Cambridge Chats #2: Sarah MacDonald

Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh

Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh are organist/choirmasters at First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, VA. They have recently returned from a 13-week sabbatical in the UK. They also direct Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia, and Mrs. Betenbaugh is chapel organist and assistant choral director at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg.

Tim Byram-Wigfield has been the music director at Jesus College in Cambridge since 1999. A former chorister at King's College, he was organ scholar at Christ Church Oxford before he moved to Winchester Cathedral to be sub-organist in 1985. For eight years he was Master of the Music at St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh before taking up his present appointment. He combines his work at Jesus College with a busy schedule as an organ recitalist, and has played in France, Australia, Belgium, the USA and Canada. He conducts the Northampton Bach Choir, is organist for the Millennium Youth Choir, and regularly gives workshops for amateur choirs. He is also active as a pianist, arranger and composer. He broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 3, and has recorded on the EMI, Hyperion, Argo, Priory and Herald labels.

The chapel at Jesus College is the most ancient college building in Cambridge, begun in 1140. We had occasion to speak with Tim over tea prior to his afternoon rehearsal on Friday, May 23. We had previously attended a week's rehearsals and Evensongs at Jesus. The program is distinctive in maintaining two choirs. During university term there are five choral services each week. The Chapel Choir sings three and the Mixed Choir sings two. The alto, tenor and bass voices are common to both groups and are sung by the choral scholars, who each receive £100 per term plus a nominal payment for all the services they sing.

Tim Byram-Wigfield has recently been appointed director of music at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. The chapel runs a conventional cathedral-style set-up of boy choristers and twelve professional men, singing daily services. The building is one of the finest examples of English 15th-century architecture, with fan vaulting, fine stained-glass windows, and a marvelous Harrison and Harrison pipe organ.

BB: Your boy choir doesn't have a choir school like King's College or St. John's, do they?

TB-W: That's right.

BB: Do they pay tuition?

TB-W: No, the college provides it. In fact, the college also pays them a small stipend of £35 per term which is put into a savings account for them. It can accumulate until the time that their voice changes. We also provide some instrumental bursaries for them.

BB: How does that work?

TB-W: An instrumental bursary is a small donation that the college would make to the parents directed toward the cost of their instruments.

GB: Suzuki is not taught much over here, is it?

TB-W: It is in some places and certainly at very young ages. It used to be very popular for children who wanted to learn the violin in large classes. I daresay in London it still happens. I don't know of a class in Cambridge, but there might be one.

GB: Actually, from a choral standpoint it only helps the ear. It doesn't help the reading skills which is paramount.

TB-W: Yes, that's true. When I first came here four years ago there were only 13 full-time choristers, and only about half of them were reading on their instruments. Maybe it's just been through luck or because we've been tapping a different vein, the caliber of chorister we've been getting in terms of their musical ability and literacy has appreciated a bit. Going back to what you were saying, ours is a very different set-up from King's and St. John's. We operate on a part-time basis and can only be on that part-time basis, because the activity is essentially taking place after school at the end of the choristers' day.

BB: In the auditioned children's choir we have at home, the parents pay tuition. We've found that when parents pay tuition to the choir just like they do for soccer or other sports and activities, they feel more inclined to insure that their child attends rehearsal.

TB-W: Yes, that's like having lessons. That's less of a problem with us, because in a sense we're asking them to do us a favor by having the boys come and sing the services for us. In return, of course, we're providing them with a certain element of musical education and other aspects of education as well. Commitment being what it is these days, the amount of things the parents want their children to do affects the choir. We had a full house on Wednesday evening, and then we had less than 2/3 yesterday. This morning I got several e-mails that children would be absent for this, that, and the other reason. You get the idea.

GB: Yes, we have the same thing with church volunteer children's choirs at our church.

BB: Do you teach the boys in a separate theory class?

TB-W: No, it has to be done in the context of the music that we teach them. The only time I get the chance to teach them anything in that vein is when they're probationers and come to their probationers' class, which is on Tuesday afternoons. We only have an hour.

GB: Did you start the mixed choir of boys and girls in Edinburgh at St. Mary's Cathedral?

TB-W: No, my predecessor Dennis Townhill did. That works for them very successfully because they operate like a choir school. We had rehearsal in the morning and a service in the evening. Also, because it's in Scotland, where the tradition is not so firmly embedded in the society, it wasn't seen quite so much as a heresy to introduce boys and girls together, although for a while it was not without its difficulties. One of the strongest arguments there was that it was the only choir school in Scotland, and also because the choir school operated like a specialist music school like Wells Cathedral or Manchester. The argument was that this was a golden opportunity for a child to sing in the choir, so boys and girls should have the same opportunity. That's a pretty strong argument, really! It was for those reasons that they introduced the boys and girls. They kept an eye on the balance, which never really got beyond a third, boys to girls. Here it is a different situation, because this is a volunteer boys choir, just a club really. It could be swimming or it could be football.

BB: Do you have auditions?

TB-W: Oh yes, they are auditioned, and they have to pass that audition. They also have to pass an informal audition having done their probationary training before they become full choristers.

BB: Explain that, please. The earliest we take choristers in our auditioned children's choir is third grade, which is age 8. What age do you start the boys?

TB-W: I take them earlier at age 6, because I want them to get the bug early and get them used to using their voices and get them to understand something of the single line of music in front of them. They come and sing with the older boys once or twice a term.

BB: How often do you meet with these boys?

TB-W: Just once a week for a half an hour on Tuesday for singing with a bit of theory thrown in. It's really learning how to use the voice, and they learn some chorus songs and some easy hymns. They have a little test every term, so they have to learn something from memory, and they have to count rhythms. It's predominantly based on the singing rather than on instruments. That gives them the bug. They get their own cassock in the vestry and have something to aspire to. By the time they're 8 or 9 they are old enough to join the big guys.

GB: I understand that the college has done this for about 150 years.

TB-W: Yes, in 1849 when the stalls were put in and that lovely ancient organ case with the angels painted on it. [Author's note: In 1849 the "Sutton Organ" was built by J. C. Bishop and restored by Mander in 1967.] There was a rededication of the chapel, and we still have the manuscript for an anthem which was written by Thomas Walmisley for four boy choristers to sing. The names of the four boys are on the front of the manuscript. It's really very touching. They clearly were one of the porter's sons or one of the cook's sons or that kind of thing. Ever since 1849 there's been this tradition of getting volunteer boys to come sing in the chapel. That is, I daresay, one of the reasons why Jesus College is distinctive among other college chapels, because they've had the boy trebles, and a number of very distinguished church musicians have cut their teeth by being organ scholars here. There's James O'Donnell, Peter Hurford, Richard Lloyd, Malcolm Archer and a whole host of others who've gone on to work in schools as well as cathedrals. I think we've got four, maybe five, ex-Jesus organ scholars who are now assistants in cathedrals, which is very encouraging. It's a pretty worthy record. So, we don't have as long a tradition as King's or St. John's. One of the reasons that it wasn't as developed was because they never had a director of music to develop the program. The organ scholars were responsible for running it. In days gone by when academic pursuits weren't so pressurized, it was probably possible. In these days what with children's protection, the experience of teaching them, never mind the time it takes to go around to the schools and recruit them, the energy and time you need to devote to the program, you can't expect an 18-year old organ scholar to do that and do his degree also. That's why they created this post.

BB: How do you recruit?

TB-W: I go around to the schools where we already have choristers, and ones which I know are sympathetic. I do know some colleagues in other cathedrals where they have a similar situation where the headmasters won't allow them across the threshold because they think that it's peddling Christianity. This is becoming a real issue of political correctness in this country. You get parents who will refuse to allow their children to sing Christmas carols. I hate to say it, but this has emanated from the other side of the Atlantic. It's very sad in a way, because it undermines and makes us question everything about the oral tradition that we have in this country. In that context, it's actually in some places very difficult to sustain any kind of Christian choir at all. In Cambridge we're lucky because a lot of the people we're appealing to are educated enough to understand about the tradition; secondly there is a huge reservoir of parents who are employed by the university and therefore can understand what's being offered and thirdly, although they might send their child to a state school, they still want their child to be a chorister. Those three things give us an extra edge, but I think in other places it's rather different.

GB: We're going to the Southern Choirs Festival in Salisbury on the Saturday that you'll be there accompanying the Millennium Youth Choir. What kind of commitment do you have with them?

TB-W: Two courses, one at Easter and one in the summer.

GB: You don't accompany them each week then?

TB-W: No, because they come from all over the country. It's drawn from parish church choirs. The whole rationale behind the Millennium Youth Choir is that the RSCM designed this for young people between the ages of 16 and 23. It's for "A" level and university singers who wouldn't otherwise get the opportunity if they sing in their parish church choir to sing to that level of excellence.

GB: We have a chorister, a rising senior, who just e-mailed us that she'd been invited to sing at a new RSCM course at Washington National Cathedral this summer. She was delighted.

BB: She had been to two or three RSCM camps.

TB-W: Right. The RSCM has a number of summer courses as you've probably seen. The Millennium Youth Choir is relatively new as its name might indicate. It's only been going for three years. It was first conducted by Martin Neary. He did it for about 18 months to two years. Now Gordon Stewart conducts it.

GB: Where's he from?

TB-W: He hails from Dundee, but he's operating in the North. He was organist at Blackburn Cathedral and taught in Manchester for a long time. He's now the borough organist of Huddersfield Town Hall. There's a very fine Willis organ there. He does a lot of work with the BBC. He conducts both Daily Service and Songs of Praise as well as The Millennium Youth Choir.

BB: The Millennium Choir basically sings only twice a year?

TB-W: Yes, but there are one or two other opportunities that come along. For instance, they sang on the BBC Songs of Praise which is a television program on Sundays. Generally it's just twice a year, but I'm happy to go and play. It's nice to be able to do that.

GB: The 1971 Mander organ in the chapel is certainly eccentric!

TB-W: Oh, yes. It's really on its last legs now.

GB: Are you going to renovate it?

TB-W: Thirty years ago English organ builders were only just discovering or re-discovering about the principles of German Werkprinzip and tracker action. This was their brave first attempt to build something with tracker action and bold German choruses. That's what it is! It's very much a product of its time. It has the eccentric things like the reed en chamade (laughter, and a nasal YYENT). It's a very strident sound. Everything is starting to wear. It's always been very heavy to play. As I say, it's one of these curiosities that is, in many ways, a pioneering experiment. People recognize that now. There are those that say we should keep it because it was pioneering. That's fine if you don't have to play it every day.

GB: I understand.

TB-W: The college recognizes that something's got to be done. In fact, our strategy has been not to replace it with a new organ, but to replace it with a worthy Victorian instrument that needs a home. We found a 3-manual Hill up in a Baptist church in Portsmouth. It didn't start out there. It came from another church in South London. The Baptist church is closing, so we've purchased the organ, and it's being taken down and put in storage. The next stage now is to finalize how it will fit in the Mander space and whether we want to enhance the specifications at all. We'll then put forward proposals to the college. That's been our strategy rather than to build a new tracker action organ. Also we need some liturgical sounds to do the accompaniments. We need an oboe, a harmonic flute, a swell to choir, just those kinds of basic things.

GB: It will be a 3-manual?

TB-W: Yes, at least a 3-manual.

GB: With pistons and memory?

TB-W: It will have pistons, but it won't have a stepper. I'm not into those sequencers. It will have some memory. A lot of the accompaniment skills relied on in this country is being able to use the manual and the pedal pistons together. There's a coupler that I don't think you have very often in the states called the great to pedal pistons coupler. For many years organists would learn to accompany using great pedal pistons. When you press the great thumb piston, it operates the pedals as well. The idea is that you would use the great and the swell. People like Howells, Whitlock and Ireland learned their craft of organ management by using this skill. That's something which is fast disappearing, because everybody uses sequencers these days to change one of the stops.

GB: I have on my instrument Great 1 and 2 pistons which affect the pedal also. I wired it in mainly for the cadential 32's and accompanying. It's easier than a toe stud, of course.

TB-W: Yes, it is. Our organ will be quite a modest specification, probably about 49 stops. We deliberately decided to go down this route, because a lot of the new organs being built at the moment in Cambridge are of a particular type. Selwyn's having a Létourneau built now.

BB: We'll be there week after next. Létourneau does excellent work.

TB-W: Gerton College has a new Swiss organ by St-Martin. It is a very clever 4-manual with about five stops in each manual. It's a particular style of instrument which does lend itself very easily to turn of the century style music. There are very few romantic symphonic organs in Cambridge--King's is a modest example. St. John's is not really one, but it pretends to be. You should go and see the one in Our Lady and the English Martyrs.

GB: We went down there and saw it, but we haven't heard it yet. I understand it is used in Sarah MacDonald's CD of Howells' Evening Canticles with the Selwyn College Choir.

TB-W: Yes, it's a very fine romantic organ, and they restored it very well.

GB: I love the sound of the crescendo "build up" while accompanying at King's.

TB-W: It's fine up to about mezzo-forte I think. 

GB: I was surprised to see that bass flute inside the organ screen in the staircase to the console.

TB-W: Yes.

BB: Do you ever get to play other instruments in town?

TB-W: I played that Harrison on Monday. The King's Voices (mixed voices) sing the services on Mondays.

BB: Did you play last Sunday for Evensong or was it an organ scholar?

TB-W: Yes, I played.

BB: We were there and have been attending rehearsals of the Men and Boys choir and Evensongs for several weeks.

TB-W: What did we do? The Mathias--the Jesus service, and the Hadley My Beloved Spake. Well, it's quite a nice thing to do and no pressure for me. It's nice not to be in charge and to be at the steering end.

GB: It's quite a room.

TB-W: Yes! What kind of church do you work in?

GB: Presbyterian. It's about 1200 members. We have an adult choir of 40 people, a Youth Choir of about 40+, children's choirs of about 50 and three handbell choirs. We have an auditioned choir called Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia consisting of two choirs from 3rd-7th grade and 8th grade through high school. I direct the younger choristers, and a colleague does the high school singers. Barbara accompanies one choir and directs a third group called the Cantabile Singers, which is an all-girl choir in grades 8 through 12.

TB-W: Both boys and girls together?

BB: Yes. The original concept was just to be children. The girls could stay until age 15 or 16, and the boys were supposed to leave when their voices changed. They wouldn't go away, so we just changed the concept. The older group sings SATB, and the younger ones all treble.

TB-W: In some cathedrals where there are volunteer choristers, like Carlisle and St. Alban's, they occasionally arrange for the ex-choristers whose voices have recently changed to come and sing with the existing choristers, so that they don't feel that they've been thrown out on the scrap heap. Of course, we are desperate for altos, tenors and basses.

GB: Well, are you playing Monday at King's?

TB-W: Yes, I think so. It's extraordinary, isn't it, that there's so much activity in a radius of about three miles. Most churches in this country are gasping for decent resources. The real sadness of this training is that most choral scholars, especially at Trinity where they have girls, unless they want to make a career as a professional singer, they don't tend to carry on singing in church choirs. It's a real shame. Then, of course, we have a dearth of organists.

GB: I was going to ask you if you have problems like we do in the states.

TB-W: It's getting bad now. Early this month we had the open day for prospective organ scholars, those who would like to apply to Cambridge to be organ scholars. We had 24, which if you consider that we have 22 colleges in the scheme isn't very much.

GB: So the university will have to take everyone?

TB-W: That wasn't the actual competition. That happens in September, but it's indicative of how things are. Last year I asked the question of how many of them were expecting to go on to be a professional organist. I think only two were.

GB: Are the organ scholars at King's going to continue in the profession?

TB-W: I think Daniel Hyde is staying on another year as a postgraduate student, because there are hardly any openings at the moment.

BB: What about Ashley Grote?

TB-W: Ashley still has another year, so he's set there. The really high fliers like the idea of going to London perhaps and maybe being an organ scholar or one of the assistants at St. Paul's or Westminster ABBey. They don't like the idea of going somewhere in middle England and subsequently doing scout mastering or something.

GB: Since you have two choirs, do you have a lot of administration work?

TB-W: I spend a lot of my time dealing with administrative things to do with the choristers and the interaction with child protection monitoring procedures. A lot of administrative work is generated just by having the choristers. If we want the choristers to take part in a concert, either we or the person promoting the concert has to be responsible for getting licenses for those children to take part in that concert. Technically, that means filling in 12-page forms, getting passport photographs and doctor's certificates for the kids to take part.

BB: That's just for them to leave the country?

TB-W: Yes.

BB: Do you take your choir on tour every year?

TB-W: Yes, we do, but we don't undertake concerts for which people are charged, so that problem doesn't arise. There was a story I heard about Wells Cathedral. Wells took their choir to the States about three years ago. They had not only to work out a schedule which corresponded to legislation concerning rehearsal time, sufficient bathroom stops and this sort of thing. They then had to keep a diary about how the actual tour went, so they could compare the two. They had to have something written down in case somebody made any allegations, or wanted to pursue litigation or complained about being tired, became ill, etc. They would have a record. Things are going berserk. Of course, most places take the easy way out and don't want to deal with that. It's hard enough to get choristers in the first place and yet, there is still this much trouble.

BB: What about your mixed college choir? Do you tour with them every year?

TB-W: Yes, we do. We try to have each choir have a project of going away once a year. It's sometimes nice to take the mixed choir away to the Continent whereas the boys choir might go to a cathedral. They've done a lot of touring in the last eighteen months or so. We've taken them to Paris and Copenhagen. In the new year we'll be going to Edinburgh to sing services for Epiphany. One thing I'd like to ask you actually is what's your view of church music in this country coming from the States.

GB: Well, we always said that God lives at King's College! (laughter) The first time I heard a recording of the King's choir was in the early 1960s, and it was the most in tune singing I'd ever heard. I didn't know it was possible to sing like that. I got the bug as an undergraduate and through the years we learned to love the wonderful music making at St. John's and other colleges and cathedrals as well.

BB: We think church music here is wonderful with performances to uncompromising standards in many places.

TB-W: The world even in this country has moved on a great deal since 1960 to 2003.

BB: Oh, sure.

TB-W: Have you seen a copy of the magazine Cathedral Music?

GB: Yes, we take it. It is excellent.

TB-W: In there is an article by the organist at Guilford Cathedral trying to defend a very difficult situation. Guilford, as you probably know, is a post-war cathedral. Barry Rose was the first organist, and he recruited the kids. They started from nothing. He managed to get scholarships at the local schools. 40 years ago it was possible to do that. In a changing society and the way that parents run children's lives these days, it isn't possible to do that nowadays. One couldn't start a cathedral choir from nothing in the way that Barry was able to do in the 1960s. In Guilford, his successors have had to cope with and deal with that legacy. It's been very difficult. In that situation they've decided to scrap the Saturday services, so the boys will have one day of the weekend free. I can see that in some cathedrals that will happen more and more. I do think that things are different. In places like King's and Westminster Abbey where the resources are rich you will always have the tradition continued. When you get to places where they operate on a part-time basis you have trouble even getting an alto at all. When I first went to the cathedral organist conference, it was very obvious some people are having difficulty securing lay clerks. However, they wanted to pretend that they were doing as well as their colleagues were. I think now that organists are beginning to be much more vocal and frank about their experiences in recruiting boy choristers and adults. In trying to persuade parents of the commitment involved, I think we are seeing the start of fragmentation. Maybe in King's and Westminster Abbey it will continue for years and years, but I don't think it's going to continue everywhere. Even if you try and take those kinds of things into account. you then throw in the changing liturgical demands and the more informal stances that the clergy likes to take who perhaps question the need for having such regular formal services. Even initiatives like Common Worship dilute what the Book of Common Prayer offers in terms of musical opportunities. They would say otherwise. They point to all the resources that they produce. Actually it's a dilution of a music that used to be so rich. They are encouraging to ditch 400 years of music and use theirs instead. Their music simply isn't in the same division. Then you're caught in a problem because clearly there are questions of whether Evensong is just a time warp and are you just presenting music that was written 400 years ago. But what else is being offered?

