats about 200 people—probably more pipes per person than any place else in the world. But it’s an instrument that can, if one works with it, do remarkable things. So I did play the recital and did get the job, and was there very happily for many years. I started in 1971 and retired in 2003—32 years.

MB: How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?
JW: I’ve tried to follow the McCurdy mold. When I was at Curtis we continued the tradition of the organ class—memorization and new pieces each week. I also tried to not impose my own interpretation of any given piece upon the students that I was fortunate enough to teach, both at Curtis and at Juilliard. I do believe that everyone should somehow sound like themselves, that there is some part of themselves and their own musical personality that will affect the way that they perform any piece.
I’ve had students who were extremely flamboyant and almost overdone. I’ve tried to curb that a little bit sometimes, but I certainly don’t want to squelch the enthusiasm and the very strong personal interpretations that a student like that can bring. Sometimes I find a student’s playing to be too conservative, just dull note pushing, and then we talk a lot about the music and about its nature—its liveliness or passiveness or serenity or agitation—trying to have the student project something in the music other than just the notes on the page.

MB: Who were some of your outstanding recent students?
JW: Well, without naming any priority, certainly Paul Jacobs, who succeeded me at Juilliard; Alan Morrison, who succeeded me at the Curtis Institute; Diane Meredith Belcher, who’s on the faculty at Westminster Choir College; Ken Cowan, who is on the faculty of Westminster Choir College and is now the head of the organ department there—and a whole host of others. Those are four that are under management, nationally known, and do a great deal of playing—I’m very proud of them indeed.

MB: How did you come to be at Madison Avenue Presbyterian? What are the different demands, delights, and challenges of being a church musician as opposed to being a fancy-free artist in the world of recitals?
JW: For eleven years, I was at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York. While there, my wife and I started the Bach cantata series that continues to this day, and we really made that church known for performances of the music of Bach. In 1970, I knew that the position at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church was vacant. It never occurred to me to apply for it. But one day, a gentleman came into the church office unannounced, no appointment, and asked to see me. When we met he said, “We,” meaning the search committee at Madison Avenue, “were hoping that you would apply.”
Well, having the door opened by him at that point, I decided to follow through with it, and I did so with a great deal of doubt because I had grown up in a Presbyterian church, where the din of the congregational chatter before the service completely drowned out anything that could possibly be done on the organ. And I had the impression that Presbyterians generally did not place a very high value on the quality of the worship, the sermon being the centerpiece of the whole Sunday morning experience. But I met with the committee at Madison Avenue and particularly with their pastor David H.C. Reed, in whom I found a Presbyterian with wonderfully high regard for worship and high expectations for the quality of worship. My fears were allayed. I did go to Madison Avenue in the fall of 1970, and immediately we began changing the nature of the worship service there. The congregation began to sing a great deal more—four hymns every Sunday, plus they began to sing the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.
That progressed until the congregation tended to draw people who liked to sing, and so the congregational singing was strong and is to this day. David Reed was followed by Dr. Fred Anderson, who was a musician—his first degree was as a music major—and a great lover of music and of worship. Now one could go to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and the worship experience would be very ecumenical. You would not be certain if you were in a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or an Episcopal church. It’s very much Presbyterian, but at the same time very ecumenical and very rich liturgically.
MB: Have you considered yourself an organist who composes or have you always thought of yourself as a composer who had to make his way as an organist and a teacher?
JW: Very definitely the former: I’m an organist first and foremost, but I’m an organist who loves to compose. Many composers who try to write for the organ don’t understand the instrument and therefore write pieces that get a premiere performance and are never heard again. In fact, the organ literature that does become mainstream is almost always written by people who play the instrument. One great exception is Paul Hindemith, but he of course was able to write for any instrument, and he always did his research and knew what he was doing—he wrote three wonderful organ sonatas and a concerto.
Years ago, when I was in my early teens, I started going to Vermont in the summer to a music camp for theory. No lessons were taught on piano or clarinet or violin or anything like that. There was no applied music—it was all theory. We had counterpoint classes, form and analysis, and harmony and such, and the result of it was that the students of the camp composed because we had been given the tools of the musical language.
So I’ve gone to Vermont every summer of my life to compose, and now that I live here I hope to do a lot more composing. I’ve also composed primarily things that I myself could use. Although everything I’ve composed for the last 15 years has been on commission, I’ve always written something that I could use in my own work, either in recitals or in church services. I’ve written a lot of choral music and a lot of organ solo pieces and also several pieces for organ and flute because my wife is a very good flutist and we like to be able to play those pieces together.

MB: Do you have any favorites among the pieces that you’ve written? JW: My favorites tend to be the ones that have been performed a great deal. The Passacaglia on a Theme of Dunstable—it may not in fact be by Dunstable, but it was thought to be by him, namely the tune Deo gratias—was composed for the 25th anniversary of the state trumpets at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and I played the premiere performance there. It’s a set of variations in passacaglia form, and one variation is designated for that magnificent state trumpet at the west end of that huge cathedral. Nevertheless, the piece works on instruments that don’t have that particular kind of stop available. The piece has been recorded by a number of people and has been played all over the world—that gives me a lot of satisfaction. It’s also one of my favorite pieces.

MB: How many compositions have you’ve written up to this point?
JW: I’ve probably composed about 20 choral pieces, that is, anthem-length pieces. I’ve also composed all four gospel settings of the Passion story, and probably a dozen solo organ pieces.

MB: And other than the commission that you just received on Friday, the future is an open book at this point?
JW: Yes, actually that’s the only commission I have in hand right now, but I am trusting that others will come in. And if they don’t I’ll write anyhow.

MB: Someone wanting to commission you would do what? Do you have a website?
JW: .

MB: Do you enjoy the process of recording? You’ve made some notable recordings. It ends up sounding as though you’re having a good time, even if you might not be.
JW: No, I hate recording. [laughter] There’s something a little bit antiseptic about it. First of all, one does not get that sense of response from a live audience. You simply do the playing, and then there are people sitting around with scores and dials and they’re wanting to do this over again and that over again—or a siren will go off or there’ll be a clap of thunder; things like that can make it very frustrating. When they listen to a recording, people have no idea about how long it takes to make that, because street noises or other interruptions can destroy what otherwise would have been a perfect take. It’s very hard.

MB: You’ve been performing in Portland on the Kotzschmar organ—well, you must have been a boy in knee pants when you started.
JW: It was in 1956—at the end of my first year as a student at the Curtis Institute of Music—when I first played the instrument that had been given to the city of Portland by Cyrus H. K. Curtis, whose daughter was the founder of the Curtis Institute. So there was a wonderful connection there. And I’ve been back every year since. [Editor’s note: Dr. Weaver played his 50th recital on the Kotzschmar in August 2005.]

MB: The organ is a challenge as a musical instrument—it is this device with so many opportunities for color and dynamics, and yet is an incredibly complex machine, which even at its best seems to be intractable. Is this something that organists don’t think about, they just do? Or is making music on the organ as difficult as it might appear to a layman, seeing all of those controls to be manipulated and the separation between the console and the pipework and all of that?
JW: Michael, I believe every instrument has its challenges. For pianists, the way in which the key is struck is so critical, and a pianist’s hands must cover a large key compass, whereas organs have a shorter keyboard, 61 notes as opposed to 88; and organ music tends to stay in the middle register, so, in a way, that’s much easier. Violinists have tiny strings and a fingerboard, and it amazes me that they can play a C major scale. Violin virtuosos are just astonishing. The challenges of the organ are mastering the pedals, mastering console technique that enables you to draw upon the resources of the instrument—and then also to a very great extent, the imagination that you can bring to bear with so many different colors available. Each person will choose sounds to produce the right color, if I might use that word, for the passage that they’re playing in a way that pianists and violinists couldn’t possibly do.

MB: In the 21st century young organists face not only sustaining the presence of their instrument but actually rebuilding an audience for organ music. I see this as a real challenge.
JW: Yes, it is. Every now and then though, one sees very hopeful signs—one of those being the recent installation within the last five to ten years of a great many organs in the concert halls of this country—something that’s fairly standard in Europe; for instance, the renovation of the wonderful Ernest Skinner organ in Severance Hall in Cleveland, a new organ in Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the restoration of the organ in Boston Symphony Hall, the new Disney Hall instrument in Los Angeles. One could go on and on and name any number of places where new instruments have been installed or old instruments have been restored—to me this suggests that the organ will take, again, its place as a concert instrument and not just a liturgical instrument.
On the other hand, it must be said that concert halls are often not the most perfect, acoustically, for organs. Great organ music was written to sound its best in places with fairly substantial reverberation, such as a large stone church. So concert hall organs are wonderful, and I’m glad they’re being built, and they enable us to do organ concerti and sometimes organ solo recitals. But the church, particularly one that has a long reverberation period, is still where the organ seems most at home.

MB: How would you compare the scene for organs and organists in your day? Was this a peak of energy with that marvelous—some would say divisive, some would say energy producing—polarity between the historicists and E. Power Biggs on one side, and the theatricalists and Virgil Fox on the other? We don’t have quite that type of energy today. I daresay the man in the street, if asked to name a concert organist today, might be hard pressed, whereas back in the ’60s and early ’70s, the names of Biggs and Fox were very much in the public ear.
JW: Biggs and Fox, both of them very talented, extraordinary musicians, had a great advantage of working right at the time that the LP recording was becoming common in the American home. RCA Victor and Columbia were the big producers of LP recordings at the beginning of that time in the early ’50s. And there was Biggs and there was Fox, and these two polarities were represented in the recording industry—that did a great deal for the visibility of the organ and the popularity of organ music.

MB: It could be argued that now is both the best of times and the worst of times—there are far more organ recordings available, representing a much larger panoply of artistry and instruments both new built and historic, marvelously represented—and yet there is so much that the focus is lost to some degree.
JW: Yes, I think that’s right. When it was Biggs and Fox, you could expect to find their names in the crossword puzzle. No organist today has that kind of visibility. Another name that was right up there at the top was Marcel Dupré because of his extraordinary playing and also the fact that he had been the teacher of so many organists in the U.S. through the Fulbright program. There isn’t anyone who has really achieved that kind of star status in the organ world, which is not to say that there aren’t a great many wonderfully talented and brilliant performers. Maybe there are just too many.

MB: Yes, it could be argued that the performance quality of the 21st century is higher than it’s ever been. Do you think that it’s possible with so much talent around for someone to distinguish themselves or do they have to almost jump beyond mere artistry and do something odd in order to be discovered? JW: Perhaps it would be best to think in terms of naming names. The name of Cameron Carpenter who studied with me at Juilliard comes to mind. Cameron is extraordinarily flamboyant, both in dress and personality and in playing. His playing annoys the purists terribly, but certain people are simply mesmerized by his performances. And he is a genius—there’s no question about that. Another name that gets a great deal of visibility these days is the young German organist, Felix Hell, whom I also had the honor to teach. Felix, at first, was famous because he was so very young when he was playing recitals all over the world, literally, as he still does. But now he is taking his place among the more mature artists of the younger generation and plays very well indeed—and has made numerous recordings. So these two are a little bit like Biggs and Fox—Felix tends to be a fairly conservative player, not extremely so but more middle of the road, whereas Cameron is way out there in show biz land.

MB: Presuming it’s something different from that marvelous, resonate low “E” that had you mesmerized as a child, when you play and hear the organ, what sort of thoughts go through your mind? What is it about the instrument that still captures your heart and soul?
JW: Who could not be seduced by the instrument itself? Just the mechanics of it and this great collection of pipes, some of them enormous, much larger than most people realize, and most of them very much smaller. I think when a layman sees the inside of a pipe organ for the first time, they’re always astonished—even if it’s a small instrument, it looks amazingly big and complex. And the large ones, of course, are simply mind-boggling. So there’s something about the instrument: its bigness, its history. When I’m playing an organ, if I’m playing Bach I’m thinking about instruments I’ve played that Bach may have played—there’s this great history and great repertoire, and frankly the sound of the instrument has always seduced me.

MB: How would you characterize your playing style?
JW: Probably other people should do that. I would say that I am in the middle someplace. I probably am a little bit on the extrovert side of dead center, but I also am not one to completely disregard the knowledge that musicologists have brought to us of performance practice, of historic instruments—but sometimes I will just say “this piece that I’m playing on this particular instrument cannot be played in a good, authentic, 18th-century style.” Something must be done to make the music and the organ come together in a way that is satisfying and gratifying. And sometimes that means just throwing the rulebook out the window.

MB: Did you set out with goals? You probably didn’t begin your study imagining you would go to Curtis, and then after having studied at Curtis, you probably hadn’t thought that you might end up teaching there, or at Juilliard for that matter. You’re like a natural surfer who has swum out into the sea and found a fantastic wave and you’ve been able to ride that wave through your career with skill, with accomplishment, certainly with a sense of pride. How do you look back at your career from this point?
JW: I would have to say that as with many careers, a great deal of it has to do with being at the right place at the right time, but also having ability to do the job that is required. I’ve often thought that if I had been five years younger, the Curtis Institute would not have thought me an appropriate age to head that organ department. If I had been five years older, it’s likely that they would have chosen someone else from among Alexander McCurdy’s students.

