A Celebration of Francis Jackson’s 100th Birthday: A Living Centenary at York Minster October 4, 2017

John Bishop

A thousand ages in Thy sight . . . 

In June 1956, the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, under the leadership of tonal director G. Donald Harrison, was rushing to complete the new organ for St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Pierre Cochereau, the organist at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, was to open the national convention of the American Guild of Organists on June 26 with a recital on the new organ at St. Thomas Church, and the pressure was on.

On June 14, New York’s taxi drivers were on strike, forcing Harrison to walk the eight blocks home to the apartment on Third Avenue he shared with his wife, Helen. It was unseasonably hot, and the exhausted Harrison stopped at a drug store for a dose of smelling salts. After dinner that evening, “Don” sat down with Helen to watch the impish piano virtuoso Victor Borge on television, and at 11 p.m. suffered a massive fatal heart attack. On June 18, he was buried on Long Island.¹

In exquisite foreshadowing and coincidence, on June 18, 1956, John Gavin Scott was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. His early musical education and performing career was as a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral. From 1974 to 1978 he served as organ scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge, under George Guest. After his graduation, he served concurrently as assistant organist at Southwark and St. Paul’s Cathedrals in London. And in 1990, he famously rose to serve as organist and director of music at St. Paul’s, following the retirement of Christopher Dearnley.

John Scott was appointed organist and director of music of St. Thomas Church and Choir School in New York in 2004, forty-eight years after the death of the creator of the organ there. 

On Tuesday, August 11, 2015, John Scott returned home to New York from a triumphant concert tour of Europe, anticipating a day of meetings discussing the replacement of the much-altered Aeolian-Skinner organ at St. Thomas, and the start of a new academic year with the Choir School. According to the website of St. Thomas Church, he was “not feeling well the next morning and suffered a sudden cardiac episode. He was taken to Roosevelt Hospital but never regained consciousness. His wife, Lily, was by his side when he died.” John and Lily were married at St. Thomas Church in May 2013, and Lily gave birth to their son, Arthur John Gavin Scott, on September 4. 

 

The power of social media

Social media is everywhere, and there are all kinds of uses for it, from the ridiculous to the sublime. I don’t need to describe the ridiculous—everyone who lurks on Facebook knows what I mean. But the sublime is there, and it can be powerful. In August, I was following the Facebook posts of four colleagues giving concert tours in Europe. Each published photos of the organs they were playing, and the buildings they were in. There were a few obligatory pub photos, and one of an Austrian cow. There were photos of statues of great musicians, with captions describing our colleague’s inspiration as they followed in great footsteps. It was fun to follow them as they crossed paths, sharing the stories of each venue, and rewarding to share the observations of such sensitive musicians as they sat on the same benches occupied by past masters.

John Scott was one of the touring artists. It was fun to follow him as he moved around, but eerie to scroll through them a second time after receiving the news of his death. How was anyone to know that this would be his last concert? 

And never in its eleven-year history has Facebook showed its real value more than the days following John Scott’s tragic and untimely death, as hundreds of mentors, colleagues, and former and present choristers eloquently shared their grief and memories around the world. Photos of John at the organ, in front of choirs and orchestras, and at post-concert celebrations in pubs showed up by the hundred. I clicked “play” for dozens of John’s performances as they appeared on my page—from elegant moments of small ensembles on period instruments, to serene readings of the great anthems of the Anglican tradition, to the supreme sonic swashbuckling from the 1997 Christmas Concert at St. Paul’s Cathedral (type “St Paul’s Cathedral Choir 1997 Christmas Concert: Hark” in the YouTube search field, and fasten your seatbelt).

And someone please tell me, just how do a couple dozen boys project their voices in descant above such a mass of sound?

Millions of people have been privileged to hear John Scott’s music-making. His position at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London had him on the bench for such internationally televised celebrations as “The Royal Wedding” (Charles and Diana), Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, and the Queen Mother’s Hundredth Birthday.² And those of us who understand anything about performing before the public know that a certain amount of self-assurance (dare I say ego?) is necessary. 

But there are two sentiments common to virtually every comment I read: that John Scott was the consummate musician, setting the highest standards in everything he did, making it look natural and easy, and that John Scott was the epitome of humility, of gentlemanliness, of grace, and of kindness. I read of students who, in the thrall of John’s solo organ recordings, made impromptu international pilgrimages to hear him play, and were thrilled to be treated like honored guests. I read of colleagues who marveled at his virtuosity, hearing him play concerts that included not one, not two, but four or five of the most notoriously complex pieces—a series of blockbuster closers—with apparently little effort. And I read of people thrilled beyond belief to have received affirmation and encouragement from him. 

I read the words of parents of choristers who valued the fatherly, mentoring life example for their sons as much or more than the spectacular musical education. And I read the words of clergy describing John Scott as the ideal colleague, unruffled, unruffleable, intuitive, innovative, and always exquisitely prepared.We would have forgiven him for thundering through life with full awareness of his genius, dramatic swirls of a cape, and (as I once witnessed a world-famous conductor do in Cleveland) standing regally erect to announce his restaurant dinner order in stentorian voice, stopping all other conversation in the room!