GB: Dumbed down rubbish.

TB-W: It is dumbed down. Some people are just taking the position that you just have to go with the flow.

BB: Any difficulties or problems you may face over here are more than doubled in the States.

TB-W: I think you are further down the track than we are. The only thing we've got that saves us really is the tradition and the history of the buildings that we happen to be in.

GB: I was commenting to Barbara as we walked here today that I think that educated people here in the UK are more cognizant of the arts because of the long tradition. Our parish is an unusual congregation in that almost all are professionals and world travelers, well educated and at the top of their profession. We are very fortunate to have much support for all our endeavors and concerts. However, educated people in the states in general are not usually musically cultured or supportive of the arts. I think that the vast majority of professionals in the states still listen to pop music on the radio for entertainment, and a small percentage support the symphony and community concerts, etc.

TB-W: Certainly. One can't talk of a more superior tradition--you can't talk about the western tradition of classical music as being superior to ethnic musicology or even studies in popular music and jazz music which has over 100 years now. It isn't really possible to talk of Beethoven, Brahms and Bach in the same reverential tones we used to and get away with it. So, the times they are a-changing!

BB: It's not as scary for us in our position.

TB-W: Again, you're further down the track. I've been very lucky to have the opportunity both in Edinburgh and before when I was at Winchester to be able to deal in music which I love and was brought up on. I count my lucky stars that I'm still in a job which allows me to do it.  I'm not quite sure that in another ten years time it will still be there. It's only a trust fund that keeps things going and pays for my salary. That's a big part of my fortune, really. For as long as the college wants it to happen, that's fine. I can see a time, even here, where the dean might retire and the college might say, "Oh, do we really want a dean? Do we really want to have Evensong?"

GB: A turnover of ministers in any church could greatly change musical things. The stories are legion.

TB-W: Of course, the decline in churchgoing is becoming very alarmingly rapid in this country. It's slightly higher in Scotland. Perhaps we should leave for rehearsal now.

Author's note: As we left for that day's rehearsal of men and women and walked through the beautiful grounds of Jesus College, the mood of our philosophical discussion greatly changed. Tim is a high energy, easy-going person who smiles a lot and encourages his choristers in the joy of music. He is also an excellent, natural pianist who plays with much ease and joy. His choristers obviously enjoy making music with him. We look forward to visiting Jesus College again and attending Evensong after the Hill organ is installed. We also look forward to meeting up with Tim at Windsor Castle.

Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh

Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh are organists/choirmasters at First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, as well as directors of Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia. Mrs. Betenbaugh is also chapel organist and assistant choral director at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. Last summer they completed a 13-week sabbatical in the UK, visiting Cambridge, Oxford, London and Salisbury. See previous articles from their sabbatical: "London Chats #1: Michael McCarthy," October, 2003, p. 18; "John Tavener's The Veil of the Temple," November, 2003, p. 17; and "Cambridge Chats #1: Timothy Byram-Wigfield," December, 2003, pp. 16-19.

We had a delightful interview with the charming Patrick Russill on June 24, 2003, in his office at the Royal Academy of Music, where he is Head of Choral Direction and Church Music, following a weekend of attending services and rehearsals of his choir at the London Oratory. The Oratory's weekend schedule was one of the busiest we had seen on our trip. The professional all-adult London Oratory Choir supports the Latin services (Mass and Vespers) while the Oratory Junior Choir (boys and girls aged 8 and upwards) serves the English Family Mass. In addition, the Oratory School Schola sings for the Saturday Mass. The newly released CD of Patrick's choir has recently received a favorable review in the August 2003 issue of The Diapason. Our chat began with a discussion of the various types of music programs in the UK, more specifically the Church Music program now available at the Royal Academy.

 

PR: You've seen for yourselves that there is now a wide range of different choirs in English church music: all-professional; adult central London church choirs (like the Oratory); the traditional, historic boys and men's choirs (in the cathedrals and at Oxford and Cambridge); and the all-choral-scholar choirs with young women and men (at Cambridge colleges such as Trinity and Clare in particular). These different types are all central to the current state of professional choral culture in this country.

 

GB: What about church music in the Royal Academy of Music?

 

PR: Well, historically, the London conservatoires always trained church musicians very often either in a gap year or a couple of gap years before students went to university or sometimes at post graduate level after university. This was nearly always through the medium of their organ courses. There would be choir training classes as well. But there was no specific vocational training, nothing in a liturgical context or with theological understanding at all. There was nothing which had a real church music label in any of the British conservatoires until 1987 when the Principal here, who had been my tutor in Oxford at New College, Sir David Lumsden, decided that he was going to have a church music course here in the Academy--and he asked me to set it up. It was to be a contextual, supporting course, predominantly for organists, but also for singers and composers, taking a broader view of church music issues and to fill in gaps. I didn't have church music students as such, and students didn't actually graduate as church music students. They'd graduate as composers, singers, organists or whatever. That was the situation for ten years. No other conservatoire was offering anything like this at all. Of course, at Oxbridge the sort of training you get in church music is entirely based on the liturgical experience of the chapel in which you're working--very often, a rather narrow perspective. I was giving students the experience of going to the local synagogue, of Orthodox music, and giving them an understanding of Catholic church music, and from that basis the European tradition in particular--in addition to the traditional Anglican experience. I was very much aided in that by the Academy's head of organ, Nicholas Danby, who'd been my organ professor when I was at Oxford. He was also organ professor at the Royal College of Music. He, like me, was Catholic but he had great love for and insight into the real essentials of the English tradition.

 

BB: So how did your church music career start?

 

PR: Well, that was thanks to Nicholas Danby. He insisted I make myself known at the London Oratory (which was where he thought I ought to work). The organist there was Nicholas's own old organ teacher, the legendary Ralph Downes, who designed the organs both at the Oratory and at the Royal Festival Hall. Downes showed interest in me and engineered that I became his assistant. He wanted to retire and shortly after I arrived he nominated me to be his successor as organist--a kind of apostolic succession! I have to say I felt very ill prepared. In retrospect I think I should've studied a year or two abroad before going into that job. I did a lot of learning on the job, and I think a lot of my work there initially was very callow.

 

GB: We can all say that, can't we? (laughter)

 

PR: Yes, true, but at age 23 going into a job like that without hardly any previous experience is quite tough. That was in 1977. I then started teaching harmony and counterpoint here at the Academy in 1982 and did some history classes. And then in 1987 I initiated the Church Music program. In 1995 the current Principal, Dr. Curtis Price, who is an American and a former professor of music at King's College, London, was appointed. He felt that we couldn't keep on running a Church Music Course without first-study students, without majors. So, we decided what we had to do was to fill a real gap in British conservatoires: choral direction. Incredibly we were the first Choral Directing Department in an English conservatoire. Things are now beginning to change. The Royal College of Music now has a Master's course for choral conducting. And I understand that there are developments at the Birmingham Conservatoire, which may well be linked with the Royal College of Organists' move to Birmingham. Paul Spicer, conductor of the Finzi Singers, is in the driving seat for this.

 

GB: We heard his concert at the Royal College of Music with the all-volunteer Whitehall Choir and the Brandenburg Sinfonia.

 

PR: We decided at the Academy that we would have to have a primary stylistic focus. So I decided to hang on to the church music context so I could define the repertoire, the stylistic base we're working from--that is, the English experience of the repertoire in English and Latin in a fairly broad-minded view, not peddling any one particular viewpoint. That understanding of style--the importance of ensemble, tuning, clarity, also the function of church music--has really got to be heard in the daily service, because that is where the culture of corporate discipline and style springs from. But even if you take church music out into the concert hall or onto CD, you need an understanding of what that's about. Rather than "church music with some choir training" the course became "choral direction, contexted within church music." Most of my students end up with a Master's degree.

 

GB: Is there usually a problem with an American transferring here?

 

PR: No. They can't bring any accreditation, but they don't need to. In the Academy as a whole we have a lot of Americans--and even an American Principal!

 

GB: Dr. Price studied at Southern Illinois and Harvard?

 

PR: Correct. He said to me, "Can you get the students?" I said, "Yes, fine. How many can I have?" They said, "two a year." Two! Actually this exactly matches the intake of the Academy's Orchestral Conducting course, which is highly sought-after and has a tremendous record. In addition to the choral direction specialists, I also work with the organists. The Head of Organ, David Titterington, and I have a very good, close working relationship. The Academy now has organ courses not just at the bachelor's level and postgraduate level, but we also have a foundation course which doesn't have large numbers, but significant individuals coming on who may be headed for an Oxford organ scholarship. They come here for a year's conservatoire experience of London professional standards, intensive solo organ training which you typically don't get at Oxbridge. The organ scholars there often haven't the time for it since they have to be so focused on the accompanimental arts. Here they get "choir training" training, which at the moment they still don't get at Cambridge, though influential figures in Cambridge such as David Hill and Timothy Byram-Wigfield (at Jesus College, and shortly to move to St. George's, Windsor) are hoping to start building a choir training course. GB: Some of the well known English choir trainers and conductors would not pass the first year conducting course at Westminster Choir College. (laughter)

 

PR: Was that your alma mater?

 

GB: Yes, I also went to Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. With many English conductors the musicianship is there, the skill and knowledge is there, but they can't communicate with their hands. The American way is big on conducting technique. PR: This is a major issue. I only started thinking about conducting technique when I started teaching the choir training class here. I learned on the job, because there had been no tradition of courses in the UK.

 

GB: The Choir College had 3 years of conducting classes at the undergraduate level.

 

PR: I was a singer for a while as a male alto. The physical contact between singing and the conducting technique was something that interested me from watching my Oratory predecessor John Hoban who also was a singer. Also from watching other people work like John Eliot Gardiner. That I found interesting, so then I started to try and quantify what I thought and felt, in terms of relating conducting to breathing and relaxation--actually opening a door for singers rather than putting them in a constricting box. New students who come here are often quite surprised by the emphasis on gestural technique-- though the Americans not so much! One of my important contacts is with the Leipzig Hochschule and their head of choral direction Roland Börger, who is a good friend. We have an ongoing formal professorial exchange arrangement. I was fascinated to see his work. His whole training had been through gestural command. He is a very elegant, economical conductor indeed. He does great work with my students here. Though we very much speak the same musical language, our strengths lie in different areas. When I've gone to work with the Leipzig students, I've had to deal much more with handling singers' morale within a group dynamic and with visual technique: mimicry, questions of enunciation, verbal color, reinforcing pulse and phrasing through the face.

 

GB: I worked with Helmut Rilling many years ago. Of course, he's not a choral man as such, but a wonderful conducting scholar. Basically the Germans, at least the ones I know, are not vocal colorists, are they?

 

PR: It depends where you look. I think they would say they are, but they use a different area of the spectrum, a darker one. My German visitors seem to find the English choirs, the boy choirs, somewhat underdeveloped as regards vocal color. There are exceptions of course. They always seem to respond to the current New College, Oxford choir. Edward Higginbottom there gets a great sense of color and relaxation. There's a wonderful freedom of not just interpretive expression but actual technical expression from the boys. He's had a great record of encouraging young men as well.

 

BB: Of the three different places we were in Oxford, the camaraderie between him and his boys was the best--talking back and forth, chatting with the boys about what they did that day, whereas the other two places were pretty much straightforward.

 

PR: Yes, he clearly has a really interesting mind. The reason why he gets such response from the boys is because he engages them intellectually. Nevertheless, in England we need a greater emphasis on the old adage: "What they (the singers) see is what you (the choral director) get."

 

BB: Yes, exactly.

 

PR: Now in the London professional church situation you actually don't have to show everything. You've got to come to an assessment of how much your singers are able to absorb visually, because they are working under severe time restrictions, very often with music they are seeing for the first time. The singers are always very helpful. The two most commonly asked questions are 1) breathing and 2) dynamics. They want to know that you've got a unified idea and can communicate the simple general shape of a piece. Once they are happy with the essentials, then the more sophisticated aspects can be conveyed by visual and eye contact once you come to the performance--there generally isn't time in the rehearsal to do more.

 

GB: Phrasing?

 

PR: If the singers know how long the breath is then they'll take the phrasing, the actual shaping, from you. They are generally extraordinarily responsive, because, let's face it, most of them are highly experienced interpretative artists in their own right. If there is a fault here, it's that the restrictions on rehearsal time can lead to a very generalized approach to interpretation--favoring choral regimentation and the development of one choral sound over interpretation. But that is the fault of the directors rather than the singers. I'm sure you've come to your own conclusions about those choirs that generally have developed one interpretation, which essentially is the unvarying choir sound, where every piece is made to fit that concept.

 

GB: Yes, several of the top American college choirs work that way. More choirs back in the 1960s used the technique first and then the music superimposed on the technique. However, these days more American college choirs are into correct performance practice and trying to achieve different sounds for the different periods of repertoire, especially in the last 15 to 20 years.

 

PR: I'm glad to hear it. In my teaching I try to encourage the students to be as creative and as quick as they can about developing appropriate sound both through gesture, using their own voices and by the different sounds that they hear from choirs in this country.

 

GB: What sort of students do you take at the Academy?

 

PR: Well, you have to bear in mind I only take postgraduates for a two-year course with two students in each year. Currently I have two Americans, one who is already active as a period instrument orchestral and choral conductor, and the other from a Midwest Lutheran college background--both men. And then there are two women, one English (she's from Oxford) and one Irish (from Dublin). And only the English student is a church musician.

 

GB: When your students graduate, are they going to be able to get a position or positions in this country that equals a full-time wage?

 

PR: It varies. Unless you are working in a cathedral you won't get a full-time post. But most students gradually build up a portfolio of freelance casual work and regular work, often combining church, secular choral and academic teaching work. Even I'm doing something similar--I'm working for the Academy in a half-time post and also working at the Oratory half-time. That suits me fine.

 

GB: The English church choral system seems male-dominated, at least as far as directors are concerned. Do you see that changing in our lifetime?

 

PR: I don't know--it'll certainly take time. But because of the expansion of opportunities for girls in the cathedral and college choirs there will inevitably be more girls coming through the choirs who have ambitions to be directors. One major factor is--how vital is the linkage between organ playing and choral directing? I am a choral director and I'm an organist, but I'm not necessarily the choral director that I am because I am an organist. And the same can also be said for so many English choral directors (though on the other hand there are English organists who direct choirs because they are organists and not because they have a gift with singers!). At the moment there are a handful of women working in the English cathedrals: Louise Marsh at Guildford (a former student of mine), Rosemary Field at Portsmouth for example, but only one director of music, and that at a small Catholic cathedral at Arundel.

 

GB: Patrick, I'm interested that you're holding an influential teaching post here in the English tradition but you are a Catholic. Would you comment on the ecumenical climate for church musicians in the UK?

 

PR: I think the students find me quite an interesting animal, because my education was certainly through the Anglican system, but my background as a child and my working venue now is Catholic. I can happily conduct an Anglican Choral Evensong if I want. The same is true of James O'Donnell (a Catholic) and David Hill (an Anglican). They will find their way around the Latin Mass with Gregorian propers and a Victoria setting as easily as an Anglican Evensong with Smith responses, a Walford Davies Psalm and Dyson in D.

 

BB: Sounds like what we love!

 

PR: That is very much the English culture at the moment--in church music at least there's a very good inter-denominational understanding. I think the thing about Catholic centers like Westminster Cathedral and the Oratory is that they are seen as being just as much part of the London church music as the Anglican places. We're regarded as quite central, largely because of the international repertoire that we perform and because there's an improved perception of Latin as part of European culture rather than as a Roman Catholic emblem. And the recovery of the Latin tradition by the Anglican choirs has had a liberating effect on choral sound, from George Guest's choir at St. John's College, Cambridge in the early 1960s onwards. There is far more emphasis now on the color of choral sound than on perfection of ensemble. Though of course a better understanding of vocal technique by conductors actually makes it easier to achieve a natural musical ensemble of course. Nevertheless, that's not a quality you will hear and see in all choral directors in England.

 

GB: No. At many of the places we visited there were ragged entrances, just from the fact that the culture here is not to breathe for the choir. In first year conducting at Westminster Choir College, if you couldn't breathe and bring the choir in on the downbeat, you got an F. That was the first thing to do. Of course, that was with the choir right in front of you. In a divided chancel without eye contact it's harder.

 

PR: But even in that situation it still works the same way though. The whole point is one should be able to bring in the choir without doing much at all with the hand. Just breathe and come in. I have to say I've not really seen much of what goes on in the States. By and large in England we're all feeling our way as to how to deliver technical teaching. Here at the Academy I do virtually all the technical teaching. Of course there are masterclasses which can be very valuable for the practicalities of how to rehearse. Stephen Cleobury did a fine class with the BBC Singers (organized by the BBC) a couple of days ago. Stephen was wonderful in saying, "What does the choir need to look at--how do we look at it--do we need to do that once more--or do you think the singers will get it right the next time anyway?"--pragmatic things rather than matters of gestural technique. James O'Donnell is also wonderful, very economical indeed. Getting people who are really expert in teaching gestural command that will always get the result, either the first time or at least the second time, is not so easy. One of the members of staff here, Jeremy Summerly (director of the Oxford Camerata), has one of the most vestigial gestural techniques I've ever seen. It's extremely small, yet, coupled with what goes on with the face and diaphragm it's totally explicit, very relaxed, very vocal, very disciplined.

 

GB: That's the way I was taught.

 

PR: Exactly--it's all done on the breath. And then you can control the horizontal melodic line at the same time as the vertical pulse. And that's essential in the polyphonic music which is the heart of the English tradition. Polyphony seems to be one area where I'm conscious of a cultural difference between the Americans and the Brits. There seems to be a different way of analyzing the score. I find that American students find it very difficult to absorb polyphonic scores, to see the wood from the trees. All the entrances are marked, they try to give every single entrance. So, of course, the gestural preparation tends to be too late. Other problems then follow on: how do I indicate the character of the lead? If many leads, which one should I give? Do I mouth each one? But the English tradition is based on the conductor presuming that his singers (even youngsters) already have an informed understanding of the polyphonic concept. People like James O'Donnell and David are very good at that: leading the singers through and trusting the singers to do it.

 

That leads on to another essential characteristic of the English tradition. There's a really different mind-set between chorus-mastering and choral conducting when you've actually got an instrument that already has a built-in intellectual and physical motor. You don't have to do much actually to call that forth, you've got to do other things. That can be very difficult for inexperienced students when they're presented with musical singers. At Academy auditions many candidates come in and just don't know what to do. They've been used to drumming the music into their choirs and so haven't actually started to think about the essence of interpretation. Questions of appropriate tempo, elegant articulation, verbal color and intensity--very often there has been no background in these considerations at all. Fortunately now we have singers in the Academy who are already expert choralists (many of them already working professionally), so my conducting students can experience the truth of "What they see is what you get"! I place much more emphasis on actually showing what you want and not just rehearsing what you want. The initiative needs be taken by the choral director, rather than the old English way of simply listening to the choir's performance and then making a reactive comment. Even though I only have two students a year here, I think there is a growing feeling in England that choral direction is something which can and should be taught and that naturally gifted young directors still need to learn. Of course, you can't instill talent if there's no talent in the first place, but you can help refine it and hone it with technical training. There's not been a sea-change yet in attitudes towards the choral director's training in England, but things are definitely starting to change.