MB: You have moved on from three prestigious positions and you’ve now settled in what used to be your summer home in rural Vermont, up in the marvelous rolling countryside in the northeast corner of the state. Somehow, I can’t think of you as retiring. What projects have you set for yourself for the future?
JW: The mail recently brought a new commission for a new organ piece—that’ll be one of the things. I do want to continue to compose. I’m playing a number of recitals this year including two that I’m extraordinarily excited about, because I will be reunited with the instruments that I had my first lessons on. One of them, the Peabody concert hall Skinner, was put in storage for about 40 years, and then set up at a big Roman Catholic Church in Princeton, New Jersey. A week later I will be playing a recital on the wonderful Skinner organ at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, where my teacher Richard Ross was the organist, and before him, Virgil Fox—a beautiful, perfectly untouched Ernest Skinner that really is quite a marvelous instrument. And I’m playing some other recitals and some dedications around the country.

MB: So, you keep your organ shoes polished and ready to go?
JW: Indeed so.
[Editor’s note: Dr. Weaver has announced that the 2007–2008 concert season will be his last for regular concert activity.]

MB: Tell me about some of your memories from being “on the road.”
JW: The wonderful occasions that I love to think back upon are two recitals that I played—one in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, for a national convention of the American Guild of Organists, in which everything went the way I wanted it to. I loved the instrument, the audience was wonderful, the acoustic was great. And the other one was the Mormon Tabernacle—a recital I played when the Tabernacle was having a three-day symposium to celebrate the restoration of the organ there. Everything was fun, and the instrument was to die for, and of course the acoustics are world famous.

MB: Tell me about your railroad fascination. Where did you grow up? Mauch Chunk?
JW: Yes, Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, is a little town north of Allentown and Bethlehem, about 20 miles up into the Pocono Mountains—it’s in a ravine cut by the Lehigh River, and there was a railroad on both sides of the river that ran through the town. The town is now called Jim Thore, but its historic name of Mauch Chunk has great importance. Anyhow, it was a railroad town, and being in this mountain ravine, day or night you could hear the sound of a steam locomotive. The bells and the whistles and the smell of coal smoke were a constant feature of that place. I can remember standing by the railroad track and holding my father’s hand and counting the number of cars on a freight train as it rolled through. It became a part of my life—a very strong hobby, and we are seated right now in the midst of a model railroad that I’m creating that is 26 by 36 feet and has 390 feet of track in it. This is my last model railroad—if I live to 150 I might actually finish it.

MB: And you had one in your office at Madison Avenue Presbyterian.
JW: Yes, unfortunately when I retired from Madison Avenue that meant the end of that railroad, but all of those trains and the structures and the little people and the automobiles and all that are now a part of the railroad here.

MB: I’m sure the compositions that you created for Madison Avenue Presbyterian remain in the files there for the choirs to sing. It’s too bad that your railroad installation in the office wasn’t kept by your replacement.
JW: In the search for my replacement, a fondness for railroads had nothing whatsoever to do with their choice. So.

MB: What of your siblings and in what directions did they go?
JW: My older brother took piano lessons from the same teacher that I had, and he could see that I was making faster progress, so he switched to violin and became in his high school years a reasonably good violinist—he played second chair, first violin in what was at that time a very good high school orchestra. My younger brother is a wonderful tenor, does a lot of solo work in the western Massachusetts area, teaches mathematics at Mount Holyoke College, has an abiding passion for music and even does some composing—he has been published.

MB: And your parents’ musical backgrounds?
JW: Both of my parents played the piano, my father better than my mother. My father had also studied organ for a year or two, and could get through a hymn—knew how to use the pedals a little bit for hymn playing. My mother was an artist, did a master’s at Carnegie Tech and then studied for a year at the Sorbonne—the walls of our houses are covered with paintings that she did over the years.

MB: With your family’s church affiliation and your being a church organist, it’s maybe not surprising that some of the most lovely works that you’ve created have been fantasies on or settings of hymn tunes. You certainly do respond to the church’s song in your compositions.
JW: Well, I love playing hymns. I especially love hymns when a congregation is stirred to sing really well—that’s a wonderful experience. Very often the reason for writing pieces based on hymns has to do with the nature of a commission that I have received. In fact, almost always when I have composed a piece based upon a hymn tune, it’s been requested by the person who commissioned the composition.

MB: Did your parents live to see the honor accorded their son who went on to great things?
JW: My father was very gratified to live to see my appointment to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. It was one year later that I was appointed to Curtis. By that time, my mother had died, and my father was not at all well. My father did not particularly encourage my desire to be a professional organist. He, as a minister of a medium-size church, saw that as being at best a part-time job, which would mean having to do something else on the side, and that’s always a difficult life. I think he was very happy to see that I had the security of a full-time church position that was also in a church of great prominence within the denomination.

Michael Barone adds: When I first heard John Weaver play, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for the AGO convention in 1984, I was charmed by his physical presence (Mr. Clean in a dinner jacket!), awed by his control of the instrument (and himself), and beguiled by his musicianship. Subsequent convergences have confirmed my first impressions. John is a modest man of major accomplishments, a patrician artist and persuasive virtuoso who has fostered and encouraged the talents and individuality of an inspiring array of youngsters. He is a musician whose own playing leaves a lasting memory, and whose compositions touch the soul. He’s a guy I’ve been both honored and delighted to know. Happy birthday, John!

John Weaver will be the featured guest/topic of a Pipedreams broadcast (#0717) during the week of April 23, 2007, which will remain available 24/7 in an online audio “programs” archive at www.pipedreams.org.

Michael Barone's John Weaver interview

See the interview here.

 

Other items of interest:

John Weaver honored by Juilliard

John Weaver honored by Union Theological Seminary

Honoring John Weaver's 80th birthday

John Weaver dies at age 83

John Weaver honored by long time representative

Gavin Black

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He welcomes feedback by e-mail at . Expanded versions of these columns with references and links can be found at .

This & that
As I mentioned in last month’s column, this month I will provide a sort of miscellany or potpourri of brief thoughts, ideas, and anecdotes that will amount to “light summer fare,” but which I hope will be interesting. Some of this column will introduce subjects that I will take up more fully later on.

Organ pedagogy
When I was a graduate student in organ performance at Westminster Choir College in the mid-80s, I took—as was required—the course in organ pedagogy. This course was, in those days, set up in an extraordinary way, and it ended up having a strong influence on the way that I think about teaching. The course was not a step by step traversal through a particular method of teaching. It did not purport to teach us how to teach in any technical sense. Rather, it was a kind of colloquium loosely organized around the notion of teaching but really concerned with what it means to be a musician, an organist, a performer, a colleague, and, indeed, a teacher. The course—and this was the crucial part as far as I was concerned—was taught by all six members of the organ department in turn, each one taking two or three weeks, and sharing whatever he or she thought was interesting, useful, or important for us to know.
Structured this way, the course taught us two lessons before we even stepped into the classroom. The first of these was that learning to be a teacher did not consist of learning some other (presumably older) teacher’s method, or, more broadly, did not necessarily consist of learning a method at all. The second was that diverse or divergent points of view were worthy of respect, and that anyone who had experience and something to say was worth listening to, even if he or she was not your own teacher, and—especially—even if he or she was rumored to have an approach or a philosophy that was different from your own, from your teacher’s, or from what you were used to.
(The Westminster organ faculty at that time was such an extraordinary group and represented such a great amount and diversity of experience that I would like to record here, even though it is already of course a matter of public record elsewhere, the names of the teachers who made up that group, in order of their seniority at the time. They were Donald McDonald, Eugene Roan, Joan Lippincott, Robert Carwithen, William Hays, and Mark Brombaugh.)

Two kinds of teaching
The whole phenomenon of declaring that “there are two kinds of” something—usually “people”—is somewhere between a joke and an oversimplification. My notion that there are two kinds of teaching is the latter: an admitted oversimplification that, if it is recognized as such, might be interesting. The first kind of teaching is the normal kind: a student comes for a lesson more or less every week, and practices regularly. The work of these lessons is organized in a fairly systematic way, and the teacher’s job in large part is to help the student make systematic progress, with each lesson building upon what came before. This will always be the largest and most important part of what goes on in the teaching/learning process, especially when that process addresses an area that involves technical skill.
The second kind of teaching is that in which a teacher says or does one simple thing that—very quickly, almost suddenly, with little or no need for follow-up or amplification—makes a significant or even crucial difference to the student. This is a kind of teaching by “revelation” or “enlightenment.” Of course—as I have experienced myself!—this concept can lead towards arrogance (“I will bestow Pearls of Wisdom upon my students as if I were a great Guru”) and laziness (“I need not undertake the grinding work of helping my students develop a systematic lesson and practice plan”).
(I should mention that I think that laziness can be quite useful sometimes—more about that below—but that arrogance probably cannot.) The antidote to this arrogance and laziness is the realization that, if sometimes something that you say or do as a teacher can have a revelatory effect upon a student and can create as much progress for that student as you might expect to achieve in a semester of work, it is always impossible to know or even guess in advance what might have that effect or serve that role for a particular student. It is not really something that you can do on purpose!
Here are four almost offhand remarks made to me over the early years of my own organ and harpsichord study, by four different people, some of whom were official teachers of mine and some of whom were not, each of whom turned out to be about as important to my learning as any given few months of studying and practicing:
1) After listening to me play a bit of a Bach fugue on the organ in my first year of organ study, an astute listener commented that I should listen to my playing of the subject in the pedals, and then try to recreate that effect in the voices that were on the manuals. This taught me that sometimes the visceral, kinesthetic, dance-like feeling of pedal playing can be a good intuitive source of rhythm, shape, and liveliness.
2) Early on in the time when I was studying organ with Paul Jordan—probably in about 1973—I was trying to play a short piece for him. Whenever I made a wrong note, I hesitated, or stopped, or tried to go back. Paul said to me that I should always know before I started a passage whether I was, on the one hand, playing it, or, on the other hand, drilling it. If the former, then I should be utterly committed to keeping it going, never breaking rhythm, always thinking about the next thing, not worrying about what just happened. If the latter, then I should know in advance what bit of the music I was drilling, and indeed go back and repeat it as many times as I needed to, but on purpose, not as a result of letting myself be derailed. This brief comment was, I believe, the source of at least half of my own ability to practice effectively and to perform, and to help others learn how to do the same.
3) A young but experienced virtuoso harpsichordist with whom I was chatting one day in the late ’70s, commented that any gesture that a person could perform at any given (slow) speed, could also—absolutely certainly—be performed at any (faster) speed, given appropriate practicing. I had no way of actually evaluating the truth of this claim at the time, but I kept it in mind. In the end it provided more or less the other half of my own ability to practice effectively and to teach effective practicing.
4) In the spring of 1979 I was studying privately with Prof. Eugene Roan, a few years before I studied with him as a graduate student. I played one of the Well-Tempered Clavier fugues for him on my new harpsichord, and he commented that he couldn’t hear a certain motif when it entered in the top voice. I think that I said something about harpsichord voicing, or acoustics, but he suggested that I simply make the theme a bit more detached, and he demonstrated that it could indeed be heard better that way. He floated the idea that the sound of the instrument was telling me something about how to play the piece. At the time I was very committed to the notion that this theme should be articulated a certain way, and that it should be played exactly that way every time that it came in. I didn’t want the instrument to try to force me to depart from my plan. However, that moment was the beginning of my considering the idea that interpretation could be, in effect, a collaboration between analytically derived ideas and acoustic- or instrument-derived sonic realities, and that neither side of that picture should be ignored.

Laziness
We clearly live in an era when everyone is expected to work all of the time. In fact, on the day when I am writing this, there are news stories floating around about attempts to get people to “turn off their BlackBerries” at least while they are at the beach or at a ball game. The need for such an attempt says a lot. In some fields the essential source of pressure to work all the time is external: the corporation, the boss, the client. For an enrolled student there is the pressure of grades, prizes, recommendations, etc. For any student there is the pressure of pleasing the teacher. In a field that specifically requires technical prowess, like playing a musical instrument or a sport, there is also the inner pressure of wanting to get better and better—to become more accomplished than it is actually possible to be, in order to hold at bay the fear of not being accomplished enough.
I myself have had exactly one period in my life when I actually practiced about ten hours a day, on average, for quite a few weeks in a row. This was when I was first learning to play the Art of the Fugue on the organ. It was, and is, that hard: I practiced for eight hours on the very day when I first performed it. Obviously this is not normally recommended. I believe that I or just about anyone would burn out before too long on this kind of schedule. It was certainly exhilarating to do it for a while, though.
I am, however, fundamentally quite lazy. I love sitting on the couch watching TV or reading or chatting with friends, and I believe that doing a reasonable amount of that kind of thing is clearly good. Resting and recharging is good (crucial!) for work, and doing things that are not work is good for life. However, I want to point in particular to one way of harnessing laziness that I think is really useful. The impulse towards laziness can be used to help us (and our students) to become aware of what is really important to us and what is not. Certainly it was important to me to learn the Art of the Fugue. I behaved like a working fiend then, long before the invention of the BlackBerry. Many other things that I think about doing also turn out to be important enough to me that they overcome whatever inertia I may have. And of course some things one just has to do. However, in the areas of life and of musical work that are optional—choices about what pieces we want to work on, or whether to get a harpsichord and learn how to keep it tuned and working, or whether to learn clavichord technique, or whether to try to become a good golfer or to read all of Joyce or Dante or Wodehouse—we should always be attuned to the voice that keeps us informed as to whether we would actually rather be napping. Sometimes, to be sure, this voice is misleading, and represents only a fleeting bit of tiredness or inertia. Sometimes, however, it can help us not bother with things that are really not valuable enough to bother with, and to focus on the things that are (and to take an occasional nap).
This ties in with the last subject for this month:

