Baroque in Beijing: Alive and Well

Larry Palmer and Robert Tifft

From the Harpsichord Editor

It was East Texas Pipe Organ Festival director Lorenz Maycher who first alerted me to the news that Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková had passed away. Shortly thereafter I read her extensive obituary in The New York Times (which, following their standard style, indicated the correct pronunciation of the name: (rouge-ITCH-ko-va). Immediately it was obvious that a tribute should be written for Harpsichord News. She was a familiar name to me, for I had attempted to arrange a meeting with her during my singular one and a half-day day visit to Prague, as I hoped to glean her insights into one of my favorite twentieth-century harpsichord compositions, Bohuslav Martinu˚’s Sonate (1959). Alas, Mme. Ru˚žicˇková was not in Prague at that particular time, but she wrote a gracious letter apologizing for that absence, and she included her CD recording of the work, as well as several scores by her husband, Viktor Kalabis.

Rather than my quoting the writings of others, it occurred to me that a longtime friend and Dallas colleague, Robert Tifft, would be the best person to compose a unique and intimate tribute for this legendary figure, and even more so since he is comfortable with the plethora of diacritical marks required to render authentic spellings in the Czech language! His websites can be found at: www.jsebestyen.org/harpsichord.

All of us who treasure harpsichord history are indebted to Mr. Tifft for the fine essay and the private photographs that comprise our December Harpsichord News.

—L. P.

 

Remembering Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková

Personal Association

I was in high school when I first encountered Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková through her Supraphon LPs. These recordings, impossible to find in the remote corner of Iowa where I grew up, were readily available from Qualiton Imports in New York. I first wrote her after hearing the harpsichord concerto by her husband Viktor Kalabis, a work of staggering intensity that made a profound impression on me. Ru˚žicˇková replied and I soon discovered, much to my amazement, that she always answered. She was an inveterate correspondent, and it was a pleasure to receive her beautifully handwritten letters and postcards. In January 1994 she wrote to inform me of her concerts in Washington, D.C., and included a phone number. This initiated the first of many conversations. She was wonderful on the phone—always engaging, always laughing, and genuinely interested in what I had to say.

My first and only encounter with her in person took place in March 2010. I was in Budapest visiting our mutual friend János Sebestyén and planned a short train trip to Prague. Miklós Spányi accompanied me in hopes of examining her Ammer harpsichord, and my friend Ria Brézova joined us in Bratislava. We met Ru˚žicˇková for lunch, then spent the afternoon at her home trying out the Ammer and sharing stories. That evening the four of us attended a concert by the Graffe Quartet at the Rudolfinum to hear music by her late husband. It was a memorable day, not just for me, but for Ria and Miklós as well, each of us vividly aware how fortunate we were to spend at least a few hours in the company of this extraordinary woman.

Her Life and Career

Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková, the legendary Czech harpsichordist, died in Prague on September 27, 2017. She was a virtuoso on her instrument, a noted teacher and recording artist, and a survivor of Nazi atrocities. In recent years she was the recipient of numerous honors celebrating her life and accomplishments. 

She was born January 14, 1927, in the city of Plzenˇ where her father owned a successful department store. Her piano teacher, Marie Provazníková, introduced her to the music of Bach and encouraged her to study harpsichord. Ru˚žicˇková’s abilities were apparent from an early age, and preparations were made for her to study with Wanda Landowska at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt near Paris. The possibility of study abroad became impossible as the Second World War advanced, and in January 1942, Ru˚žicˇková and her family were interned at the Terezín ghetto (Theresienstadt).

Described by the Nazis as a “model community,” Terezín was the only camp that allowed some artistic activities. Ru˚žicˇková labored in the fields during the day but was able to continue her education. She studied harmony with Gideon Klein and attended concerts and lectures staged by other residents. She also befriended Fredy Hirsch, who was later credited with saving the lives of hundreds of Jewish children. 

Ru˚žicˇková’s father died at Terezín, and in December 1943 she and her mother were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Here she once again came in contact with Hirsch, who told her to lie about her age so she could work alongside him as a teacher’s assistant, protecting her from more dangerous work within the camp. She and the others transferred from Terezín were scheduled for the gas chamber but were miraculously spared, most likely because of a disruption in camp routine after the Allies invaded France on June 6, 1944. Ru˚žicˇková and her mother were then sent to Germany as forced laborers, working on oil pipelines and at the shipyards near Hamburg. In February 1945 they were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, described by Ru˚žicˇková as the “lowest part of hell.” As the war neared its end, German guards abandoned the camp and English and Canadian soldiers liberated the surviving prisoners on April 15. In July, after months in a hospital where she assisted medics as a translator, Ru˚žicˇková and her mother returned to Plzenˇ only to find their home occupied and possessions gone. She credited her survival through all this not to courage, but “a hundred lucky moments” and her mother’s strength.

Despite conditions endured during the war, Ru˚žicˇková’s passion for music remained undiminished. Her hands nearly ruined from physical labor, she was determined to regain her skills. In Plzenˇ she studied piano with Bohdan Gsöllhofer, and in 1947 was admitted to the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where her professors included pianist František Rauch and harpsichordist Oldrˇich Kredba. She decided to specialize in the interpretation of early music and gave her first harpsichord recital in 1951.

It was while teaching piano to composition students at the academy, a position she obtained in 1950, that she met her future husband, composer Viktor Kalabis. They married in 1952.

In 1956 she won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and accepted a scholarship from jury member Marguerite Roesgen-Champion to continue her harpsichord studies in Paris. Her success in Munich marked the beginning of an international career. She performed regularly throughout Europe, made repeated visits to Japan and the United States, and appeared at Bach Festivals in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Ansbach, Frankfurt, Schaffhausen, Bath, and Oregon.

In 1962 she co-founded the Prague Chamber Soloists with conductor Václav Neumann, and 1963 saw the formation of a very successful duo with violinist Josef Suk, with whom she recorded the Bach sonatas on four different occasions. Other chamber music partners included János Starker, Pierre Fournier, and Jean-Pierre Rampal, and she worked with many noted conductors including Serge Baudo, Herbert Blomstedt, Neville Marriner, and Helmut Rilling. Her repertoire spanned works by the English virginalists through contemporary composers. She championed the harpsichord concerto by Bohuslav Martinu˚, performing it frequently and recording it for the first time in 1967. She premiered compositions by Emil Hlobil, Hans-Georg Görner, and Elizabeth Maconchy, and several composers dedicated works to her, the most important being those by her husband. He composed his first piano concerto as a wedding gift, and significant works for harpsichord followed: Six Two-Voice Canonic Inventions (1962), Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings (1975), Aquarelles (1979), and Preludio, Aria e Toccata (1992).

The music of Bach, however, remained central to her art. In 1964 she recorded a Partita, English Suite, and French Suite by Bach for the French label Erato, and this soon led to a contract to record all his works for solo harpsichord. The sessions took place in Paris and Prague over a period of eight years, and an integral 21-LP edition appeared in 1975, winning the prestigious Grand Prix de L’Académie Charles Cros. 

Ru˚žicˇková’s teaching career at the Academy of Performing Arts spanned 50 years, but her refusal to join the Communist party led to her being denied the title of professor until after the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989. She also established a harpsichord class at the Music Academy in Bratislava and gave master classes in Zürich for 23 years, with additional courses in London, Stuttgart, Budapest, Kraków, and Tokyo. Her students include Christopher Hogwood, Ketil Haugsand, Anikó Horváth, Borbála Dobozy, Giedré Lukšaité-Mrázková, Jaroslav Tu˚ma, Václav Luks, and Monika Knoblochová, and during her last years she mentored Mahan Esfahani.

Ru˚žicˇková approached the harpsichord as a modern instrument for the modern world. Her goal was never to recreate Bach’s music exactly as he would have heard it, but to communicate its essence to a contemporary audience. In her own words, “I am a synthesist who remains within the style of a certain period yet does not eschew modern means.” Ru˚žicˇková’s playing sounds like no one else, and her approach to interpretation is not easily classifiable. She operated within the mainstream of classical music, the result of her association with contemporary music and close friendships with the leading musicians of her day, and refused to confine herself to a particular niche.

Ru˚žicˇková’s diminutive stature belied her commanding presence on discs. She excelled in large-scale works, such as Bach’s French Overture or sixth English Suite, and one often senses in her many concerto recordings that she, and not the conductor, is the guiding force behind the interpretation. Critics were sometimes unconvinced by her recordings, quibbling over tempos, registrations, or the type of harpsichord she played, and yet her integrity and the conviction with which she approached everything she committed to disc remained unquestioned.

In Prague she was limited to revival-style harpsichords from the East German firm Ammer for the first three decades of her career. This is the instrument she played at home, took on tour, and with which she is most closely identified. In the early 1980s she turned to an instrument by German builder Georg Zahl. In France she most often played instruments by Neupert and Sperrhake, but there were experiments with historic harpsichords, and she played instruments by Hemsch for two LPs in her Bach edition. In 1975 she recorded Purcell’s suites in Tokyo on a condor-quilled instrument by Michael Thomas. But it was not until the late 1980s that she had access to historical copies in Prague, and when she returned to the Well-Tempered Clavier in 1995, she played instruments copied after Ruckers and Harraß by František Vyhnálek and Jürgen Ammer. 