 

GB: Super! This has been great! Would you chat about the deputy system in London?

 

PR: Yes, all the main London choirs with the exception of the BBC Singers are part-time or are to a greater or lesser extent ad hoc, even though conductors are always going to use their favorite singers. If, for example, you are a lay clerk at Westminster Abbey or Westminster Cathedral the job is permanent, but not full-time, even though actually it is well-paid pro rata. Even in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey the singers will either need to do solo work or they will do consort work outside. You'll find them working with all the concert groups you've heard on CDs and others as well. The only full-time professional choir working 9 to 5, 5 days a week, is the BBC Singers (24 singers). The London singer needs to have the liberty to take on freelance work, even if he or she has got a base in the church. The work of choirs like The Monteverdi Choir, The Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort, even the Tallis Scholars, is part-time work, paid pro rata by appearance and by rehearsal session. The only way that you can staff that sort of thing, since you're working around people's diaries, is by working with a pool. The deputy system in London is essentially this pool of professional singers whom you need to ring up to fill the balance. This happens with all choirs, particularly the church choirs since they are at the bottom of the heap because their rates are the lowest.

 

Nevertheless, it's surprising how many singers make great efforts to keep their contact with the church even though the rate of pay is less attractive than working with other choirs. If one of my singers is on a 3-week tour with the Monteverdi Choir or The Sixteen, then I won't see them at the Oratory and they will need to send in an approved deputy; but when they get back it's like the return of the Prodigal Son--personal relationships are very strong, and many of them go back to student days or even further. Most choral directors will have their own list of approved "deps" from which the regular singer must provide a deputy. And many of the "deps" are familiar members of the choir "family". Here's my own current list for the Oratory and you'll see I've also made additional private comments [We were shown the list.]--it's my most important tool as a choral director. If I'm away I may need to get a deputy for myself. And there are deputy organists and directors. And I have an orchestral fixer (contractor) for when we have an orchestral mass (generally 3 times a year).

 

BB: You do get vacation from your position at the Oratory?

 

PR: Theoretically, yes! We sing 52 Sundays a year. There is no actual designated holiday period at the Oratory within the year. I'm entitled to 28 days holiday a year including four Sundays.

 

BB: Do you take it?

 

PR: Just about. I don't always take my Sundays off as holidays, actually. Some of them have been when I'm in Leipzig doing my exchange work, because I have to go there once a year to teach.

 

GB: What are the fees for the singers?

 

PR: The Oratory is near the top, it appears, but it's not right at the very top. For a typical Sunday morning at the moment we pay £45, a typical Sunday afternoon £38.

 

GB: Even with all that outside processing around you did last Sunday afternoon? (laughter)

 

PR: They got £45 for that. Weddings go up to £62. The rates are higher for other major liturgical celebrations, especially over Holy Week, when we do the full Latin schedule consisting of Tenebrae on Wednesday night, Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday night, Tenebrae on Friday morning, Afternoon Liturgy on Friday afternoon, Tenebrae on Saturday morning, Easter Vigil on Saturday night, Sunday morning Solemn Mass, and Sunday afternoon Solemn Vespers. Those are very long services. I have to say, actually, I think the program at the Oratory is bigger than anywhere else. Generally, the quality of the music is such that the choristers are prepared to do that. Also they like the fact that the liturgy itself is enduring.

 

GB: Good word!

 

PR: It's not "here today and gone tomorrow." Whatever they may think about it theologically, I think many singers find the service to be very traditional, pastoral, cultic, and essentially eternal. It's a sort of musical and cultural bedrock for them.

 

GB: There was no trouble after Vatican II with the music at the Oratory?

 

PR: Actually the Oratory Fathers always wanted to keep it as pre-Vatican II as they can.

 

BB: That's wonderful!

 

GB: Great!

 

PR: I'm interested you take that view.

 

GB: With the altar on the back wall?

 

PR: Oh, they wouldn't move the altar! Interestingly, in scholarship and re-reading the original Vatican documents, you find this idea of westward-facing celebration is actually not in the original conciliar documents. It was something that was produced much later. The Oratory Fathers have never gone along with that. While they are absolutely loyal to the authority of the Pope in the modern Catholic Church, they're deeply traditional, very retentive, very consistent, quite insulated and deliberately so.

 

GB: That can be a good or bad problem.

 

PR: Well, it can make some problems for me. For example, the approach to music from the modern era is extremely cautious, but the positive aspect is that I am never asked to do anything that is less than a five-star masterpiece. I can do all the Victoria, Palestrina, Gabrieli I want, and the bigger the better. I'm not being asked to do John Rutter-- perhaps I should complain? (laughter)

 

BB: We enjoyed hearing the Latin Mass.

 

PR: Well, what I really value (and so the singers) is that I'm dealing with something that is central to the European tradition, above all at Easter. I think that the Easter services at the Oratory are the finest representation of the classic Latin liturgy you'll find anywhere in the world wherever it's available in the new rite. It's not the Tridentine rite. It's the new rite in Latin, which is actually the normative form of the new rite, though many American bishops, and even some English bishops, don't admit that. At Westminster Cathedral at 10:30 every morning there is a Latin mass. The only mass the Cathedral choir sings which is in Latin from beginning to end is Saturday morning.

 

BB: Martin Baker invited us to come on Saturday.

 

PR: You're probably going to that and then going to the boys rehearsal afterwards. That's the way my students normally dip their toes into that system.

 

GB: Right, this has been great. Thank you so much for visiting with us. We're late for the Mozart Requiem rehearsal.

 

Prior to our interview that day, Patrick gave us a tour of the Royal Academy of Music, where we also had lunch in the dining hall. Following our interview we sat in on a rehearsal with the Academy Choir and Period Instrument Orchestra as they prepared for a concert the following day of the Mozart Requiem (edition--Robert Levin) conducted by Sir Roger Norrington. Patrick had been a kind and gracious host to us for several days, and we were most appreciative of the opportunity to get a first hand peek from an insider's perspective of both the Oratory and the Royal Academy.

by Jason Overall

Jason Overall works with the pipe organ builder Goulding & Wood, Inc., in tonal design and project development. He graduated from Furman University of Greenville, South Carolina with a degree in music theory, studying organ with Charles Tompkins and composition with Mark Kilstofte. From there he went on to study composition with John Boda at Florida State University, also studying organ with Michael Corzine. In addition to his work with Goulding & Wood, Mr. Overall is an active church musician in the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis.

 

Robert J. Powell is one of the most recognized names in contemporary church music. He has a countless number of publications in every genre and has led sessions in conferences across the country. Since 1968, Mr. Powell has been organist-choirmaster at Christ Church, Greenville, one of South Carolina's oldest and largest Episcopal churches. During his nearly thirty-five year tenure, Mr. Powell has taken the program from a single children's choir that led the 9:00 am Morning Prayer service to a comprehensive array of adult and children choirs, instrumental ensembles and a thriving concert series. Prior to his position at Christ Church, Robert Powell served the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York as assistant organist and Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, Meridian, Mississippi as organist-choirmaster. Yet it is his compositions that have done the most to secure his reputation.

 

Mr. Powell has written well over 1,000 anthems and service music for the Episcopal church. His setting of the Gloria in excelsis is thought to be "The One True Gloria" by many people in the pew. Nearly every church musician has come to rely on the dependable, accessible music of Robert Powell, and with such an encyclopedic output, it is easy to find the perfect piece for even the most difficult situations.

If Bob's reputation is earned through his composition, it is his generosity of spirit that most touches those who know him. His warmth and genuine Christian spirit provide the basis of his career, his music-making and his composition. In his music, Bob weaves together a sensitive spirituality, no-nonsense practicality and a liberal dose of good humor.

At the end of 2002, Mr. Powell will retire from Christ Church, leaving behind a flourishing music program. He makes it clear, however, that he isn't retiring. Bob says that he is looking forward to spending even more time composing and the opportunity to try his hand at substitute playing.  In May, I was able to ask Bob about his career and experiences. Following is a portion of our conversation.

Who are some of the composers or teachers that inspired you?

Well, of course Alec Wyton was my mentor and he always encouraged me. He is a wonderful person, and he was always a great inspiration. In fact, when Abingdon Press was first starting their music publishing business, they asked Alec to send them an anthem. He said he didn't want to at that time, but that he had a young student--meaning me--that would send them one, and I did. They took "Ancient of Days" or some anthem that's out of print, so I sent them another. Pretty soon I sent them twelve at once, and they took about ten of them. Finally Earl Copes, who was one of the editors at that time, called up and asked, "How fast does (and he named an anthem) go?" By that time I had written fifteen others, and I didn't even remember it. He had to sing to me over the phone to show me how it goes. I never put [tempo markings] on pieces because speeds don't mean anything to me. I don't play the same speed anyway each time. If you ever see a piece of mine with a metronome indication, it is usually because publishers want it.

Who else besides Alec Wyton?

This will be a surprise: I came up in rural Mississippi playing in what was called a Union church. That is, it was Baptist two Sundays a month and Presbyterian, which I was, one Sunday a month, and Methodist the other Sunday with circuit riding preachers. It was wonderful, and of course all of the congregation came to all of the services, whether it was Baptist or Presbyterian or whatever. So I came up playing the Sunday School piano, like everybody does, it seems. They bought a Hammond organ and said "You can play the thing: it's got a keyboard!" I'd been taking piano lessons, but I said, "I can't play this thing." So I went to a town near us, Greenville, Mississippi, and found an organ teacher. He played at St. James Episcopal on an old two-manual Estey, and I learned how to play on that. He was a wonderful person who was also a band director and a good organist. His name was Walter E. Parks. I would go in for my organ lesson and do the usual things: Eight Little Preludes and Fugues and all of that. Then he'd say, "Now it's time for our composition lesson." And for the same price I'd have another three hours. We did Preston Ware Orem's book and the Prout books, the Percy Goetschius book of composition. It was wonderful fun for me. He was a great influence.

Did you keep up with him?

He died at the keyboard after I left high school. I went to Louisiana State University, and I ended up with Frank Page, the organist at the Catholic student center and a great teacher. He would give us assignments, like harmonize a melody, and I would transpose it and harmonize it six different ways. I was ambitious in those days--you learn not to be after a while, I guess--but it was fun. I studied composition and organ at the school and got degrees in both of them, then I went off to the Army. I went to Atlanta first and was a junior choir director: my first experience with a junior choir. My hometown church didn't have a choir of any kind. In fact, the first choir of any kind that I ever heard was the LSU concert choir. In the army, [I was stationed] first in Atlanta, then in Japan, which was a wonderful experience. The Korean conflict was over then, and I had a choir of Japanese women who worked at the Army base and American soldiers, which sang for chapel services. It was a great experience in choir training. As far as other people who have influenced me? Publishers particularly have encouraged me; I could just go down the line. All of them are encouraging, and of course that doesn't mean they take everything you send them. I'm used to rejections, because obviously everybody can't publish every piece. I understand that. Usually if an anthem is rejected twenty-two times or so, I change it into an organ piece and send it somewhere else. So you get organ pieces out of anthems sometimes. I try to recycle things.

Who are some composers you enjoy listening to?

Amazingly enough, right at the moment I'm on a Dvorak kick. I think Dvorak was a great composer--underrated in a lot of ways. Mahler I have trouble with. Of course there's Bach. My old saying used to be "there are two categories of organ music: all the music that Bach wrote for organ and all the music that everyone else wrote for organ." Bach is always an influence, but you have to be careful with Bach because you can copy him easily and end up sounding like bad Bach. I try to listen to a variety of things, to check out all styles. I try just to sit there and listen and not do too much. I try to keep a balance. You can't do music all the time. I never take music with me on a trip or a vacation. I do not take any manuscript paper. I do not think about it.

When you're not on vacation, do you have set times for composing?

I try to get writing at about 9:00 and I go until about 11:00. Then I go out and have coffee with friends, come back around 2:00 and work a couple of hours, and that's it.

Do you compose four hours every day?

Well, it's like practicing. You lose it if you don't do it. I used to have a good time writing for junior choir when I had a junior choir to work with. Now it's difficult to write for junior choir. I do as well as I can with it, but it was much easier when I actually had one, even though we weren't singing my music, because you know what they can do. It's easy to write for SATB choir when you have one. It's more difficult when you don't. You're in a vacuum writing away.

What criteria do you look for in a text that you want to set?

It has to say something to the people who are going to be singing it and hearing it. If it's a regular anthem, something that rhymes well and makes good sense when it rhymes, and if it's a classical text, something I think I can set, I think that's basic. Also if it has some little dramatic thing in it like They Cast their Nets in Galilee, you can always make a little [motive] out of "nets." "Glory" is always a great word for me to use--"glorious" or something like that--because you can always make it soar out. So the text is very important in writing church music.

Although you have always been involved with the Episcopal Church, you've only done a couple of [settings of the] Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, one Jubilate Deo and of course the things that are in the hymnal. Was it a conscious decision to not write more canticles?

Not a conscious decision. I found that when I first started sending these canticles like "O be joyful" (the Jubilate Deo) or the Benedictus est, there were already many in the catalogs, and most of the publishers simply didn't want another one. How many "O be joyful"s can Concordia have after all?

Have you ever consciously tried to develop a Bob Powell style or a sound?

Heavens, no. I consciously try to make sounds like what the particular publishers publish. Obviously I wouldn't send a Concordia-type piece to a publisher that's used to publishing renewal music. So I have to study other composers' [pieces]--read them through and throw them away so I wouldn't be copying them, but just to get the general style of the music for a particular publisher. Also, I subscribe to a lot of these choral packets so I can see what Augsburg and Concordia or whoever is publishing, and I would write something like that.

With both the texts and with style, it seems like a very practical approach.

Yes, I write for small choirs, as you probably gathered. Choirs of twenty-five because that's what most choirs are. When you come right down to it, most choirs are not of Cathedral ability or size. I just can't write for fifty voices. I don't think in that way.

What about beyond that? Bach and Telemann and composers of their ilk weren't necessarily writing pieces that they thought would last for all eternity. They were writing music for next Sunday. Whereas people like Brahms and Beethoven were writing pieces that they intended to be around for a while.

No, I'm more on the Bach line. I know they're not going to be around forever. They'll be in print five years if you're lucky. If they don't sell, they don't sell. Then the publisher will put them out of print because they have to pay taxes on them whether they sell them or not. My pieces are all practical things and useful for specific occasions. Peace I Give to You, the Paraclete publication, is a Maundy Thursday text. I think the rector [at Christ Church] asked me to write something that we could use on Maundy Thursday, so I wrote that. Of course there are a few commissions here and there, and they want this, that and the other thing. So I say, "Sure, I'll do that." I don't know how to say no. I'm going to learn by the time I'm seventy-five. I might say no, but right now if anybody asks me to do anything I'd be glad to do it. It's fun.

How much lead time do you require to have something ready?

To write a piece? The Suite for American Folk Tunes was written in two weeks for Austin Lovelace. He said he needed something for organ and brass, and would I write him something. That was lucky. Sometimes it takes a month. The organ duet went along about six months.

What about a typical anthem?

A typical anthem is a week. I do like Searle Wright used to suggest. Just put it down quickly: everything that comes into your mind, put it down. You can always go back and fix it later.

How much editing do you do?

Very little. [laughs] Once it's in the ground there is very little revision made. It's not like Mozart where I hear it in my mind. I just keep improvising on the piano until it comes. I think John Ferguson said something like that--that you keep hitting away until it sounds right to you. And when it sounds right to you, then you go on to the next measure.

So you always compose at the piano?

Almost always. Sometimes at the organ. It's more difficult to compose organ pieces at the organ for me. It's easier to do it at the piano. All the choral pieces are done at the piano. Other people go out to the middle of a lake on a boat and write a piece, but I can't do that.

When you write organ pieces, do you ever . . .

Do I ever think of timbres? Not really. I hear a flute maybe once in a while, and maybe a reed here and there. But I never hear a timbre particularly, because it's all the notes. That's the important thing to me: the notes themselves, not the sounds. I leave it to good interpreters to decide what to make it do. They make it sound right. A good interpreter is really re-creating the music. The person that interprets it is like a composer. In fact, Walter Erich pays the same amount of royalty if you arrange a piece as if you write a piece, because an arranger is just as important as a writer and sometimes more important than the writer of the piece.

So in your view, a sensitive performer can be an arranger.

That's exactly right. I don't want them to change the notes, although, my notes are not written in stone. I have no problem with people who change a note here or there. They say, "Did you mean this?" I will usually say, "What do you want? What sounds good to you?" And they'll say whatever it is and I'll say, "That sounds good to me too, so let's just put it down." Everything is flexible in this world. That's because I'm a parish organist, and you've got to make concessions.

What is the typical process you go through in writing an anthem?

The first process is to find some kind of text. That's basic. Richard Rodgers did that, and I feel good about that. Richard Rodgers didn't think of "Oh! What a Beautiful Morning" without having the text in front of him. Then the second thing is how are you going to divide the text--will you divide it into verses, will it be a long piece that you'll have to divide into some kind of sections? You have to have breathing points, and you have to figure out where the poet meant it to come to the end of an idea. Next process is to see if the first line gives you any inspiration. Does that phrase give you a tune in mind? Then you get your tune and you have your first inspiration and then it goes from there. Then bang away, and after a while it begins to sound right and take shape. I usually write the middle part first then add the introduction after I've written everything else, because you have something to draw from then. I try to avoid clichés. It's so easy to get clichés when anthem writing, particularly in concertato writing. You just do the same thing: there's going to be brass playing an introduction and everybody's going to sing unison, then the second verse is going to be different, and the third verse will be a harmonized verse for the choir, and the last verse will be unison-descant-plus-coda. I try to avoid doing that. One great anthem is Harold Darke's Christmas anthem "In the Bleak Midwinter" which is a hymn anthem, but it's very cleverly done because you don't have this four-verses-of-the-same-thing. Each verse is very different from the others. To me it's a very good hymn anthem.

What is the balance between inspiration and craft in your composition?

Inspiration--that's a hard question. I think Rutter said at one of those conferences that once you get the first idea, the rest of it is easy. Which is quite true, but it's a whole lot better if you have a good first idea. The inspiration is the first thing you get--the first idea. If you're going to write a pastorale and you get a little pastorale theme--a measure or so, a motive--then that's the inspiration part. Then the rest of it is craftsmanship. Well, of course, all of it is inspiration, but the rest of it is extension of the idea.

I think it was Schoenberg that said composition is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration.

That's right. Exactly.

But do you feel that the first idea is always inspired? Or do you feel like you can craft a good motive?

Oh, I think it has to be a certain amount of inspiration. It comes from God, I believe. I have no idea where these ideas come from. If I had some great well that I could put my hand in and draw one out, I'd do it. But it just comes. And sometimes you sit down at the keyboard and you say, "Okay, I'm going to be inspired now." And I wait for inspiration to come, and it does not come. I think Austin Lovelace said once that this stuff cycles. Sometimes you can really hit it right off and other times you sit there for a day or two or a week and you have no idea--no ideas. It's funny.