Motivation
I am convinced that working on learning a piece of music is a totally different experience depending on whether you do or do not really want to be working on it. And, as an extension of that, I am convinced that the whole project of working on becoming a musician (organist, harpsichordist, or anything else) is a completely different project depending on whether you are by and large working on music that you really, truly want to be working on or you are not.
I also believe that the artistic results that a performer can achieve—and the level of likelihood that it will be a worthwhile experience for a listener to hear that performer’s performance—are proportional in large part to how much the performer likes the music and really wants to be playing it.
I have seen evidence for this with myself and with every student that I’ve ever worked with. But one story illustrates it very clearly and strikingly.
I came to know an organ student, not my own, who had an interesting life history. He had been a member of the clergy, and cared about both the church and church music. He had always been a musician, but had lately decided to shift his work into music as such, rather than the ministry. He was still a young man, though old for a student. He had made this decision thoughtfully and was certainly highly motivated. However, for the first year or so of formal study, during which time his teacher asked him—quite reasonably, by usual standards—to work on a cross-section of standard repertoire, he found it all to be a chore, and grew less interested. He tried to be conscientious about his work, but no one found his performances all that exciting, and he became uncertain about his choice to enter into this kind of work.
Later on, after a year or so of study, his teacher decided that it was OK to let him focus, exclusively for the time being, on a certain, admittedly very narrow, slice of the repertoire that he had always particularly loved. At this point his demeanor and manner changed—much for the better—he abandoned his thoughts of abandoning his musical calling, and, most interestingly, he began for the first time to give performances that were exciting and interesting, that really contributed something artistically and enhanced the lives of those who heard them.
This was a long time ago: before I started teaching. It left me with a suspicion that whenever I did start teaching, I would have a strong bias in favor of letting students choose essentially all of the music that they wanted to work on. I have indeed followed that practice—100% as far as I can remember—and I think that it works extraordinarily well. Of course it raises issues about how students can inform themselves of what music is out there, and it confronts such ultimate questions as “what if someone never plays any Bach in their whole life? Can they be considered a real organist??” These are valid concerns, and I will, at some point in the future, write a column or two on exploring and choosing repertoire. My point here is just that the motivation provided by genuine inner excitement about the music being worked on is a powerful force that we should never ignore.
Next month I will start the new school year with a series on the teaching of contrapuntal keyboard music.

 

Gavin Black

Gavin Black can be reached at gavin [email protected].

Repertoire, part 3: Mailbag
This month’s column is devoted to answering a few questions from readers, arising out of the two recent columns about repertoire. The questions all have to do with one basic point—namely, how it can be possible for students to work effectively on pieces that are “too hard.” These questions have led me to believe that I should discuss this further, especially since I also consider it a very important point. I will revisit certain things that I have already said, looking at them from somewhat different angles, and add a few new ideas.

What is too hard?
I begin by quoting at length from a set of questions sent to me by Don Stoner, a reader from Pennsylvania who studied organ in college and has taught high school and middle school music for many years. From his perspective as an experienced teacher, he has provided interesting feedback on different matters over the past couple of years, and in this instance his questions bring up essentially everything that I want to address here. He wrote as follows:

Thanks once again for your articles in The Diapason. I would like to ask you several questions that I was thinking about, especially in the paragraphs about the issue: What is too hard? . . . Here goes!

Should a teacher first access what the technical and theory abilities a student has at the keyboard? For example: You get a student that wants to play the famous Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor. But he doesn’t have the “finger power” (for lack of a better way to describe it) to negotiate the manual runs, the pedal work, and so on. It would, I think, be like throwing someone in 10 feet of water and tell him to swim!! While I think that we need to let people play music they enjoy, they need to have certain amount of technical ability to be able to “make it through” to the end of the piece. Would you in this case say to a student “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I think that we need to start with a smaller prelude and fugue (little 8) and then build up to this larger selection”? Do you think that all organ students are ready to “make the decision” that “I can play this piece no matter what anyone thinks”?

The essence of the matter is this: if it is true—as I believe—that it is important to encourage students to work on music that they really like and want to work on, then it must be OK to let those students (some of the time at least) work on music that is harder than what we as teachers might consider prudent. It also must mean, again some of the time, being willing to throw out any sense that it is necessary to work on pieces in some particular order. In general, it seems to call for taking a somewhat improvisatory approach to the business of using repertoire as material for making technical progress. In order for any of this to work, it is necessary to discover a way to use any piece—regardless of its degree of difficulty—as the material for teaching and learning at any stage. The essence of this, in turn, is the ability to break each piece down into simple components and to figure out how to use those components as appropriate teaching materials. It can, as a matter of teaching technique, learning technique, and practicing strategy, be done successfully with any piece.
However, as Don Stoner suggests in the last line quoted above, part of the issue is psychological. This is true most fundamentally with respect to the root of this whole discussion: the reason for letting students work on whatever music they most want to work on is that the mind of the student will then become more focused and better able to work efficiently. I believe this because I have observed it over and over again in myself, in colleagues, and in students. I think that this effect can often be at work even in people who believe that it doesn’t apply to them—that is, who believe that they have the pure willpower to make themselves work regardless of their feelings about what they are working on.

Temperamental and psychological issues
However, there certainly are some psychological or temperamental points that run counter to this. The main one is that if a student is working, even very efficiently and effectively, on a piece that is very challenging—“too hard”—for that student, then the student has to have patience. It will clearly take many times as long to learn a piece that is lengthy and difficult than to learn a piece that is short and (relatively) easy. A student who asks to work on such a (long, difficult) piece must think carefully about whether he or she has the patience to defer the gratification of having completed the whole piece, perhaps not even to be able to predict how long it will take. If this student gets pleasure out of playing pieces for people along the way, then he or she will have to think about whether it is all right to do less of that for the time being—that is, to be learning fewer pieces in a given space of time and thus have fewer, or no, new pieces to perform during that time. (I am talking now about this as a source of pleasure, satisfaction, or motivation, not as a practical requirement. Of course some students are in a position where they need pieces for practical purposes, say for church or to meet the requirements of a structured academic program. If so, then of course those needs may intervene temporarily and deflect the student from simply studying what he or she wants to study.)
If a student comes to a teacher wanting to work on a very difficult piece, one that is exciting and interesting to that student, then the teacher should discuss the temperamental and psychological issues involved. That is, the teacher should remind the student that this will be a long project, will require patient and well-organized work, and will involve postponing the satisfaction of having completed and learned a piece. It is by no means necessary to end up working on that piece. However, it is necessary (where “necessary” means “much better for the learning process”) that the student be genuinely happy with whatever piece(s) he or she end up working on. And while there need not be an assumption that the longer or more difficult piece will be chosen, there should also not be an assumption, even as a starting point, that it will not be chosen.
In fact, if a student has a strong desire to work on a piece that is a stretch for that student, then the teacher can use that as a sort of bargaining chip: you may certainly work on this piece, but only as long as you practice it well, in the ways that I suggest, patiently, systematically, etc.
The other psychological dimension that I want to discuss is fear. Fear is a natural response to the prospect of doing something very difficult. At a minimum, fear of failure, in and of itself, comes into play. On top of that, there is fear of disappointing the teacher, fear of disapproval from others—the teacher, fellow students, others in the field, a kind of imaginary, externalized “superego,” one’s parents, and of course one’s self. There is also the fear, specifically, of being thought hubristic, arrogant, self-important, or just plain cluelessly unrealistic in your claims about what you can or can’t accomplish. These fears are all natural and more or less universal. However, acting on them, in particular by limiting the scope or ambition of what pieces one works on, seems to me to be a terrible loss. In discussing with a student the pros and cons of tackling a big difficult piece, a teacher should, I believe, encourage the student to think clearly about his or her motivation, temperament, style of working, and so on. The student should know as clearly as possible what it would feel like to dig in and work on a very challenging piece, and make a free decision about whether that is or is not something that he or she wants to do. But the teacher should also try very hard to help the student ignore any voice of fear, any voice suggesting that working on a harder rather than an easier piece is scary or risky.
In fact, helping our students to free themselves from fear is probably the most important thing that we can do as teachers. I have one anecdote to relate on that subject. At my first organ lesson in the spring semester of 1985—which was my second year as a graduate student—I placed on the music desk of the Fisk organ at Westminster Choir College the Helmut Walcha organ edition of The Art of the Fugue. When Professor Eugene Roan arrived for the lesson, he just sat down in a nearby chair, nodded and smiled. He was telling me that, yes, it was OK for me to work on that (very) long, (excruciatingly) difficult piece for my upcoming degree recital. There was essentially nothing in the record of what I had done prior to that day to suggest that I could handle this project. His immediate, concise, friendly agreement that I could and should do it not only led to my lifelong involvement with that piece, it also signaled to me that I really was an organist, and that I could really aspire to do what I wanted to do.

The role of the teacher
This brings us to the next question. It is always important, essential in fact, that a teacher know as much as possible about the “technical and theory abilities a student has” as Don Stoner aptly puts it. The notion of letting students choose their own repertoire cannot be based on the teacher’s abdicating the responsibility to know both exactly where that student is in the learning process and as much as is humanly possible about the student’s abilities and aptitudes. This knowledge can be used either to help the student choose pieces to work on that will seem appropriate in a traditional way—neither too easy nor too hard, adding something to the student’s technical and musical learning without being overwhelming—or to help the student navigate the treacherous but fruitful waters of a very challenging piece. If Professor Roan had not known me very well—I had studied with him off and on for several years at that point—he would not have been able to agree without discussion that it was a good thing for me to work on The Art of the Fugue, and he certainly would not have been able to help me with the process as much as he did.
If anything, it is more important that the teacher be prepared—equipped with knowledge of the student and of the music, and in a frame of mind to pay very close attention—when a student is working on a “too hard” piece. Although such a piece approached properly can be at least as effective a teaching tool as several easier or shorter pieces, it is also true that it carries with it more danger. If the student approaches it the wrong way, it can turn into a waste of time or a source of discouragement, or, worse, a framework for developing bad technical habits. There is nothing intrinsic to a longer or harder piece that will make these pitfalls actually manifest themselves, but they can do so if the piece is not approached the right way. The teacher’s job is to make sure that this doesn’t happen. The more that a teacher knows about the strengths, weaknesses, and habits of the student, the better he or she can accomplish this.
As a matter of hour-by-hour practicing, week-by-week learning, or the overall pedagogic usefulness of any number of months or years of study, the act of working on short easy pieces is identical to the act of working on a longer or more difficult piece. A long, difficult piece is several shorter, easier pieces. It is up to the student to be willing to treat it that way and up to the teacher to use all of his or her teaching expertise to show the student how to do so.
The technique for doing this is conceptually simple. The long piece must be broken into shorter bits, and those bits then must be made easier by practicing them slowly, by separating hands and feet as much as necessary, and by doing enough analysis to render the piece well known to the student. For example—an extreme example—if a student who might naturally be working on a few Orgelbüchlein pieces or short preludes and fugues wants to learn the Bach F-major Toccata and Fugue, that piece can be broken up into many pieces, none of which is (initially) any harder than, say, Ich ruf zu dir. The first of these might be the right hand part of the opening canon. The next might be the left hand part from the same section, noticing very explicitly the relationship between this line and the right hand part. The third “piece” might be any dozen measures of the pedal part from the middle of the toccata section. (I say that to make the point that a long piece that is being learned patiently does not have to be worked on in order from beginning to end.) The next might be, say, the alto voice of the fugue for the first two pages, and so on.
In this way, a long difficult piece can be built up, and it is the key to avoiding the “throwing someone in 10 feet of water” problem. Of course, this is really just everyday good practicing, but applied very seriously. In fact, the discipline of working on an extremely challenging piece can help to teach overall good practice habits. The easier the piece, the more tempting it is just to play it over any number of times in a row until it gets more or less learned. If it is obvious that this casual approach will not work with a given piece, then the student—who in this scenario is highly motivated to play the piece: after all, it was chosen specifically and only because the student really wanted to work on it—will be highly motivated to practice in a way that does work.
I will leave the subject of repertoire for a while after this month, though happy to answer further questions individually by e-mail. Sometime in the future I will write a fairly long series of columns going step by step, in considerable detail, through the process of learning a specific piece. As part of that series I will address particular individual practice strategies for students with different levels of experience. I welcome suggestions for what piece I should use for that project, though of course I will not be able to use them all.

 

Gavin Black

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been teaching organ and harpsichord since 1979. He can be reached by e-mail at <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A&gt;

Repertoire, part 1
The issue about which I have gotten by far the most inquiries since I started writing this column is repertoire: that is (primarily) the question of what repertoire students should work on, or, to put it slightly differently, what repertoire teachers should ask or expect their students to work on. In this month’s column I will offer some general musings about that question, including some reminiscences and anecdotes that I think are relevant. Next month I will continue to muse, but also give more specific suggestions, including some guidance—as up to date as possible in a rapidly changing technological world—about the practical side of finding printed music, especially for students who do not have access to well-stocked music libraries.