The marriage of Viktor Kalabis and Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková was one of exceptional devotion that lasted 54 years. It was through his encouragement that she returned to Germany as a concert artist little more than a decade after the war, and later to speak publicly of her wartime experiences in order to fight the “Auschwitz Lie”­—the denial that the Holocaust ever took place. After Kalabis’s death in 2006, Ru˚žicˇková devoted her last decade to preparing his manuscripts for publication by Schott Music and established a foundation to promote this music through concerts and recordings. This decade also saw numerous accolades for Ru˚žicˇková herself, including the Czech Cultural Prize in 2012 and the Bohemian Heritage Fund Award the following year. Her 90th birthday was celebrated with interviews in the international press, the reissue of her complete Bach cycle in a 20-CD edition from Warner Classics, and the release of the film Zuzana: Music is Life, which screened at festivals throughout 2017 in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, London, and Prague. Her legacy to future generations is secure through the film and her recordings, but her most enduring legacy to those fortunate to have known her is the gift of her friendship. Her graciousness and generosity, the sincere warmth of her personality, her unfailing sense of humor and delight in the ironic, and of course her incredible tenacity, were unforgettable. She was an inspiration and comfort to all and a remarkable human being.

Further information is available through the Viktor Kalabis & Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková Foundation:

www.kalabismusic.org.

—Robert Tifft

Etienne Darbellay, Bruce Dickey, Susan Ferré, Margaret Irwin-Brandon, and Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Introduction

Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini—organist, harpsichordist, musicologist, teacher, and composer—died July 11, 2017, in Bologna, Italy. Born October 7, 1929, in Bologna, he studied, organ, piano, and composition at the conservatory in Bologna, and later studied organ with Marcel Dupré at the conservatory in Paris, France. He graduated from the university at Padua in 1951, and then taught at universities and conservatories in Bologna, Bolzano, and Parma in Italy, and Fribourg in Switzerland. Tagliavini was a guest instructor at various universities and presented recitals and lectures for several chapters of the American Guild of Organists throughout the United States. He regularly taught organ courses at Haarlem, the Netherlands, and at Pistoia, Italy. He served as organist of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna, sharing duties with Liuwe Tamminga. With Renato Lunelli, he founded the journal L’organo in 1960. An active performer, he presented recitals throughout Europe and the United States. Tagliavini was a recognized authority in historical performance practice for the Baroque organ and harpsichord, and was a strong supporter of the historic organ movement in Italy. A prolific recording artist, earning several awards for his LP and CD discs, he was awarded several honorary degrees, including a doctorate in music from the University of Edinburgh and a doctorate in sacred music from the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome. As a musicologist, he published numerous papers and edited critical editions of music.

 

Editor’s note: the staff of The Diapason invited Susan Ferré to assemble some remembrances of Maestro Tagliavini. What follows are remembrances from Ferré, Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Bruce Dickey, Etienne Darbellay, and Margaret Irwin-Brandon.

§

It was during a long bus trip to see organs with Maestro Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini that we became friends. He was not obliged to sit beside me. Making sure I boarded the bus first gave him the opportunity of sitting somewhere else. I had interviewed him on public radio, and he knew of my interest in early music and organ restoration. He had read my thesis on Respighi’s organ works and knew of articles I had written on links between Sweelinck and Frescobaldi, through such Neapolitan composers as Giovanni de Macque, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Ascanio Mayone, their connections to Antonio de Cabezón, who had traveled to the Netherlands with Prince Phillip, and the numerous questions those links posed, especially concerning the 1635 Frescobaldi Preface.¹ We had a lot to discuss, and I was eager to hear his thoughts, which he shared enthusiastically, even with relish. He could have retreated to safety, but instead, engaged fully, listening as intently as he spoke.

During the years I lived off and on in the French Pyrenees (1969–1972), I enjoyed Italian neighbors and friends whose homes I later visited in the Italian mountains. During those visits and traveling to play concerts with Luis de Moura-Castro in Spain and Italy, Maestro Tagliavini took me to play historic organs not yet restored. It was then I met Susan Tattershall, who, with help from Martin Pasi, was busy restoring some of them, much to the delight of Tagliavini. Our paths crossed in Switzerland, in Haarlem, and in Dallas. His passing removed a most brilliant, most informed thinker, and most generous musician from my world. I didn’t know him well, but the loss of this unassuming, humble, gentle, yet wildly virtuosic musician touched me profoundly. It is with joy that I give voice to the following tributes from those who knew him best.

—Susan Ferré

Director, Music in the Great North Woods, www.musicgnw.org

Director, Texas Baroque Ensemble, 1980–2005

 

I first met Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini in November 1986 at an exhibition at San Giorgio in Poggiale, Bologna, where he was displaying his vast collection of harpsichords and organs for the first time. My next encounter with him was at San Petronio in Bologna, during concerts for the celebration of the church’s patron saint in 1990. Of course, I had also encountered his numerous publications on the history of Baroque music in Bologna while I was working on my dissertation at the University of Ghent and was deeply honored when he agreed to be the external expert reader for my dissertation and defense in 1995. In those years I had also discovered his importance as a scholar in Italian and European musicology, organology, and historical performance practice.

When I was a student in the 1980s, historical performance practice was not considered to be part of “serious” musicology (certainly not in Belgium), which could only be either historical or systematic. Performance questions belonged in the conservatories, not in the university. As a musicologist and Baroque cellist myself, I always needed to have both “sides” inform each other and the idea of being institutionally penalized by seeking a perfect collaboration between musicology and performance practice forced me to look for a job as far away from Europe as Oregon.

Tagliavini managed to be a leading authority as a musicologist and a professional keyboard player—specialized not only in performance practices on organ, harpsichord, spinet, clavichord, and fortepiano, but also in organology and in the preservation and restoration of historical instruments through his collection.

In that sense Tagliavini was probably the most influential figure in my entire career, and he has continued to be so. This influence continues through one of his most eminent and talented students, Liuwe Tamminga, who first became his colleague as an organist in San Petronio, and then the curator of Tagliavini’s collection of instruments when it became a public museum in the former convent of San Colombano in the center of Bologna. Thanks to this collection and my friendship with Liuwe and Ferdinando, I have been able to play such beautiful instruments (his collection is the only one in the world in which every single instrument has been restored in a historically relevant manner), and I have also been able to introduce many of my students from Oregon and from various European conservatories and universities to these sounds of the early modern period and, maybe even more importantly for me as a performing musicologist, to Tagliavini’s approach to musicology and historical performance practice as a scholarly discipline, which fortunately is becoming more mainstream even in European universities. His influence thus continues on both continents, and I am trying to make it happen as far as I can through my own teaching.

—Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Associate Professor of Musicology, Area Head, Musicology and Ethnomusicology

University of Oregon,

School of Music and Dance

 

I think I must have met Maestro Tagliavini about 40 years ago, soon after my arrival in Basel at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. I remember that he came to give a talk on tuning and temperament, and that I was astonished, not only by his knowledge of the topic, but also by his extraordinary ability to speak German and English, almost without a trace of an accent and always with eloquence and clarity. After I moved to Bologna in 1985 I came to know him much better and came, at his insistence, to call him Ferdinando, an honor I cherished. I have seldom if ever known anyone who carried his erudition (and in his case it was very substantial) with such lightness and modesty. 

I would like to relate two anecdotes that I think give an impression of his character and personality. Both of these stories relate to rehearsals with the wonderful organs of the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, whose renovation he was, of course, instrumental in securing. On one occasion many years ago, I was rehearsing with him for a concert with some pieces for cornetto and one organ. The morning rehearsal was dragging into the early afternoon, and I asked if we could do one more piece before breaking for lunch. He paused for a moment, then said, “Yes, of course, but I will have to call my mother to tell her to hold off tossing the pasta in the water!” I think he was into his 70s at this point.

The other occasion was some six months before he died. He had been very ill in the hospital and then made a sudden miraculous recovery. Enough of a recovery that he was able to participate in a concert at San Petronio with two organs and two cornetti, together with Liuwe Tamminga and Doron Sherwin. I was with the organ played by Tagliavini. Though he was able to play well enough, he did not have the strength to depress the stop levers without climbing down from the bench and putting all of his weight on the lever. That created some remarkably long pauses between sections of the canzona we were playing. Still, I was thrilled that he was able to play the organs he so loved one last time, and I felt enormously privileged to be a part of it.

—Bruce Dickey

Cornettist, Scholar, Professor of cornetto and 17th-century music, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (1976—2016)

The following is a personal reflection delivered at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) on September 21, 2017, excerpted and translated by Susan Ferré:

Tuesday, July 11, 2017, “Ferdinando has disappeared!” That’s what was announced to me in a pithy email message from Liuwe Tamminga. It was like a return to the ice age. The image as dizzying as the sound of a scaffold falling: now a world without him, an impossible world that rocked silently in the real one. As this was surely the case for many of us, it took me time to understand. Decidedly, I hate the inexorable. Occasionally, time, a matter essential to the musician, an engine full of promise, now raw, delivers us dirty tricks, chilling, unacceptable, engaging mercilessly on a path without return. It was not only as announced by our friend Liuwe Tamminga the collapse of an entire library, but even more, it was the final disappearance of a point of fundamental support for the evolving science and art of music, an emulator without precedent, for all those who, like me, had the great good fortune to know him. There are circumstances in which we truly learn the opaque meaning of the word “vacuum.”