But there’s the beauty. As the Gospel of Luke reminds us not to keep our light (talent) hidden under a bushel, John Scott knew that his was a special gift, not given him for self-aggrandizement, but to be shared freely with all the energy he could muster. Hundreds of people writing about John on Facebook quoted Johann Sebastian Bach’s maxim, Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be glory). John impressed and inspired thousands of musicians with his exquisite taste, consummate musicianship, and unparalleled collegiality.  He honored us all by the care he invested in his work, and our lives are all enriched by his devotion to the music of the church.

 

Reminiscing 

In the past few days, I’ve spent time with several of John’s colleagues and coworkers, hearing their memories and impressions. I intended to distill those offerings into separate vignettes, but felt that it read too much like tributes to the contributors.³

You know those gala dinners when a member of the committee introduces the keynote speaker by giving a ten-minute biography of himself? 

Instead, what follows is drawn from the words of others.

John had a relentless work ethic. He studied, practiced, and programmed meticulously. He approached each piece of music and each instrument he played as a fresh experience, and he prepared each performance as though it were his first. When there was extra practice time available he used it diligently—perhaps nurturing his skills to be ready for the many times when there wasn’t much rehearsal or practice time.

John’s basic musical and keyboard skills were unparalleled. Once, when the choir was working toward a performance of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, there were an extra few minutes in a rehearsal just before Evensong. John asked the choir to “take out the Bach” and run through one of the big flashy choruses. He went to the piano to lead, and his colleague noted that as the performance was to be performed at Baroque “low pitch” (A=415Hz) with an orchestra of period instruments, John was transposing down a half-step at sight. Another glance showed that he was playing from the full orchestral score—casually enough drawing on those basic skills—basic for him perhaps, but unattainable for most of us. His skills were perfectly preserved and carefully nurtured, available at any moment without notice.

Another rehearsal story came from an organist who was “filling in” during a period when the associate and assistant organist positions were vacant. The piece in question was Bach’s rollicking motet, Lobet den Herrn—five minutes and forty-five seconds of bounding Baroque ebullience. Determined to meet John’s standards, he had prepared carefully, and after a rehearsal run-through, was pleased to have grazed just one note. As the last chord died away, John turned to him and said, “Mr. ____, on page . . . .” One note of the multitude out of place, and John identified it perfectly and immediately. What’s more, the correction was not personal. It was accurate and simple, in the service of the music alone.

A colleague wrote: 

 

John’s unparalleled, gentlemanly conduct with people was tangible in his sense of musical proportion, balance, communication and temperament. Never the triviality of wasted time nor wasted words, what was undeniably correct in the music could not have been easier to comprehend and follow. One hundred simply perfect musical thoughts communicated with one gesture and a smile. The acceptance of nothing less through the reciprocity that made this possible without a hint of eccentricity, ever.

 

A correspondent engaged John to play a recital on his home instrument, enjoyed and admired John’s preparation, and was astonished during the performance at how fresh and vital the organ sounded. The story-teller was used to playing on the instrument weekly, performing frequently outside of worship, and hearing many other musicians use the same instrument—but somehow this performance was different. With the program over, John returned to New York, and the story-teller took a look at the piston settings used during the concert, expecting to find magical creative combinations as yet untried. But no. John had used registrations that were conventional and uncomplicated. There was simply something about his fingers on the keys, the turns of phrase, the impalpable sense of rhythm that transformed the instrument into something even more special.

In 2011, I wrote about attending worship at St. Thomas on Easter Sunday.⁴ Wendy and I attended the early Mass—the preludes started at 7:30 a.m. Two hours later, after we heard the sub-organists playing the anthems, hymns, and service music, John slid onto the bench for the postlude and it seemed suddenly like a different organ. It was breathtaking. The energetic drive of his playing woke up the instrument, giving it a new and distinct voice.

John was devoted to the boys of the choir. He cared deeply about them, and cared for them as a parent would. The mother of a chorister commented to the rector, “My son doesn’t have a father at home—Mr. Scott serves as his father.” John noticed dark circles under a chorister’s eyes. “You look a little tired. Do you need an early evening?” A chorister’s father posted a short video of John playing (pretty good) ping-pong with the boys, adding, “John was at home with the boys, and they were at home with him.”

The choir sang in a series of performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, led by the brilliant Sir Simon Rattle. After the last performance, Rattle commented, “Those are the finest choristers I’ve ever worked with.”

An organist was dejected after missing notes and registrations during Evensong. John expressed his belief in his associate, encouraged him—“I know you have it in you”—giving the richest of collegial experiences.

An organbuilder working at St. Thomas spoke of John’s vision for the organ—his intuitive sense of how timbres blended, and how he was able to alter the sound of the instrument with the subtlest changes in phrasing and articulation. Another commented that John was at home with whatever instrument he played. When on tour, he played a wide variety of instruments, from massive romantic cathedral organs, to huge modern trackers, to tiny ancient instruments. One observer pointed out that it didn’t seem as though he adjusted to each organ, he simply played the organ of the day.