Do you ever receive inspiration unexpectedly? The cliché is waking up in the middle of the night with this great idea that you have to write down, but perhaps also when you are driving around town or,

[interrupting] No. Well, actually that's true. I have driven around town and gotten a good inspiration, with the radio off, of course. Sometimes driving from home to work you can get an idea and then you go in and put it down. Sometimes you play a service, and services are really quite inspiring in more ways than is normally thought. Sometimes you get an idea in the service, and I used to write them down after the service was over, at least a snippet of it. For a while I recorded some of them then tried to transcribe it, which is difficult. I like to play church services because I don't get nervous there. You have to keep going. You can't go backwards. Improvisations often turn into real pieces. I think that happened with lots of composers, not just me.

I remember coming over from Furman [University] to hear your service playing because it's so excellent. As you hear other church musicians play services--and struggle through services--do you have advice to share?

Well, in the first place I would say that relationships should be the first priority. Relationships are so important. After all the staff meetings and all the going to music conferences and all the practicing and all the choir training and all the other things, in the end the most important thing in all are the relationships. There are two ways of presenting God's word. One of them is by what the priest and the liturgy says. But equal to me is what the music says. It is an equal partner in proclaiming the word. It's another way of proclaiming Christ's gospel. Secondly, lots of people play too slowly for the church itself. Obviously if you are in a resonant building you have to play more slowly, but most churches are not resonant buildings. Some don't give the congregation a chance to breathe. Alec Wyton taught me a great thing: he said you must play with the text. So I was taught by him to play by the text itself no matter what the music does. Although I remember bad occasions when I've not done that. At St. John the Divine, when I was assistant there, [I played] 13 verses of "O come, O come Emmanuel" until people started looking at me wondering when I was going to quit. I had lost my place and wasn't playing by the text. So I learned the hard way. The other advice I have is to give the same amount of time between the verses each time. I also never ritard until the end of the last verse. I think if you ritard at the end of the introduction, you confuse the congregation. They don't know what speed it's really supposed to be.

What about larger issues in service playing? What about pacing the service, planning your registrations?

You have to be like you're on television. You have to be right with it right away. There are two [issues] there: you have to be with it when you're supposed to be with it and not have a grand pause while everybody looks for things or while you look for music, and people in general don't understand that silence is a part of music. A quarter rest is a beat of silence for example. And there are times in the services when there should be silence and not music. Silence is music in a sense.

Do you feel like there is a particular liturgical aspect that some weeks could be silent and other weeks could be musical? Or are there some times which should always be silent?

Depending on the service itself, I think there should be some moment of silence. Particularly in preludes that people play for funeral services when they want continual music or in a communion service where they want continual music. I don't want continual music in a communion service. If I were playing four pieces, there wouldn't be a modulation between numbers 1 and 2 or 3 and 4. I play one piece and put it down. You want to give people's ears a chance to breathe even though they're not singing. It comes back to participation. Participation does not always mean that people have to be yelling at the top of their voices. One form of participation is when we are all singing "Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven" and are just having a great time. We are participating--great. But if an organist is playing a great organ piece, like Bach, and we are all into it, we are also participating even though we are just sitting there. That's a form of participation.

That's something that in the liturgical world seems to divide the Roman church, which emphasizes active participation, and the Anglican world, with what you are talking about.

Yes, that's right. With Evensong, the congregation is not singing all the time, but they are involved in all kinds of ways: emotionally, spiritually we hope--every kind of way. And that's the point of these kinds of services to me anyway. That's a very difficult concept for many people. They only feel like if they are singing that they are participating in music making.

Are there ways musicians can foster that sense of visceral participation?

If they have a chance to write a little article in the bulletin or newsletter, that's always helpful. Tell it to the choir; tell it to the clergy.  The clergy listen and if they understand, the whole church ends up understanding.

How do you approach polishing a choir or your own playing but avoid it being a performance?

Automatically when the choir sings it's a performance of a sort. And of course you want the best; we all want the best of every kind of music. Every presentation of a choir or organist is a performance by the very nature of what it is, and you want it as perfect as possible. I'm not sure there is any sort of a thing as perfection in this world in this way, but anyway you want it as perfect as possible. Then you've got a good performance. But does it relate to the what's going on with the rest of the service or is it just a performance? You have to be very careful that it relates textually and that it creates the right ambiance. You must be a team player and not isolated. That's what I mean by relationships. You are related to the people who are in the service, the congregation, the clergy. You are related to proclaiming the gospel, and you are not just doing a little performance somewhere. This isn't something you can just slop around. You have to do it quite well. And hope for the best. Pray a lot.

If it is a performance, it sounds like Søren Kierkegard's idea that in a service the musicians and the clergy are just the prompters, the congregation are really the actors and the audience . . .

The audience is God. God is the audience and so you want to make sure that you do as well as you can to please God. And the congregation is involved in it too. When an anthem is sung or an organ piece is played, everybody in the church building is involved in some way. As long as you think of being involved with them and them being involved with you, then what you're doing is proclaiming God's and Christ's gospel. Then you're not doing performances. You are helping along their spiritual worship. Which is why choosing anthems is so important.

How much of your time throughout the year will be spent choosing anthems?

In my best days, I spent a long time and looked at a lot of pieces. Not only as a composer but to see what we could use--that's what I'm paid for. And it goes throughout the year. I'm kind of like the publishers in that in July I should have my Christmas music ready and at Christmas I should be at least beyond Easter, so you are always ahead of the game. You are never living in the present; you are always sort of living in the future in this business. That way if you're going to have brass you can get it arranged. You don't have to sort it out the last week, and they are out there with their stands open and no music on them.

How would you describe your technique for improvisation, and how do you prepare your improvisations for a Sunday service?

If I'm going to improvise a prelude, now this is a strange technique, I take the hymn book upside down, and the bass becomes a soprano part and improvise on that. Other times I take a part of the tune and change the keys and go into different sequences of that just like every hymn prelude you've ever seen: you do your introduction, you do your tune, you do your tune with echoes in between. There are hundreds of techniques. You just try to keep a little form so you don't keep splatting away. You just have to study books by Gerre Hancock, David Cherwien and others.

Do you consciously have to rein in your counterpoint to make sure your voice leading is good, or do you now find that natural?

I don't think about counterpoint or harmony or any other thing. The notes will lead you to another place. So you go down another path. That's the fun thing about improvisation: where the notes will lead you. As you're going along, you think, "I've got this note," you don't think, "This is B-flat and it's going to go to so and so." The note itself, the chords and the notes just kind of lead you to the next thing so you don't have to. And that's where form becomes very important, because then you don't just go wandering off anywhere. What you actually want to do is get back home sooner or later.

In your longer improvisations, is it common for you to do free improvisation not on a hymn tune?

Of course, I'll do that. You have to be sure in a longer one that you contrast things: soft and loud, fast and slow, high and low. That kind of contrast is very important. I remember I [played a service] once in Columbia, and they had an electronic organ there that only had two sounds: loud and soft. It was a long procession with all the priests in the whole Southeast it seemed like. It went on for about twenty or thirty minutes, dealing with this organ which only had loud and soft. That's all it was. And finally you get to just playing chords because you just run out of . . . [shudders]. It was one of those horrible experiences. I was glad when it was over.

In both improvisation and in composition, do you find it difficult to come up with interesting textures?

For me it is sometimes difficult to come up with interesting textures. Sometimes you have to use things that you would normally not find in a piece written for organ by Franck or somebody. Use the Vox humana not like a Vox humana is usually used, but like a snarly something. I'm pretty conservative, I'm afraid. I use strings and flutes and diapasons in a kind of normal way, but every once in a while I try to break out of it. High and low is important. Most of us play in the middle of the keyboard all of the time. Those Thalben-Ball preludes have a lot in the high register and in the low register. Obviously he was dealing with what I'm struggling with. Of course you want to use the tune in the tenor or in the bass rather than always in the soprano, and have little frills around it.

Is there anything else you want to say?

Well, I just hope we continue to get a bunch of great young organists coming along who are going to go into church music and who work as well as they can in choosing music. When you choose music you want the very best of every kind, whether it is renewal or not renewal or classical or not classical. You don't want to choose second-rate anything. As I said in a 1967 interview I was re-reading the other day, I don't think there is really any one style of church music. I certainly don't think in this day and age that there is any "Episcopal" church music as there was twenty years ago. I think the renewal is here and--I know my colleagues are not with me on this, and that's all right, I'm retiring anyway--I don't have a great objection to blended services--that is to say, [services] with some renewal music in it and classical as well. At Christ Church on Sunday at the big service, it occurs mostly in the communion sung by the choir alternating with classical hymns from the hymn book. A lot of it is played on the piano, and some of it is played on the organ. We almost never use guitars or the string bass or the recorders in the big service. There are two other renewal services in the week, where all renewal music is appearing. I don't have any problems with this because everybody doesn't like Bach. That's just a plain fact. Like all organists, I wish it were otherwise. Everything that I like--Tallis and Byrd and everybody--I wish everybody would like it as much as me, but they don't. Some of them really get a lot out of the different songs, and we think my colleagues here do it here very tastefully so the whole service blends, and I guess the word "blend" is about the right word for it. You have a service where something in it appeals to everybody. In the beginning I was resigned and thought, "Well, that's what it's going to be," but the truth is the whole service becomes an entity, a unity. Without the renewal music, that particular service isn't right. Now at the 11:00 service, which does not have any renewal type music, to put it in there would not be right. We're a big enough church that we can have five services on Sunday, so it's easy. People, like water, seek their own level; they find the service they like and go to it. In these large churches it's necessary that services have their own character--that every service doesn't sound like the last one anymore than every Episcopal church in Greenville should sound like the next one. This [individual character] is its appeal: the spiritual appeal of people. I feel that the renewal music has its place, at a certain time but not all the time. I don't mean just out at the campfire or something. I mean in a church service on a Sunday morning. I think it has an appeal and a place.

You've drawn a clear distinction about doing it tastefully and not using guitars and so on.

That might be a failing. I know of churches which use guitars and flutes and violins and everything and dress it all up very nicely. In a sense we're bringing the secular world into the sacred and in a sense we're not. Music that Vivaldi wrote, the guitar concertos and so forth, was not a lot different than the Vivaldi Gloria. It was the same style in and out of the church. That has always swung back and forth as everybody knows. I think God uses all kinds of music to proclaim His gospel and to draw people to him. So I think that secular music--that gentle secular music--is useful. Songs such as "As the deer" and so on make an appeal that deals with the spiritual side of the person. I think it is important that we acknowledge that. These pendulums swing. A lot of the stuff the Roman Catholics had in the sixties has gone away, and some of the Roman Catholic churches that I know of are now swinging back to Gregorian Chant and to their heritage that they have from that, which I think is wonderful. I think classical music, like the Brahms motets, appeals to me, and if I were going to a service, not as an organist, I would go to Church of the Advent in Boston and hear the music played and sung there. As I said, people seek their own level in music. I know there is a terrible controversy raging about it. People say, "I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to have it." Well, it's not easy to say that. I think we have to deal with it the best way we can. We have to make it useful to God's purpose--not our purposes but God's purpose as we see it.

Given that there does seem to be such controversy about it, are you still optimistic about the church?

I am. Lots of my friends are not optimistic about church or church music, but I am because I know these things cycle. The really fine [examples] of any style of music or any style of worship is going to stay. It has stayed over the years. We still sing "A mighty fortress" for example. Any church should present the classical hymns: "A mighty fortress," "O God, our help in ages past," all the Lutheran chorales, the hymns in the 1982 Hymnal and the 1940 Hymnal. These should always be in the forefront of everything that's done. Then when the other music comes in, you actually have the icing on the cake in a sense. I am optimistic about church music. There are lots of great teachers, and there are lots of great players that really are church organists as opposed to performers. All you have to remember is to work with people--the relationships--that's the main thing. That doesn't just mean the choir members. It means the clergy and the staff, the program staff, the janitorial staff, all of them. And then you find out how things get done easily.

Marcia Van Oyen

Marcia Van Oyen earned master's and doctoral degrees in organ and church music at the University of Michigan, where she studied organ with Robert Glasgow. She is the organist and director of music ministry at Glenview Community Church (UCC) in Glenview, Illinois, and is past Dean of the North Shore AGO. She also writes for Choir & Organ magazine and JAV Recordings. More information is available online at .

Elizabeth and Raymond Chenault have blazed a trail for the art of the organ duet, enchanting audiences with their enjoyable performances and charming personalities and ensuring the future of the genre with a wealth of commissioned repertoire. When you meet the Chenaults, an easy rapport develops immediately, and you feel as if you've known them a long time. They are genuine, sincere, fun-loving people, and these qualities feed their mission to connect with people through their music.

Both their career as duo organists and their marriage span nearly 30 years. Natives of Virginia, the Chenaults attended Virginia Commonwealth University, marrying after graduation in 1972. Ray attended Cincinnati Conservatory to earn a master's degree, and they both studied organ with Wayne Fisher during that time. Following his master's studies, Ray spent a year as organ scholar at Washington National Cathedral. The Chenaults moved to Atlanta in 1975, taking the positions of organists and choir masters at All Saints Episcopal Church, where they direct the music program and concert series. A year later, positions at the Lovett School--Ray as director of fine arts and choral director of the Upper School, Beth as choral director of the Middle School--rounded out their professional life. The Chenaults are managed by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.

I talked with them while they were in town to play a concert at the Glenview Community Church.

MVO: How did you get started performing duets?

Beth: When we started giving recitals, we thought it would be fun to play together because we're married. That was how we got started. Thomas Tomkins, the 16th-century British composer, wrote one of the earliest known organ duets, A Fancy for Two, which we programmed on our recitals. Early on, when we commissioned Gerre Hancock to write a piece, he took the same title, A Fancy for Two. Sometimes we would play both of those duets because we didn't have enough literature. We would play solo organ literature and put a few duets on the program.

Ray: When we began to research duet organ literature, we found there wasn't a lot written. There are theses and dissertations that have identified unpublished manuscripts of duets, but we focused on what was published. There was so little of it that we decided to start commissioning works.

MVO: So you started commissioning music not only because you wanted to, but also out of necessity.

Ray: Right. The idea really came unexpectedly. In 1978, Dr. Arthur Wills from Ely Cathedral in England played a recital on our concert series at All Saints Church, Atlanta. The second half of the program comprised his own music. I really liked what I was hearing, so after the concert I asked him if he'd be interested in writing us an organ duet. He immediately accepted and that became our first commission.

Beth: Toccata for Two is one of our favorite pieces and we premiered it at Washington National Cathedral.

Ray: Next, we asked John Rutter to write Variations on an Easter Theme for us which we also premiered at Washington Cathedral. We found out that audiences, organists and music critics were very excited about the duets we were commissioning. In fact they still are almost 25 years later. Now we have over forty commissions that we've either arranged or had written for us. Three CDs later, we've recorded a lot of our own works and have the Chenault Organ Duet Library that's been published by Belwin Mills. Our mission is to get the work out there and leave a body of work for organists to perform and audiences to enjoy.

MVO: Do you play your duo repertoire for church services, or do you stick to solos?

Beth: For church services, we've played Callahan's Evensong, Philip Moore's Allegro, and Variations on an Easter Theme by Rutter.

Ray: We use almost all our repertoire, except the secular pieces, for preludes and postludes.

Beth: We have even played The Stars and Stripes Forever for the postlude near the 4th of July. Our former rector, the Right Rev. Harry H. Pritchett, Jr., played the cymbals and the entire congregation would cheer him on.

Ray: Talk about fun for the congregation--the minister playing cymbals. That's one time they all stay for the postlude. When the minister hits the first crash of the cymbals the congregation will break into applause, I can assure you.

Beth: It's just great fun and a wonderful way to make organ music and the organist more accessible to the parishioners.

Ray: Charlie Callahan has already written two compositions for the first Sunday when we'll play the new John-Paul Buzard pipe organ at our church for services on All Saints Sunday this November 2003. One of these is a duet postlude on Sine Nomine.

MVO: When commissioning a piece, do you give the composer specific ideas or do you let him have free rein?

Beth: We've done both. When we first started, we had some definite ideas. With Philip Moore, we asked him to listen to our recital at Yorkminster Cathedral and make a suggestion about what we might need on the program. He suggested sonata-allegro form, so he used that form for the third movement of the Triptych which he wrote for us over a time period of five years. This wonderful composition works nicely as a larger work in three movements or by featuring one of them in concert.

Ray: Being a bit of a composer myself, I believe it's important for the composer to have inspiration for a piece or a particular theme, because then you get your best music. In general, we're open-minded and accepting of whatever a composer feels inspired to do. We've been very happy with most of our commissions and they're all very different. It's wonderful to see composers being inspired by what they want to write. Take The Emerald Isle for instance. Charlie Callahan's homeland is Ireland. When he found out we were going to be recording our second CD at Washington Cathedral--he knows that organ very well, he lived in Washington--he said he knew exactly what he wanted to write--a piece based on Londonderry Air. He was inspired to write one of our most appealing organ duets. He never missed an opportunity to extract every ounce of beauty from that popular theme. Being from Ireland, it had a very special meaning for him.

Beth: Nicholas White has just written an arrangement of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera for us.

Ray: We wanted something fun for our audiences and Phantom is our favorite musical. Nick lives in New York. He loves musical theatre and plays jazz, so he was the ideal choice for this commission. When we commissioned him the first time, we specifically asked for an arrangement of Shenandoah, because Beth is from the little town of Shenandoah in Virginia. We love that beautiful folk tune and our audiences love it, too.

Beth: The Shenandoah River goes through my hometown, and some of the piece was cleverly written by Nick to sound like the rippling water. He also throws in Moon River and Strangers in the Night for added pleasure.

MVO: Do the composers usually give specific registrations in the scores?

Ray: Mostly they're very specific about what they want. Occasionally, they just give dynamic levels and registration suggestions. A lot of times we'll go back and ask them specifically what they want. It's a lot easier if they are specific, then we can take creative license, depending on the organ.

Beth: We've often had coaching sessions with the composer. Conrad Susa made only dynamic suggestions in Canticle. So we found it very helpful to play the duet for him and get his immediate feedback to our interpretation and registration.

Ray: Stephen Paulus has written for us Triumph of the Saint, a large symphonic type three-movement duet, which had only dynamic suggestions. We met with Steve and then he gave more specific registration suggestions. He waits to hear the piece first. It's fun to get the composer's input and ideas. You learn so much from them.

Beth: On the other hand, in the score of Rhapsody, which we premiered in Atlanta for the 1992 National AGO Convention, Naji Hakim was very specific.

Ray: He was specific to the stop, and it's rewarding to recreate that, even though his work is written with the French organ sound in mind. Some American organs do that more successfully than others, but you create that sound as best you can when you get to different instruments. Some of the composers write for four feet, some have Beth do most of the pedaling because she's sitting on the left hand side. In the Naji Hakim piece, we both have double pedaling which is an added sonority.

Beth: At one point in the last Allegro movement of Philip Moore's Triptyque, Ray almost gets off the organ bench as I move all the way up to high E on the pedalboard. The balance issue really comes into play and both players must be totally in sync in such instances.

Ray: You'll see me almost get up and stand beside the bench while I'm still playing just to get out of Beth's zone. She, at that point, becomes a solo player because the pedal work is the main focus. The full pedal resource is featuring the melody, and we're doubling the manual parts. Beth moves to the top of the pedalboard and then all the way back down. I just have to get out of the way. It's particularly entertaining for the audience at that moment.