Organ repertoire: size and scope
The first thing that stands out about the organ repertoire is its size and scope. The number of composers, the number of pieces, the number of centuries, the number of different types of instrument for which what we call “organ music” was written: it is all almost overwhelming. If you throw in hymns and various other sorts of accompaniment, and then remember that a substantial proportion of at least the pre-1750 keyboard repertoire not expressly written for the organ can be played perfectly well on the organ, the amount and diversity of music that an organist might be expected to master seems to spiral out of control.
There are several possible reactions to contemplating this overwhelming amount of music. One is panic over the seeming impossibility of learning all of it. This panic can set in when a student, perhaps because of something about the teacher’s real or perceived attitude or perhaps just from within the student, feels an obligation to know everything: a sense that one can’t be a real artist or a real “professional” without mastering everything. A lesser form of this—which I still sometimes feel myself—is sadness over the fact that it is impossible to learn all of the repertoire. This, of course, is just a part of life: it is also impossible to visit every town in the world, or to read every book, or to attend every baseball game. (Or at a deeper level, to spend enough time with all of one’s friends or loved ones, or to meet everyone who might have become a good friend.)
Another possibility, however, is to find the size and scope of the repertoire liberating. If the amount of music that exists is too great to make it possible to learn all of it, then we are all relieved of the obligation to learn all of it. In that case, each of us is perfectly free to work on the music that we really like or that we are really interested in, or that our experience shows us we can learn and play in a way that somehow makes a difference. This is what I have always done myself, and have always invited my students to do. There are other dimensions to this liberation. For example, within any style or type of music that happens to interest any one of us there is almost certain to be enough music to sustain that interest for a long time. Also, if anyone’s interests change or if a particular part of the repertoire loses its allure for a particular player (student or otherwise) there is an essentially infinite amount of other music to investigate. If I, as a performer who is mostly focused on Baroque music, feel a hankering to delve into the nineteenth century—as I have felt from time to time over the years—then I need not lament the fact that I am not a pianist or a player of an orchestral instrument. There is a whole panoply of organ music from that particular esthetic world for me to explore. If an organist who has mostly played nineteenth-century music develops an interest in late medieval music, then he or she can investigate the earliest known keyboard repertoire as an introduction to that musical world.

Personal responses
The relationship between all of this repertoire and people—people who might be organ students or organ teachers or organists or listeners to organ music—is complicated, multilayered, and interesting. Each person’s detailed experience, probably from before conscious memory on, colors his or her reaction to pieces of music and of course to all other experiences. I was remembering recently that whenever I hear the word “culpable” I get in my mind a flash of a strong image of a certain place: the gravel road at the back of the park in the shadow of East Rock in New Haven, where I grew up. (I know the source of this image, though I don’t know why I remember it so strongly: I was taking a walk there with my father when I was nine or ten, and he told me—joking, I assume—that the only sentence he knew or needed to know in French was “Ce n’est pas de ma faute.”) I mention this because it is essentially certain that I am, and will forever remain, the only person in the history of the universe who makes that particular connection. I believe that a vast number of connections like this color everyone’s reaction to all of music that they hear, as well as other experiences, and shape the course of one’s life with music, as an appreciator or as a player, professional or otherwise. Since everyone’s experiences, and the linkages that they form, are different from everyone else’s, it is quite impossible that any two people react to any music the same way, or, even at the most direct level, have the same experience as each other when hearing any given music. (After all, that scene in the park is part of my immediate, direct experience upon hearing the word “culpable,” and part of no one else’s.)
(Some more examples from my own experience, this time about music: I am a big fan of the rock group Jethro Tull. Although I honestly consider their music to be in every way as wonderful artistically as any other that I know of, including the organ repertoire and the rest of the “classical” repertoire, I also believe that I know why I became a fan of that music. During my freshman year of college, one of my roommates had a Jethro Tull record, and I, who at the time did not like any rock and roll, heard in a few passages in a few of the pieces, something that evoked very powerfully for me some of the feelings of the time I had recently [then] spent in England, and that music became part of my nostalgia for England, although I didn’t really get to know the whole Jethro Tull repertoire until about twenty years later. Also, when I hear or play older English music—Tallis or Gibbons, say—the feelings that come up in my mind are those of my experience at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, where I first heard music of that sort when I was in the choir there in the late 1960s: the smell and appearance of that church, the vastness [as it seemed to me then] of the New Haven Green outside, the sounds of cars and buses muffled by the thick stone walls. When I hear mid-twentieth-century chamber music I get an image in my mind of the cover of a particular LP. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I think that it included a Poulenc trio. Along with this comes a memory of a certain kind of spring weather.)
I mention all of this in connection with the organ repertoire because it is important to remember that no two people experience, or can possibly experience, that repertoire in the same way: not even one piece, and certainly not any subset of or pathway through the whole repertoire. This is, to me, probably the most important thing to bear in mind when thinking about the vastness of the organ repertoire and when contemplating how to help students find their way through all of that music.
Practicing music is more fun when you really like the music. It is also, in my experience, better practicing: more efficient, more effective, much more likely to result in learning. It is also likely to lead to more practicing, to a real desire to work on more music, and even to a greater willingness to try new things. This observation is based on my own direct experience—practicing, learning music, trying to become a progressively better player—and also on my observation of many students (mostly my own) over many years.
Another anecdote to illustrate this point: my daughter took piano lessons for several years. She, coming from a home in which lots of unusual things went on musically, had unusual ideas about what music she wanted to play. For example, she brought to her lessons movements of Buxtehude harpsichord suites that I was in the middle of recording at the time, or, later, folk song melodies that she wanted to learn how to harmonize and then play. None of this was anything that any piano teacher would have expected to give to a beginning student. (This was in the second year or so of her studies, and she was nine or ten years old.) However, her teacher went along with this and let her work on whatever she was interested in at a given time. The result was that my daughter practiced a fair amount and looked forward to her lessons. She also cared about doing well and about pleasing her teacher. There was good give and take: an atmosphere was created in which it was also possible for the teacher to coax her into trying out various new things. Later on, when that teacher moved away, her new teacher, a very gifted and serious player and an experienced teacher, had a more traditional attitude about what was and what wasn’t OK for a student to work on. My daughter quit enjoying her lessons, quit practicing, and indeed quit the piano. Nowadays she can still play those Buxtehude movements: the way that she worked on them caused them to stay with her forever.
So, for me, the first thing to think about in choosing repertoire for students is to try to find music that the student will really like and want to practice. This is certainly not the only consideration, and it does not directly answer the question of how to find those pieces. After all, not every student comes with a list of pieces that he or she wants to work on. However, I think it is important to give this consideration first place, not to consider it a frill or a luxury or an afterthought.

Is there a standard repertoire?
Another consideration that normally comes up in talking about repertoire for teaching is what the “standard” repertoire is, what music students should know. To me, this is a complicated question, or a question with several different answers. In principle, I believe that there should be no assumption that every student will, even to a small extent, involve him- or herself with the same repertoire as other students or with a “standard” repertoire. This is for several reasons: because there is so much wonderful music out there, because everyone’s experience of that music is different, and because no one can work extremely effectively on music that they don’t like. Also because, for the benefit of the musical world at large, it is a more interesting situation if many performers perform as diverse a repertoire as possible. If there is music that somehow deserves to be more widely played than other music, that will take care of itself: more people will want to play it if it is indeed in some meaningful sense better or more interesting. It may seem to me, or to anyone in the field, that an organ student would be crazy not to want to play at least some Bach (to use the most obvious example). However if a student doesn’t want to, then, perhaps, there is no point in any way forcing them to. There will, presumably, be plenty of others who do want to play Bach.
On the other hand, there is a tremendous disadvantage to anyone in not even knowing what is out there (in any field or endeavor). If a student is not interested in playing something utterly standard, like Bach or Franck, only because he or she has essentially never encountered it in an engaging and interesting way, then that student is being impoverished unnecessarily. This is also true, however, if a student fails to become interested in non-standard repertoire (Cavazzoni, Ernst Koehler, Moondog, Lefébure-Wely, anyone) for the same reason. It is certainly important for a teacher to encourage a student to know about a lot of music, and to make choices based on that knowledge. That does not mean that those choices must settle to any very large extent on standard repertoire.
(Next month I will include some thoughts about ways of exposing students to lots of music and giving them the best chance of figuring out what might most interest them.)
Of course, there are real practical considerations to think about when considering “standard” repertoire. The first is really part practical and part psychological. If an organ student or organist bravely carves out a whole career without ever working on the music that is considered to define the organ repertoire, then that person will be called upon over and over again to explain, and will in fact not be thought well of by at least some people. “You can’t be a real organist if you’ve never worked on any Bach” would be a common refrain. Withstanding this in a happy frame of mind would require a lot of fortitude.
The other problem is more purely practical. It is the problem of auditions and other organized occasions for jumping through hoops. Obviously an organ student who might want to go on for advanced study or who might want to apply for a scholarship or fellowship, or who might want to enter a competition or, for that matter, apply for a job, might well have to produce some pieces that conform to certain rules. Many of these situations have an audition requirement that is more or less “something before Bach, something by Bach, something after Bach” or “something by Bach, something nineteenth century, something twentieth century.” Of course there is often flexibility, but almost always in the context of some such specificity. (I myself, if I were in charge of shaping an audition, would use the following prompt: “Play us about 25 minutes of whatever music you believe would best show us your recent work as an organist, and be prepared to talk to us about that music and the other music that you have studied over the last few years.”) It seems to me that the best approach in dealing with this is to consider it a practical problem with practical solutions. If the right pieces for such needs can be found among the repertoire that a student and his or her teacher are working on in any case, that is wonderful. If not, then the student might have to venture into the territory of playing pieces that he or she is not really interested in. However, this should be recognized as a simple practical task, and not given any more ethical, moral, artistic, or pedagogic weight than that.
Next month I will write more about how to incorporate this and other outside constraints into the teaching process as fruitfully as possible. I will also discuss the “two-way street” relationship between learning to play and repertoire as such (that is, that we learn to play in order to play repertoire and at the same time we work on repertoire in order to learn to play). And I will also consider how to help students explore the repertoire and make choices that are honestly their own, but also impeccably well informed.

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Oswald Ragatz

Oswald G. Ragatz served as professor of organ and chairman of the organ department at the School of Music at Indiana University from 1942–1983. Sadly, Mrs. Ragatz passed away after a long illness in 1998. When the Positive division was added to the organ at First Christian Church, where Mary so lovingly played for so many years, the Reuter organ was dedicated in her memory. Dr. Ragatz can be reached by contacting him at Meadowood Retirement Center in Bloomington, Indiana. David K. Lamb is currently the organist/choir director at First United Methodist Church in Columbus, Indiana. Graduating from IU in 1983, the year Ragatz retired, he completed the Doctor of Music degree at Indiana University in 2000. Dr. Lamb was recently appointed the District Convener for the State of Indiana by the American Guild of Organists.

Introduction by David K. Lamb
For more than 40 years, Oswald Gleason Ragatz served as chairman of the Organ Department of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. On October 30, 2007, “Ozzie” celebrated his 90th birthday. Witnessing many changes through those years at Indiana University, Dr. Ragatz has also seen many changes in the organ world and in church music practices in the years since his retirement from IU in 1983.
I recently enjoyed the chance to visit with Dr. Ragatz in his home at Meadowood in Bloomington. Full of stories and anecdotes, as always, he was ready to recount his years at IU in full detail. What a joy it was listening to those reflections as Dr. Ragatz revisited the events in his early life that led him to his 40-year teaching position at Indiana University.
“Guardian Angel” is a wonderful exposé by Dr. Ragatz, detailing the sequence of events that made up the path leading him to Indiana University in 1942. In the words of Oswald Ragatz, please prepare to travel with him on this journey to Indiana University.

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During my 25-year employment as organist-choirmaster in Presbyterian churches, I never heard the term predestination mentioned from the pulpit. But I understand that belief in predestination is one of the tenets of the Presbyterian faith. My Unitarian and agnostic friends shake their heads in patronizing dismay, when, instead of attributing some event to predestination or to sheer luck, I refer to my “Guardian Angel.” Probably influenced by all those charming angels in Renaissance paintings and those lovely little winged cherubs in the rococo churches in Europe, I personally would rather attribute the chain of events that greatly determined my life to an angel than to luck or to predestination. Luck never did me any good in those very brief encounters with the slots in the casinos in Las Vegas, and of course no serious angel would look after anyone foolish enough to wager hard-earned cash on those automated bandits. And I’m not a Presbyterian. But let me recount those events that directed my life, and the reader or listener can decide, Guardian Angel, Lady Luck, predestination, or whatever.
I guess I must start way back in the midst of the Great Depression and the Democratic landslide of 1932 that brought Franklin Roosevelt into the presidency, and that cleaned out all of the Republican county office holders in Logan County, Colorado, including my dad. The ensuing years found the Ragatz family trying to make a meager living from a small, 40-acre farm at the edge of my hometown, Sterling, Colorado. Farm labor, dust storms, locust plagues, and fundamentalist, straight-laced parents contributed nothing to the wished-for joie de vivre of high school student Oswald Ragatz. It must have been about then that Guardian Angel was assigned to look out for this puny kid, whose interests were music and architecture, thus contributing to the general scorn of his macho classmates.

High school days
The angel first appeared in the guise of a high school math teacher, Miss Smith. It was she who set me on the path that would lead to my escape from the dead-end existence of life on the dreary eastern plains of Colorado. It was Miss Smith who asked me to stay after algebra class so that she could talk to me, as she had some very exciting information to impart. My grade average was one-half point above that of one Verda Guenzi, and Verda and I had the highest grade average of our class. I probably should at this point give credit to the newly hired empathetic gym teacher, who had taken me in hand and had introduced me to gymnastics. This had had a marvelous effect on me. I was no longer the class wimp with C and D grades in gym. I now got an A in gym, which got me that one-half grade point above Verda Guenzi. (Was possibly Mr. Durfee the gym instructor an assistant Guardian Angel? Whatever.)
At any rate, Miss Smith pointed out that the University of Denver gave a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to the graduating senior valedictorian in the six largest high schools in the state. If I maintained a straight A average for the remaining years in Sterling High School, I would be able to go to college at the prestigious university in Denver, a city where there could also be numerous musical opportunities. That put on hold my interest in architecture; the nearest school offering architecture was Kansas U., which of course was out of the question. And anyway, no one was employing architects during the Depression.
My parents were elated by this news, and my mother, who was your basic taskmistress, went into a full cry. For the next two and half years, I became no longer the class wimp but now the class grind, the resident ant being held in some awe by the grasshoppers, my classmates. Verda Guenzi didn’t have a chance, poor girl.