More than a teacher who would become a master and a friend, Ferdinando was for me a true spiritual father, a support, a reference of wisdom, insight, and intelligence coupled with rare kindness. Always ready to enter into any serious area of knowledge, whether a random encounter or to solve a particular problem, he was at the same time ready to come out with a joke that demonstrated his unfailing sense of humor, which from a natural distance also afforded him his magical freedom in interpretation, both musical and scientific, open to suggestion and to listening.

His tutelage and his inspiring presence accompanied me in all circumstances of my life in the days when, blessed as a young student and apprentice musician, I met him at the University of Fribourg. His influence had convinced me to sign on to the track of musicology rather than physics, with which I was still hesitant. I have never regretted this choice, and this, was because of his presence in the early days, which never wavered in the following ones.

It was here, 50 years ago, seen at the top of the stairs, with a firm footing, he would head toward a large table on which he posed some music or a book. He would concentrate for a few moments, then, without emphasis or oratorical effect, he would begin to speak on the topic of the day, sometimes with a slight smile and an enigmatic look without a target, which gave us the impression that he was reading in his head. He never stumbled or searched for his words, and in all these various data he was consistently accurate. Throughout his life, he possessed a phenomenal and infallible memory, regardless of the field. What struck me most as a student was his mastery, almost discouraging to his colleagues and students, in all areas of music history and in all languages, including Latin. He would jump without difficulty from the exegesis of a grimoire of the eleventh century to the explanation of a technique of composition in “our” century (the twentieth), or the rapport between the voice of the piano in a song of Schumann opposed to Schubert. Nothing would escape his expertise or encyclopedic knowledge. Recently, I actually saw him in Bologna where, as usual, I went to consult with him about a few issues related to the completion of the edition of the Frescobaldi manuscripts.

Often he demonstrated at the blackboard, very precisely, an idea or a particular mechanism, whether a problem of solemnization or even a calculation of temperament. This last area in which he was incredibly competent (in the image of his friend Patrizio Barbieri) was one of his favorite areas of exploration: at the end of the explanation, the board was covered with numbers, fractions, with values of four or five numbers, which he knew by heart, and which he could infallibly recognize by ear! Often he created a demonstration on a small harpsichord that he himself had brought before class for the occasion, or he would gather us, clustered around the instrument, opening our confused ears.

Noting our notorious incompetence in counterpoint, knowledge of which was indispensable in order to follow his course on any particular writing technique of the Renaissance, he set up a kind of accelerated pro-seminar where he taught us with his usual virtuosity the basics and essential tips, the best courses of “music theory” I have ever had!

The biggest revelation of all—when we were touched by his teaching—was without a doubt, those blessed moments when he rose from his small chair to go to the keyboard—normally one of the big beautiful old Steinways, brown from use. Everything became pure magic. Whether sight reading from any large keyboard or full score (for example a Mahler symphony), he gave us a living example of how to prepare a concert following the rules. His virtuosity, his ease, and his proverbial musical insight were marvels. For example, during a course on Frescobaldi, I discovered this fascinating music­—totally unknown to me­, and with which I became a prisoner—a music that served as a passage between us, a ford over the river of life that separated us until the last months before his death. Having become my preferred subject of study and subsequently an area of specialization, it was this bridge that brought me back constantly to him, after my degree and my PhD, as part of the complete critical edition by the Italian Society of Musicology, an edition for which he was the initiator and, always, the ultimate validating reference. I owe so much to Frescobaldi: it is thanks to Frescobaldi that I stayed in almost permanent contact with Ferdinando, Frescobaldi’s first and most important prophet, both as a performer as well as a musicologist.

He loved teaching, and he loved his students. He spent as much time as he could with them. When he conducted a thesis, I think that none of those who have lived the experience would contradict me in saying that he followed it relentlessly, helping the student in the face of difficulties while reading the work with unfailing attention. For me, it was not only a help, but a pleasure, and major assurance as I walked with my clumsy feet in his most personal garden. I cannot forget to mention that his sympathy for his students almost always brought him to share with them his fondness for fondue. How many times did the fondue at the Café du Midi in the street of Romont (Fribourg) serve as an extremely joyful and festive climax to a semester or a business meeting? Besides, the tradition continued in Geneva, where Ferdinando agreed repeatedly to the thankless task of thesis jury, accepting this burden for many of my students who, even today, are grateful. But the fondue there was not as good . . . .

One of the aspects that characterized Ferdinando the best throughout his life was his taste in riddles—perhaps a form of self-satisfaction in view of his incredible ability to solve them. His students of the 1970s and ’80s remember: be it the Album of the Countess (a nineteenth-century manuscript that he had found, containing if I remember correctly a piece by Liszt and which offered several weeks of hilarious and passionate discussions), or a mysterious inscription between two planks of a newly found old instrument that he had discovered in Italy or elsewhere. Each week he reserved for us the surprises of these little mysteries that he presented with his characteristic smile of satisfaction, that he could still be the one to rule over his new find. With his proverbial passion for antique musical instruments, the organ at the top of the list, these are clearly the different traits of passionate curiosity that led him to establish, almost despite himself, the most important collection in the world of instruments of this type, which he gave to the Foundation Carisbo de Bologna, in order to institute at San Colombano a museum of “living sonic monuments.”  

His immeasurable respect for history and masterpieces of the past rendered him uncompromising in the face of inaccuracies in modern editions of early music. When he was confronted in a modern edition with an inaccuracy due to a colleague, he gave us an informative example without blaming or judging, sometimes even excusing it as a teaching example. His tolerance and kindness were also as proverbial as his mastery without compromise.

In the field of organology, it was the same for thoughtless and reckless restorations of organs or harpsichords. One of his recent battle cries was the problem of successive restorations with the set of choices to which they led. It is the same problem as in the restoration of art: does one scrape the Van Gogh in order to find the Courbet, and then the Courbet to find the Cantarini? The evolution of taste is part of the story: the traces that it leaves on the witnesses, too, are newsworthy, which must be documented. In fact, the ideal situation is the reversibility of any intervention. Ferdinando taught us the vital importance of respect for all who, in history, made history.

Ferdinando was world renowned as an interpreter, even if his audience was unaware of his other talents, which, in the first place, was musicology. We have witnessed many times the enthusiastic way in which young people followed him with lots of gear to record and preserve some exceptional moments, like the amazing concert in Bösingen to inaugurate a restoration of the organ. The exceptional quality of his playing, both in vivacious music and in its technical perfection, always had the same impression on his audience which was to experience one of those exceptional moments of existence that one remembered always, between ecstasy and levitation, of “musical Tiepolo.”

I still think back more than 30 years ago of a concert at San Petronio (Bologna) on two organs, with Tamminga: dazzling, aerial virtuosity played with acrobatic garlands of sixteenth-century Venetian ornamentation, the rhythmic vivacity of which has had no parallel. Not so long ago, he told me the amazing story that just happened to him in Messina where he had inaugurated the restoration of a famous organ. Approaching in a car with a friend, he found himself stuck in the city because of incredible traffic. He then said to his friend in the form of joke. “It is because of my concert!” And the last straw was that it was true! It almost didn’t happen, as they had to clear a passage for him in a crowd estimated by newspapers the next day to be about 5,000 people. As the maximum that the church could hold was about 400–500 people, he had to give the concert two more times in the following days to satisfy the frustrated audience.

Thanks to him, therefore, I discovered the organ, its stylistic peculiarities so differentiated in its creation according to Italian or Nordic styles. This is true for the harpsichord in its extreme refinements. Ferdinando also gave us several organology classes dedicated to his chosen instruments, their construction, their sound principles, and their history.

With his disappearance, it is really the first time he leaves us. I have the impression of floating in a world without anchor, disoriented, whose entire grounding has disappeared. This weightlessness confuses me, and the void it digs is called loneliness, a kind of erasure of all landmarks, a general loss of meaning. As with all of those who have had the chance to appreciate him, I will need much courage to continue without him who will remain in our memories and our hearts until we face our own deaths.

­—Etienne Darbellay

Honorary Professor

University of Geneva,

Musicologist

 

It was 1962 when I first heard the name “Tagliavini”—a name associated with Italian organs and “early” Italian music. He was, I believe, on his first visit to the United States to give a course on playing the music of Frescobaldi. A young woman in our church choir had attended this course and, knowing I was an organist, would speak of nothing else. Six years later I began to understand why, when I attended the Haarlem (Netherlands) Academy for Organists and took the Maestro’s course. This mind- and life-altering experience, three weeks of daily classes, excursions, concerts, and earnest discussions led me to further investigations of the Italian organ landscape—first through participation in a traveling conference of the Gemeindshaft der Deutsche Orgelfreunde, under the guidance of Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, during which we visited mostly antique organs, many of which were still playable but in need of restoration—and finally concluding at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, where the two now-famous organs (da Prato and Malarmini) face each other across the choir, both restored under his watchful eye.