Beth: Philip Moore could have chosen to write that for Ray but that's what makes each composer's assignments for the duetists challenging.

Ray: Most composers have not written organ duets, and they're curious as to the format and idiosyncrasies. Therefore, we generally send a couple of our duets so they can see how it works. It helps to clarify so much before the first note is even written.

MVO: They must need some kind of a primer about how physically the duet can work.

Ray: Of course, there isn't a primer for writing duets. That's when our previously written duets become an invaluable composing document sampler. Sometimes we go back to the composer and tell them that doesn't work. We'll make suggestions based on our experience. Usually they're happy to do what is needed, perhaps dividing up the territory differently than written. Also, if the piece really doesn't work, then we have to go back to the drawing table again. Most composers get it figured out with only slight revisions. It's a fascinating process.

MVO: I recall you mentioning that you need a 3-manual organ in order to perform your repertoire. Do you ever have to turn concert requests down because the setting won't work?

Beth: We had to turn one down last year because it was a two-manual organ. We used to play on two-manual instruments, but it's too hard as we need more keyboards and tonal colors to bring out accompaniment and solo lines. If you have two or three themes going at the same time, you wouldn't hear them on a two-manual instrument.

Ray: We have done some concerts on two manuals, and we have to do creative arranging of the duets to make it work. But a small two-manual organ is just too limiting. If it's a fairly large two-manual organ, it's possible, but we would have to be very careful with the selection of repertoire. We wouldn't be able to showcase the commissions the way they were intended to be performed.

As you can imagine, as we play more concerts and build our repertoire, there are certain types of duets we want, and we go to trusted composers who will write what we need for our programs--some more contemporary, some more audience friendly. It's important to reach all of your audience members. Hopefully each audience member will take away something from our concert that feels special to them, and perhaps that will bring them back to another organ concert.

MVO: What do you think about when you're putting a program together? What makes it a good concert?

Ray: A primary consideration is to be sure the pieces fit the unique qualities of the organ and acoustic. The longer we're in this business, the more we find our audiences are people who want programs that speak to them. They want performers who communicate and move them emotionally.

Beth: We know we are a unique couple--unique as a husband and wife offering an entire program of organ duets--all commissioned or arranged for us. Audiences are already open to our special fare. That gives us a wonderful opportunity to perform a program filled with musicality and warmth. Our concerts strive to connect with many human emotions.

Ray: We might draw people to our duet organ concert that the ordinary solo performer may not. Husband and wife duets? What's this?

Beth: Oh, are there two organs? Four hands, four feet? It's a curiosity.

Ray: People say, you're duo organists, does that mean you play two instruments? We could have gone that route, but look how much that would have minimized our performing venues. So we specialize in duets for two organists at one console. That works. We may attrtact fifty people to a recital who may never have been to an organ concert, who come out of curiosity.

Beth: Part of our mission is to get them to come back.

Ray: We purposely program music that is very audience friendly. But we also know that AGO members will attend and they want to hear something that's highbrow. So we do a mix, all the way from Naji Hakim's Rhapsody--fascinating and unique--to Londonderry Air or Shenandoah or Stars and Stripes. We begin our programs with more contemporary music and generally progress towards audience-friendly selections.

Beth: It has been interesting when we've played our Litaize Sonate à Duet commission. I just love it, but a lot of musicians will say, "Goodness, that's really modern isn't it?" I don't hear it that way, even when we read through it the first time. If musicians don't always like the piece, we might not play it on programs.

Ray: We have to be very careful when we program music by Litaize. At an AGO convention, which is where we did the premiere, you've got people present who understand and appreciate this kind of literature, mainly because they have had more university training. A lot of them are used to playing works of that nature, so they would appreciate it. But if you go to a small community that might not be used to hearing a lot of sophisticated organ music, it might turn them off. You've got to be very careful and sensitive to the nature and backgrounds of your audiences.

Beth: For a long time, a lot of people were turned off to organ music.

MVO: Let's talk about that. Some people say it's the fault of organists because they're not doing what they need to do to reach audiences, and organists complain that their concerts are not well-attended. How do you see the picture?

Beth: I think things are turning around. Organists play so many recitals for other organists. While that is wonderful, and you want your colleagues to come, that's not always who supports what you're doing. You've got to play something for parishioners and folks in the community. I don't want to be a lightweight, but I want to play something that average people can enjoy, something that will encourage them to come back again for another program, or maybe go out and buy a CD of organ music.

I love Messiaen, but you can't play 45 minutes of it, except maybe on your graduate recital. You can't play that kind of program for the average community of people who are coming to support your church that has a new pipe organ. They might not come back again.

Ray: We saw that happen at an all-Messiaen program many years ago.

Beth: People left in droves at intermission.

Ray: The die-hard organists stuck it out because they knew what they were hearing and it was a unique opportunity. Even many of the local organists left.

Beth: Many people didn't come back. They talked negatively about that recital for a long time.

Ray: We heard them say, "I'll never come back to another organ concert." That just breaks your heart. We really work hard at programming. Appealing programming and good playing is the absolute secret to making audiences feel good about an organ concert. People know that our programs are going to be warm and friendly and the audiences respond favorably. After the concerts, people tell us it was the most enjoyable organ concert they've ever attended. I don't know whether it's our playing or the fact that we're husband and wife or the repertoire or a combination of all these things. The longer we're in the recital business, the more we find that our mission is to bring people to organ concerts and to inspire them to come back again.

Beth: And come back to your church concert series. Because you may have not only organists performing, but also other types of concerts or events offered for your community.

Ray: For instance, particularly since 9/11, often for encores we play a duet by Charlie Callahan called Evensong. It's based on the Tallis Canon and Ar hyd y nos, two well-known evening hymns with prayerful and meditative texts. With all the war talk in our world, we're all feeling scared. After playing Evensong many people comment on how appreciative they feel for this calming musical offering. It's not anything that you can put into words, but when we play those two beautiful tunes and the organ ends very quietly, you can hear a pin drop. It leaves people in a very warm place, and somehow feeling that maybe things are going to be okay.

Beth: The Ar hyd y nos hymn text ends "Sleep my child, peace be with you, all through the night."

Ray: We played Evensong on a concert the day Desert Storm started. Beth and I were weeping as we were playing it. It was a very special performance. We played it a couple of weeks ago as well for an encore and again, with the talk of war with Iraq, it became quite emotional for us to perform it.

Beth: Ray is from Fredericksburg, Virginia, and recently there had been the sniper attacks. When we had gone to Virginia for his aunt's funeral, we stopped at the gasoline station where one of the men was shot. So that was fresh on our minds.

Ray: Evensong is an illustration of the kind of repertoire that we've commissioned over the years. We have duets in our repertoire that we can perform for the occasion or respond to what is happening in the world.

Beth: If you want something in particular, we've got enough variety to fill the request.

Ray: We've been ending our concerts with The Stars and Stripes Forever. Since 9/11, Americans have become a lot more patriotic and appreciative of what we have in the United States.

Beth: American musicians need to promote more American music.

Ray: One of our missions is to promote American music. It's not that we don't commission outside of the United States, but we primarily concentrate on encouraging American composers to write by giving them an opportunity through our duet commissions. This is a valuable lesson I learned from one of my former teachers, Dr. Paul Callaway. Paul premiered many choral and organ works as organist/choirmaster of Washington Cathedral. Perhaps there is no finer legacy for a musician.

MVO: How do you work on learning music?

Beth: First, we work the duet on the piano individually and learn the keyboard parts first, then take it to the organ adding the pedaling and registration. Then we'll put things together slowly, working on problem areas and interpretation. When we first started, we would take turns switching Primo and Secondo parto, but we found it was difficult because as a duet performer, your center is off anyway. It's easier to get to one side and stick with it. At least, that works best for us.

Ray: I usually tell an audience that playing duets is like driving a stick shift car but from the passenger seat.

MVO: Do you have certain roles? Does one of you perhaps work more on registration?

Beth: Ray primarily does registration and I go out in the performing hall to listen and make suggestions.

Ray: I'll be the one at the instrument trying things. It's great to have another pair of ears in the room. We've all been in a solo situation where the organ chamber is halfway down the nave and you can't hear balance. In our situation, even though obviously I can't play all the parts, I can play enough of the duet so that we know what it sounds like once Beth resumes her role of performer.

Beth: As we spend more time with each instrument in a two- to three-day period, we continually tweak our initial registrations.

Ray: We collaborate on everything. We don't need a page-turner because we very carefully work out who turns the pages, who pushes the pistons, who works the expression boxes. It's very carefully orchestrated to avoid a mid-air collision.

Beth: Also, we work together on the programming.

Ray: And we'll go shopping together for Beth's performing outfits. We really collaborate on everything--our career, our jobs, our marriage. We're right there together. We are amazingly compatible.

MVO: Tell me how you collaborate at All Saints Church and the Lovett School.

Beth: Ray is the organist and choir master. I accompany the anthems and service music. Usually I'm at the console and he's conducting.

Ray: Beth is the associate organist/choirmaster and she never gives herself enough credit for what she does. We'll divide the choir rehearsal and do sectionals. She does that at the Lovett School as well. We co-direct the three high school choirs and she is also the accompanist. She trains the middle school choirs, which is a great feeder program for the high school, and she takes rehearsals for the high school choirs when I have administrative duties as director of fine arts. At church, I do most of the conducting, but Beth does most of the accompanying of the anthems and a lot of the preparatory sectionals. We share the preludes and postludes on Sunday morning, and we share the hymn playing.

MVO: You're working together at school, at church, and you're performing together. What makes that work? You must have your moments.

Beth: We're together so much, our personalities just gel.

Ray: I know people think I'm lying when I say this, but we are so compatible, it's almost unbelievable.

Beth: I miss him I if I don't see him for two or three hours.

Ray: We're soul mates and we knew it the moment we laid eyes on each other.

MVO: It shows.

Ray: One of the great joys of playing duet recitals it that we get to travel together. That's a real bonus. When we first started, before we developed the duet repertoire, I was under management as a solo artist. I would go on two or three-week tours and I really missed Beth and discovered that concertizing wasn't nearly as enjoyable without her by my side.

Beth: It's no fun traveling alone, sitting in some hotel room by yourself.

Ray: We get to share all of these things. If we ever have a cranky word for each other it's usually when we've been through a long day and we're both just exhausted. I can count on one hand the few little spats we've had and they've been so minor it's not even worth talking about. We're very fortunate and know it.

Beth: It is true.

Ray: God knew what he was doing when he put us together. We're very grateful for the opportunities we have.

MVO: Your collaboration seems to feed everything you do. It certainly isn't an encumbrance, a feeling of being yoked together. It's just the opposite.

Ray: Exactly. It wouldn't work for everybody. Some people say I'd be divorced by now if I had to spend that much time with my mate! And many of them are!

MVO: I've noticed something else that I believe is part of why people love to come to your concerts. You've created an image for yourselves. You're glamorous. [They both laugh.] I must tell you this story. A year ago, I was discussing concerts for the next season with my music board. None of them had ever heard of you or heard you play. I had just received your new publicity photo, so I showed it to them. The board's immediate response was a vote in favor of you coming to play a concert here. [Uproarious laughter.] I offered to get some recordings for them to review, but the response was, "No, that won't be necessary, we can just tell they would be really good."

Ray: Gosh, the power of that photo.

MVO: Clearly, you put in the effort to make your performances something special. Beth, I love the glamorous gowns you wear. I think organists could stand to do more of that. Would you dress that way anyway, or do you consciously make an extra effort for your performances?

Beth: One of our dear departed friends, Emily Spivey, a very elegant lady and wonderful organist and the powerhouse behind that fabulous concert hall, Spivey Hall, just south of Atlanta, gave us great advice early in our careers. Emily taught me the importance of glamour. She actually told me what to play and what to wear. She was a southern grand dame. She said people love to see glamour, and with organists, often you either see their backs or you don't see them at all. Emily said, "Spice it up, honey."

Ray: People want to know you're going to sound good, but ultimately, I think they want to connect with the artist more than anything else. As we all know, most of the time we're stuck in the balcony or behind a screen. In a church situation on Sunday mornings we're in a choir robe. We're sort of untouchable people--like in the Wizard of Oz, the person behind the curtain. People want to have contact with the artist. The first image they're going to have is just as you've expressed. They're going to see the picture our agent distributes. They will either be drawn in by that image or not. When we're all out there in a pool, a large body of artists and organists, there's got to be something that's going to draw them to you. We enjoy the glamour of it, but just sitting here, the three of us, we like this as much as anything. In fact, the best part of having the opportunity to concertize is getting to meet great people like you.

Beth: I love that.

Ray: Our greatest mission is to make contact with people like you--to get to know wonderful musicians, to have the opportunity to meet an audience and talk with them afterwards and shake their hands. And you become a family to us once we've come to your community and experienced your generosity and warm hospitality. It means a lot to us, and we don't take that for granted. You've given up a great deal of your time and part of your music budget in order to open your church and this wonderful instrument to us. We've been on the other end of that, too. We know what it takes to host musicians and a concert series. It's not something to be taken lightly.

MVO: What do you see for the future? Do you have a wish list?

Ray: We've got a recording project in mind for the new organ John-Paul Buzard is building for our church.

Beth: We've been holding off, waiting for the new organ as we want to feature the exceptional work of this talented organ builder.

Ray: We want to do something in a more popular vein. That's why we've asked Nicholas White for an arrangement of the musical Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Beth: We also have a great arrangement of the William Tell Overture by Alan Gibbs of England.

Ray: That's one we're going to record, and of course, we have Shenandoah. We're looking for something more popular, something that would appeal to the non-organist as well as the organist.

MVO: As more great concert hall organs are being built, could you envision a duo organ concerto?

Ray: I think down the road we'll probably commission a concerto for two organists.

As we bring in fees from our organ concerts, we turn around and put the money into a commission. No one underwrites this other than us. One of our biggest missions is to accumulate a large body of organ duet literature for future generations. We're spending the money to do that.

Beth: We want to have all of our duets published and recorded. We hope others will be inspired to play them.

Ray: We want to be careful that we get the best use of our money with the pieces we commission. Would a concerto for two organists get that much of a hearing? Concertos don't get played that much in general. And it's more expensive to get two organists to play plus the added expense of an orchestra. I think that's an idea that we'll talk about, but we'll choose the composer carefully. We would want it to be a duet concerto that would have a long life after the premiere.

MVO: I hope I'm there to hear it. Is there anything else you would like to share?

Ray: We played a recital at a monastery a couple of weeks ago, a monastery that also has an all-male high school. It was an interesting opportunity for Beth and me, having had background in church work, concert work and teaching in school. We were able to tie in all of our backgrounds in one setting. While we were practicing, the choir director would bring his choral students over. We talked about the organ, entertained their questions, and played some duets. Later, I would go over and listen to them sing and give them some feedback on how well they were doing, some ideas. We were able to meet with the monks and talk with them about their religion, opposed to where we are as Episcopalians.

Beth: We ate with them in the cafeteria and had wonderful opportunities for dialogue.

Ray: We were just fascinated at the concert as some of the monks were in their 90s and were wheelchair bound.

Beth: They practically wheeled them right up to the console in a special reserved area.

Ray: As we walked off after taking our bows, we noticed some of the monks that couldn't get around and couldn't even talk much. We communicated mainly through the wonderful expressions on their faces. We would hug them and hold their hands.

Beth: There was one man who had cancer, I assume of the voice box. He held up a card. He couldn't speak, but he really communicated with his face. He wrote us a very moving letter of thanks and said he hoped we'd return again soon. That's when you know you're using your God-given talent in the right way.

Ray: He wanted to shake our hands and we could tell he really enjoyed the music. These are the memorable experiences: the people you meet and how you're able to communicate with them.

Beth: It was a unique opportunity, to be able to talk to the young men at the academy. One wants to major in piano. He was talking to us about where to go to school and asked our advice on his future. That can be a defining moment in a young musician's life.

Ray: You never know what will inspire somebody to major in organ, or to be a church organist. The three of us can sit here and think of great opportunities we've had in our lives when hearing a certain person play an organ concert or a certain piece really excited us. Or a certain organ that inspired you or a teacher who took that extra special time. It might have changed your life. That happened to me. I would never be an organist today had my sister not had an organ teacher, Mr. Harold Abmyer, who happened to end up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It's surprising to have had such a fabulous beginning organ teacher--it's not a big city, it's a rural area. Mr. Abmyer went to Union Theological Seminary, he studied with Clarence Dickinson, Seth Bingham . . .

Beth: Harold Friedell and many of the great musicians of that era.

Ray: Mr. Abmyer had great teachers in New York, and when he found a talented organ student--he made it into an apprenticeship. He was so excited to be able to impart the knowledge from these great master teachers, that an hour lesson would turn into five hours on a Saturday. That man changed my life. I would never be here today if it were not for him and for my beloved parents. We've all had opportunities like that. It's never just another day or another concert. It's a wonderful opportunity to connect and make a difference in someone's life.

Beth: To connect with somebody, wherever they are.

Ray: It's a great life and we just love it. Hopefully Beth and I have made a difference.

Elizabeth and Raymond Chenault have blazed a trail for the art of the organ duet, enchanting audiences with their enjoyable performances and charming personalities and ensuring the future of the genre with a wealth of commissioned repertoire. When you meet the Chenaults, an easy rapport develops immediately, and you feel as if you've known them a long time. They are genuine, sincere, fun-loving people, and these qualities feed their mission to connect with people through their music.

Both their career as duo organists and their marriage span nearly 30 years. Natives of Virginia, the Chenaults attended Virginia Commonwealth University, marrying after graduation in 1972. Ray attended Cincinnati Conservatory to earn a master's degree, and they both studied organ with Wayne Fisher during that time. Following his master's studies, Ray spent a year as organ scholar at Washington National Cathedral. The Chenaults moved to Atlanta in 1975, taking the positions of organists and choir masters at All Saints Episcopal Church, where they direct the music program and concert series. A year later, positions at the Lovett School--Ray as director of fine arts and choral director of the Upper School, Beth as choral director of the Middle School--rounded out their professional life. The Chenaults are managed by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.

I talked with them while they were in town to play a concert at the Glenview Community Church.

MVO: How did you get started performing duets?

Beth: When we started giving recitals, we thought it would be fun to play together because we're married. That was how we got started. Thomas Tomkins, the 16th-century British composer, wrote one of the earliest known organ duets, A Fancy for Two, which we programmed on our recitals. Early on, when we commissioned Gerre Hancock to write a piece, he took the same title, A Fancy for Two. Sometimes we would play both of those duets because we didn't have enough literature. We would play solo organ literature and put a few duets on the program.

Ray: When we began to research duet organ literature, we found there wasn't a lot written. There are theses and dissertations that have identified unpublished manuscripts of duets, but we focused on what was published. There was so little of it that we decided to start commissioning works.

MVO: So you started commissioning music not only because you wanted to, but also out of necessity.

Ray: Right. The idea really came unexpectedly. In 1978, Dr. Arthur Wills from Ely Cathedral in England played a recital on our concert series at All Saints Church, Atlanta. The second half of the program comprised his own music. I really liked what I was hearing, so after the concert I asked him if he'd be interested in writing us an organ duet. He immediately accepted and that became our first commission.

Beth: Toccata for Two is one of our favorite pieces and we premiered it at Washington National Cathedral.