 

Big shoes to fill

It’s a special responsibility for an artist to follow a legend—to assume a post long held by a beloved, skilled, and admired predecessor. Gerre Hancock was organist and master of choristers at St. Thomas Church from 1971 until 2004. Known as “Uncle Gerre” to generations of musicians, he raised the musical and liturgical standards of worship at St. Thomas to stratospheric levels. People thronged from around the world to participate in worship there, and under his leadership, the St. Thomas Choir was respected as among the best. Dr. Hancock’s organ improvisations were legendary, as were his compositions and hymn arrangements. 

Following Gerre Hancock’s retirement, John Scott arrived in New York and quietly assumed his duties without fanfare. He simply took up where Hancock had left off, and continued to build and develop the sound, the prowess, and the international esteem of the choir. Perhaps this metamorphosis was enhanced by the turnover inherent in a choir of young boys. After all, a treble chorister’s career cannot last more than four or five years. But as one commented to me this week, John Scott saw himself as a steward of the choir, of that great tradition in that great church. It was his duty to encourage its work for the Glory of God as long as his tenure lasted. Tragically, his tenure was drastically shorter than any of us might have hoped or imagined. But we as individuals, and our art form, are the richer for having shared the earth with John Scott.

Never has the world of church music been graced by a more highly skilled, thoughtful, humble, caring participant. Church music will never be the same because John Scott was part of it. Much of his legacy is permanent through stacks of solo, choral, and ensemble recordings. And all who heard him have witnessed the best there is. He was born with immense gifts, nurtured them with grace and energy, and shared them generously with the world to the Glory of God. That was his way. ν

 

Notes

1. Craig Whitney, All the Stops, New York, PublicAffairs, 2003, page 119.

2. Queen Elizabeth appointed John Scott as a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) in 2004 in recognition of his work at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

3. Thanks to those who contributed memories by phone and in writing:

a. Fred Teardo, organist and director of music at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, Alabama, who served as associate organist at St. Thomas for more than five years.

b. Erik Suter, former organist at Washington National Cathedral, frequent “fill-in” organist at St. Thomas. Erik’s son Daniel is a chorister in the St. Thomas Boy Choir.

c. Haig Mardirosian, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Tampa, where he presides over the Dobson pipe organ in Sykes Chapel.

d. Canon Carl Turner, rector of St. Thomas Church.

e. Stephen Tharp, concert organist, and artist in residence at St. James Episcopal Church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

4. I have written twice about attending worship at St. Thomas Church with John Scott at the helm. See “In the wind . . . ” in The Diapason issues from January 2008 and June 2011.

Lorraine Brugh

Lorraine Brugh is currently resident director of Valparaiso University’s Study Centre in Cambridge, England. She is professor of music and the Frederick J. Kruse Organ Fellow at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana.

The interview took place in Mr. Cleobury’s office in Gibbs Hall at King’s College, Thursday, October 31, 2017. At 5:30 that afternoon he led the choir in an Evensong for the Vigil of All Saints, with music by Byrd, Palestrina, and Tomkins.

Since the time of the interview, King’s College has announced that Stephen Cleobury will retire from King’s at the end of the 2018–2019 academic year.

 

Lorraine Brugh: I want our time to include what you’d like to talk about. I’ve thought of four areas I’d like you to comment on and you can add whatever you would like. Those areas are the recent Howells conference, the choir, worship trends, and personal notes. 

Just last weekend, the Herbert Howells Society met here in Cambridge, at St. John’s and at King’s College. You are its current president. What is its mission and current activity?

Stephen Cleobury: There are two organizations, the Herbert Howells Trust and the Herbert Howells Society. Both are, of course, dedicated to preserving the memory of this great man, and the Society is a collection of people who meet together for events such as we’ve just had this past weekend. The Trust is a particular body that allows us to make grants which help to support recording and performance of Howells’s works. These are funded from the royalties from Howells’s estate.  

 

LB: Would you commend particular organ works to American organists? Some play the Psalm Preludes but most of us don’t go much further.

SC: I think the Psalm Preludes are wonderful. There is a tantalizing aspect to those in my mind. Herbert Howells was acting organist at St. John’s College here in Cambridge during the Second World War. If I understand correctly, he used to come up at weekends and preside over the Sunday services. I imagine he might have improvised on the organ at that time. There may be lots and lots of psalm preludes up in the ether somewhere, but that’s just an idle speculation.

I can only speak of the pieces I know.  There are the rhapsodies, of which the best known is the C-sharp minor, which I played at the end of Evensong. That’s a very forthright piece with a quiet middle section, which is actually the opposite of almost all the psalm preludes that start quietly, rise to a climax and go down again.

The first rhapsody does more what the psalm preludes do: starts quietly and rises to a climax and subsides again, and I think it’s a very beautiful piece, completely different from the third. They are the two better known ones, the first and the third. 

Then there is the Paean which is in the same volume as Master Tallis’s Testament. They are the two pieces I know best from the collection Six Pieces for Organ. The Paean is the nearest thing Howells got to writing a toccata. It is very fast moving, with a lot of sixteenth-note movement. The metronome mark is quite fast. I once asked him if he really expected us to play it that fast and he said he did. I don’t know many people who can. And then Master Tallis’s Testamant, which I think is an outstandingly beautiful piece, in a modal G minor, and again rising, but ending with that little epilogue, that little envoi.  