Off to the University of Denver
Now things were getting under way in this chain of events. My dad’s brother lived in Denver and was married to a professional musician, a singer of some note in the city. They suggested that I live with them while attending the University of Denver. Their four sons were grown and out of college. I could pay for my room by accompanying students in my aunt’s studio and eventually accompanying her on singing engagements. There would be other duties—in-house chore boy, chauffeur for Aunt Ruth on occasions, etc.
Sterling, a town of less than 8,000, had a remarkable music program in the schools; the high school band and orchestra perennially won first place in the state competitions. I had begun playing oboe when just out of the sixth grade, and in six years had become quite proficient. In 1938 a symphony orchestra was formed in Sterling to accommodate the sizable number of graduates of the school’s music program who still lived in town and who wanted an outlet for their talent. Though still in high school, I was playing oboe in this symphony that had been organized during my senior year.
Guest conductors were brought in for the three concerts that we played. The most important of these guests was Horace Tureman, director of the Denver Symphony. I don’t remember what we played, but there must have been an important oboe part. At any rate, when I enrolled in music theory the first semester at the university, who should be the teacher but Horace Tureman! And wonder of wonders, he recognized me. After class, he asked to talk to me, saying that he remembered me from the orchestra concert he had conducted in Sterling, and would I like to fill the opening in the Denver Civic Symphony for the second chair oboe? The pay was not great, but it enabled me to pay my uncle for my board. Did my Guardian Angel arrange for all this? But I continue.
I had played piano since I was six years old, my mother being a piano teacher. And I had my first organ lessons the summer after the eighth grade, and became the organist at the Methodist church that fall. During my last year in high school, my parents managed to scrape up enough cash to enable me to drive the 140 miles up to Denver once a month for oboe lessons and organ lessons with the organist-choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral. Now, living in Denver, I hoped to be able to continue organ lessons, although payment for same would be a problem. But not to worry, said my teacher. There was an opening for an organist at Broadway Baptist Church. He told me to try out for the job; I did and got the job. Those four years of playing for First Methodist in Sterling for little more than a Christmas remuneration had prepared me for the paying job in Denver.
So now I had enough monthly income to pay for organ lessons, textbooks, and music. I had been pretty burned out by the tension of making straight A’s during high school, so now I had decided to slack off a bit in college. However, shortly after the first semester had begun, I received a nice letter from the University Chancellor congratulating me on having won the scholarship and indicating that academic excellence would be expected of me. Furthermore, he indicated that since scholarship students were expected to give some services to the university, and in view of my experience as an organist, I would be expected to play the organ for university functions as needed—before lecture in the chapel, for example.
This was OK by me. It gave me unlimited access to the chapel organ for practice and resulted in my being asked by the Dean of Women to furnish background music on the Hammond electric organ in the posh Renaissance room in the library where teas were the style in those days. For each of these events I was paid $3 and engendered a high profile among the female elite of the student body who were wanting to go to the teas—the girls of the Pan Hellenic Society, the Associated Women’s Students, etc.
So my fingers (on the ivories) were doing the walking—well, the earning, and my parents did not have to fork over that first dollar for my undergraduate training, just an occasional dressed chicken sent by my mother to Aunt Ruth, but that was it. I felt that I was independent, I was living in a sophisticated environment at my uncle’s, and I no longer felt inhibited by my strict parents’ restrictions—and I had a ball! I was pretty naïve and thoughtless though; things had worked out so well for me, so why worry about the future? Incidentally, I did graduate eighth from the top in my class, due to the chancellor’s veiled admonitions four years earlier. But I must continue.

Clarence who?
I am not quite finished with undergraduate years. The next vignette may seem inconsequential, but keep in mind, it turned out to be very significant. The setting: a picnic in the mountains. Who was there? I don’t remember, just a bunch of college students. What? I was sitting on a big rock eating a hot dog when a blonde girl I didn’t know joined me and initiated conversation. She was quite hep, and shortly had me telling her about my interest in organ playing. At that point, she became very excited and said that I must meet her uncle from New York, Clarence Dickinson, who would be in Denver in a couple of weeks. Her enthusiasm caused me to think that Uncle must be a man of some importance. And indeed the name was familiar to me: Dickinson was the author of the organ method text given to me by my cousin, my first organ teacher, that summer after my eighth grade.
I was only mildly impressed, however, but I did mention this information to my organ teacher at my next lesson. Well, his reaction let me know that Clarence Dickinson was indeed a person of importance, being the head of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. So, a week later, I was playing two of my biggest pieces at St. John’s Cathedral for Dr. Dickinson, my teacher having somehow made contact with him in Denver. Tall, dignified, with white hair and mustache, Dr. Dickinson was cordial, and, I thought, politely complimentary. But I was still only mildly interested; I was probably preoccupied thinking about the impending fall Pan Hellenic formal. By the way, I never encountered the blonde niece on campus again. Was she my Guardian Angel in disguise? If so, she must have been pretty bored by my lackadaisical lack of enthusiasm. But guardian angels must be patient, and fortunately Guardian Angel didn’t forsake me, as will soon become evident. She just became a bit more devious. So I continue.

Aunt Ruth: gateway to Eastman
I have mentioned my Aunt Ruth previously. There is no doubt that she was my mentor if indeed not my Guardian Angel. She introduced me to the facets of the professional musical world, and she and Uncle Arthur took considerable pains to civilize their shy and unhep nephew from Sterling. By my senior year, Aunt Ruth had sensed my lack of a clear picture of what I was going to do the next year after graduation. My Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences had presumably prepared me for getting a job in some small-town high school teaching history or social studies. But it was obvious that my interest and talents lay elsewhere—in music, of course.
Aunt Ruth had a former voice student who had gone to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and had high praise for the school. It sort of became understood during my senior year that I should go to graduate school the year after graduation from Denver. So I applied to Eastman and was accepted. However, I don’t remember now that I was particularly concerned about the financial requirements this expensive school would entail. I guess that I naïvely assumed that it would work out some way. It always had, hadn’t it? Of course, if there were sounds of fluttering angel wings, I didn’t notice.
I taught some organ students during the summer and played oboe in the Sterling summer band. So I had a little money in my pocket when I started out for New York with my two friends in the model A Ford. We traveled economy class, camping out, cooking our own food, and cheating on entrance fees at places like Mount Vernon. After two weeks of travel and visiting the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, we arrived in Rochester. The semester had not yet started, but I went into the Eastman office to see what a student did about housing. There was no men’s dormitory, but I was given a sizeable list of rooming houses near the school that catered to Eastman students. The person I talked to about this looked at a register of entering students (probably to see if I were indeed a legitimate entrant), and seeing that I was to be an organ student she immediately told me that an organ job was open and would I like to try out for it?
And OK, yes, a lady had called for an organ student to come to her home and play her pipe organ during tea that she was hosting. It was intimidating that in view of the address this would undoubtedly be in one of the mansions out on East Avenue where the old elite of Rochester held forth. Well, I had brought with me my “tea time” music, thanks to those $3 gigs I’d played for at the University of Denver—I’d “been there, done that.” This gig was indeed in a mansion on East Avenue and was on an Aeolian pipe organ, the instrument of choice in those days for those who could afford such a pipe organ in their home. And needless to say, the pay was considerably more than $3. And, when I had my audition at Emanuel Lutheran Church, I got that job. So I had money to pay for my room and board—board by eating on $1 a day at a cafeteria across the street from the school.
Did Guardian Angel arrange it that I got to Eastman several days before the other students arrived, so I had no competition for these jobs and the opportunities to make some money?
By this time things had improved for my parents. Sterling was having a modest oil boom, and new houses were being built. Three blocks of our farm abutted on a subdivision, and it became possible to sell some of our property for city lots. I felt able to ask for tuition money, since I’d cost my parents nothing for my undergraduate education.

Life at Eastman
I found life at Eastman a far cry from my Denver experience. As an undergraduate in Denver, I had played an organ concerto with the Denver Junior Symphony, the Grieg piano concerto with the University Orchestra, and the organ part to the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony with the Denver Civic Symphony. Big deals!!! Big toad in what I now found out had been a fairly little puddle. My uncle, who was somewhat of a VIP in some circles in the city, reported stiffly one evening at dinner that when he had that day been introduced to someone, he was asked, “By any chance are you related to Oswald Ragatz that young organist?” May I say, that that “made my day.” Country nephew, indeed!
But things now were different in Rochester. I was just a new student in one of the top professional music schools in the country. And believe me, there is no place more competitive than a big music school. Nearly all of my fellow graduate students had undergraduate degrees in music, many from Eastman itself. During my time at Eastman I learned discipline, humility, and respect for what the music profession really was like.
My Guardian Angel was no doubt cheering a bit seeing her/his protégé getting his comeuppance. But I was not being crossed off the list that year. Oh no! So I must continue this saga.
About the Lutheran church: it had an organ the likes of which I had not encountered. At that point, the organ world in the United States was just beginning to become aware of a renaissance in organ tonal design that had begun in the middle of the 20th century. The new instruments that were being built by many European builders and by a few avant garde builders in the United States were referred to as Baroque organs because the builders were attempting to design their organs on the tonal principles of the great old European organs of the 17th and 18th centuries. The organ at my church was a newly built instrument by the Walter Holtkamp Company, one of the first of these avant garde American builders. After a year with this organ at Emanuel Lutheran, I understood how to use it. This experience became very valuable for me, as will be noted later on.
The choir director at church was a talented young man who was the choral person in one of the big Rochester high schools, and his church choir was made up almost entirely of high-school age singers. I was getting some very good experience in choral techniques by observing how Ernie Ahern worked with the choir. I had had no training in choral work up to this point. The second year in Rochester, I actually did some private coaching with Mr. Ahern, and what I learned became the basis of my career as choirmaster through all my life.
One other facet of the Rochester experience must now be mentioned to make clear how the chain of events developed. If one link in the chain had not been there, there would have been no chain. When I obtained the list of rooming houses suitable for an Eastman student, my choice was purely arbitrary (or was Guardian Angel getting into the act again?). The first place I investigated was a big, old, three-story Victorian home, housing a dozen or so men, half of whom were students, the others single professional men. The maiden lady that ran the establishment had a nice vacant room (due, I presume, to the fact that I had gotten there before other students had arrived in the city). It was a congenial bunch of fellows, who all seemed to be on a tight budget, so we frequently ate supper en masse (I could hardly honor the meal as dinner) at the aforementioned cafeteria.

Wilson College
One of the students, a fine violinist, and I became very good friends. It turned out that John’s father was the head of the music department of Wilson College, an undergraduate woman’s college in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. When John came back from Christmas holidays, he told me that the organ teacher at Wilson College was going on sabbatical the second semester the next year, and his father, Prof. Golz, thought I might want the job as substitute for a semester. Of course I was most interested, and as a matter of fact I went down to Chambersburg with John during spring break to be interviewed. I played for Prof. Golz, and he seemed pleased and offered me the job. A real teaching job with a salary—$850 for the semester as I remember it! But that was 1940, and remember, I was eating on a dollar a day, so that seemed like a gold mine. I was just beginning to cope with the competitive stress of Eastman and the demanding teaching of Harold Gleason, my organ professor, so I was very glad to stay on at Eastman for the summer and fall semesters, which enabled me to get a second major, namely in music theory. Then in January of 1941, I arrived at Wilson College, with its faculty comprising chiefly elderly ladies. Now that was an interesting experience for a 23-year-old kid hardly dry behind the ears. It could furnish material for another different document, but that would have no relevance in this tale, except for two non-Wilson people with whom I made friends.
There was a young lawyer in Chambersburg who was very interested in music, and since there were not many opportunities for social contacts with people in their twenties, he immediately contacted me, and we became lifelong friends. He lived with his mother in Chambersburg, and they were frequently visited by his sister Selma, a music teacher in Baltimore and a graduate of N.Y.U. Selma was about my age, and we became good friends also—we dated in fact.
The semester at Wilson College was all too short, and I was having to face a very uncertain future. World War II was in full cry, and I had registered for the draft while in Rochester. So that dark cloud was hovering over my head. But I had had no word from Uncle Sam, so in the meantime I had to hunt for a job. I registered membership with a teacher’s placement agency in Chicago—Clark Brewer. And in May I went to New York to interview with a couple of agencies there. But they wouldn’t even take my registration. Colleges were retrenching because of the war and were hiring no new faculty.
That was a very low moment in my life. For the first time I was faced with having no idea what to do next. I was suddenly out in the big world. I started walking aimlessly up town on Fifth Avenue, my mind swirling. I may even have contemplated how near the Hudson River was and how long would it take one to drown oneself. But maybe I wasn’t that far down or that stupid. At any rate, by the time I’d walked from the ’40s where the agencies’ offices were and reached 59th Street and the beginning of Central Park, my befuddled mind began to remember that Selma, who of course had lived in New York City while attending N.Y.U., had at some point asked me why didn’t I look into Union Theological Seminary. That had seemed like a dumb statement. A seminary? I didn’t want to be a preacher! Far from it!