Ray: Next, we asked John Rutter to write Variations on an Easter Theme for us which we also premiered at Washington Cathedral. We found out that audiences, organists and music critics were very excited about the duets we were commissioning. In fact they still are almost 25 years later. Now we have over forty commissions that we've either arranged or had written for us. Three CDs later, we've recorded a lot of our own works and have the Chenault Organ Duet Library that's been published by Belwin Mills. Our mission is to get the work out there and leave a body of work for organists to perform and audiences to enjoy.

MVO: Do you play your duo repertoire for church services, or do you stick to solos?

Beth: For church services, we've played Callahan's Evensong, Philip Moore's Allegro, and Variations on an Easter Theme by Rutter.

Ray: We use almost all our repertoire, except the secular pieces, for preludes and postludes.

Beth: We have even played The Stars and Stripes Forever for the postlude near the 4th of July. Our former rector, the Right Rev. Harry H. Pritchett, Jr., played the cymbals and the entire congregation would cheer him on.

Ray: Talk about fun for the congregation--the minister playing cymbals. That's one time they all stay for the postlude. When the minister hits the first crash of the cymbals the congregation will break into applause, I can assure you.

Beth: It's just great fun and a wonderful way to make organ music and the organist more accessible to the parishioners.

Ray: Charlie Callahan has already written two compositions for the first Sunday when we'll play the new John-Paul Buzard pipe organ at our church for services on All Saints Sunday this November 2003. One of these is a duet postlude on Sine Nomine.

MVO: When commissioning a piece, do you give the composer specific ideas or do you let him have free rein?

Beth: We've done both. When we first started, we had some definite ideas. With Philip Moore, we asked him to listen to our recital at Yorkminster Cathedral and make a suggestion about what we might need on the program. He suggested sonata-allegro form, so he used that form for the third movement of the Triptych which he wrote for us over a time period of five years. This wonderful composition works nicely as a larger work in three movements or by featuring one of them in concert.

Ray: Being a bit of a composer myself, I believe it's important for the composer to have inspiration for a piece or a particular theme, because then you get your best music. In general, we're open-minded and accepting of whatever a composer feels inspired to do. We've been very happy with most of our commissions and they're all very different. It's wonderful to see composers being inspired by what they want to write. Take The Emerald Isle for instance. Charlie Callahan's homeland is Ireland. When he found out we were going to be recording our second CD at Washington Cathedral--he knows that organ very well, he lived in Washington--he said he knew exactly what he wanted to write--a piece based on Londonderry Air. He was inspired to write one of our most appealing organ duets. He never missed an opportunity to extract every ounce of beauty from that popular theme. Being from Ireland, it had a very special meaning for him.

Beth: Nicholas White has just written an arrangement of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera for us.

Ray: We wanted something fun for our audiences and Phantom is our favorite musical. Nick lives in New York. He loves musical theatre and plays jazz, so he was the ideal choice for this commission. When we commissioned him the first time, we specifically asked for an arrangement of Shenandoah, because Beth is from the little town of Shenandoah in Virginia. We love that beautiful folk tune and our audiences love it, too.

Beth: The Shenandoah River goes through my hometown, and some of the piece was cleverly written by Nick to sound like the rippling water. He also throws in Moon River and Strangers in the Night for added pleasure.

MVO: Do the composers usually give specific registrations in the scores?

Ray: Mostly they're very specific about what they want. Occasionally, they just give dynamic levels and registration suggestions. A lot of times we'll go back and ask them specifically what they want. It's a lot easier if they are specific, then we can take creative license, depending on the organ.

Beth: We've often had coaching sessions with the composer. Conrad Susa made only dynamic suggestions in Canticle. So we found it very helpful to play the duet for him and get his immediate feedback to our interpretation and registration.

Ray: Stephen Paulus has written for us Triumph of the Saint, a large symphonic type three-movement duet, which had only dynamic suggestions. We met with Steve and then he gave more specific registration suggestions. He waits to hear the piece first. It's fun to get the composer's input and ideas. You learn so much from them.

Beth: On the other hand, in the score of Rhapsody, which we premiered in Atlanta for the 1992 National AGO Convention, Naji Hakim was very specific.

Ray: He was specific to the stop, and it's rewarding to recreate that, even though his work is written with the French organ sound in mind. Some American organs do that more successfully than others, but you create that sound as best you can when you get to different instruments. Some of the composers write for four feet, some have Beth do most of the pedaling because she's sitting on the left hand side. In the Naji Hakim piece, we both have double pedaling which is an added sonority.

Beth: At one point in the last Allegro movement of Philip Moore's Triptyque, Ray almost gets off the organ bench as I move all the way up to high E on the pedalboard. The balance issue really comes into play and both players must be totally in sync in such instances.

Ray: You'll see me almost get up and stand beside the bench while I'm still playing just to get out of Beth's zone. She, at that point, becomes a solo player because the pedal work is the main focus. The full pedal resource is featuring the melody, and we're doubling the manual parts. Beth moves to the top of the pedalboard and then all the way back down. I just have to get out of the way. It's particularly entertaining for the audience at that moment.

Beth: Philip Moore could have chosen to write that for Ray but that's what makes each composer's assignments for the duetists challenging.

Ray: Most composers have not written organ duets, and they're curious as to the format and idiosyncrasies. Therefore, we generally send a couple of our duets so they can see how it works. It helps to clarify so much before the first note is even written.

MVO: They must need some kind of a primer about how physically the duet can work.

Ray: Of course, there isn't a primer for writing duets. That's when our previously written duets become an invaluable composing document sampler. Sometimes we go back to the composer and tell them that doesn't work. We'll make suggestions based on our experience. Usually they're happy to do what is needed, perhaps dividing up the territory differently than written. Also, if the piece really doesn't work, then we have to go back to the drawing table again. Most composers get it figured out with only slight revisions. It's a fascinating process.

MVO: I recall you mentioning that you need a 3-manual organ in order to perform your repertoire. Do you ever have to turn concert requests down because the setting won't work?

Beth: We had to turn one down last year because it was a two-manual organ. We used to play on two-manual instruments, but it's too hard as we need more keyboards and tonal colors to bring out accompaniment and solo lines. If you have two or three themes going at the same time, you wouldn't hear them on a two-manual instrument.

Ray: We have done some concerts on two manuals, and we have to do creative arranging of the duets to make it work. But a small two-manual organ is just too limiting. If it's a fairly large two-manual organ, it's possible, but we would have to be very careful with the selection of repertoire. We wouldn't be able to showcase the commissions the way they were intended to be performed.

As you can imagine, as we play more concerts and build our repertoire, there are certain types of duets we want, and we go to trusted composers who will write what we need for our programs--some more contemporary, some more audience friendly. It's important to reach all of your audience members. Hopefully each audience member will take away something from our concert that feels special to them, and perhaps that will bring them back to another organ concert.

MVO: What do you think about when you're putting a program together? What makes it a good concert?

Ray: A primary consideration is to be sure the pieces fit the unique qualities of the organ and acoustic. The longer we're in this business, the more we find our audiences are people who want programs that speak to them. They want performers who communicate and move them emotionally.

Beth: We know we are a unique couple--unique as a husband and wife offering an entire program of organ duets--all commissioned or arranged for us. Audiences are already open to our special fare. That gives us a wonderful opportunity to perform a program filled with musicality and warmth. Our concerts strive to connect with many human emotions.

Ray: We might draw people to our duet organ concert that the ordinary solo performer may not. Husband and wife duets? What's this?

Beth: Oh, are there two organs? Four hands, four feet? It's a curiosity.

Ray: People say, you're duo organists, does that mean you play two instruments? We could have gone that route, but look how much that would have minimized our performing venues. So we specialize in duets for two organists at one console. That works. We may attrtact fifty people to a recital who may never have been to an organ concert, who come out of curiosity.

Beth: Part of our mission is to get them to come back.

Ray: We purposely program music that is very audience friendly. But we also know that AGO members will attend and they want to hear something that's highbrow. So we do a mix, all the way from Naji Hakim's Rhapsody--fascinating and unique--to Londonderry Air or Shenandoah or Stars and Stripes. We begin our programs with more contemporary music and generally progress towards audience-friendly selections.

Beth: It has been interesting when we've played our Litaize Sonate à Duet commission. I just love it, but a lot of musicians will say, "Goodness, that's really modern isn't it?" I don't hear it that way, even when we read through it the first time. If musicians don't always like the piece, we might not play it on programs.

Ray: We have to be very careful when we program music by Litaize. At an AGO convention, which is where we did the premiere, you've got people present who understand and appreciate this kind of literature, mainly because they have had more university training. A lot of them are used to playing works of that nature, so they would appreciate it. But if you go to a small community that might not be used to hearing a lot of sophisticated organ music, it might turn them off. You've got to be very careful and sensitive to the nature and backgrounds of your audiences.

Beth: For a long time, a lot of people were turned off to organ music.

MVO: Let's talk about that. Some people say it's the fault of organists because they're not doing what they need to do to reach audiences, and organists complain that their concerts are not well-attended. How do you see the picture?

Beth: I think things are turning around. Organists play so many recitals for other organists. While that is wonderful, and you want your colleagues to come, that's not always who supports what you're doing. You've got to play something for parishioners and folks in the community. I don't want to be a lightweight, but I want to play something that average people can enjoy, something that will encourage them to come back again for another program, or maybe go out and buy a CD of organ music.

I love Messiaen, but you can't play 45 minutes of it, except maybe on your graduate recital. You can't play that kind of program for the average community of people who are coming to support your church that has a new pipe organ. They might not come back again.

Ray: We saw that happen at an all-Messiaen program many years ago.

Beth: People left in droves at intermission.

Ray: The die-hard organists stuck it out because they knew what they were hearing and it was a unique opportunity. Even many of the local organists left.

Beth: Many people didn't come back. They talked negatively about that recital for a long time.

Ray: We heard them say, "I'll never come back to another organ concert." That just breaks your heart. We really work hard at programming. Appealing programming and good playing is the absolute secret to making audiences feel good about an organ concert. People know that our programs are going to be warm and friendly and the audiences respond favorably. After the concerts, people tell us it was the most enjoyable organ concert they've ever attended. I don't know whether it's our playing or the fact that we're husband and wife or the repertoire or a combination of all these things. The longer we're in the recital business, the more we find that our mission is to bring people to organ concerts and to inspire them to come back again.

Beth: And come back to your church concert series. Because you may have not only organists performing, but also other types of concerts or events offered for your community.

Ray: For instance, particularly since 9/11, often for encores we play a duet by Charlie Callahan called Evensong. It's based on the Tallis Canon and Ar hyd y nos, two well-known evening hymns with prayerful and meditative texts. With all the war talk in our world, we're all feeling scared. After playing Evensong many people comment on how appreciative they feel for this calming musical offering. It's not anything that you can put into words, but when we play those two beautiful tunes and the organ ends very quietly, you can hear a pin drop. It leaves people in a very warm place, and somehow feeling that maybe things are going to be okay.

Beth: The Ar hyd y nos hymn text ends "Sleep my child, peace be with you, all through the night."

Ray: We played Evensong on a concert the day Desert Storm started. Beth and I were weeping as we were playing it. It was a very special performance. We played it a couple of weeks ago as well for an encore and again, with the talk of war with Iraq, it became quite emotional for us to perform it.

Beth: Ray is from Fredericksburg, Virginia, and recently there had been the sniper attacks. When we had gone to Virginia for his aunt's funeral, we stopped at the gasoline station where one of the men was shot. So that was fresh on our minds.

Ray: Evensong is an illustration of the kind of repertoire that we've commissioned over the years. We have duets in our repertoire that we can perform for the occasion or respond to what is happening in the world.

Beth: If you want something in particular, we've got enough variety to fill the request.

Ray: We've been ending our concerts with The Stars and Stripes Forever. Since 9/11, Americans have become a lot more patriotic and appreciative of what we have in the United States.

Beth: American musicians need to promote more American music.

Ray: One of our missions is to promote American music. It's not that we don't commission outside of the United States, but we primarily concentrate on encouraging American composers to write by giving them an opportunity through our duet commissions. This is a valuable lesson I learned from one of my former teachers, Dr. Paul Callaway. Paul premiered many choral and organ works as organist/choirmaster of Washington Cathedral. Perhaps there is no finer legacy for a musician.

MVO: How do you work on learning music?

Beth: First, we work the duet on the piano individually and learn the keyboard parts first, then take it to the organ adding the pedaling and registration. Then we'll put things together slowly, working on problem areas and interpretation. When we first started, we would take turns switching Primo and Secondo parto, but we found it was difficult because as a duet performer, your center is off anyway. It's easier to get to one side and stick with it. At least, that works best for us.

Ray: I usually tell an audience that playing duets is like driving a stick shift car but from the passenger seat.

MVO: Do you have certain roles? Does one of you perhaps work more on registration?

Beth: Ray primarily does registration and I go out in the performing hall to listen and make suggestions.

Ray: I'll be the one at the instrument trying things. It's great to have another pair of ears in the room. We've all been in a solo situation where the organ chamber is halfway down the nave and you can't hear balance. In our situation, even though obviously I can't play all the parts, I can play enough of the duet so that we know what it sounds like once Beth resumes her role of performer.

Beth: As we spend more time with each instrument in a two- to three-day period, we continually tweak our initial registrations.

Ray: We collaborate on everything. We don't need a page-turner because we very carefully work out who turns the pages, who pushes the pistons, who works the expression boxes. It's very carefully orchestrated to avoid a mid-air collision.

Beth: Also, we work together on the programming.

Ray: And we'll go shopping together for Beth's performing outfits. We really collaborate on everything--our career, our jobs, our marriage. We're right there together. We are amazingly compatible.

MVO: Tell me how you collaborate at All Saints Church and the Lovett School.

Beth: Ray is the organist and choir master. I accompany the anthems and service music. Usually I'm at the console and he's conducting.

Ray: Beth is the associate organist/choirmaster and she never gives herself enough credit for what she does. We'll divide the choir rehearsal and do sectionals. She does that at the Lovett School as well. We co-direct the three high school choirs and she is also the accompanist. She trains the middle school choirs, which is a great feeder program for the high school, and she takes rehearsals for the high school choirs when I have administrative duties as director of fine arts. At church, I do most of the conducting, but Beth does most of the accompanying of the anthems and a lot of the preparatory sectionals. We share the preludes and postludes on Sunday morning, and we share the hymn playing.

MVO: You're working together at school, at church, and you're performing together. What makes that work? You must have your moments.

Beth: We're together so much, our personalities just gel.

Ray: I know people think I'm lying when I say this, but we are so compatible, it's almost unbelievable.

Beth: I miss him I if I don't see him for two or three hours.

Ray: We're soul mates and we knew it the moment we laid eyes on each other.

MVO: It shows.

Ray: One of the great joys of playing duet recitals it that we get to travel together. That's a real bonus. When we first started, before we developed the duet repertoire, I was under management as a solo artist. I would go on two or three-week tours and I really missed Beth and discovered that concertizing wasn't nearly as enjoyable without her by my side.

Beth: It's no fun traveling alone, sitting in some hotel room by yourself.

Ray: We get to share all of these things. If we ever have a cranky word for each other it's usually when we've been through a long day and we're both just exhausted. I can count on one hand the few little spats we've had and they've been so minor it's not even worth talking about. We're very fortunate and know it.

Beth: It is true.

Ray: God knew what he was doing when he put us together. We're very grateful for the opportunities we have.

MVO: Your collaboration seems to feed everything you do. It certainly isn't an encumbrance, a feeling of being yoked together. It's just the opposite.

Ray: Exactly. It wouldn't work for everybody. Some people say I'd be divorced by now if I had to spend that much time with my mate! And many of them are!

MVO: I've noticed something else that I believe is part of why people love to come to your concerts. You've created an image for yourselves. You're glamorous. [They both laugh.] I must tell you this story. A year ago, I was discussing concerts for the next season with my music board. None of them had ever heard of you or heard you play. I had just received your new publicity photo, so I showed it to them. The board's immediate response was a vote in favor of you coming to play a concert here. [Uproarious laughter.] I offered to get some recordings for them to review, but the response was, "No, that won't be necessary, we can just tell they would be really good."

Ray: Gosh, the power of that photo.

MVO: Clearly, you put in the effort to make your performances something special. Beth, I love the glamorous gowns you wear. I think organists could stand to do more of that. Would you dress that way anyway, or do you consciously make an extra effort for your performances?

Beth: One of our dear departed friends, Emily Spivey, a very elegant lady and wonderful organist and the powerhouse behind that fabulous concert hall, Spivey Hall, just south of Atlanta, gave us great advice early in our careers. Emily taught me the importance of glamour. She actually told me what to play and what to wear. She was a southern grand dame. She said people love to see glamour, and with organists, often you either see their backs or you don't see them at all. Emily said, "Spice it up, honey."

Ray: People want to know you're going to sound good, but ultimately, I think they want to connect with the artist more than anything else. As we all know, most of the time we're stuck in the balcony or behind a screen. In a church situation on Sunday mornings we're in a choir robe. We're sort of untouchable people--like in the Wizard of Oz, the person behind the curtain. People want to have contact with the artist. The first image they're going to have is just as you've expressed. They're going to see the picture our agent distributes. They will either be drawn in by that image or not. When we're all out there in a pool, a large body of artists and organists, there's got to be something that's going to draw them to you. We enjoy the glamour of it, but just sitting here, the three of us, we like this as much as anything. In fact, the best part of having the opportunity to concertize is getting to meet great people like you.

Beth: I love that.

Ray: Our greatest mission is to make contact with people like you--to get to know wonderful musicians, to have the opportunity to meet an audience and talk with them afterwards and shake their hands. And you become a family to us once we've come to your community and experienced your generosity and warm hospitality. It means a lot to us, and we don't take that for granted. You've given up a great deal of your time and part of your music budget in order to open your church and this wonderful instrument to us. We've been on the other end of that, too. We know what it takes to host musicians and a concert series. It's not something to be taken lightly.

MVO: What do you see for the future? Do you have a wish list?

Ray: We've got a recording project in mind for the new organ John-Paul Buzard is building for our church.

Beth: We've been holding off, waiting for the new organ as we want to feature the exceptional work of this talented organ builder.

Ray: We want to do something in a more popular vein. That's why we've asked Nicholas White for an arrangement of the musical Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Beth: We also have a great arrangement of the William Tell Overture by Alan Gibbs of England.

Ray: That's one we're going to record, and of course, we have Shenandoah. We're looking for something more popular, something that would appeal to the non-organist as well as the organist.

MVO: As more great concert hall organs are being built, could you envision a duo organ concerto?

Ray: I think down the road we'll probably commission a concerto for two organists.

As we bring in fees from our organ concerts, we turn around and put the money into a commission. No one underwrites this other than us. One of our biggest missions is to accumulate a large body of organ duet literature for future generations. We're spending the money to do that.

Beth: We want to have all of our duets published and recorded. We hope others will be inspired to play them.

Ray: We want to be careful that we get the best use of our money with the pieces we commission. Would a concerto for two organists get that much of a hearing? Concertos don't get played that much in general. And it's more expensive to get two organists to play plus the added expense of an orchestra. I think that's an idea that we'll talk about, but we'll choose the composer carefully. We would want it to be a duet concerto that would have a long life after the premiere.

MVO: I hope I'm there to hear it. Is there anything else you would like to share?