Everything to do with Howells is about organ management. Organ management, while I wouldn’t say it’s a lost art, is now not always understood. We had a wonderful example of organ management by Nathan Laube who came to play here last year. I don’t think I’ve heard the organ managed better than that very often. By that I mean the ability to grade crescendos and diminuendos perfectly and to treat the organ really orchestrally.

I think that one of the things that has happened is that people have become a lot more interested in authentic performance style for Baroque and Classical music. And that’s absolutely fine; I’m completely signed up for that and do my best to keep up with trends in that regard. But I don’t see that it need also lead to an inability to manage the organ orchestrally.

I think a versatile organist should be able to do both of those things. The challenge for playing Howells is precisely that of managing the sound.

The Partita, which was the big piece I played on Saturday, does have some quite technically demanding writing. However, none of it (Howells’s music) is virtuoso writing in the sense that you’re playing something from the great nineteenth-century French repertoire, or later, Messiaen. It’s not technically that difficult.

It requires one to hold in one’s head the right sort of sound world. Because organ registration, certainly in late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century English usage, was approached rather differently from the way people naturally approach it now. This can be seen in the organ in the Albert Hall as it used to be. Today we have general combinations and sequencers (steppers), so we can be far too fancy with our registrations, too fussy, because it’s so easy to do, whereas in the old days mostly the pistons were pre-set so that you couldn’t easily change them. If you look at the way they were set, you would find that the crescendo was made by drawing the 8′ stops one by one, then the 4′ stops one by one, whereas now people would add a 4′ to a single 8′, then a 2′, and so on. That would have worked well at the Royal Albert Hall.

The nineteenth-century orchestra sounds different from a classical orchestra playing on period instruments; the duty of the organist is to reflect different sound worlds as best as can be done on any given instrument. So that’s why I say you need to hold in your head the sound world as best as you can that Howells had in his head. Listen to recordings of the old Gloucester organ made by Herbert Sumison.

 

LB: Do you think that the German and the north German organ tradition, which builds the sound vertically, has influenced organists today?

SC: Yes, I do. I think you can hear Howells’s music played with too many mixtures. I was talking to Jonathan Clinch about this on Saturday,¹ and the very interesting views he has on this. He quotes Howells on that subject:

a. Players were not using sufficient amount of foundation tone, and

b. People were too busy fiddling around with the registration that they lost a sense of musical pulse.

Pulse was very important to Howells. When I worked at Westminster Abbey, long ago now, in the second half of the 1970s (1974–1978), Howells used to come to services sometimes when we were performing his music. I recorded some of it on the Abbey organ. Before that I arranged for him to come and hear me play his pieces. Everyone tends to think that Howells’s music is smooth and broad and redolent of English pastoral scenes. In fact, he was rather a dynamic and passionate man, and was certainly very keen on rhythmic pulse and clarity of texture. Those are two things that people don’t think of in connection with Howells but he really did want them. This might be interesting for American organists. One of the big differences a British organist finds when he/she goes to the United States to play is that you don’t have the stop called “Great and Pedal Combinations Coupled.” You have an independent pedal and you have to register the pedal separately, which is a really good discipline. Here we can get lazy because we have Great and Pedal Combinations Coupled. Here you can push Great Piston 3 and you get an appropriate pedal registration as well. In American organs you have to deal with the pedal separately. I think in Howells that is really important, since his pedal lines are often independent and care is needed to make them clear.

I remember one thing he pointed out to me is that when he writes a pedal point, he doesn’t just put down bottom D for two pages. It is always repeated, rhythmicized, or jumps the octave. He always wanted the pedal to be very alive. I take care when I play to register the pedal so that you can hear it clearly.

 

LB: Would you like to comment on the organ’s restoration?

SC: We are all thrilled with it. It is still recognizably the King’s organ, but it speaks with a renewed vigor and clarity. I’m particularly pleased about two new ranks, or actually two ranks that were replaced with different ranks. One is a 4′ flute on the Great, which you heard in the second movement of the Partita. It is very beautiful. We also introduced a proper Principal 8′ in the Pedal, which we didn’t have before. That’s given a whole lot more clarity to the Pedal. Now you can play Bach with a proper principal chorus. Formerly we had a Violoncello, a Geigen, a stringy stop. It wasn’t very good in Bach.

 

LB: The English organ was slow to develop the independent pedal. Is this a carry-over from that?

SC: Yes, I think it is. But David Willcocks in the 1960s had a lot of new upperwork put in the Pedal. We have had flutes at 16′, 8′, 4′, and 2′ and a 4′ Principal and mixture in the Pedal for quite a while now.

I arranged shortly after I came to have the Swell double trumpet (16′) made available on the Pedal, which is very useful for playing Bach. You can have the Great and Swell choruses coupled together, but you can access the 16′ reed in the Pedal independently.

Although classical Baroque organ music on an instrument like this is a compromise, there are lots of things you can do to make it have integrity.

 

LB: Both of these things would help with this integrity.

SC: Yes, indeed.