There has never been a greater evangelist for the Italian organ and its music than Tagliavini. Through his herculean efforts, and in support of the efforts of others, scores of organs now shine as they once did in centuries past. The treasures of musical composition are opened to new eyes, hearts, and minds. But perhaps the most tangible evidence of his passion is to be found in the Museo San Colombano, Tagliavini Collezione, where upwards of 80 keyboard instruments (and a couple dozen various others) are now on display, in playing condition, and open to the public without charge. In October 2017, a convocation dedicated to Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, “Il cembalo a martelli: da Bartolomeo Cristofori a Giovanni Ferrini” (the harpsichord with hammers: from B. Cristofori to G. Ferrini), was held at San Colombano, with concerts in the museum and in the Basilica of San Petronio, and papers by scholars in the field. It was my honor to be included as a harpsichordist in one of these memorial concerts, one particularly unusual, in that it included ten of his former students and colleagues, in a program that moved chronologically from Frescobaldi, 1615, to Johannes Brahms, op. 118. This breadth of musical composition in no way traced the boundaries of Tagliavini’s interests, but was clear in its meaning. Music. Music, at the center of his life.

Attending the events of this colloquium the maestro’s two brothers, extended family and friends, shared in the legacy that I believe will accompany his memory in years to come—his keen scholarship, illuminating performance, insightful and inspirational teaching, love of life, jokes, puns, frivolity—all evident in his brilliant fulfillment in a life of music.

—Margaret Irwin-Brandon

Founder/Director, Desert Baroque, Southern California; Director Emerita, Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra, Western Massachusetts;

Originator, Organs of Italy Tours.

Notes

1. Preface to Fiori Musicali (1635) and its relation to Il secondo libro di toccate (1627).

THE DIAPASON Staff

The Diapason’s inaugural “20 under 30” selections came from a field that included over 100 nominations, a response that surprised and delighted us. The nominees were evaluated based upon information provided in the nominations; we selected only from those who had been nominated. We looked for evidence of such things as career advancement, technical skills, and creativity and innovation; we considered a nominee’s awards and competition prizes, publications and compositions, and significant positions in the mix. Our selections were not limited merely to organists but reflect the breadth of our editorial scope, which includes the organ, harpsichord, carillon, and church music. Here we present the winners’ backgrounds and accomplishments, and then have them tell us something interesting about themselves, and about their achievements, goals, and aspirations.

Since we had to decline multiple nominees for each one we chose, selecting only 20 from a field of very worthy nominees was quite a challenge. We do urge you to participate in the “20 under 30” awards next year—a person must be nominated in order to be selected. 

 

Larry Palmer

Recent recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations

Now universally known as the Goldberg Variations, Johann Sebastian Bach’s self-financed 1741 publication of his most extensive set of diverse variants on a simple theme bears this title on its cover: Keyboard Exercise Comprising an Aria and Differing Variations for a Two-Manual Harpsichord, composed for Amateurs by Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer at the Courts of Poland and of the Elector of Saxony, Chapel Master and Choir Master in Leipzig. Published in Nuremberg by Balthasar Schmid (translated from the original German).

Following the 1933 first recording of the complete masterwork by pioneering harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (a weighty 78 rpm recording project that has been reissued in every successive record format) the “Goldbergs” have been consigned to disc by a widely varied list of keyboardists, a tradition that continues, seemingly without any ritardandi. Indeed, while writing this report on recent compact disc releases, I have noted at least two more new recordings advertised for sale.

Just as I look at my extensive collection of books and think about the immense amounts of time and energy that are required for each publication (having been a writer all my adult life), I feel a similar empathy for the effort and dedication required when we consign our musical performances to disc (having done a fair number of these, as well). Thus, I try not to be overly critical in my reviews but rather hope that I may serve primarily as a reporter: one who gives enough information about the new offerings so that a reader may decide to seek more information, or even, perhaps, wish to acquire the item being discussed.

In alphabetical order, I present for your consideration three recent recordings of Bach’s magnum opus as performed by Diego Ares (born 1983) [Harmonia Mundi HMM 902283.84]; Wolfgang Rübsam (born 1946) [Naxos 8.573921]; and, as an archival reissue, a legacy from the renowned German organist and teacher, Helmut Walcha (1907–1991) [the last disc in a boxed set of thirteen compact discs comprising all of the major Bach solo harpsichord works, Warner Classics 0190295849618]. To make matters even more interesting, it so happens that I have had personal connections with each of these three keyboard artists.

 

Diego Ares

I met this brilliant harpsichordist in November 2009 and was blown away by his virtuoso performance of the Manuel de Falla Concerto for Harpsichord and Five Instruments at the opening event of the Wanda Landowska Exhibition organized by Martin Elste of the Musical Instrument Museum in Berlin, Germany. On my way to offer congratulations to the young artist, he met me halfway, as he wished to speak with me. At that time Diego was a student in Basel, and we both expressed our regrets that he had to return immediately to Switzerland for his semester end examinations, especially since we each had a special interest in contemporary harpsichord music.

We have, however, kept in touch since that brief encounter, and Diego has been generous in sending me his compact discs as they are produced. The immediate predecessor to his Goldberg Variations offering, his 2015 premiere recording of previously unknown Soler harpsichord sonatas (discovered in a manuscript now owned by the Morgan Library in New York City) won international acclaim, garnering both a Diapason d’Or and the German Record Critics’ first prize. I suspect that this latest two-disc set may well do the same.

In eloquent notes to the recording, Ares writes of his daily ritual that begins with a complete play through of the entire set of variations, but also he expresses his feeling for the need of a prelude to precede Bach’s opening statement of the Aria. For this recorded performance, Ares made a clever choice: Bach’s own transcription of an Adagio (BWV 968) based on the composer’s Violin Sonata (BWV 1005). It is indeed a lovely piece, but, since Bach left us only this one movement which cadences in the dominant key, it is a difficult work to program. As the desired prelude it makes a perfectly logical opener, connecting smoothly to the Aria in G Major.

Ares’s performance, with the added prelude, spans 1 hour, 29 minutes. He performs on his two-manual harpsichord by Joel Katzman (2002) based on a Taskin instrument from 1769.

 

Wolfgang Rübsam

Appointed to succeed the far-too-early-deceased James Tallis as harpsichord and organ professor at Southern Methodist University, I moved to Dallas, Texas, in late August 1970, to join the music faculty of the Meadows School of the Arts. Wolfgang Rübsam was, at that time, a stellar student in Robert T. Anderson’s organ class, and he went on to prove his stature by winning the first prize for interpretation at the 1973 Chartres organ competition. He also played a superb organ recital during the dedication year of SMU’s Fisk Opus 101 installation, and we continue to meet at various organ events throughout the United States.

Following a successful set of Bach recordings on the modern piano, Rübsam has turned his considerable musical insights to performing the Goldberg Variations on an instrument known to have been of interest to J. S. Bach: the lautenwerk or “lute harpsichord” of which a postmortem inventory of Bach’s belongings included two examples. Unfortunately, neither instrument is known to have survived the passage of time.

The proud owner of the fifth such instrument to be built by the highly respected American harpsichord maker Keith Hill, Rübsam provides a totally different sound picture for Bach’s variations. The constant arpeggiation certainly gives a different aura to the work, while the gentler plucked tones produced from this single-manual instrument soothe the ear. To record the entire work on one disc with a total timing of 78 minutes and 24 seconds, the artist confided that he made his own choices as to which of the variations would be played with the indicated repeats and which ones would not. I find his selections well made and actually agree totally that not all of the arbitrary double dots at the conclusion of each section need to be observed in any performance. I especially dislike the carbon-copy reruns of the B sections once one has made that trip from dominant cadencing back to the tonic. Most of the time one traversal is quite enough for my ears.

Amazing as it may seem to those of us who require two manuals as specified by the composer, Glenn Gould, Rübsam, and some other players seem quite able to negotiate the crossing of hands and notes, as well as the general awkwardness of compressing such acrobatics to one keyboard only. Bravo to all involved. 

 

Helmut Walcha

I first experienced a concert by the legendary professor of organ at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst of Frankfurt, Germany, during the unforgettable summer trip that followed my year at the Salzburg Mozarteum as an Oberlin Conservatory junior (1958–1959). In Letters from Salzburg
(Skyline Publications, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 2006) I mentioned Walcha’s organ recital at the Frankfurt cathedral, with its eight-second reverberation, and noted that the organist was “an inspired player.” While visiting the Hochschule I met its harpsichord teacher, Frau Maria Jäger, and did not realize that Walcha was also a harpsichordist. 

During many summer trips to Europe in the earlier years of an academic career, my German friend and “European manager” Alfred Rosenberger and I often would attend Saturday Vespers at the Dreikönigskirche where Walcha was organist. There we could marvel at his expressive hymn playing and masterful improvisations, while also enjoying both the intimate beauty of the rather sparsely attended afternoon services as well as the post service opportunities to speak with the genial organ master.

Still there was no mention of the harpsichord; so, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the present thirteen-disc set comprising all the major solo harpsichord repertoire of J. S. Bach had been recorded starting in the spring of 1958 in Hamburg, continuing for the next several years, and culminated during March of 1961 with the 75 minutes and 38 seconds of Walcha’s interpretation of Goldberg Variations. And, for one further surprise, the recording engineer for all these sessions was none other than Hugo Distler’s brother-in-law, Erich Thienhaus! 