Ray: We played a recital at a monastery a couple of weeks ago, a monastery that also has an all-male high school. It was an interesting opportunity for Beth and me, having had background in church work, concert work and teaching in school. We were able to tie in all of our backgrounds in one setting. While we were practicing, the choir director would bring his choral students over. We talked about the organ, entertained their questions, and played some duets. Later, I would go over and listen to them sing and give them some feedback on how well they were doing, some ideas. We were able to meet with the monks and talk with them about their religion, opposed to where we are as Episcopalians.

Beth: We ate with them in the cafeteria and had wonderful opportunities for dialogue.

Ray: We were just fascinated at the concert as some of the monks were in their 90s and were wheelchair bound.

Beth: They practically wheeled them right up to the console in a special reserved area.

Ray: As we walked off after taking our bows, we noticed some of the monks that couldn't get around and couldn't even talk much. We communicated mainly through the wonderful expressions on their faces. We would hug them and hold their hands.

Beth: There was one man who had cancer, I assume of the voice box. He held up a card. He couldn't speak, but he really communicated with his face. He wrote us a very moving letter of thanks and said he hoped we'd return again soon. That's when you know you're using your God-given talent in the right way.

Ray: He wanted to shake our hands and we could tell he really enjoyed the music. These are the memorable experiences: the people you meet and how you're able to communicate with them.

Beth: It was a unique opportunity, to be able to talk to the young men at the academy. One wants to major in piano. He was talking to us about where to go to school and asked our advice on his future. That can be a defining moment in a young musician's life.

Ray: You never know what will inspire somebody to major in organ, or to be a church organist. The three of us can sit here and think of great opportunities we've had in our lives when hearing a certain person play an organ concert or a certain piece really excited us. Or a certain organ that inspired you or a teacher who took that extra special time. It might have changed your life. That happened to me. I would never be an organist today had my sister not had an organ teacher, Mr. Harold Abmyer, who happened to end up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It's surprising to have had such a fabulous beginning organ teacher--it's not a big city, it's a rural area. Mr. Abmyer went to Union Theological Seminary, he studied with Clarence Dickinson, Seth Bingham . . .

Beth: Harold Friedell and many of the great musicians of that era.

Ray: Mr. Abmyer had great teachers in New York, and when he found a talented organ student--he made it into an apprenticeship. He was so excited to be able to impart the knowledge from these great master teachers, that an hour lesson would turn into five hours on a Saturday. That man changed my life. I would never be here today if it were not for him and for my beloved parents. We've all had opportunities like that. It's never just another day or another concert. It's a wonderful opportunity to connect and make a difference in someone's life.

Beth: To connect with somebody, wherever they are.

Ray: It's a great life and we just love it. Hopefully Beth and I have made a difference.

50 years of teaching at The University of Michigan, Part 2

by Dennis Schmidt

Part 1 of this interview appeared in the October issue of The Diapason, pp. 16-21.

Q: I just wonder how you get all your energy.

A: Well, maybe it's because I'm from Oklahoma. I do exercise a lot. I walk quite a bit and I used to bike a lot, too.

Q: Does everybody in Oklahoma have energy like that?

A: It depends on the genes. They're always friendly, I know that.

Q: What suggestions do you have for young organists?

A: There might be some suggestions which are based on my own experience. One of them is the Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared," because as I look back the break that I had was in 1950 when the Boston AGO called me to say "Robert Ellis was to play and he cannot play. Will you play the Schoenberg 'Variations' for us?" I had less than two weeks to prepare this piece. But fortunately I had been prepared. I'd had my lessons with Schoenberg. I'd been preparing the piece and playing it for some time. I had it memorized.

The second thing is to be flexible. That is, if someone asks you to play, don't say, "I won't play because we don't have four manuals." Don't say, "I can't play because there's only two manuals."  Roll with the punches, be willing to fit into the situation. It's better to be playing a recital and have to make a few compromises than not be playing at all.

The third thing, very important, is be dependable. If you say you will be there, if you say you will do such and such, be there, do it. Be known for your dependability and your accountability.

Don't procrastinate. That comes along with being dependable. Don't put things off. I have a very fine colleague in the organ department--James Kibbie. He is the splendid example of this. He never procrastinates. If I suggest something or if I ask him to do something, he does it immediately. I think that's an important aspect of our work. If for any reason I might have to put off something, it's because my inner sense of the whole situation says "wait." We all know of situations where if you had waited a little bit things would have worked out a little better than if you had gone ahead immediately. So I say procrastination with a grain of salt--using your own judgment.

These four things matter: to be prepared, to be flexible, to be dependable, and not to procrastinate.

Q: Please tell about the Fisk organ here which is named "The Marilyn Mason Organ."

A: The organ which stands in the Blanche Anderson Moore Hall in the School of Music is a result of a lot of thinking and consulting and wondering what was going to happen next with our department. Robert Clark was teaching with us at the time we were thinking and trying to decide. He had just made his first trip to what was formerly East Germany. We knew that we were going to have this fund started by Judith Barnett Metz. She told me, "I would like to do something in your honor. Would you like a Marilyn Mason scholarship?" I said, "Well, we need an organ more than anything." So she gave Michigan the initial funds. Bob Clark said, "We should have a copy of one of those beautiful Silbermanns because we don't have anything like that." At that time, about 1979-80, there was nothing like that in the States. So he was the one who gave us that marvelous idea, and the whole faculty--Robert Glasgow, James Kibbie & Michele Johns--thought it was the right thing to do. So, that's what we did. The interesting thing is how it came about. I went to our Dean, Paul Boylan (and he had just become the Dean in 1979). I said, "We're going to have this money for an organ, but we can't have an organ without a place to house it." He said, "I want to have a rehearsal/concert hall for musical theater, because we're expanding that wonderfully." Then he said, "Can't we think about combining the two?" which is of course what we did. So we arranged to visit President Shapiro (this was during his very early days in office) and called on him together with this proposal. He said, "I'll be glad to help you and I think it a good idea." So he was very helpful in getting us funds from the legislature. Then there was other money which helped us get the Palmer Christian Lobby. People donated for that. The Earl V. Moore people donated for that. Bill Doty, Mildred Andrews and Franklin Mitchell also donated to the lobby. The hall is named for Blanche Anderson Moore (wife of Earl V. Moore) who was a very devoted patron of the arts. She came to many organ recitals. I remember seeing her at Hill Auditorium when some of us were playing. And so we named this hall in her honor. The organ contract was signed in 1980 with Charlie Fisk, who said, "I won't have the organ for you until 1985." We said, "Oh, it will never come." He said, "It will be here quicker than you can realize." That was really the truth--it was here very quickly. We dedicated the organ on October 4, 1985, and it was a special occasion.

Q: Was the organ named for you at that time?

A: No, that was a few years later. Dean Boylan said that it should be named for me because the initial funds had been given by Judith Barnett Metz in my honor. This was a very nice gesture, and I appreciate it very much.

The organ is modeled after a Silbermann, but there is no specific organ which it copies. We would not want, and  we could not make a perfect copy simply because the hall is different and the time is different. We're no longer in the 18th century. In most of the churches where the Silbermanns stand the organ is in the west gallery, while this one is in the front. We have a very nice situation the way the hall is built. There are tiers of steps that go up to the organ. Last night, as part of our Institute, there was a choral concert with James Abbington, conductor. The singers were standing on these different steps, and it was nice for the 20 singers to be heard that way in  acoustics quite sympathetic for the voices.

Q: The Fisk organ has provided the students there with an opportunity to encounter historic organ building principles that they wouldn't have in other places.

A: Exactly. It's been a big impetus for us. I am especially glad that we could provide the original type winding: the bellows may be hand pumped and a recital could go on despite an electrical storm, and Michigan has them. With this organ, our teaching organs and the organ at Hill Auditorium, we feel very blessed. We have 16 practice organs plus 3 teaching organs and 2 performance organs. We have the magic number of Bach--21.

Q: Would you talk about your family?

A: My first husband was Professor Richard K. Brown. Many of my students knew him. He was a true gentleman, a wonderful engineer and teacher, a man whom I had first met in 1945. We were married in 1949 (long enough time for him to see me in action, so to speak, and he knew what he was getting). He continued teaching at the University of Michigan until he retired in 1987.

We have two sons. The first is Merritt Christian Brown (named after my father and Palmer Christian), born in 1955. He's a scientist who earned his Ph.D. here at Michigan. He took classes with his father in engineering. He would come home and tell his father, "You could make that course even more strict. You have some very gifted students in there." Richard would say, "But I'm aiming for the middle students as well as the gifted ones." Then he would say to his son, "Please, don't go into engineering." Our son played the violin just wonderfully, studying with Gustave Rosseels at Michigan. When he would finish practicing, I would say, "Oh, Chris, you play so beautifully, but please don't go into music." So, here was this young man with opposing directives, so he chose acoustics. After earning the Ph.D., he continued research in the Kresge Hearing Laboratory. Later, he read a paper at an acoustical conference in Los Angeles. An engineer who heard him there said, "We would be very interested in having you join our research at Massachusetts General Hospital." Chris was intrigued with the work they were doing, so he joined that research group. His mentor there was Nelson Kiang. Dr. Kiang later invited him to teach at Harvard. He is Associate Professor at the Harvard Medical School where he teaches physiology. His specialty has been the inner ear. His music and his engineering led him into this.

To me, that's a lesson that young people must know. You must explore the options, and how better to explore the options than to go to school. If you're a freshman or sophomore in school and not happy with what you're doing, it may be that the Lord in telling you to go in a different direction.

I had a wonderful student, Weston Brown. After his sophomore year, he said, "You may be mad at me, but I think I want to change my major." I said, "No, I want you to do what you want to do." He said, "I am making straight A's in German and I am making a B in music history." I said, "The Lord is trying to tell you something." He said, "I love German." He earned the Bachelor's and Master's and later a Ph.D. from Columbia in German and musicology. That's a fine example of how you can find options if you keep watching. The best advice is to watch for the options and hope to find something that you enjoy doing. Try not to think about money. If you think only about the money you will make, you may end up doing something that you don't enjoy .

Our second son is Edward Brown, a wonderful young man who's a free-lance photographer. He lives in California. He likes California because the light is always wonderful there. But I think he loves it because there's no snow, fog or ice.

Q: Did either son have an urge to play the organ?

A: Not really, probably because they heard so much playing. It didn't turn them off, but they probably thought one organist was enough. I practice the piano a lot a home. Once one of our neighbors, Mary Sinnott, said to our son Edward, aged 10, "What's your mother doing?" He said, "She's playing the piano." The next day, Mrs Sinnott said, "What's she doing now?" He said, "She's still playing the piano." They got used to that.

When they were younger, I put them to bed with organ music on the house organ which my husband and I assembled in 1955. I gave that organ to two doctoral students, Howard & Marie Mehler. We purchased a small Walker tracker for practicing. My family has always been very supportive but also understanding with my schedule. The dishes may not get done or the beds made if I have to practice.

In 1991 my husband had enjoyed four years of retirement. Gardening was one of his interests and his beautiful rhododendrons still bloom. He suffered a stroke on May 7, 1991. We had to take him to the hospital. We thought he would recover from this, but on July 23 he slipped away. Both of our sons were extremely supportive of me at that time. Even though I had this great loss, I still had my teaching which was a comfort to me. I had become organist of the First Congregational Church in 1984. There, Tom Marshall had been my trusty assistant. I had the inspiration of the Wilhelm organ at the church and we had the Fisk here.

In the autumn of 1991, I felt more settled. Music was a great support to me. One of our good friends, Jim O'Neill, formerly chairman of the French department, called. "We have a dear friend and he would like for you to play a memorial service for his wife who died some time ago." Other friends, Mary and Bill Palmer, arranged dinner where I met William Steinhoff. Later, he came to the house to discuss music he wanted--mostly Bach and Mozart. I played for that service in January of 1992. After that, we had lunches and dinners. It was satisfying to spend time with someone who was not in music and yet who was very supportive. It's important to have a sympathetic person near you, someone who understands you. He is an emeritus Professor of English Literature at Michigan. Although he had taught here for 30 years, I had never met him. We were married on May 8, 1993. Someone said, "What did you do about music?" I said, "I played for my wedding!" We were to be at the church Saturday morning at 11:00. My sons were there along with Bill's nephew and niece. No one else was present. I said, "Well, I'm just going to play the prelude." So I played the Guilmant March on a Theme of Handel. Bill came in, saying, "Am I late?" So, Terry Smith performed the service for us. Then I moved to the organ and played the Widor "Toccata." That was a fine ending for our wedding service.

Q: Do you have brothers and sisters who are musical?

A: My brother James Clark Mason was musical. He was a wonderful family man, and loved his four children and wife. He died two years ago. My sister, Carolyn Mason Weinmeister, is active in computers and computer programming.   She enjoys music and sports. She lives in Oklahoma City and has one daughter and son.

Q: How do you keep your positive attitude?

A: A lot of this is based on the loving care that we had as children. Both our mother and father were supportive of us. My mother always did the cooking and dishes so that I could practice the piano or go to the church and practice the organ. A loving home, to be surrounded by such love, and a religious home, to be surrounded by Presbyterian Protestantism--these things are what you cannot take away but also what you can't buy. Parents must be aware of this when raising children. That religious upbringing that I was given is something that no one can ever take away and I hope I never forget.

Q: You continue to be a church organist, and you've been a church organist for a long time along with your teaching. Have you been an organist at several churches in Ann Arbor?

A: I was a substitute organist at the Presbyterian Church where we belonged for many years. When Zion Lutheran needed an organist, the music committee invited me to play there. I was the organist for many years in the early sixties. John Merrill was the choral conductor. I enjoyed the liturgical service and the Lutherans. I enjoy being a church organist and I like to play hymns.  I sometimes remind the students that if they are church musicians the title "church" comes first, with the flexibility and dependability that I mentioned earlier. And, after all, that is usually where the best organs are!

We were out at our lake cottage one Labor Day weekend, and I had to return for church on Sunday at Zion Lutheran. I went to the Schantz organ, saw the bulletin and #15 for the processional hymn. I opened the hymnal and found "Joy to the World." This was on Labor Day weekend! I thought--these Lutherans, if they want "Joy to the World" they're going to have it! I really gave it the full treatment. The choir came down the aisle with their books under their arms. Not a person was singing. When they arrived in the chancel the minister announced, "And now we'll have the opening hymn, number such-and-such." I had misread it and the "15" was the page number for the order of service. Regardless, I enjoyed the Lutheran service very much.

In 1963, I had a fine student, Donald Williams, who was just graduating. I recommended that he take over and he was invited. Dr. Williams was the organist/choirmaster at Zion Lutheran for over 30 years.

We need not frown on church and service music. As I said, that's where the good organs will be. We have at First Congregational a wonderful conductor, Willis Patterson, who inspires us all. My assistant, James Nissen, is Associate Director of Music. He is so versatile that he can play if I am gone or conduct if Willis is gone. That is good.

Q: The fact that you keep active in church music is a testimony to your own students and a good way that you can tell your students what they are going to experience when they go out to church jobs as well, because you know just what they will encounter. I think a lot of organ teachers in colleges are detached from that.

A: I don't want to ask my students to go into church music without experiencing it myself. We must not be detached from church music. We must be right in the swing.

One thing I do tell my students who move into church positions: You're a new organist and choir director in a church. If you don't hear anything, you're terrific. Keep telling yourself that. You'll always hear when somebody doesn't like it. When they don't like it, you must smile and try to agree. Don't be defensive. They may have a reason for saying so.

Q: I'd like to know when the cooking requirement came into the DMA program.

A: All my students, even Master's degree students, are invited to cook a meal for us. That idea came in the '50s. One of the nice meals that was prepared was by John McCreary and Phil Steinhaus. They knew that Jean Langlais was coming. They said, "We'll prepare a Master's dinner." So they prepared a wonderful dinner for us. It's referred to on page 15 of the book, Hommage à Langlais, in Langlais' diary, where he says, "We've had a dinner with the students and Marilyn Mason and her husband." That dinner was memorable because there was a pot roast which was luscious. The flavoring on the meat, the carrots and onions were delicious, but the potatoes had been added too late and they were hard. Langlais was trying to eat them with his knife and fork and said, "Is this some new vegetable in the United States that we don't know about?" Poor John was so chagrined. Those potatoes will always be remembered as the ones that didn't make it. That was the beginning of that requirement. And I am now so proud of Phil, his wonderful career as organist/choirmaster and his work with Aeolian-Skinner, and with John, too, 30 years in the Cathedral in Honolulu as Organist/ Choirmaster! I do feel we had that cooking requirement especially for the men, but we must all learn to cook.

Q: You're certainly well known for your jokes. For many years you had a joke book that you lost along the way.

A: No--it was stolen at Riverside Church. I was playing a recital there. The organ console had two large mirrors so the audience could see while you play. I thought I would put my purse right behind me. That purse had my joke book and some jewelry. Someone reached in behind and took the whole thing. Someone said, "What nicer way to lose it than to have it stolen from Riverside Church." But I've kept a lot of stories in my head. Along with flexibility comes a sense of humor--mostly to be willing to laugh at yourself. If we can have the light touch as we go along, I think that helps.

Q: Along with that, can you think of some humorous incidents in your travels that would be interesting?

A: I can think of some humorous things that happened here in Ann Arbor. I was playing for freshman convocation in the first week in September for about 4,000 new students. I had played the prelude, but they asked me to play a special piece. I chose the Haines "Toccata," which is something that I enjoy playing and can play without too much extra practice. The Dean of the Faculty, Charles Odegaard, looked over at me and said, "And now our organist will play --Miss Marilyn Monroe." All of these students just howled, and he was so embarrassed. He said, "Oh, I'm sure Miss Mason will do just as well." Then I did play and it was fun.

Another thing that happened at Hill Auditorium occurred in 1985. I had scheduled a series of 16 recitals of the music of Bach (1985 was 300th anniversary of Bach's birth). So I was doing that series here at the Fisk organ every Sunday afternoon at 4:00. But I was also supposed to play for a graduation ceremony at Hill Auditorium at 2:30. So I said to my colleague Sam Koontz (our organ technician at Hill Auditorium who knew the organ like the back of his hand and who had been one of my Master's students), "Will you please play the final hymn, which is the Michigan hymn, and then a postlude?" Sam said, "I'll be glad to." I played the opening prelude, the processional and "The Star-Spangled Banner." The console was in the corner on the far stage left. By this time it was about 3:00 and I needed to leave. So I left, and Sam was on the bench. I got to the Fisk on time and played the Bach recital in the afternoon. But I heard afterwards, the Vice President of the University, Richard Kennedy, had said at Hill (which he had never done before) "We're so happy to have our organist today--please thank Marilyn Mason." He looked back at the console. Sam threw up his hands in dismay, because I wasn't there. After that, when I was thanked for these occasions, Mr. Kennedy always looked back to see me.

Q: You mentioned that there have been 111 doctoral students. Do you have any idea of the total number of students you have taught?

A: No, I don't. But in over 50 years there were a lot of students. I wish I'd kept track, but at the time that is not the most important thing. Actually, we have graduated 600 organists in the Bachelor's and Master's programs since the first ones in 1932.

Q: I remember seeing the sea of people at your recognition dinner in 1986. All those people had been touched by your life, and also by the blue pencils that were given to each one.

A: I got the idea of the blue pencil from Palmer Christian. It's such a good way to mark music and it's easy on the eyes. It's a very important thing to mark fingering and how you're going to do things--not to have a Monday way, a Wednesday way, and a Thursday way. I have a student, Robert Jones, in Houston, who's fanatic about that. The strategy in the hand helps us to play. There are many people who say they're far too "creative" to mark their fingering. These are very often the ones who don't play as well as the ones who know where they're going.