 

LB: You were also organ scholar at St. John’s. Did you overlap with Howells at all?

SC: No, well not at St. John’s. His service there was in the War, when Robin Orr was away on wartime service, just in the way Harold Darke was here at King’s when Boris Ord was away in the Air Force.

 

LB: And George Guest was there when you were there? 

SC: Yes.

 

LB: This collaboration with St. John’s each year—is that a result your being an organ scholar there?

SC: No, you’re talking about the annual Evensong service sung by both choirs. This had been started before I came here as organ scholar at St. John’s, and has probably been going since the early 60s. Originally it was connected with the Cambridge Music Festival, which took place in the summer.

It used to be described as “Evensong sung by the choirs of King’s and St. John’s to mark the opening of the Cambridge Summer Festival.” That has come and gone so we’ve lost that connection, but we have carried on doing the annual service.

 

LB: I think it’s nice to show that collaboration.

SC: Yes. We choose the repertoire carefully. Each choir is obviously slightly different in its style. We find that if you choose big repertoire like we did this year, like Blest Pair of Sirens by Parry, that sort of piece sounds better with more singers. Some repertoire sounds better sung by one choir or the other.

 

LB: I was here when you sang a Lassus Mass a couple weeks ago. That sounds best with a small choir.

SC: I quite agree.

 

LB: Americans are fascinated with the King’s College men and boys’ choir, and how they get trained.  What do you see for their future?

SC: I used a phrase the other day. I gave a speech at a charity dinner, a fundraiser for the Friends of Cathedral Music. In fact, it wasn’t my phrase, but it was actually given to me in the briefing notes. “We are not dealing with some kind of elite group. We are dealing with ordinary children doing extraordinary things.” And it is extraordinary what they do. They are ordinary kids, and they need to play around and be children. I suppose, if anything, what I try to do is to treat them as if they are ordinary people, not as superstars or anything, because they aren’t. But at the same time, you have to manage what they do here. They wear their Eton suits and walk through the college to the chapel. Visitors are coming in here, photographing them, for example, and we have to deal with and manage the issues that arise from that.

As far as the training of them is concerned, we do our best to offer them as broad a musical spectrum as we can. So each boy plays the piano and an orchestral instrument. We teach them theory, they have aural training and sight-reading. We also have a professional vocal coach who teaches them about singing. With children, I think that’s best done on a relatively straightforward and simple level.

Here I’m slouching in this chair, but I’m basically telling them to stand up straight, get their body alignment and balance in good shape, and then thinking about breathing and the easy production of sound, not forcing, just good basic habits.

 

LB: The older boys model the sound for the younger boys?

SC: Yes, that’s a good point. There are two aspects to the training they get.  You would have seen in the chapel boys in Years 6, 7, and 8. We also have boys in Years 4 and 5 back over the river at King’s College School. They don’t sing in the public services. Some of the Year 5s do. They get one-to-one training, small group training, but they’re also singing along with the older ones. It’s a mixture of specifically targeted instruction on the one hand and modeling, or I call it osmosis, seeping down from one generation to another. One of the things you have to remind the older boys is that they are role models for the younger ones, necessarily.

 

LB: I saw one of the younger boys relying on another older boy for cues during the Evensong last Saturday, I believe.

SC: I try to place them so there is an older boy next to a younger boy through the ranks.

 

LB: Could you speak about what goes into the preparation for Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols?

SC: I remember David Willcocks being asked this question. I heard him on a radio interview when I was very young. He gave a typically clever answer that “in a sense you are preparing all the time because every day you’re trying to make the choir sing as well as possible.” I’m not somebody who believes in suddenly trying to up the ante a week before. I try to do it on the basis that it’s what we’re doing every day. That’s not to say we don’t make obviously very special effort for the big occasions. 

I personally feel that unless you’re trying to make it really good every day, you can’t suddenly click your fingers and expect singers to move into another gear for this or that occasion. Because children, especially young children, thrive on consistent expectation, they like to have the ground rules, whatever they are. It’s best to have ground rules, consistency.

Then from my point of view, the preparation is about planning the repertoire, and in a sense I am thinking about that all the time. I’m looking out for publishers catalogues. I get a lot of material sent to me (looking around the office, “a lot of this stuff has been sent to me”), and I do try my best to look properly at everything, because you just never know when a little gem will turn up. And so I have to get all of that organized and sorted out. And then toward the end of November we start in earnest preparing the actual music. We have a carol service for schools here where we air some of the repertoire. We are often asked to sing Christmas carols for a concert. This enables us to prepare gradually through the month of December.

 

LB: Is it your innovation to commission a new work each year?

SC: Yes, it is. I started that in 1983. When I first started doing it, I got some quite abusive letters from people asking what was I doing degrading this great tradition by introducing horrible, dissonant modern music. 

Now I tend to get the same reaction you are describing. People are keen to hear what it will be. I feel that’s a small achievement.

 

LB: No small achievement! I wonder how you keep the quality of men and boys from one year to the next.

SC: I remember a comment made by one of the choral scholars when he graduated some years ago, ten or twenty years ago, who said, “I really admire how you peg away every day at it.” And I think that’s what I do, I peg away at it.