The two-manual harpsichord used for Walcha’s recording sessions was built at the Ammer Brothers factory located in Eisenberg in the eastern German province of Thuringia. What nostalgia that inspired! My first harpsichord teacher, Isolde Ahlgrimm, made her famous Bach recordings playing an Ammer instrument. My first harpsichord was a small double built at the Passau factory of Kurt Sperrhake, who also provided a larger two-manual model instrument during our Mozarteum year. (Ahlgrimm’s comment: “I’ve slept in smaller rooms than this instrument!”) While I would not want to return to these well-built, but heavy, leather-quilled factory instruments, there is a certain nostalgia for that youthful time of discoveries and the blooming of my first love for the harpsichord.

Would I recommend the Walcha recordings? Perhaps. It is remarkable that he could play absolutely perfectly since he had been struck blind at age nineteen, most likely from a reaction to his vaccination for smallpox. I do not hear any mistakes or smudged notes at all, but I also do not hear much in the way of personality or nuance either. It has somewhat the same effect as reading a dictionary—but as a source for checking the notes as they appear in the original Bach-Gesellschaft Editions there would likely be no deviations from that urtext.

And what a tribute to the human spirit! Every note required for thirteen compact discs full of music was retained in that brilliant memory! One of Walcha’s prize students, my SMU colleague Robert Anderson, told many tales of being summoned to visit his mentor for the purpose of following a score while his teacher played through the complete Art of the Fugue or some other complex set of organ pieces. And, said Bob, “There was hardly ever even one wrong note!”

Leonardo Ciampa

Leonardo Ciampa is Maestro di Cappella Onorario of the Basilica di Sant’Ubaldo in Gubbio, Italy, and organist of St. John the Evangelist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

When you see a bud growing out of the ground, you’re not sure what it is yet, so you water it and feed it, and you wait to see what it grows into. But you don’t want to step on it. And if the bud is very small, all the more important not to step on it.

—Yuko Hayashi

 

Yuko Hayashi is gone.

I feel unworthy of eulogizing her. I do not presume to rank among her greatest students—a very long list that includes James David Christie, Carolyn Shuster Fournier, Mamiko Iwasaki, Peter Sykes, Christa Rakich, Gregory Crowell, Mark Dwyer, Kevin Birch, Kyler Brown, Barbara Bruns, Ray Cornils, Nancy Granert, Hatsumi Miura, Tomoko Akatsu Miyamoto, Dana Robinson, Naomi Shiga, Paul Tegels, and others too numerous to name. 

I cannot describe, or comprehend, the fortune of being her student between the ages of 15 and 18—at the time, her only high school student. She was in her late 50s—still at the height of her powers, still performing internationally and recording. She brought a constant parade of heavy-hitters to Old West Church in Boston for recitals and masterclasses. During those three years alone (1986–1989), there were José Manuel Azkue, Guy Bovet, Fenner Douglass, Susan Ferré, Roberta Gary, Mireille Lagacé, Joan Lippincott, Karel Paukert, Umberto Pineschi, Peter Planyavsky, Michael Radulescu, Montserrat Torrent, Harald Vogel, and the list goes on. Yuko was something of an impresario. In the 70s, when Harald Vogel was completely unknown in America, she brought him to Old West to play his very first concert here—for $100, which she paid out of her own pocket! Guy Boet, same story—his first concert in America, for $100. In 1972, at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Yuko organized the very first organ academy ever held in Japan, bringing both Anton Heiller and Marie-Claire Alain. In 1985, Yuko, Umberto Pineschi, and Masakata Kanazawa started the Academy of Italian Organ Music in Shirakawa. A list of her accomplishments would be long, indeed.

At the time, I knew virtually nothing about Yuko’s life or career. Meeting her was truly random. It was September of 1985 (Bach’s 300th birthday year). I was skimming the concert listings in The Boston Globe, and I happened to see that there was going to be an all-Bach organ and harpsichord concert at Old West Church, given by Peter Williams. I had never heard a “real pipe organ,” and I had never set foot in a Protestant church before. I had no idea who Peter Williams was, and I had no particular interest in the organ or harpsichord. I was a 14-year-old piano student in the New England Conservatory prep school. The craziest part of all? I had not the faintest idea that the New England Conservatory organ department held their lessons, classes, and concerts at Old West, or that the church’s organist happened to be department chair. Attending the concert was nothing more than a whim.

I was immediately grabbed, both by the sound of the Fisk’s ravishing plenum, and by Williams’s exquisite selections, all from Bach’s youth. I still remember every piece on the program, which opened with Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 739. After the concert, a short but elegant Japanese woman introduced herself to me and shook my hand. I had no idea she had any affiliation with NEC. I’m not sure I even understood that she was the church’s organist.

Who could have predicted that, one year later, September 1986, I would quit the piano and become an organ student of Yuko, taking lessons on that same instrument? But even that was random. In the NEC prep school catalogue, under “Organ,” Yuko’s was the name listed. That’s the one and only reason I contacted her.

 

Early years in Japan

(1929–1953)

Yuko Hayashi was born in 1929 in Hiratsuka, a coastal town 24 miles from Yokohama. She was born on November 2. (She used to joke about having been born on All Souls’ Day, having missed All Saints’ Day by only one day!) Many of Yuko’s students would come to notice her unusual perceptiveness. A couple of us thought it bordered on ESP. She had the ability to reach for things even when she couldn’t see them. Case in point: why did a woman who was born in 1929, in a country that was only one percent Christian, decide that she wanted to become an organist, when she didn’t even know what an organ was?

Yuko’s father was a Japanese Anglican priest. He was the pastor of St. Andrew’s Church in Yokohama. At age five, Yuko started playing the reed organ at St. Andrew’s. (Soon enough, she became sufficiently proficient to play an entire Anglican service.) In sixth grade, her music teacher suggested she learn the piano. “Hanon: hated it. Czerny: a little better. Burgmüller: not as bad. But then, Bach Inventions! I became hooked on this music. I practiced all hours; I didn’t want to quit.”¹ She reasoned, “If Bach wrote pieces for the organ, then the organ must be a wonderful instrument.”² She knew that she wanted to play the organ, even before she had ever seen one! The only instruments she knew were the reed organ at church and a Hammond. In 2007 I asked her, “When you were young, how did you know you wanted to play the organ if you didn’t even know what an organ was?” She replied, “I knew when I met J. S. Bach.”³ In a 2009 email she wrote, “If I was not exposed to the two-part Inventions by Bach just by chance in my youth, I am positively sure that I [would] not [have been] drawn into music for so many decades since. Certainly, I would not have chosen organ as my main instrument.”⁴

Finally at age 15 she saw a pipe organ for the first time, in Tokyo. It was important to practice on a pipe organ, for she was preparing to audition for the Tokyo Ueno Conservatory (now named Tokyo University of the Arts). Imagine this 15-year-old girl, in 1944, with bombs falling around her, traveling two and a half hours to Tokyo to practice for two hours on this organ, then making the two and a half hour return trip home. (I recall that, in the 1980s, she told me that this organ was an Estey.⁵ However, other students remember her saying it was a Casavant.⁶)

She passed the audition and enrolled in the conservatory. Eight students had to share “a Yamaha and an electric-action pipe organ with a hideous sound. We each practiced for 50 minutes and then let the motor rest for ten minutes in between because it was old and cranky.”⁷ 

 

Study in America (1953–1960)

In the early 1950s, Yuko’s father urged her to visit America. She accepted a scholarship to attend Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. The port of entry was faraway Seattle. The sea voyage from Yokohama to Seattle took 12 days. She arrived in Seattle on July 23, 1953. Tuition, room, and board were covered, but she had only thirty dollars in her pocket (which was all she was allowed). She stretched the thirty dollars as far as she could, though at least she had an Amtrak pass that enabled her to travel by train anywhere in the country.  

 

My father arranged a train trip for me around half of the country, visiting some of his friends. When I arrived in Seattle on July 23 [1953], his friend’s daughter, who was the secretary of St. Mark’s Cathedral, came to pick me up. Within two hours of setting foot on American soil, I played the organ at St. Mark’s. I think it was a Kilgen.⁸ I met Peter Hallock, and he gave me some of his compositions. From Seattle I went to San Francisco and stayed with my father’s friend there. I heard Richard Purvis play a recital in a museum, and I remember I kept looking around for the pipes, which were not visible. That was my second American organ experience. Next I stayed in Los Angeles for a few days. I didn’t see any organs there, but what I remember most was my first American picnic, a culturally foreign experience for me. Then I went to Salt Lake City, found the Mormon Tabernacle organ and went to two concerts in one day. Alexander Schreiner was there. Can you imagine? Next I visited my father’s friends in Minneapolis, and then the remainder of the summer stayed in a guesthouse at the University of Chicago. Finally, I arrived at Cottey College, and do you know what I found there? A Baldwin organ!⁹

 

After a year she was no longer able to stay at the school; however, she received a scholarship to go to any other school of her choice in America. Where would she go? She knew nothing about Oberlin or Eastman. Ultimately, her decision was influenced by having grown up by the sea.

 

At that school in Missouri, every Friday you know what we had to eat? Fish. That fish must have been dead for ten days by the time we had it. The fish was so fresh in Japan. So I knew I wanted to live near the sea. New York was too big. Washington, D.C., was too political. But Boston . . . .¹⁰

And so in 1954 she entered the New England Conservatory and studied organ with the legendary George Faxon.  