Oh, that Clarence
But now my tiny memory began to function, and by the time I got up to the Metropolitan Museum, I thought of the blonde at that picnic in the mountains years ago, and her uncle, Clarence Dickinson, who was the head of the School of Sacred Music at—yes—Union Seminary in New York City. With a quick visit to a phone booth, where wonder of wonders there was a phone directory, I determined that Union Seminary was at 120th Street and Broadway. The next 50 or so blocks were covered with considerable resolution, and crossing over west to Broadway, past the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Columbia University, I found the Gothic towers of Union Seminary and its quadrangle, which occupied two city blocks.
Hot, tired, still dispirited and thinking that this was totally mad, I entered the main entrance and located the offices of the Music School. When I made it known to the secretary that I might be interested in becoming a student there, things began to move very rapidly. I was ushered into Dr. Dickinson’s office, where I was warmly greeted by Dr. Dickinson and then was introduced to Mrs. Dickinson, who, it developed, actually seemed to manage the business end of the school. The introductions were barely over when Dr. Dickinson said he remembered my playing for him in Denver, and that I had played very well. Where had I been since then? Eastman? Teaching at Wilson College? Interesting. Well, of course they would be delighted to accept me as a student working on the two-year curriculum leading to the Master of Sacred Music degree.
I had no money? No problem! The dormitory had two-room suites for students at $10 a month, and I could work a shift in the refectory for all my meals. And all of their students were placed in churches in Manhattan and in communities around New York City—on Long Island, in Westchester County, in Connecticut or over in New Jersey. Auditions for a job would be set up for me during the next month.
I could hardly believe all this. An hour earlier I was plodding the streets of New York wondering if I should be heading for the Hudson River. And had I listened, I might have heard Guardian Angel wildly flapping wings and snarling, “Oh ye of little faith, you silly twit. Why do you think I had that blonde girl join you on that rock that afternoon in the Rocky Mountains? And all of that other stuff we went through to get you this far!” Of course I wasn’t listening, but I do hope that I had the good grace to think that too many good coincidences were beginning to occur. My parents once had told me that the German name Oswald meant “Chosen of God.” What’s in a name? Maybe I should have paused to think. But of course, pausing and thinking were two things I’d not yet learned to do.
So I was set for two more years, Uncle Sam willing. I went back to Rochester for the summer to finish my master’s thesis. I had enough money saved up from that great salary at Wilson College to pay for a room at the Y, eat at the cheap cafeteria, and pay train fare to New York City twice for auditions.
The second audition was at Hitchcock Memorial Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, a posh suburb in Westchester County. As it turned out, this was one of the prime jobs the Union students had. I would be replacing Robert Baker, a doctoral candidate at Union, who had just been hired at First Presbyterian in Brooklyn, a real, full-time professional position. I felt the audition went well, but nothing definite was said at the conclusion of my playing and answering questions. I would have a junior choir, a choir of twelve high school girls, and a professional quartet—VERY professional. The soprano had just sung a solo recital at Town Hall and the contralto was singing at the Metropolitan Opera a couple of years later, and several years later I read a rave review of her Carmen sung in Vienna.
This would not be the first time I was faced with a task for which I was not really prepared. But I will say, without professing any modesty, that I never ducked. I learned how to conduct from the console by doing it—not that that quartet needed as much conducting as I thought I should be doing. At the end of the interview the chairwoman, an elegant middle-aged lady, said she would like to take me to dinner at the Scarsdale Country Club. That didn’t scare me: my aunt and uncle had seen to it that I knew how to behave at dinner, hold the chair for the lady, use the flatware from the outside in, etc. I seemed to pass muster with my hostess, since she informed me at the conclusion of the evening that I was hired. Eureka! Not only was the salary quite sufficient to pay for the organ lessons (which were outrageously high even for those times), tuition, and incidental living expenses, but even for a concert and opera now and then and a few heady evenings taking a date dancing to big name bands on the Astor roof.

Life in New York City
Guardian Angel now left me for a time as I devoured the life in New York. Our church jobs only required our presence at Sunday morning services, so a number of very compatible friends from Union would rush back to Manhattan by 3 o’clock, meeting at one of the big churches that had afternoon vesper services, oratorios, etc. A typical Sunday afternoon would be St. Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue at 3, where the 60-voice choir sang an oratorio every Sunday with a stunning organist on an enormous triple organ—chancel, rear gallery, and dome, playable from a single console in the chancel. Then over to St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue to hear a fine boy’s choir sing the 5 o’clock vesper Evensong. Then after a quick snack at our favorite bar, Tops, it was to St. Mary the Virgin Church on 46th Street, where the young avant garde organist, Ernest White, presided over a high-church late Evensong service. When I heard Mr. White play, I knew that I would have to study with him someday—which I did one summer after I had been at I.U. for a couple of years. These experiences taught me more than all the courses at the School of Sacred Music about what music could be in an enlightened church—with money. I HAD A BALL, needless to say.
It was the summer after the first year in New York, and I had had a very lucrative June playing for eight or more fashionable Scarsdale weddings. I was set indefinitely at the Scarsdale church and at Union, and after the M.S.M. degree I could continue working on a doctoral degree at Union, as had my friend, Robert Baker. I had dreams of eventually also moving on to some big Manhattan church. But this had to wait for a few decades for one of my students, who now is at the First Presbyterian Church in New York and is a big name there. Guardian Angel had other plans.

Hoosier holiday
Mail time was always a time of anxiety. Several of my friends had been drafted, but there was no message from the government for me. BUT, there was a letter from Clark Brewer Teachers’ Agency in Chicago telling me that there was an opening for an organ teacher at Indiana University. INDIANA? That was just a state to quickly get through when one was en route from Colorado to New York (with the exception of that adventure at Spring Mill Park in 1939). But I could get my expenses paid to Bloomington, and—always on the lookout for a deal—I figured I’d go to Indiana and then on to Colorado to visit my parents. I hadn’t been home for two years. I would go by train and stop off in Rochester to take my orals on my master’s thesis. Sneaky. Smart. I wasn’t even remotely interested in a job in Indiana.
So that is what I did, and after a night sitting up on a train from Rochester to Indianapolis, and then a bus to this village in the wilderness, I was even less inclined to take it seriously. After a night in a hot room in the Graham Hotel, I wandered out to the campus, past yellow clay around the old business school and the auditorium, both of which had just been completed. With the help of a kind lady who thought I was a new student (my ears were slow to dry), I found the new music building. First I was interviewed by Dean Sanders, a smooth, formidable, sophisticated young man, and then by the chairman of the theory department. Then I was taken up to a small practice room where the only organ on the campus existed. And guess what? The instrument was a Holtkamp almost identical to the one I’d had in Emanuel Lutheran in Rochester. And of course I knew how to handle it. (Did Guardian Angel snicker smugly?)
So I played a couple of big pieces, and because I didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the job, I was cool, probably to the point of being arrogant. Consequently, I greatly impressed the interviewers. It was explained to me that there was one organ major who would be a senior. Her organ teacher, who was also a pianist and taught theory, had been drafted. The organ “department” had been set up two years before when one Mary Christena had come over from the main campus wanting to major in organ. An organ curriculum was hastily fabricated, the Holtkamp was promptly purchased, and now they needed a regular organ teacher to get Miss Christena through her senior recital.
I would teach any other organ students that might show up when it was learned that there was an organ teacher (there were nine of them), I would teach two sections of freshman music theory (after observing the chairman of the department teach another section of the same class each day), a music appreciation class for the general student body (there were about 70 enrolled, it turned out), and I would conduct the Choral Union, the only choral group on campus. This would result in my conducting in the auditorium a performance of Messiah, with orchestra, just before Christmas. I had never conducted an orchestra, to say nothing of an orchestra with a big chorus of 90 or so singers. But as I said earlier, I was not one to duck. I was new at academia and didn’t know that this teaching load was brutal and now would be considered illegal. It was a job, and I intended to be a success at any cost.
But I wasn’t offered the job on the spot, which was of no concern to me. I wanted to go back to New York. As a matter of fact, I called my parents and suggested that they come east instead of my going on to Colorado. They would meet me in Chambersburg, where I would go to visit Rudy and Selma Wertime. Did I tell Dean Sanders about this? NO, of course not. (Guardian Angel almost gave up on me at this point.) Three days later, my family and I were at the Wertimes in Chambersburg, when I got this irate call from Dean Sanders wanting to hire me. I don’t know how he found me. He probably contacted someone at Union who knew I had a girlfriend in Chambersburg and knew the name. I never asked. Maybe Guardian Angel slipped him a note.
So I was being offered a real job, a permanent job, albeit in the hills of Indiana. Well, I stalled a bit. My parents pushed, Guardian Angel was pushing, I am sure. I thought that surely that draft would get me any day, and a job at Indiana University would look good on my résumé some day, so I gave the dean a reluctant “yes.” The Dickinsons called me a day later suggesting that I postpone the appointment for a year, so I could finish the degree, but that was out of the question since Miss Christena would be awaiting her new teacher in September. So after a week in the city with my parents, I was off to Bloomington, Indiana, for an entirely new life, and as it turned out, a wife.
Mary Christena turned out to be a fine organist, and again I was faced with a situation I wasn’t quite ready for. But I didn’t duck, and she got a performer’s certificate with distinction for her senior recital. It was not until after Mary’s graduation that the student-teacher relationship segued into a more personal one. After a summer of dating, Mary went to New York to Union Seminary on my recommendation. I wanted her to experience the school, and especially the milieu of New York City and the great church music. However, she spent only one semester at Union, terminated by my going to New York to propose at Christmas. And that event can be subject for another paper—shorter than this one, I assure the reader. We were married June 4, 1944. (I never had trouble remembering that date. The assault on Normandy was to take place that week.)
There is one loose end that must be taken care of in closing: THE DRAFT. During my first Christmas vacation at I.U., I had three recitals scheduled in the East—for the American Guild of Organists Chapter of Baltimore, before the New Year’s midnight service at First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and in Chambersburg. Of course I had as yet not learned how to cope with the stress of this sort of behavior, and I took sick on the B. & O. train returning from Washington to Indiana. A few days later, my landlords called a doctor, and I was promptly swished off to the hospital in an ambulance with a severe case of pneumonia. (Guardian Angel was taking severe measures!)
I was very ill, and had not the sulfa drugs just come on the market, I might have died. But after three weeks, I was released, only to go back to my room to find THE letter from Uncle Sam telling me to report for induction in Indianapolis. Why had it taken them so long to find me? I had registered in Rochester, giving my address as Sterling, Colorado, but I found out later that my registration had been sent to Sterling, Pennsylvania, wherever that is. And when they finally found me, it was discovered that I had registered as a conscious objector—and that is another story—so interviews had to be made with all sorts of people in Colorado to see what sort of a jerk I was. (Was Guardian Angel back of all this? Surely not . . . ) But now I was going through induction in Indianapolis, then, pale, and suspect. The late January quota for draftees was unusually low that month, and after the examining doctors took a good look at me and they took a look at my 1-A-O classification, I was told that I probably wouldn’t do much good for the U.S. Army and to go back to I.U. “and teach them how to sing the Star-Spangled Banner.”
So that’s how I met my wife. Do I believe in a Guardian Angel? Sometimes I almost think that I do. Maybe everyone has a similar chain of events that direct them through life. They just don’t spill the whole tale in a writer’s club. I leave it up to you, with apologies for being too forthcoming.?

What a pleasure it has been to prepare this essay for publication in The Diapason to honor and celebrate the 90th birthday of Dr. Oswald G. Ragatz. This inspirational tale provides a glimpse of the organ and church music scene in New York in the early forties, as well as the documentation of the beginning of the I.U. Organ Department at that same time. When Dr. Ragatz retired in 1983, that organ department that he found in Bloomington in 1942 with the Holtkamp organ in the practice room had grown to a department with a notable historic concert organ in the I.U. Auditorium, two respectable studio organs, and eleven pipe organs in practice rooms for student use. Ragatz built the department to a level where it could take its place along with the other large university organ departments in the United States. Currently, the organ department of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University is one of the largest institutions offering degrees in organ in the United States.
With approximately 400 living IU alumni organists, the former students of Oswald Ragatz can be found all over the U.S. and in several foreign countries. Teaching and playing in both churches and universities, these Indiana University organists carry the Ragatz legacy with them in all of their endeavors. We salute you, Dr. Ragatz. Happy birthday and many happy returns.
—David K. Lamb

 

Andrew Scanlon

The following conversation, conducted both in person and by telephone in March 2013, explores the career of one of America’s most eminent musicians and teachers, Ann Labounsky. Dr. Labounsky was my undergraduate organ teacher at Duquesne University, and she is now in her 44th year as professor and chair of sacred music and organ at that same institution. Some years after completing graduate study and working in church music, I had the privilege of returning to Duquesne as a faculty member, teaching alongside Dr. Labounsky for four years. We maintain a close collaboration, and therefore, I have been in the unique situation of knowing Dr. Labounsky on several levels since we first met in New York City at the 1996 American Guild of Organists Centennial Convention. As a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend, Ann has challenged, encouraged, and supported me in many ways. In this interview, we discuss Ann’s life and career. Several life chapters particularly dominate our discussion: Ann’s student days at Eastman as a pupil of the young David Craighead, and the full circle of Ann and David’s long friendship; Ann’s time as a Fulbright scholar in Paris, studying organ under André Marchal, Jean Langlais, and Marcel Dupré; and finally, Ann’s inimitable teaching career in Pittsburgh. 