 

LB: Do you see the boys every day?

SC: Almost every day.

We didn’t talk very much about the choral scholars who, of course, are an essential part of the Choir. They sometimes feel a bit neglected. We go on the concert platform, and everyone will applaud the little boys, and then the volume of the applause dies down when the men walk on.

I occasionally do it the other way around and send the men on first. It’s quite interesting to see what the audience does. It is not a question of a front row sixteen trebles with a backing group. All the men are an absolutely vital part of the whole.  

We do services with the men only once a week, and more than that in half-term. I really enjoy those occasions because it gives me a chance to work in detail, in depth, with the choral scholars in a way one actually can’t do when the children are there. They occupy a higher proportion of one’s attention, naturally.

 

LB: How many of the boys and scholars go on to study music professionally?

SC: Quite a few. It is difficult to put a percentage on it, but a significant number do. Just to mention a few of the organ scholars, there is Sir Andrew Davis in Chicago, Simon Preston, who is, sadly, no longer playing, and Thomas Trotter. That’s just three and there are a lot more.   

 

LB: Churches in the United States have increasing problems supporting church musicians. How does the Friends of Cathedral Music support church music?

 SC: Friends of Cathedral Music exists to help with funding. I think that funding is an issue for everyone. Everyone thinks the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) colleges are rich, but they aren’t infinitely rich. We have to make our case for the chapel and the choir within the college as a whole over against educational imperatives, just as you might expect.

In a cathedral, the greatest call on funds is maintenance of the fabric. You can’t have a cathedral choir if the building is falling apart.

It becomes a matter of priorities. In the big London choirs where they are paying a dozen professional singers, it becomes expensive. So there is going to be a continuing need for financial support.

We get no support from central government. The money a cathedral has comes from its endowments if it has any, its lands and assets, if it has any, together with income from visitors.

For instance at Ely, those shops along the High Street, a lot of them belong to the cathedral, and the cathedral derives a rent from them. That’s part of what enables the cathedral to keep going.

Many of them now charge, as we do. I remember in Ely fifteen to twenty years ago, when they introduced charging, there was a lot of heart-searching, shaking of heads. People said it’s awful to charge people to go into a religious building.

One of the clergymen said to me it’s not really about that. It’s a choice. We either charge or we have to close down.

Here, King’s College Chapel is a private college chapel; there is no compulsion upon us to open it to the public. We choose to do so. To make it safe for people to be in there, to heat it, that costs us money.

I don’t subscribe to the argument that it’s a bad thing to charge.

 

LB: I think you do a good job of separating the worship times and the times the visitors can view the chapel.

SC: That’s got to be done.

 

LB: In the United States, each parish has to fund its own musicians, and they don’t have land and other support. There are increasingly fewer full-time musician positions. It’s a big issue in the United States, and our system is different than yours. Do you have any comment about our situation?

SC: I don’t have a solution to the problem. I just note what I see. Sometimes I look rather enviously at the level of funding that some of the churches have in the United States. Of course there is a difference. A given parish in the United States, whatever the denomination, has its parish role. Those loyal parishoners see it as a responsibility to see that it is properly funded.

The Church of England is a very different animal, partly because of the established link with the state. I think that, personally, one of the great things about it is that it’s theoretically there for everyone, of all faiths, or no faith. You can be baptized there, married there, and you could be buried there in the parish in which you live.

But there isn’t quite the same degree of community and of financial responsibility. It’s a rather subtle difference but it does makes a difference.

So I go to some churches in the United States that are fabulously well-funded. They have offices, and the director of music has quite a large staff. 

I do understand what you describe because I read about it. If there are fewer people attending church, you have less money coming in.

It’s different here; it’s different again if you go to Scandinavia or Germany where they have had the church tax, which is gradually being abolished in some of these countries. The church had it rather easy when it had the compulsory tax.

If the church loses this revenue, they’ll have to make it the responsibility of people voluntarily to support it.

 

LB: What you are looking forward to in future projects? How do you nourish your own spiritual life? Does this daily life nourish you?

SC: Goodness . . . . Well, forthcoming events: that’s relatively easy. We have our next United States tour in the spring of 2019, a short tour. I don’t know if we’re allowed to announce yet where we are going. We’re going to Australia in the summer of 2019. We have plans for the UK and Ireland in 2018, and this December we go to Athens.

We have exciting recording plans for a Bruckner Mass, and possibly some more Rutter. And we’ve got a recording coming out of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

There’s lots of that going on.  

I think as far as a personal spiritual journey is concerned, as with probably the majority of people, that barometer goes up and down.

I know that Cardinal Hume used to say at Westminster Cathedral, even someone like him, “it’s hard to believe all of this sometimes. Some days it’s harder than others.” That’s something I share with a lot of people.

As to how I perform my job here, I see it as an enabling thing. I want to enable particularly the young people in the choir to experience this wonderful music through liturgy well-conducted.  

I don’t seek to influence them in what they should believe about it. I’m simply laying before them the opportunities, and they take from them what they want. 