 

I spoke almost no English, and he didn’t say very much. So our lessons were filled with music but had long silences! One week he asked me to bring in the Vivaldi[/Bach] A-minor concerto. And I memorized it. I’d never memorized anything before. He didn’t say much. But you know what he did? He wrote on a piece of paper “Sowerby Pageant” and told me to go to Carl Fischer [Music Company] to pick up the music. When I got to the store and showed the man the piece of paper, he said, “Oh, you’re playing this?” I said, “Yes.” I had no idea what it was. Then when I opened the music! Incredibly difficult. At my next lesson Faxon wrote in the pedalings, very quickly, from beginning to end. What a technique he had. And you knew where he got it? Fernando Germani. Once Faxon took me to Brown University to see his teacher, Germani, play the Sowerby. I got to sit very close to him, so I could see Germani playing. And there he was, five-foot-three, his feet flying all over the pedalboard.¹¹

 

On February 6, 1956, Yuko played her bachelor’s recital in Jordan Hall, her first recital ever. In only three weeks Yuko memorized the daunting program, which included Vivaldi/Bach A-minor concerto (first movement), D’Aquin Noël X, Schumann Canon (probably B minor, op. 56, no. 5), Bach Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue, Liszt “Ad Nos” (second half), Sowerby Pageant, Titcomb Regina Caeli, Dupré Second Symphony (Intermezzo), and Messiaen L’Ascension (third movement).

In 1956, Faxon told Yuko, “This is still a secret, so you can’t tell anybody. But I’m leaving NEC and going to teach at B.U. [Boston University]” Yuko was disappointed at the news. “I wanted to follow him to B.U. I didn’t know anybody else. But he said, ‘No, don’t follow me. You studied with me two years—that’s enough. Stay at NEC.’ And then he said, ‘You must make Boston your home.’”¹²

Yuko was disheartened and considered returning to Japan. But Chester (“Chet”) Williams, beloved dean of NEC, would have none of it. Faxon’s imminent departure was still a secret. But Chet had another secret for Yuko: “There is another man coming, someone with great ideas.” That man was Donald Willing. On Chet’s advice, Yuko stayed at NEC.

Willing had been to Europe and was galvanized by the new tracker instruments being built. He immediately arranged for NEC to purchase new practice organs by Metzler and Rieger. The 1957 Metzler was voiced by Oscar Metzler himself.

 

As soon as I touched the instrument, I had an immediate reaction: “This is it! This is a living organism!” My teacher did not persuade me to have this reaction—I had it on my own, from touching the instrument myself. That was 1957. The next year, 1958, I got my M. M. from the conservatory. And that same year, the Flentrop was put in at Busch-Reisinger [now Adolphus Busch Hall]. That was Biggs’s instrument. He let all the students play it. We had to practice at night, when the museum was closed. And we were poor; we couldn’t afford to pay a security guard. So Peggy [Mrs. Biggs] would act as the guard. The Biggs’s were so generous to organ students.¹³

 

Not all the organ students were taken by these new instruments. “They would say, ‘Are you going backwards?’”¹⁴ Yuko was undeterred. She played her Artist Diploma recital on the Flentrop in 1960.

 

Leonhardt and Heiller (1960–1966)

In 1960, Yuko joined the faculty of the organ department of New England Conservatory. At this point she had not yet heard of Gustav Leonhardt.  

 

I first heard of Leonhardt from John
Fesperman. Before John went to the Smithsonian, he taught at the Conservatory. The organ faculty was Donald Willing, John
Fesperman, and I, who had just been hired. I don’t know why, but John had been to Holland already, and he said, “Leonhardt is coming; you should go study with him.” So I did. I used to go to Waltham [Massachusetts] to practice cembalo at the Harvard Shop, and once a week I went to New York to study with Leonhardt. He was young, late 20s. A whole summer [1960] I studied with him.¹⁵

 

Yuko so enjoyed her study with Leonhardt that she considered switching to harpsichord. Indirectly it was Leonhardt who dissuaded her.

 

Finally [Leonhardt] said, “You really should study organ with Anton Heiller.” And I thought, “Who is that?” So I bought records of Heiller. You know, the old LP records. [. . .] [I]t was grand playing. Already I noticed something.¹⁶

 

1962 marked Heiller’s first visit to America and his first ever trip on an airplane! He gave two all-Bach performances on the Flentrop at Harvard University. Yuko attended the first performance and was so impressed that she attended the second one as well.  

 

And you know the most wonderful thing he played? O Mensch . . . with the melody on the Principal . . . . The whole program swept me away. And I immediately said, “This is the man I want to study with.” But I was shy, so I didn’t go to him right away. [. . .] He used to come to America every three years. He had come in ’62, so in ’65 he came back, and he returned again in ’68, ’71, etc. So in ’65 he was teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. I went down there, and for the first time, I met him. [The course was] six-and-a-half weeks. Every morning, he gave four hours of classes. Bach, David, Reger, and Hindemith—on a Möller! Then, in the afternoon, private lessons on a 10-stop Walcker organ in a private studio.¹⁷

 

Heiller urged Yuko to enroll in the summer academy in Haarlem the following year (1961). This marked her very first visit to Europe. She went on to study with Heiller sporadically, following him wherever he happened to be playing. (She was the only Heiller student who didn’t study with him in Vienna.)

 

Maybe [Heiller] taught differently with other people, but with me, most of what I learned was from his playing, not from his words. [H]e played a lot [during lessons]. But I would move and he would sit on the bench. He didn’t just play over my shoulder. With him, nothing was halfway. [. . .] Funny thing: when he was just standing there, without doing anything, I played better. He felt the music inside him, and it came out. It was a weird thing. [. . .] I performed his organ concerto. Of course he wanted to hear it at a lesson. But I wasn’t ready. He only told me about it three weeks before. But again, he was standing right there. And it’s funny, I was able to play it. You see, he was so perfect, he made me feel I could play. [. . .] You know, I was so little—I’m still little. (laughter) And he was much bigger than me. But he said to me, “Don’t be afraid of the piece.”¹⁸

 

In 1969, Yuko became chair of the organ department of NEC. She remained until 2001, a total of 41 years on the faculty, 30 of which as chair.

First European tours (1968)

Yuko’s first concert in Europe was at the 1968 International Organ Festival in Haarlem. From there she went on to play many concerts on historic instruments in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. “The wife of Hiroshi Tsuji, the Japanese organbuilder, arranged my first concert tour in Europe. [. . .] I soon discovered that I loved going to places where I didn’t know the people or the organs. I like to explore things I don’t know.”¹⁹ Here again we see Yuko’s fearlessness in reaching for things she could not see. As Nancy Granert reminisced, 

 

One time, Yuko and I were talking about traveling alone through Europe. I was saying that I always had a map in my purse, and that I really didn’t like being lost. She replied that she loved being lost and to find new places. She, after all, always knew where she was, right?²⁰

Old West Church (1974)

Charles Fisk built one of his most beautiful instruments, Opus 55, for Old West Church in Boston.²¹ It went on to become the main teaching instrument for the New England Conservatory organ department for decades. The organ was dedicated on Easter Sunday 1971 by Max Miller and Marian Ruhl Metson.

In 1973, Old West was conducting a search for a new organist. The organ committee consisted of the Rev. Dr. Richard Eslinger (pastor of Old West), Charles Fisk, Max Miller, and Jeanne Crowgey.²² Sneakily, but fortuitously, Eslinger and Fisk invited Yuko to attend a committee meeting in December 1973. After this meeting, they took Yuko across the street for a beer or two at a Chinese restaurant and lounge. Yuko enjoyed telling this story.

Charlie said, “Yuko, have you ever thought of becoming the organist for Old West Church?” These were absolutely unexpected words, and my answer was simply, “No.” Charlie kept a smile on his face and went on to tell me how convinced he was for me to be the organist of his organ at Old West, and that it was the right thing for me to do.

I was overwhelmed by his totally positive thoughts, and by the end of the conversation that evening I was convinced that Charlie was right and said “Yes” to him without knowing what the future would hold. [. . .] In February of 1974 I began to play for worship services (as a non-salaried organist), organized organ recitals for the season as well as the weekly lunchtime concerts that, after a decade, evolved into the Summer Evening Concerts.

As I look back [. . .] I say to myself, “How on the earth did Charlie know that I would be the appropriate one?” [. . . .] Charlie then knew that if I were caught by [the] beautiful sonorities that I could not leave them, would enjoy them, would maintain the instrument, and would let it be heard and played by all. [. . .] 

As I listened to organ students of the New England Conservatory day by day, year after year, and, of course, through my own practice, I became convinced that the 1971 Charles Fisk organ at Old West is a living organism and not just an organ with extraordinary beauty. This organ responds to the high demands of an artist as if a lively dialogue between two humans is being exchanged. I even dare say that the spirit of Charlie, an artist/organbuilder, is present when the organ is played by any organist who wishes to engage in conversation.²³

 

Yuko remained organist of Old West for 36 years. I was so fortunate to hear so many of her recitals there during the 1980s. I remember matchless performances of Bach’s Passacaglia, Franck’s Grand Pièce, and the Italian Baroque repertoire for which she had an incredible knack. (In fact, I never in my life heard a non-Italian play this music as well as she.²⁴) As late as 2008 (her last recital was in 2010), she gave a performance of Bach’s Pièce d’Orgue that to me remains the benchmark for all others. Few organists can play the middle gravement section without it sounding too long and too heavy. In Yuko’s hands, I was astonished by the articulation of each entrance of each of the five voices. I say without exaggeration that it sounded like a quintet of breathing musicians. I was so gripped by it that, when she got to the final section, I couldn’t believe how short the gravement had seemed.