 

 

Andrew Scanlon: When people ask me why I decided to learn to play the organ, I most often reply, “Actually, the organ chose me!” Most of your life has been devoted to the organ. What was your first encounter with the organ, and when did the organ first “choose you?”

Ann Labounsky: As a young girl, our family was living in Port Washington, Long Island, and my mother used to take me to a Methodist church across the street from our home. This was before I could read; and I must have heard the pipe organ, but I don’t have much of a memory of it.

Later, we attended Christ Church (Episcopal) in Oyster Bay, where Paul Sifler (also a composer) was the organist-choirmaster. My mother, my brother, and I all sang in the choir, and it was then that I became interested. I was fascinated by the way Paul played. I would come early for choir rehearsals or lessons to watch him practice. I began studying the organ with Sifler at age 15. He was a very good teacher for me, and I loved his compositions. One summer, I went away to a camp, where I couldn’t play the organ for about two weeks, and I missed it so much. I think at that stage, I knew I would be an organist.

 

The conventional wisdom seems to be that before learning the organ, a strong piano background is useful, even essential. Were you already accomplished on the piano? 

My piano teacher in high school was John LaMontaine, Paul Sifler’s partner. He was also a wonderful composer and had a great command of technique. He followed the Tobias Matthay school of relaxation. I would take the train to go to their apartment on 57th Street in New York to take the lessons. It was he who encouraged me to go to Eastman. 

 

Since your piano teacher encouraged you to apply to the Eastman School of Music, did you audition on both piano and organ? What was required for the audition?

Yes, we were required to perform on both instruments. For the organ portion, I remember playing Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 6, but can’t remember which Bach I played. I do recall that I played a recital my senior year of high school and had played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and Wir glauben all an einen Gott on that recital, so I must have played one of those works. For the piano portion, they required that you know all scales and arpeggios, as well as the performance of a work by Bach and a Beethoven sonata. I was very nervous for the audition.

 

Before you went to Eastman, what, if anything, did you know of David Craighead? Did you want to study with him, or were you taking the advice of your teachers?

Well, no; actually, I didn’t know anything about David Craighead. But John LaMontaine had studied at Eastman, and he thought it was a very good school. He wanted me to study with Eastman’s piano teacher, George MacNabb. (It was from MacNabb that I learned the Brahms Fifty-one Exercises, which I still use.) Paul Sifler thought that Catharine Crozier would have been a good organ teacher for me, and I looked into studying with her. However, by the time I entered Eastman as a freshman, Crozier had already left the Eastman faculty for Rollins College in Florida. 

 

Did you audition anywhere else besides Eastman?

No. It always makes me laugh now, because these days, students audition at several schools. But for some reason, I didn’t.

 

Had you given any thought to what might happen if you didn’t get in?

No, that didn’t occur to me! 

 

In 1957, you moved upstate from Long Island and began your new life in Rochester. What are your memories of those undergraduate years? 

Eastman was a wonderful school. For many years, I stayed in close touch with the friends that I made there because we all struggled together. It was very demanding; in fact, I had nightmares. I was so afraid that I wouldn’t do well enough and that David Craighead would make me study with Norman Peterson, the secondary teacher! 

 

Can you recall your close friends and colleagues from that time?

Some dear colleagues included Bill Stokes, Joanna Tousey, Bill Haller, Maggie Brooks, Bruce Lederhouse, Jim Johnson, Gretchen Frauenberger, and Robert Town. Roberta Gary was working on her doctorate and David Mulberry was a senior, but they were beyond me. They were the great legends at the time!

 

How many students were studying organ then?

I think there may have been about ten—smaller compared to what it is now. 

 

Can you recall periods of particular growth in your playing during the Eastman days, or conversely, any precise struggles?

I don’t recall any struggles specifically; everything was difficult. We had to have all our repertoire memorized. I would get very nervous before performances. I wish that I would have found a way to get over that more easily, as I look back now. But all of this contributed to my growth as a musician. 

 

When you arrived at Eastman, in the studio of David Craighead, he was still fairly new to Eastman’s faculty, correct?

Yes, he had arrived in 1955, and I entered in 1957. He always told me this funny story about when I first arrived. Evidently I went up to his office and knocked on his door and introduced myself. I said, “I’m Ann Labounsky: Ann without the ‘E’!” David said he always remembered that.

 

What was Craighead like as a teacher in 1957? What aspects of learning did he emphasize as a young teacher?

He was always very precise. At that time in his life, he was rather nervous, quite inhibited. He would tell you all the things that were not right, but you always wanted to strive to do better in the next lesson. We spent a lot of time on the registration. He used the Bonnet Historical Anthology of Music, which was highly edited, and not a good edition. He used the Seth Bingham edition of Couperin’s music and I hated that music back then; it wasn’t until I went to Paris to study with [André] Marchal that I knew what it all meant!

 

That anecdote reminds us of how David Craighead evolved tremendously, over the years, both as teacher and a performer.

He did. I remember seeing him some years later, perhaps in the early 1970s. He had come to perform in Pittsburgh, and we attended the Pittsburgh Symphony together. He spoke of the Offertoire from Couperin’s Mass for the Parishes, and how he had learned about the notes inégales. For Bach, we changed registration frequently and each change was well marked in the score. Also, phrasing was carefully marked. Craighead was meticulous about every detail, but was patient in working with us until we got it right. He was most effective when he would quickly slide onto the bench to demonstrate a passage.

 

Can you remember your degree recitals?

They were all in Kilbourne Hall on the Skinner organ. For my senior recital, I played the Bach Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, and of course, a lot of American music. David Craighead loved the music of Sowerby. I played Sowerby’s famous Arioso, which was gorgeous on that organ. At Eastman, there was a kind of “shopping list” of music that we all had to work on. Ironically, when we got to Langlais’ music, I hated it! I had performed some of the Hommage à Frescobaldi, and I didn’t like it at all! I also remember playing in the weekly performance class in preparation for my senior recital. At one such class, having completed a play-through of the Bach “A Minor,” I remember David Craighead saying, “That was bloody but unbowed!” 

 

When you were wrapping up your days at Eastman, did David Craighead advise you about what you should do in terms of furthering your education?

David Craighead was very different from Russell Saunders, who told the students exactly what they should do. David took a far more hands-off approach. He gave his students the confidence to make their own decisions. I thought about staying at Eastman for my master’s degree, but decided to go to the University of Michigan. It turned out to be a very good thing to do that, as I would meet my future husband, Lewis Steele, at Michigan.

 

After four years at the Eastman School, I imagine that you had a much broader sense of the organ world, and you knew what you wanted?

I certainly knew that I wanted to go on to earn a master’s degree, but at that time, I didn’t know much about church music or improvisation. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, except that I wanted to learn music.

 

In few words, can you summarize the church music curriculum at Eastman in those days?

It didn’t exist! 

 

Your next move was from Rochester to Ann Arbor. Tell us about what life was like at the University of Michigan in 1961.

In those days, the president of the AGO was Roberta Bitgood. She did a wonderful thing for the new students at U. of M. When we got off the train in Detroit, she met all the students. She had gathered members of the clergy from churches in the area that were looking for organists. She introduced all of us, and as a result, I began a church job right away in Dearborn, Michigan, about an hour from Ann Arbor. 

U. of M. was a very different school than ESM. My teacher there was Marilyn Mason. Mason was less of a teacher for me, but more of a coach. David Craighead had really formed my technique—so she didn’t have to work on that. We worked on musical details and interpretation. We always had our lessons on the organ in Hill Auditorium.

 

Were there other organ teachers?

Yes. Ray Ferguson and Robert Noehren were on the faculty at that time. 

 

Besides organ playing, were there any other memorable aspects of the Michigan graduate degree program that helped you grow?

The courses at Michigan were wonderful! I especially recall Hans David the musicologist, and Louise Cuyler, and I learned a great deal from both of them.

 

You mentioned that you also met your husband while at Michigan?

Yes, I earned the degree in one year and two summers, and I was getting ready to play my recital. I met Lewis Steele on the steps of Marilyn Mason’s studio. I needed soloists to sing in my church every Sunday since we didn’t have a summer choir. I heard his resonant voice, and asked him to sing a solo. That’s how our romance started! 

 

Would you care to elaborate?

Well, three children and four grandchildren later, we are very happy together. 

I could never have done the things I have done without Lewis’s support. He always said that in a marriage, it’s not a 50/50 partnership, rather it’s 100/100. You have to give all of yourself, all the time. He did so much in raising the children. I had no idea even how to change diapers. He taught me. So many of the things I didn’t have (for example, expertise in theology, scripture, choral directing), Lewis did have. It has been a wonderful partnership over the years. I always remember what Marilyn Mason said: “I’d marry him for his laugh!”

 

Can you sum up the church music curriculum at U. of M. in those days?

They had two tracks. You could earn the MM in organ, which I did, or the MM in church music. However, it seemed to me that the only difference was you didn’t have to memorize the recital if you were in the church music track. All students took Robert Noehren’s course in organ building, which I almost failed! You had to know the composition of mixtures, which was too much for me! He was a very good teacher, though. He had a significant influence in the organ department there at that time. 

 

As your time wound up in Michigan, the next big step would be the Fulbright process. What were you doing in Michigan to prepare for the program in France?

By the time I got to Michigan, I knew I wanted to go to France for additional study. In fact, I had applied for a Fulbright while still an Eastman student, but I didn’t get it. I applied a second time while at U. of M. I had been passionate about the French language and was determined that I would go to France one way or another. Every week, I would get together with Deedee Wotring, one of André Marchal’s former students. We would meet for coffee, and she would force me to speak French! 

 

But your love of France and the French language had begun long before Michigan, through your beloved Aunt Julia, correct?

I’m glad you mentioned Julia. You knew her and played at her funeral. She had studied art in Paris after the war, and following her arrival back home in New York, she spent every weekend with us in Long Island. Julia was determined to teach me how to speak French! My father (a geologist and engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project) was Russian, his second language being English. I was determined I was going to Paris to study, even if I had to be an au pair. 

In April, having applied for a Fulbright, saying I wanted to study with Marchal, but not yet knowing my fate, I went to a recital at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, performed by Jean Langlais, whom I met for the first time. I told him I had played his Miniature on my graduate recital at the University of Michigan, and that I hoped to soon be in Paris studying. He replied that he hoped he would see me! When I returned home to Long Island from that recital, I found out I had gotten the Fulbright grant! That was such a great blessing to be able to go, with everything paid for; it was just a marvelous thing. 

I should speak a little bit about how we got to France. The first time we went over was on the “Queen Mary,” and on the “France” a number of times. It took five days, and there was no jet lag, because each day you changed the clocks only one hour. It was a wonderful way to travel. Ruth Woods (Harris) and I went together, both studying with Marchal on a Fulbright grant. We remain close friends.

 

Though you are perhaps best known as the leading American disciple of Jean Langlais, when you set off for France, your initial intent was to study with André Marchal, and you did. Tell us about studying with Marchal.

When I heard Marchal play for the first time, it was at Oberlin. He played in a way I had never heard anyone else play. Each line breathed. I heard music differently when he played, and I wanted to learn what he knew. Fortunately, my French was good enough that I didn’t need a translator, but his daughter Jacqueline often translated for the other students. Lessons were in his home at 22 Rue Duroc. I also wanted to study improvisation. Even though Marchal improvised very well, at that time he no longer taught improvisation. He said: “Well, you may study improvisation with Langlais.”

You must understand about the teachers all over Europe at that time: they were very possessive of their students. You were not able to simply study with anyone you wanted; definitely not several teachers! You went abroad to study with ONE teacher. I studied organ repertoire with Marchal, but Marchal gave me his permission to study with Langlais. After that time, while continuing to study with Marchal, I would then go to Ste. Clotilde in the evenings for my lessons with Langlais, which was wonderful. Playing on the organ that Franck, Tournemire, and Langlais knew so well, and hearing their music on that instrument, made all the difference in learning that music.

 

What musical facet did Marchal underscore the most in how to play the organ?

The touch. He had a way of phrasing each line independently. And he had such a concept of the whole piece. I remember working on Bach’s great Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor (BWV 542) with him. He had the whole piece completely engraved in his mind—every voice. It was amazing to me that this blind man knew music so well. For example, if you used a fingering that was not effective, he could tell!

 

You mentioned having studied Couperin as an undergraduate at Eastman. I know that with his interest in early music, Marchal would make the classical French school an essential part of what you studied. How did your point of view evolve with respect to this music?

Marchal just knew that music. I don’t know how—because he had studied with Gigout, and of course, everyone was playing completely legato then. Marchal attributed his style of playing to studying the harpsichord, saying that as a result, he had learned a different way of playing. And in the 1960s, no one else was playing like that. We usually associate Marie-Claire Alain as a leader in the early music revival for the organ—but even in the 1940s when Marie Claire Alain was very young, it was Marchal who was the first great leader in this movement. There was something about the way he played that helped me understand that “this is how you play!” With Marchal, I studied all Couperin, as well as all the music of de Grigny, Clérambault, Daquin, etc.

 

I recall from other conversations over the years that you recall practicing constantly during the time you were in France. You learned a great deal of music—how much repertoire did you absorb in two years?

In addition to all I mentioned just above, with Marchal, I studied all the Bach trio sonatas, all the big preludes and fugues—tons of repertoire! With Langlais I studied all of Franck’s music, much of Tournemire, and other pieces, too. In terms of how lessons worked, with Marchal (and Donald Wilkins said it was the same with Duruflé), you brought in a piece to a lesson, one of these big pieces, and they told you everything you needed to know. If you brought in the same piece again to another lesson, they said, “Well, I already told you everything I know about it last week!” We knew that we wouldn’t be there forever with those brilliant musicians. Our goal was to cover as much repertoire as possible in the shortest amount of time.