It’s really the same in terms of the congregation. So I’m saying, here I am. I’m trying to do this music as well as I can today, and you’re coming to our service. You’ll meet lots of different people, from the college, the university, the town, or visitors from Australia, or Papua New Guinea, and, of course, America. Some will be what one might call card-carrying Christians, some will be lapsed Christians, some will have no particular religious belief or knowledge at all. That’s what makes us very different from a community church in America as we’ve been talking about. Some people think that would devalue the experience for me. I actually think the complete opposite of that.

One of the particular problems the church has today is that it’s easily perceived as being exclusive. If you don’t fit a particular pattern . . . we don’t need to go into the question of gender and sexuality, but we know about all that.

Whereas I think, it’s a cliché, of course, that everyone should be made welcome, whatever their religious standpoint or lifestyle. So if someone comes to the service and hears “Like as the Hart” by Howells, for example, and is moved by that and spiritually nourished by that, that’s great. 

It’s not my concern whether they’re going to go to the altar and receive communion the next day or not. Those are separate issues. I’m not intending to sound detached about that, but I genuinely feel that.  

There’s another thing I believe in strongly. There’s another side of that coin. I say to the choral scholars (since it’s not necessary for the children at that stage, as they haven’t developed their views), “well look, if you don’t believe this, or don’t agree with it, you still have to behave in a professional way. There are people in the chapel every day for genuine religious reasons to say their prayers, and they don’t want to see you behaving in a way that distracts from that.”

I do insist on what I call a proper professional decorum. It’s important to me that the choir conducts itself properly.

 

LB: I think that clearly shows. Who have been your own greatest influences?

SC: I was a boy chorister at Worcester. The organist there was Douglas Guest, who’d been an organ scholar here in the late 1930s. The first experience of anything is very formative. Then Christopher Robinson came to be organist there and taught me to play the organ. Harry Bramma was there, a great teacher. Then in Cambridge there was George Guest, of course, whom I worked closely with at St. John’s. I also had good contact with David Willcocks during those years; I played for his rehearsals with the Cambridge University Musical Society. Within the field of church music I would say those are the people.

 

LB: What about your own composition?

SC: I’m not really a composer. I think I can turn in some fairly decent arrangements. I don’t see myself as a composer of original music. I have composed some pieces and people have been nice about them.

One of the privileges I had when I worked with the BBC singers as chief conductor for ten years was to do a lot of contemporary music, a lot of premières. I found it fascinating to be in close contact with composers. I could tell you a lot about composers from that angle.

One thing that is true of the best composers I’ve met is that they are absolutely consumed with a need, almost a physical need, a mental need certainly, to compose music. It’s something they absolutely have to do.

I don’t feel that kind of an urge to compose. I teach students here to do harmony and counterpoint, so I know how to put the notes on the page in order to do an arrangement. I know how not to write parallel fifths.

It’s the same with going into the musical profession. I remember Herbert Sumison at Gloucester used to advise young people, “If you are thinking about entering the music profession, is it something your innermost feelings make an imperative? If not, you’re much better going off and doing something else and keeping music for your leisure and enjoyment.”

 

LB: Thank you for your time this afternoon.

 SC: I look forward to seeing you again in the chapel.

Notes

1. Dr. Clinch presented a lecture on Howells’s piano music at the Howells Society gathering, October 28, 2017.

Larry Palmer

A glimpse into actual eighteenth-century performance practices

Early in April I received a copy of Beverly Jerold’s fascinating article on performance standards in Handel’s London. The American musicologist, a longtime friend and consultant, brought to mind the cogent remark from Gustav Leonhardt: “we would almost certainly be surprised by a truly Baroque performance!”

In mid-May, having just returned from a 2,000-mile roundtrip automobile journey to perform in the Aliénor Retrospective that was the final event for Historical Keyboard Society of North America’s 2018 meeting at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I arrived home on May 14­—one day before the mid-month deadline for submitting a July column. A late-night email to Ms. Jerold resulted in her giving permission to reprint this article, originally published in Handel News, #71 (January 2018), the newsletter of the Friends of the London Handel Festival.

Should Jerold’s article lead to a desire for more Handelian essays, an annual subscription to the newsletter is available for £20 (£15 for retired folk). Payment should be made payable to Friends of the London Handel Festival and sent to the society’s treasurer: Leslie Porter, 25 Park View Road, Southall, Middlesex UBI 3HJ, United Kingdom. Our thanks to newsletter editor Tony Watts and to the author for allowing this reprint of her thought-provoking essay.

 

Reichardt’s Review of Handel Concerts in London

by Beverly Jerold

 

If we could travel back to the age of Bach and Handel to hear how music was performed, we would often be disappointed. Technology is unnecessary for music composition, but it can greatly enhance performance. For example, early sources reveal that many musicians are not born with the ability to sing or play pleasingly in tune. In contrast, the music we hear every day provides automatic ear training and many other benefits. Since we cannot imagine a world that had never experienced our concepts of refined tone quality, consistently good intonation, and rhythmic accuracy, our reading of early sources may be colored by modern assumptions. Some of these are called into question by the Berlin court Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt’s report of two Handel concerts he heard in London in 1785.¹

The first was Samson at the Drury Lane Theater, whose entrance was in a dirty alley and down some steps, as in a beer hall. In the foremost loge, almost on the stage of this small, plain theater, were King George III and the Queen. Some disorderly young chaps settled themselves very close to the king’s loge, making an unruly disturbance during the performance—mostly mockery of the singers—such as Reichardt had never heard at the worst German theater. One of them took loud delight in the stiff enunciation of the singers, who made a point of thrusting out each syllable extremely firmly and distinctly. Particularly in the recitatives, Mr. Reinhold attacked the difficult words with such pedantic preparation, executing each single consonant so elaborately that one would often have had time to look up the word in a dictionary.