The next thing is making the goals in your study. If you have a piece you want to learn, divide it into sections rather than trying to learn the whole thing all at once. Young people should have goals to learn certain music. In the semester system, we have juries for the music the student has learned. I don't know but that all of us don't waste time by being rather aimless. We waste time by not having an objective. That's why I've enjoyed teaching, because the goal is to be there and to have a plan.

Another goal I've had over the last five years is recording all the works of Pachelbel. He's such an imaginative composer. He doesn't have the rhetoric of the North Germans. He has a sweetness, placidity and strength in his music, and it has been a great joy to learn and play his music. These are recorded in the Musical Heritage Series. I began the series with the freely composed works, but then there were enough chorale preludes for three disks. The chorale preludes were written for services or as interludes for hymns. So we decided that the chorale would be sung first. A gifted tenor in the doctoral program, Robert Breault, sang the melodies. After  recording the chorales, we came to the Magnificats. I asked a Benedictine monk, Irwin West, to sing the alternation. There are more Magnificats written for the first tone than for any other. Dr. Tom Strode and his Boychoir sang the alternation for Volumes 7 and 8.

Q: Have you done some additional teaching elsewhere in addition to your teaching at Michigan?

A: I did some  teaching at Columbia University during summers while I was in doctoral studies. I taught at St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia, where Searle Wright was the organist. I also taught at Pomona College in Claremont and at the school in Brazil. But I love Michigan a lot. What's wonderful about teaching is that the clientele changes. I have had students for as many as four or five years. I have recommended that some of my students study with my other colleagues in the department. Prof. Glasgow, Dr. Kibbie, and Dr. Johns each have their own special things to offer.

Robert Glasgow excels in the nineteenth-century interpretations, while Dr. Kibbie enjoys the baroque and contemporary. Michele Johns with her expertise and experience has brought  much to our curriculum in church music practices. Her position as organist/choirmaster at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Plymouth, has given "hands-on" experience to so many of our students.

Q: Was there ever a thought that you would go anywhere else to teach?

A: I had a wonderful offer from USC  and Raymond Kendall in the '50s. But I talked to my husband and to Dean Moore and decided to stay here.

Q: In a job interview, someone once asked me what I would like written on my tombstone. What would you like to be remembered for?

A: You would like to think that the things you have done have been a blessing to other people and that you were kind. We all have our own opportunity to serve. So, for the stone, I have two suggestions: "She served and enjoyed" or "S. D. G."

Q: Thank you, Marilyn, for your 50 years of teaching at the University of Michigan and for the positive influence you have had on so many lives!

by Marcia Van Oyen

"English concert organist John Scott is recognized not only as one of his country's finest organists and musical leaders, but also as one of the most gifted of his generation of concert organists in the performance world today." So begins John Scott's biographical sketch in his management's brochure. Scott's stellar career includes serving as Director of Music at St. Paul's Cathedral and (formerly) Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy of Music, many tours and recordings with the St. Paul's choir and as organ soloist, and a dizzying array of other appearances and awards. In addition to an already demanding schedule, this year he served as a judge at the Dallas International Organ Competition, arranged an exchange with the choir of St. Thomas Church New York City in June, and is performing the complete works of Bach at St. Paul's in twenty-five recitals.

 

On his most recent recital tour to the United States, John Scott visited Glenview Community Church in Glenview, Illinois to play the inaugural recital for a concert series featuring the new Buzard pipe organ and to give a masterclass, "Accompanying the English Anthem." During the visit, he demonstrated a genuine love of his work and approached his tasks with the carefully-paced energy of a veteran performer. He is a most delightful person--confident but soft-spoken, business-like yet very polite, sincere and possessed of a slightly mischievous sense of humor. Following his electrifying recital performance, Scott was asked if constantly being praised for his work becomes commonplace. He responded simply with a smile, "I don't get tired of hearing compliments."

During one of our conversations, Scott began to reminisce about a childhood experience with organ music. That recollection became the stepping stone for a formal interview, an exchange during which he shared some of the details of his experience as a musician in a great English cathedral and how he got there.

 

MVO: During lunch on Saturday, you mentioned a recording that made a great impression on you when you were young--G.D. Cunningham playing the Bach D-minor Toccata and Fugue at Birmingham Town Hall. Was that one of your earliest experiences hearing organ music?

JS: Yes, I'm sure it was. It was a scratchy old 78 record that we had at home. When I was growing up the 78's were already out of fashion, but we had an old player at home that I was fascinated by--the wind-up sort of gramophone. I discovered this recording of G.D Cunningham and I was amazed that there could be such music. I had never heard anything like it. It was something entirely new to me and I couldn't stop listening to it. I think I wore the record out in the end.

 

MVO: How old were you at the time?

JS: I must have been about eight.

 

MVO: Were you already a chorister by then?

 JS: Yes, I became a chorister when I was seven. I had heard organ music, of course, but it was at about the same time that I discovered this recording.

 

MVO: At that time, you were singing in the choir at Wakefield?

JS: Yes. It was what we call a parish church cathedral--a church that had become a cathedral in the late nineteenth century. We had a very good choir of men and boys. All the boys were educated at the local grammar school where we had choral scholarships to help pay for our education. From an early age, I was exposed to a wide variety of good music.

 

MVO: When did you begin playing the organ?

JS: When I finished singing in the choir, I had already been learning the organ for a couple of years--first with Percy Saunders, who very much put me on the right lines and then with the new organist, Jonathan Bielby. He was a great influence on my playing. I studied with him from the age of fourteen to eighteen. He did more than anybody else to develop my technique and my stylistic awareness. He was a very fastidious and demanding teacher, and also a great inspiration. He had been organ scholar himself at St. John's College Cambridge under George Guest. It was he who encouraged me to go for that particular scholarship. I went to Cambridge at the age of eighteen and studied for two music degrees, leaving at the age of 21.

 

MVO: What were you studying in your lessons with Jonathan Bielby? Repertoire or accompaniment?

JS: A mixture of both. To begin with, the main emphasis was on accompanying. I was in the extraordinary situation of finishing in the choir one week, and the following Sunday I was drafted in to play for the services. I guess my organ playing had become suitably proficient. I went literally from being in the choir one week to accompanying it the next week. After a period of some months, during which I was being tried out, it became a regular process. I was eventually appointed assistant organist at the cathedral. I can remember that first Sunday because we sang an anthem by Basil Harwood called "O How Glorious Is the Kingdom," which has quite a difficult organ part. I dread to think now what it sounded like, but I must have been able to cope with it.

 

MVO: In the United States, organ study tends to be very repertoire-based, although the vast majority of organists are going to play in churches and need to accompany, not be solely concert artists. I have the impression that your training had an emphasis on accompanying.

JS: That's right. I was a pupil-assistant to Jonathan Bielby. His main job was to direct the choir; I would do most of the service playing. That meant it was in his interest for the success of the choir that the accompaniment be really well-rehearsed and moulded. We spent a lot of time in my lessons working on the cathedral music. That's not to say that we didn't do repertoire. I remember doing a lot of pieces during the four years that I studied with him. When I went to Cambridge, although I was expected to play for services and accompany the choir on a daily basis, I didn't have any specific instruction in that. My music degree was purely academic. I was working on harmony, counterpoint, history, orchestration--that sort of thing. For the first two years, my studies included no practical part whatsoever other than keyboard harmony. Only in my third year was the practical part significant. During that year I had to play a half-hour recital, but it only counted for ten percent of my final marks. During this time at Cambridge, I began studying with Gillian Weir. It was a profound and remarkable experience to study with someone of her eminence and inspirational quality. But it was very much left up to me whether I wanted to study with anybody and indeed, who that person should be. It wasn't a requirement for my university course at all. The same at Oxford. You could be an organ scholar for three years and never have an organ lesson. It's crazy.

 

MVO: That's incredible! Is that the way it is today?

JS: I'm not sure. I think things must have changed quite a bit since I was there. I think the whole syllabus is not quite so academically based. Practical musicianship has rather more emphasis now. It does seem strange, looking back.

 

MVO: Based on your experience as a cathedral musician, if you could design the curriculum, what would it include for those aspiring to do what you do?

JS: When I was at St. John's Cambridge, my main duties as Organ Scholar were accompanying and conducting when George Guest was away. As I say, there was no formal training as such, you were thrown into it in a way, and you either sank or you swam. With that in mind, it would be sensible for people who want to focus on church music to have courses in choral direction, service accompaniment, realization of orchestral scores on the organ, and of course guidance in repertoire.

You have to realize the distinction between the English university system and the conservatoire system. If you go to university, you would expect to take a music degree in which the greatest emphasis is on academic study, whereas in a conservatoire it's the other way around. You're basically being trained to be a practical musician, though a certain amount of theoretical study is necessary, of course. I chose consciously to go to university rather than conservatoire because I wanted the broader base that that experience could offer--the chance to meet with people from other disciplines and backgrounds. I found that to be more attractive.

Looking back again, in my first week at St. John's--I was overwhelmed by having this world-famous choir to accompany--I had the scary experience of playing for evensong on the first day of term with basically a new choir and Dr. Guest conducting. On the next day and the day after, he was away and I found myself standing in front of a choir, something I'd never done in my life. Nobody had told me what to do, I just simply had to get on with it. To some degree it's a very English mentality--a very dilettante approach. You make of it what you can and learn by your mistakes. If you're trying to conduct a choir and nobody can follow what you're doing, you have to refine your technique so they can. Of course, I had watched other people conduct. That's the great learning process--observing other people who are  experts. You take a lot of that with you. To this day, I've never had a conducting lesson in my life. It may seem very strange indeed, yet that's the way one functions. And I have the privilege of working with a fully professional choir and many times in the year with professional orchestras.

 

MVO: Would you say that your experience is fairly typical? Do you have other colleagues who have been similarly plunged into service?

JS: Yes, I think it is pretty typical. A lot of people do come through the cathedral tradition so they're immersed in it. They know the repertoire. Many of my colleagues who are cathedral organists were cathedral choristers. A lot of them have been to university and had very good organ tuition. The other practical skills are acquired rather than instilled. That has its own merits. In this day and age, we're much more concerned with building courses and curricula based on what people wish to do later. All of these things are being examined. In London at the Royal Academy of Music there's a church music course that's been running for ten years which does give people these basic skills which are required for the profession. It's by no means unique now, though it was unique at the time. There are many other establishments which are providing church music degrees which encompass not only the historical background but practical skills and knowledge as well.

 

MVO: Tell me about your transition from St. John's to St. Paul's.

JS: After four years in Cambridge, I went straight to St. Paul's. I moved to London. I had never lived in London and I was very excited by that prospect. London seemed to be the right place to go. I was invited to take the place of third organist at St. Paul's and assistant organist at Southwark Cathedral, just over the river. Southwark is the cathedral for the diocese of south London, only about a mile away from St. Paul's.  So I was number two at Southwark and number three at St. Paul's, basically playing three days of the week in each Cathedral, usually at Southwark on Sunday. That was a great experience. I did that for seven years--running back and forth over London Bridge. It was a great learning experience, I must say, being involved on the one hand with the professional choir at St. Paul's and the volunteer choir at Southwark cathedral. However two very different liturgical bases as well. St. Paul's at that stage represented all that was very "correct and proper," if that's the right expression--a very traditional form of Anglicanism, whereas Southwark was a more progressive and, dare one say, slightly livelier style of worship.

 

MVO: Were you working under Christopher Dearnley at St. Paul's when you began?

JS: I was working both with Christopher Dearnley and with Barry Rose who at that stage was in charge of the choir. Looking back, I did most of my accompanying for Barry because I tended to play on the days when Christopher was not there. I worked closely with Barry and learned a great deal. He's a phenomenal and inspirational choir trainer. That was a terrific experience at a time when the St. Paul's choir had made a great impact under Barry's leadership through recordings, developing a more public profile than they had previously had.

 

MVO: At that time Christopher Dearnley was mainly playing the organ?

JS: He was really. He was the Director of Music, having the overall say in the music program, but after the organ was rebuilt in 1973-1977, he very much wanted to concentrate on playing the organ, to develop its role in the life of the cathedral and beyond. He concentrated on playing the organ for the services and Barry did most of the choir work. I was gradually brought into that. After a while, I took the choir for one day a week.

 

MVO: So you moved more into Barry Rose's position eventually?

JS: For a year, Christopher took the choir again when Barry left. There's a very nice recording from that time on the Decca label, with Christopher conducting and me accompanying. After about a year, he wished to go back to playing the organ rather more. I think that's where he felt the most comfortable. I was keen to have the opportunity to take the choir on a more regular basis. Although I was sub-organist I found myself directing the choir more and more. I gradually stepped into that position.

 

MVO: Being in a high-profile position, you're probably under scrutiny a lot of the time. How do you handle that?

JS: To be honest, I don't worry about it too much now. I used to worry about it rather more. You're right, it's a bit of a goldfish bowl. There's never a day, even in the depths of winter, when there are fewer than a hundred people at evensong. You're always conscious that the daily choral office is something that is very visible. Certainly, in the summer months, many more people attend. In July we have visitors from all over the world when we do the orchestral masses. It is a very visible position in that sense. One struggles to maintain standards, but I'm very fortunate in the support and set-up that I have from my assistants, my colleagues and from the choir. We all strive to do the best. In recent years we've reached a pretty consistent standard which is there from day to day. Obviously, every choir has its off days, but they seem to be less frequent than they were when I first started doing the choir work. I'm more established in the position. I don't feel so much the weight of what went on before. I've been there long enough, made recordings and feel more comfortable about what I'm doing in the job.  Of course, I'm always concerned to see who's there from day to day and if they're people I recognize. There might be a day when you suddenly see George Guest or David Willcocks sitting in the congregation! If you worried about that too much, you wouldn't be able to get anything done. Just put your head down and get on with it.

 

MVO: Do you find the pressure to be a motivating force?

JS: Undoubtedly. The moment you began to relax, to rest on your laurels, is the moment to move on to something else. Every day has its challenge. There's no such thing as a routine week at St. Paul's. There's always something extra. Whether that's ceremonial services, memorial services or whatever, there's never a chance to settle back into a routine. A daily sung evensong is a challenge in itself because for the most part, you pick up the music with the boys first thing in the morning. You've got an hour in which to mould it in the morning, and half an hour with them in the afternoon before the men arrive. The men rehearse at 4:30 with the service at 5:00. As a full choir, we've really only got about twenty-five minutes to practice forty minutes of music. It's a lot to do. There isn't the oppportunity to work much more than a day at a time. On Monday, I try to look at some of the mass for Sunday, but generally we're living from day to day. There's a lot of pressure in that, just to get things done. We have to work quickly, efficiently, and professionally.

 

MVO: What is the rehearsal schedule?

JS: We rehearse every day except Thursday morning. The choristers are educated in the choir school, which is directly behind the cathedral. They're all boarders--they live there during the term. I see them from 7:50-8:50 every morning except Thursday, which is our day off.  Evensong is sung by the men on Thursday, and the boys sing evensong on Monday. Otherwise, it's full choir on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and three services on Sunday. That's nine choral services each week on a regular basis.

 

MVO: What do you enjoy the most about your work?

JS: Many things, really. I'm very fortunate being based where I am, having this wonderful building in which to work. It's always an amazing experience just to go into St. Paul's. Every morning I go in and think "wow." It's a building that completely overwhelms you. The sound of music in the building is very special as well. With nine seconds of reverberation, it's a unique acoustical environment in which to work. I'm very fortunate with the choir that I have--30 boys and 18 men--fully professional singers. It's a very dramatic and exciting group of singers with which to work. Of course, the organ  itself is tremendously thrilling. It's a fine instrument in every sense. The Willis part of the organ has great quality and refinement. The part built by Mander in 1973-77 added other dimensions that fit the building very well, further developing the potential of the instrument in a way unforeseen previously. It's a very exciting, versatile instrument. This year I'm playing all the organ works of Bach in twenty-five recitals on Sundays and I'm just amazed at how well it copes with that repertoire. It's been remarkably successful. Obviously, one has to register things in a very judicious manner, but many people have been amazed at how well it does work.

 

MVO: During your masterclass on  Saturday, I noticed that while you were playing you had a smile on your face. It seemed obvious that you simply love that music and love what you do. What is it all about for you? 

JS: It's very hard to define! I couldn't put my hand on my heart and say that I like this piece of music more than any other. I enjoy all the different styles of music that we sing. It's basically the English cathedral repertoire, of course, and a lot of eighteenth and nineteenth century music. But in the time that I've been responsible for the choir, I've moved the repertoire backwards quite a lot to encompass more polyphony and early music, music which I very much enjoy. The versatility of the group that I have is very great indeed. The men are not particularly challenged by anything you put in front of them as far as notes are concerned. They can basically read anything! There is little need for note-bashing. It's so much been a part of my musical life to be involved with this particular sort of music--Psalms, hymns, canticles, anthems--it's hard to imagine life without it, really. I've often considered whether at some stage in my life I'd like to be a free-lance organist. I'm not sure. That would have its compensations in many ways because I'm really not playing the organ so much at St. Paul's. But I can't imagine life without pieces like the Balfour Gardiner "Evening Hymn" or the Byrd Great Service. I enjoy them so much. Each time I come back to them I try and find something new and keep myself fresh in that way. I don't feel that I'm remotely tired of this music yet. I hope that in ten years time I can still say that. It's the sort of music that does really inspire me still.

 

MVO: What keeps that musical tradition alive? It's very easy for traditions to become frozen. 

JS: Yes, I know what you mean. Traditions can become fossilized. I think the tradition is continuously being enriched by music from other sources.    The fact is that we're discovering ne repertoire all the time. More and more music is being printed, most notably early music by some very good publishers in England who specialize entirely in Renaissance polyphony--pieces which have not been available before outside of collected editions. The market is being flooded by good quality material. On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned, it's wonderful to encourage our best contemporary composers to write for the church. I'm glad to say that the Dean and Chapter support this endeavor. Part of our annual music budget is given over to commissions. For the millenium, we've pushed the boat out a bit. We had a big service on January 2nd which was televised nationally, attended by the Queen and the Government. We commissioned a setting of "Jubilate" from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies for choir, organ and brass. It was a good commission and will work well on its own with organ accompaniment, so we can do it liturgically. We commissioned some brass fanfares from another of our most eminent composers Sir Harrison Birtwistle. They were stunningly well conceived for the building with four different groups of brass playing around the building. It was really fantastic. Later this year, in July, we'll be doing a premiere of a work that we've commissioned from Luciano Berio, the great Italian composer. Our commissions in the past have been from English composers. I felt it was a time to bring in somebody else, so we commissioned Berio who seems keen to write for us. This is an important part of our life at St. Paul's--the church in its traditional role as patron of the arts must be seen to be lively and energetic. Over the years, we've commissioned pieces from John Tavener, Jonathan Harvey, Francis Grier, and William Mathias, among others. Most years we've had a commissioned piece. I've been very pleased and proud of that tradition.

 

MVO: You seem to view that as a responsibility.

JS: I do. It's all to do with keeping the tradition alive. On the one hand, I like to think that what we're doing is very much in the monastic spirit, as the monks of yesteryear. Our daily office of Evensong has evolved from that tradition. But it has to be renewed of course. We have to be always pushing the boundaries either forwards or, indeed, backwards. That's vital.