 

Do you still play the pieces you studied with Marchal or Langlais the same way as when you learned them? Or do you perform them differently now?

Wonderful question. I think that the spirit is the same; some things changed a little. I’m constantly trying to think in a fresh way, but the spirit of what I learned from Langlais and Marchal has stayed with me.

 

Concerning Marchal’s teaching, did he have any idiosyncrasies?

Many have said of Marchal that if a student was not gifted, he would be very lenient with that student; but the more diligent a student was, he would be much more strict. And that certainly was true. One funny story was about phrasing in one of the trio sonatas. I had asked why he played it that particular way, and he thought for a long time. After quite a long period of silence, finally he answered: “Because it pleases me!”

 

Many people are very well acquainted with your work and expertise on the music and the life of Jean Langlais. Much of this information can be learned from your book, Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music (Amadeus Press, 2000), as well as from the liner notes on your CD recordings. Would you share with us, in a broad sense, what it was like to be Langlais’ pupil, and how that relationship developed over many years?

Langlais was extremely supportive. He always made you feel that you could do anything! If you made a mistake, he knew, but he was just thinking about the music. Always so encouraging and supportive, he was continually trying to find places for his students to play, and to help them in whatever way he could. As I learned his music, I became more and more interested, and I wanted to learn as much as I could. 

 

Over the years, how much cumulative time did you study with Langlais?

I have no idea. I usually had a weekly lesson on Wednesday evenings, when the church was closed. In addition to that, on Saturday afternoons, we were at the Schola Cantorum, and that’s where we worked on improvisation. Over the years, I returned many more times to study.

 

After remaining in France for an extra year, what path did your career take upon returning to the States?

Langlais asked me to be his guide for his fall 1964 American tour, and I did that. Shortly thereafter, I took a job in a very large Roman Catholic church in New Hyde Park, Long Island. I had a choir of men and boys that I had to develop and direct. That was hard work. 

 

How did you end up in Pittsburgh? Did you move there to take up your position as organ teacher at Duquesne University?

In 1967, Lewis and I moved to Pittsburgh to take up a joint church position at Brentwood Presbyterian Church. Lewis was the choir director, and I was the organist. We had only one child, six months old. Two years later, in 1969, the head of graduate studies at Duquesne University called and asked if I would like to teach organ at Duquesne—but I had never heard of Duquesne! Honestly, I was not thinking about teaching in a college and university. I had done some private teaching, but had not thought beyond that. I wanted to be a church musician and recitalist. Looking back on it, I don’t know why I hadn’t considered university teaching. I was busy at the church and raising our kids. So, in 1969, I began teaching part-time, and it initially cost our family money for me to teach at Duquesne, because I had to pay for child care! At that time, there was a degree program in organ, but no sacred music program or sacred music courses. 

In 1972, around the time of the birth of our third child, the dean of Duquesne’s school of music at the time, Gerald Keenan, called me into his office and said they wanted to hire me full-time. After that time, I was the only organ teacher.

 

What was your strategy for building up the sacred music degree programs at Duquesne? 

I didn’t really have a strategy. I worked slowly, adding courses as it made sense. Even before I was full-time, I had brought Jeanne Joulain to Pittsburgh for a recital and workshop—in that way, I was already developing a tradition of guest artists. The first class that I started was the “Service Playing” course. I was always interested in improvisation, having studied it with Langlais, and I had won the very first AGO improvisation competition in 1966 in Atlanta. I began an improvisation course, focusing on rather simple aspects of improvisation. 

For a few years, we moved along slowly, trying to figure out the curriculum and course requirements. In 1976, the 25th year of the Duquesne School of Music, I decided that Langlais should come to Duquesne. This coincided with the official establishment of the sacred music degree programs. While Langlais was in residence, we awarded him an honorary doctorate, and we had a whole week of concerts featuring premieres of his music. This started things off in a huge way, attracting a lot of national attention. Gradually, more and more students wanted to come to Duquesne, continuing over the years. I couldn’t say in what specific year things really blossomed. Another aspect of our program’s emphasis in church music came after I realized there had been a huge void in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council—no choirs, no hymnals, a very low level of music. I saw that Duquesne had a responsibility and an opportunity to take a lead in this area. The dean, Robert Egan, agreed with me, and we worked for several years on strengthening the program. I called many people at different universities to see what other programs were offering. In those early days, I taught all the courses myself, as we didn’t have that many students. 

 

For many years, you have been a serious campaigner for the cause of the AGO certification program. From where did your advocacy of this program emerge?

Initially from Walter Hilse. I met Walter while we were both students in Paris. Walter, also from New York, was studying composition with Nadia Boulanger and organ with Maurice Duruflé. On Wednesday afternoons, Boulanger taught an analysis class for foreigners at her apartment, for which she had a huge following. She had a small house organ, having been a student of Vierne. Students would play pieces (Fauré, for example), and then she would pull the pieces apart and ask questions. She was a huge personality. I still have the scores. (We had to buy the ones she was going to discuss.) At these classes, Walter Hilse encouraged me to become certified. I distinctly remember him saying “You really should take the AAGO [Associate of the AGO] exam.” He has always been a huge promoter of the exams and has had many private students. Anne Wilson and Todd Wilson, for example, prepared for the exams with Walter. While my husband and I were still living on Long Island, I decided to do this. Once I began teaching at Duquesne University, it occurred to me that those skills were so vital to all students, that they should be learning these skills while studying for university degrees. 

 

Did the desire to help students become fluent with keyboard skills such as those tested on the AGO exams prompt you to require the AGO exams as part of the sacred music degrees at Duquesne?

In the early 1980s, I was on the National Committee on Professional Certification. Only one other school in the country was making it a requirement to take the exams. So, I decided to initiate the exams at Duquesne. When you tell people they have to do it, then they just do! Not everyone passed, and people took different exams, depending on their level of expertise. I met many wonderful people on that committee, including Max Miller, Sister Theophane Hytrek, John Walker, and David Schuler, for example. Different years, various others rotated on and off that committee, such as Todd Wilson. 

 

When did you ultimately attempt the Fellowship exam? 

Since I had already made the exams a degree requirement at DU, and I was the National Councillor for Education, I decided that it was time. You can’t just say to someone, “you should do this!”—you need to set an example. During a very busy time, when I had three children, was teaching full time, playing recitals, and was on the national board, I worked with two former students in Pittsburgh, John Miller and Robert Kardasz, to prepare together for the FAGO. Eventually, we all passed! It gave Pittsburgh more people with the FAGO diploma, where previously only Charles Heaton and Don Wilkins had earned it. We needed more highly certified people for a city our size.

 

Why do you consider it so important to take the certification exams?

There are a number of reasons:

1) In order to keep growing you need both long-term and short-term goals. As a student, it’s a short-term goal. Before earning a degree, it helps you have a point of arrival.

2) After my student, John Henninger, graduated from Duquesne, he went on to Westminster Choir College for graduate school and had applied for a church job in Princeton. He had passed the CAGO while at Duquesne, and he was appointed to the job because of having the Colleague Certificate. 

3) The exams represent a very structured way of testing both theoretical and practical skill. You can work at your own pace, and everybody I know who has done this, whether or not they have passed, has profited by it. It seems like a natural thing to do this, when you consider that so many other professions offer certification.

4) Earning an AGO certificate is a way that we show we’re at a certain level in our profession.

5) Earning certification does level the playing field and sets a high standard.

Our professional organization is extremely important. I get upset with people who complain about aspects of degree programs, churches, even the AGO—when the only thing you can do is to get right in the trenches to make things better!

 

Several graduates of Duquesne have gone on to earn the highest AGO certification. How has that made
you feel?

Very proud. You [Andrew Scanlon] being one of them, and now even serving on the national exam committee—that has made me especially proud. My current colleague, Ben Cornelius-Bates, has recently earned the FAGO also. 

 

Reflecting on your almost 45 years of teaching at Duquesne, how would you say your teaching and playing has evolved?

On teaching, David Craighead always said that you learn so much from your students, and I really have. In the beginning, I felt I didn’t know much, but I learned along the way. I found some things that worked well, and I fought the scars of things that didn’t work well. I have found it important to document what each student does. Recently, I got a computer in my studio, and using the “Blackboard” tool has been transformative. I have begun taking notes for each lesson and posting them for each student to view.

In the early days of my teaching, I was still very much in the mode of the teachers I learned from in Paris—Langlais, Marchal, and Dupré. They were very directive. They told you exactly what they wanted you to do. Initially, I taught the way they taught, because it was so fresh in my mind. As things have evolved, I have wanted to help each student find his own voice. I might not always agree with the student, but feel strongly that it’s in the best interest of each student to let them develop their own musical instincts. 

Ironically, when I performed all the recitals that Langlais had organized for me, I still felt I was his student. Langlais said, “You have to do this the way you want to do it.” But he had not taught that way. For example, he was known for saying so emphatically in his teaching that “Franck is tremendously free—just like this!” In improvisation, he taught the Thème libre, which, of course, is not free at all!

As you grow older, you grow in wisdom. You learn a lot from your children, also. They keep you humble, and they really tell you when you mess up! 

When I look at David Craighead, I keep thinking of how he was when I first studied with him at Eastman. Then, he was a new teacher. I had the joy of knowing him so well for the last 14 years of his life, and he had changed so much. He started by telling the students when they had made mistakes, but ended up changing lives. I try to do that too. I try to be a mentor, to do everything I possibly can to encourage my pupils, and help them get along well together. Music school can be almost like a monastery, when you’re all working together, and it’s so important to have a good rapport with your colleagues, to show great compassion for one another. 

Secondly, in answer to your question about my own playing, several things have contributed to the way I have played over the years. One of these was earning my Ph.D. in musicology, and beginning my biography of Langlais as the dissertation. All my years of teaching, the wisdom I gained from colleagues such as Robert Sutherland Lord and Don Franklin, making all the Langlais recordings—all of that contributed to the evolution of my playing. Other factors include the 1985 Bach Year, when I was asked to play an all-Bach recital on the Beckerath organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh. I changed my approach to Bach playing, using all toes, and different fingering. Change was in the air at that time. 

 

Have there been still more recent developments?

Yes. I have been working with Don Franklin on the tempo relationships in Bach preludes and fugues. We have been looking back to Kirnberger’s tempo relationships. I am constantly trying to learn more. If you have everything figured out, you may as well just retire, and I’m certainly not ready to retire!

In addition, after being asked a few years ago to do a peer review of a string methods class, I became fascinated with the violin. I realized that I had always wanted to play the violin, but I was afraid to try! I started taking violin lessons with David Gillis, a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and I’m still studying! I’m working on the Vivaldi sonatas, Opus 2, which I love! It’s a whole other world. 

The most recent development is the establishment of Duquesne’s chant schola under the direction of faculty member Sister Marie Agatha Ozah, HHCJ. We study the St. Gall notation to incorporate those interpretive elements into our singing. In May 2013, I led a study trip to Paris to play the important organs there and gave a short concert at the Benedictine Abbey in Solesmes. 

 

How do you know what to say when a student plays? What not to say? 

Always, I do it by intuition, and I think David Craighead did too. I’m careful not to say too much, and not say too little. 

 

How do you decide not only what to say, but how to say it? How do you break through?

Teaching is so dynamic, because you have to figure out where the student is and how the student will perceive what you say. You always have to be honest, but you need to be helpful—not damaging. You can’t say something is good when it’s not. Some teachers are more didactic, but I find that I do almost everything by intuition.

 

Realizing that you could retire, what keeps you going?

I love what I’m doing. I’m finally at a point when I can do it more easily.

I still have a lot to give to the students. I can still make a difference in their lives, and I still enjoy it. When we look around the country, and see the teachers who have retired, only to see their programs eliminated, that is always a danger. 

 

What are your hopes for the future of Duquesne’s sacred music and organ programs?

We are working very hard to get a world-class organ on campus! We have plans, and hope to be able to do this in the near future. The last piece of the puzzle is to put a doctoral program in place. That has been in discussion for many years, and it has been very challenging because there are many hoops to jump through. Our library holdings have been critical, but we now have many sacred music collections (the Langlais Collection, the Craighead Collection, the Boys Town Collection, the Richard Proulx Collection, to name a few). We have the faculty, and the quality of teaching, but we need more financial support. 

 

What else would you like to say?

Duquesne University has always been a religious institution. Our mission is to train church musicians. There are other schools whose main issue is getting students ready for competitions, which is wonderful, and I admire them very much. But even David Craighead agreed that he wished the Eastman School had done more with church music and preparation for the AGO exams. I want to prepare students to be musicians in churches of all denominations. We are trying to evolve, as the church continues to evolve. Students have to learn both pastoral skills and musical skills. These are difficult to teach. Our internship, for example, is a requirement partially because of NASM accreditation, but it’s also a critical area that we use to help each student in that very way. 

 

Ann, thank you for sharing these details of your life in teaching and performing. Albert Einstein said, “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” My experience of you as a teacher and mentor has been just so. You always gave the students exactly the right amount of guidance, and offered the right words precisely when they were needed; and yet you always allowed each student to discover his own path. You have led the way gracefully, setting a high bar and leading by example. Most importantly you have shown me the importance of constant, ongoing learning. I look forward to many more years of collaboration and friendship and wish you many blessings for continued joy in your work.