 

As a teacher

Yuko made good use of her ESP. As a teacher, not only did she adapt to each individual student, but she adapted to each individual lesson with each student. Each lesson with her was a brand new experience—based solely on what she was sensing in the room at that moment. Besides her perceptiveness, she had something else: a regard for the value of each student. I can never forget something she told me many years later: “When you see a bud growing out of the ground, you’re not sure what it is yet, so you water it and feed it, and you wait to see what it grows into. But you don’t want to step on it.”²⁵ Her next sentence was even more unforgettable: “And if the bud is very small, all the more important not to step on it.” It would be hard to find a famous teacher with that level of regard for even the least talented among of her students.

Yuko’s ear was astonishing. She could have used that ear to be a critic or an adjudicator towards her students. Instead, she worked tirelessly to get them to use their own ear, to make their own decisions and judgments. In her gentle, quiet way (her voice never rose above a mezzo piano), she was relentless in making her students listen to the sound coming from the organ, in particular to be aware of the air going through the pipes. Most of all, she wanted her students to learn directly from the composer.

I will never forget playing Bach’s Allein Gott, BWV 664. The moment I stopped listening to one of the three voices, within milliseconds she started singing it. Then I would get back on track. Then, the millisecond that I stopped listening to another part, she would sing that one. That was how perceptive she was—which was both comforting and frightening! Another astonishing moment in our lessons that is worth mentioning is the one and only time I played Frescobaldi for her. In modern parlance, you could say that I was “schooled.” I was playing the Kyrie della Domenica from Fiori Musicali, which is in four voices. I played it and could tell from her facial expression that she was not pleased. She said one sentence: “You know, this music was originally written on four staves.” I played it again. This time, her face was even more displeased, and she said nothing at all. She sat down on the bench next to me and said, “OK, you play the alto and the bass, and I’ll play the soprano and the tenor.” I was floored. Her two voices breathed. They sang. She got up from the bench, without saying a word. Her point was made, and powerfully.

 

Later years

Yuko and I exchanged many emails in 2009. Many of them concerned administrative details of the Old West Organ Society (of which I was then a board member). However, more often the emails were simply about music.  

 

I remember when I first heard Mozart, in a castle outside Vienna, in [the] early 1970s. It was a big shock to me. While they were performing Mozart’s chamber music, I started to have the image about the leaves of the tree which show the front of the leaf and the back of the leaf, back and forth. Their colors are very different from each other, yet [the] only differences are front or back of the same leaf. It influenced the dynamic control as well in their performance at the castle.²⁶

 

During this era she always wrote to me as a friend and colleague, never as a “student.” Only once did she give something resembling “advice:”

 

I believe, there are only two emotions that stand out, “Love” and “Fear.” You have plenty of both, which in [an] actual sense make [a] great artist. Your potentiality is enormous! Don’t waste it, please! After all, it is the gift from God.²⁷

 

She was pleased, then, when not long after that email I became artistic director of organ concerts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (home of two historic Holtkamps from 1955). In October, Yuko called me to congratulate me. She reminisced about Walter Holtkamp, Sr., whom she met in Cleveland.

 

He was a strong character, and rather difficult to get along with. Yet, we liked each other. Walter took me for dinner, and to his organ in the Episcopal Church in Cleveland, and I played the organ for him. He liked my playing because I played exactly as I believed.

That led to reminiscing about Melville Smith, who dedicated the larger Holtkamp in Kresge Auditorium. She even knew about Saarinen, the architect who designed both Kresge and the MIT Chapel. One thing led to another. She ended up telling me practically her whole life story. We spoke for four (!)
hours. She did almost all of the talking. There wasn’t a single dull moment. Every sentence was imbued with energy. She talked about growing up in Japan during the war, doing forced labor even as a teenager. She talked about her earliest musical experiences and about more recent organbuilding trends in Japan. She spoke at length about Marc Garnier, who built the monumental organ at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Center. She told story after story about Guy Bovet, Harald Vogel, Peter Williams, and Karel Paukert (in whose presence she set foot in Old West Church for the very first time). She told me about the time she was in France with Michel Chapuis, and she was playing a three-voice work, and Chapuis reached over and improvised a fourth voice over what she was playing. She spoke of Heiller (which she did in most every conversation I ever had with her). She even spoke of events and feelings in her personal life. It is safe to say that it was one of the most extraordinary phone conversations that I have ever had, with anyone. The next time I saw her, in 2010, she showed signs of memory loss. Clearly this was Yuko’s instinct at work, once again: she knew that in that phone conversation in 2009, she needed to tell me her life’s story.

At the 2014 AGO national convention in Boston, there was a workshop entitled “The Organ as Teacher: The Legacy of Performance Pedagogy at Old West Church,” moderated by Margaret Angelini, with Barbara Bruns, Susan Ferré, and Anne Labounsky. Indirectly it was an event honoring Yuko. (Had it been entitled “An Event in Honor of Yuko Hayashi,” she would have strongly objected.) It was hard for Yuko’s friends to see her in this state of diminished powers—at times aware of what was going on, at other times not so much. But then came a moment, after the workshop, when Yuko was standing, chatting with Ferré and Labounsky. All of a sudden she looked at them, pointed to me, and told them, “He’s a wonderful musician.” For me, that was the equivalent of a New York Times review. I have sought no other musical validation since that moment.

Last summer Yuko’s health declined. In September I learned that her condition was so grave that her family in Japan were contacted. Her 88th birthday was to be on November 2, followed eight days later by a celebratory concert at Old West, featuring some of her greatest former students. None of us thought she was going to live until the concert—we expected it to be a memorial service. Each day I checked my iPhone compulsively, not wanting to miss the terrible news. But the news didn’t come. Now it was November 10, the night of the gala concert. Apparently she was still with us—I had not heard otherwise. I arrived at Old West on that bitter cold night. I walked out of the cold into the warm church, and I heard people saying that Yuko was there! At Old West! I didn’t fully believe it. I looked around, and then I saw it: the back of a wheelchair. I raced over, and there she was. Her eyes were as alert as I had ever seen them. This isn’t possible! How did they even get her there, on that bitter cold evening? But Barbara Bruns made it happen. Yuko took my hand in hers and kept rubbing it, looking me straight in the eye the whole time. Not a word was said.  

The entire evening Yuko had that same alertness in her eyes, start to finish. Being at Old West, among her students and friends, hearing Charles Fisk’s beloved Opus 55—the energy from all of it must have thrilled her.

A few months passed. For Epiphany weekend, January 6 and 7, 2018, as a prelude at all of my Masses, I played Bach’s Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 739—the very first piece at Peter Williams’s life-changing recital at Old West so many years ago, the night I met Yuko Hayashi. Eerily, but not surprisingly, only three and a half hours after my last Mass, Yuko Hayashi left this world.

 

Notes

1. Phone conversation with the author,  July 25, 2007.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid. 

4. Email to the author, October 19, 2009.

5. 1918 Estey (Opus 1598) at Rikkyo (St. Paul’s) University, Tokyo. Replaced by Beckerath in 1984.

6. 1927 Casavant (Opus 1208) at Holy Trinity Church, Tokyo. Church and organ were destroyed by a firebomb in 1945.

7. Diane Luchese, “A conversation with Yuko Hayashi,” The American Organist, September 2010, p. 57. 

8. It was a ca. 1902 Kimball (not Kilgen), with tubular-pneumatic action.

9. Luchese, op. cit., p. 57f.

10. Phone conversation with the author, July 25, 2007.

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. From an unpublished interview between Yuko and the author, which took place in Boston on February 17, 2004. 

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Luchese, op. cit., p. 60. 

20. Conversation with Nancy Granert, January 11, 2018.

21. Seven years previous, and 500 meters down the road, Fisk had installed his Opus 44 at King’s Chapel, the first modern American three-manual tracker organ built in the second half of the twentieth century. The organ was a gift of Amelia Peabody. Thanks to the friendship between the pastors of Old West (Dr. Wilbur C. Ziegler) and King’s Chapel (Dr. Joseph Barth), Amelia Peabody gave a grant to Old West for their new organ. The choice of Fisk was endorsed by the organists of both King’s Chapel (Daniel Pinkham) and Old West (James Busby), as well as E. Power Biggs.

22. Jeanne Crowgey was a member of Old West from 1972 to 1980. She was also an organist, who served unofficially as an interim before the selection of Yuko Hayashi. Crowgey went on to be Yuko’s invaluable assistant during the first six years of the Old West Organ Society. Crowgey did a large amount of the administrative work for the international series, the summer series, and the weekly noontime concert series. She was one of the last friends to visit Yuko before her passing.

23. From a reminiscence written by Yuko in 2004 and posted on the C. B. Fisk website (edited by L. C.).

24. Once in the 1960s she played a recital at the Piaristenkirche in Vienna, which included a piece by Frescobaldi. Heiller was in attendance and raved about how she played the Frescobaldi, a composer she had never studied with him (phone conversation with the author, year unknown).

25. Phone conversation with the author, year unknown.

26. Email to the author, June 10, 2009.

27. Email to the author, September 2, 2009.

Nunc Dimittis

Wilbur R. Dodge, 83, died November 20, 2017, in Binghamton, New York, an engineer, physicist, professional photographer, English country dancer, organist, organbuilder, and organ technician. He graduated from Clarkson University and Harpur College (now Binghamton University) with degrees in electrical engineering and physics and followed in his father’s footsteps working at Ansco Film Company.  With Norman Smith, he started their company, R D & D before he moved on to Link Aviation where he worked on simulators for the Gemini and Apollo missions.

Dodge was a member of the choir and guest organist for various churches in the community including Trinity Memorial and Christ Churches. He also maintained and tuned pipe organs in churches throughout the region. He was dean of the Binghamton Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, 1999–2001. 

Wilbur R. Dodge is survived by his partner, Anneliese Heurich; children: Glenn Burch (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania), Michael and Tammy Burch (Deland, Florida), Barbara Burch (Paisley, Florida), and Laura Appleton (Binghamton); several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Binghamton on January 20.

 

Mark Coan Jones died December 24, 2017. Born February 25, 1957, in Asheville, North Carolina, he studied organ with Marilyn Keiser and with Donna Robertson at nearby Mars Hill College. For the past 22 years, Jones was director of music and organist for The Pink Church (First Presbyterian Church), Pompano Beach, Florida. He previously served St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, Pompano Beach; First Presbyterian Church, Newton, North Carolina; and Trinity Episcopal Church, Asheville.

Jones appeared with the Florida Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Lynn University Conservatory Orchestra, Young Artists Chamber Orchestra, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, and Miami Bach Society, and in collaborations with chamber groups and area choruses, including the Nova Singers, Florida Philharmonic Chorus, Master Chorale of South Florida, Masterworks Chorus of the Palm Beaches, Fort Lauderdale Christian Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida. He arranged music for organ and brass and performed with the Dallas Brass, Avatar Brass, Empire Brass, Lynn Conservatory Brass, and Eastman Brass. He performed extensively across Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia, in collaborations and solo recitals. 

Jones’s organ compositions have been performed in venues across the United States and in Europe, and have been broadcast nationally. His Three Lenten Hymn Meditations, Trumpet Tune in D, and Lenten Hymntunes have been recorded and performed by various organists.

From 2006 through 2014, Mark was principal accompanist for the von Trapp Children, the great-grandchildren of the singing family made famous by the Rodgers & Hammerstein movie The Sound of Music. His solo appearances and concerts with the von Trapps included performances around the world.

Mark Coan Jones is survived by his parents Hubert Mack and Shirley Williams Jones of Asheville, his sister Suzanne Jones Hamel and husband Richard Anson Hamel of Covington, Kentucky, and his partner Hilarion (Kiko) Suarez Moreno of Deerfield Beach, Florida.

 

Yuko Hayashi died January 7 in Salem, New Hampshire, at the age of 88. She was born in Hiratsuka, Japan, on November 2, 1929. For more than 40 years she was professor of organ at the New England Conservatory and department chair for 30 years. As a performer, she concertized extensively on three continents—Asia, North America, and Europe—giving recitals and masterclasses in Japan, South Korea, the United States, Holland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. She was the recipient of the coveted Arion Award from the Cambridge Society for Early Music as an “outstanding performer and master teacher of the historical organ.” She was also awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the New England Conservatory.

Hayashi graduated with a degree in organ performance from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1948 and for five years was organist for the symphony orchestra of NHK, the Japanese national broadcasting company. She came to the United States in 1953 on scholarship, sponsored by Philanthropic Educational Organization and studied for one year at Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. She then transferred to the New England Conservatory in Boston where she was awarded three degrees in organ performance: Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Artist Diploma. In 1960 she began teaching at the conservatory and was appointed chair of the department in 1969 by then president Gunther Schuller. Her primary teachers were George Faxon, Donald Willing, Anton Heiller, and Gustav Leonhardt (harpsichord).

Her frequent travels to Europe began in 1966 when she went to the Haarlem Organ Academy in the Netherlands and began life-long associations with Anton Heiller, Luigi Tagliavini, and Marie-Claire Alain. In 1971, she studied with Michel Chapuis in France and was introduced to many historic organs in North Germany and Holland by Harald Vogel and Klaas Bolt. This was the beginning of many exchanges of concerts and masterclasses across the Atlantic Ocean between Boston and Europe. It was during this time that Hayashi became organist of Old West Church in Boston, performing on a new mechanical-action organ built by Charles B. Fisk. She served as organist there for nearly 40 years and was the founder and executive director of the Old West Organ Society until her retirement in 2010.

Beginning in 1970, Hayashi crossed the Pacific Ocean yearly to give recitals and masterclasses in Japan. With Italian organist Umberto Pineschi and the assistance of Japanese organ builder Hiroshi Tsuji and his wife Toshiko Tsuji, she founded the Italian Organ Academy in Shirakawa. She was influential in persuading organ committees from universities, churches, and concert halls to commission mechanical-action organs from organbuilders from around the world. Most noteworthy are the instruments for International Christian University (Rieger), Toyota City Concert Hall (Brombaugh), Minato Mirai Concert Hall, Yokohama (C. B. Fisk, Inc.), and Ferris University, Yokohama (Taylor & Boody, Noack Organ Company, and J. F. Nordlie Pipe Organ Company organs).

In 1989, Yuko Hayashi took a leave of absence from the New England Conservatory to accept a position as professor of organ at Ferris University, Yokohama. She taught there for six years before returning to Boston. She also became titular organist at St. Luke’s International Hospital Chapel, which houses an organ built by Marc Garnier of France. She was responsible for relocating a historic 1889 organ built by Hook & Hastings to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Yokohama where her father served as priest for many years.

Yuko Hayashi is survived by two brothers, Makoto Hayashi and Satoru Hayashi, and several nieces and nephews, all residing in Japan. A memorial service for Yuko Hayashi will be held at Christ Church, Andover, Massachusetts, April 28, at 11:00 a.m. Memorial contributions may be directed to: Old West Organ Society, c/o Jeffrey Mead, Treasurer, 72 Trenton Street, Melrose, Massachusetts 02176;  St. Andrew’s Cathedral, 14-57 Mitsuzawa-shimo-cho, Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa, 221-0852, Japan; or St. Luke’s International Hospital Chapel, c/o Organ Committee, 9-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 140-8560, Japan.

 

Pierre Pincemaille, 61, died, January 12, an international concert organist, church organist, music professor, and composer. Born in Paris, France, December 8, 1956, Pincemaille was awarded five first prizes at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (harmony, counterpoint, fugue, organ interpretation, and organ improvisation) and won five international improvisation competitions: Lyon (1978), Beauvais (1987), Strasbourg (1989), Montbrison (1989), and Chartres (1990).

In 1987, Pierre Pincemaille was appointed titular organist of the prestigious 1841 Cavaillé-Coll at the Gothic Saint-Denis Cathedral-Basilica. He loved accompanying beautiful liturgy there, amidst the tombs of the Kings of France. Highly inspired by Pierre Cochereau, Pincemaille founded a concert series there, from 1989 to 1994. For his 30th anniversary there, he performed his last concert on November 5, 2017, programming choral works he cherished, conducted by Pierre Calmelet: Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle and three of his own recently composed vocal motets (to be published), as well as J. S.
Bach’s Pièce d’Orgue, BWV 572, symbolizing for him the three periods of life.

Pierre Pincemaille also performed with orchestras under the direction of conductors such as Mstislav Rostropovitch, Myung-Whun Chung, Riccardo Muti, Charles Dutoit, and John Nelson. His recordings include the complete organ works of Maurice Duruflé and César Franck, Charles-Marie Widor’s ten symphonies, selected pieces by Jehan Alain, Pierre Cochereau, Olivier Messiaen, and Louis Vierne, his own improvisations and transcriptions of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Petrushka, as well as works with orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns, Hector Berlioz, Joseph Jongen, and Aaron Copland. Several of Pierre Pincemaille’s compositions were published: Prologue et Noël varié [Prologue and Variations on a Noel] (Sampzon, Delatour France, 2007), a 4-voice a cappella Ave Maria (Lyon, À Coeur Joie, 2013), and En Louisiane for trombone and piano (Delatour France, 2017).

Recently, Pierre Pincemaille taught counterpoint at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, harmony at the Conservatory in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and organ improvisation at the Conservatory in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés for the past 17 years. For the past 14 years, he formed a generation of French and foreign organ improvisers, many who have won prizes in international competitions: among them, six Parisian organists: David Cassan (at the Oratoire du Louvre), Thomas Lacôte (La Trinité), Samuel Liégeon (St.-Pierre-du-Chaillot), Hampus Lindwall (St.-Esprit), Baptiste-Florian Marle-Ouvrard (St.-Eustache), and Olivier Périn (St.-Paul-St.-Louis).

Among his honors and distinctions, Pierre Pincemaille was a Knight in the following three orders: the Academic Palms, Arts and Letters, and St. Gregory the Great. 

Pierre Pincemaille is survived by his wife, Anne-France, and their three children, Claire, Marc, and Éric.

—Carolyn Shuster Fournier, Paris, France