“But what I wouldn’t have given for a better musical performance,” declares Reichardt.
“The singing was often downright poor. In comparison, the instrumental music was much better, at least the string instruments. The blown instruments were often intolerably out of tune.” As first violinist, Mr. Richards led the orchestra just passably. Because of the many participants, the choruses made more effect than they usually do in Germany, but were nevertheless disappointing: “Often the choral singing was filled with screaming from the most wretched voices. Miss George and Miss Philips, the principal female soloists, were very mediocre indeed, frequently singing heartily out of tune, while Messrs. Quest, Norris, and Reinhold were deplorable, and often bellowed like lions.” Reichardt’s observations are confirmed by Charles Burney’s letter of 1771 to Montagu North in which he complains that English “singing must be so barbarous as to ruin the best Compositions of our own or of any Country on the Globe” until they have music schools and better salaries.²

After the first part of Samson, a little girl played a modish concerto on the fortepiano. Reichardt’s footnote quoting The Morning Post for March 12 suggests that the composer often took the blame for a wretched performance:  

 

At the Oratorio yesterday evening Miss Parke . . . performed a concerto on the Piano Forte. . . . her execution was such that a veteran in the profession might not be ashamed to imitate. This . . . was a sufficient compensation for three tedious Acts of Handel’s worst Composition. 

Standards varied dramatically between this program for the general public, even though it included royalty, and one exclusively for the upper class. On March 12, Reichardt heard the Concert of Ancient Music, limited to music more than twenty-five years old, and sponsored by a society of 300 subscribers from the court and highest nobility. Since even the most respected musician could not be admitted, the famed German soprano Gertrud Elisabeth Mara had to use all her influence to enable Reichardt to hear some of Handel’s music that was completely to his liking.

This concert’s hall, an oblong of more pleasing form and appropriate height than the Drury Lane Theater, was just large enough to accommodate an orchestra of very considerable size and the subscribers. Seating on the floor began in the middle of the hall, leaving a substantial space between the first row and the orchestra, leading the frequent-traveler Reichardt to comment about conventional orchestral volume level:

 

I very much like having the instruments at a distance, for when they are close, particularly the string instruments whose every separate, strong stroke is always a powerful shock, it makes an extremely adverse, and often painful, long-lasting impression on my nerves.³

Mad. Mara and Samuel Harrison were the principal soloists; Wilhelm Cramer, the concertmaster; and Mr. Bath, the organist. The orchestra was large and the chorus adequately strong. In the chorus from Handel’s Saul, “How excellent thy Name, O Lord!,” Reichardt found more good voices than in the program the day before, particularly since several Royal Chapel choirboys, some with very beautiful voices, participated. But for the most part, the lower voices were the same, and again just as harsh and screaming.

Reichardt was pleased that Handel’s second Concerto Grosso, which is so different from their present instrumental music, was performed well and strongly with its own character. In his youth, this work’s simple, harmonically compact music had made a strong impression. Today, he therefore expected nothing more than what it really is, so he readily found it pleasurable. But it will be a disappointment to those who think that the title “Concerto” promises a display of the principal player’s skill with difficult passages. The principal parts do not have as many difficult passages to execute as each part in the easiest new Haydn symphony: “We can regard them as a document showing the character of instrumental music at that time. From this we can judge the great progress instrumental music has made in the last thirty years.” Yet this type of instrumental music presents its own very great difficulty for execution:

 

something that . . . should be the foundation of everything else. Good intonation and larger tone. Music affects the listener only when it is completely in tune and strong. When performed with correct intonation and large tone from all the instruments, this concerto’s melodic clarity and rich harmony has to make a far stronger effect on the listener than the greatest technical difficulties. . . . Whoever knows the enormous difficulty of achieving this will not be surprised that I found both of these qualities today only with Mr. Cramer, who played the principal part. Yet no single measure offered him the opportunity to show his superior skills that are so admired in Germany.⁴

Since Reichardt’s 1776 manual for professional ripienists (Ueber die Pflichten . . .)
prescribes exercises that are mastered today by young children, string technique, even at that time, was extremely low by our standards.

Hearing Mad. Mara (for the first time since she left Berlin) in a scene from Giulio Cesare, Reichardt found that grandeur and fullness of tone had been added to her qualities of strength, clarity, intonation, and flexibility. “How she sang the great, noble scene from Handel! It was evident that Handel’s heroic style had influenced the spirit and even the voice of this exemplary artist.” And in Handel’s “Affani del pensier un sol momento” from Ottone, he was profoundly moved, for she conveyed the text as from the soul. After intermission, Mr. Harrison sang “Parmi che giunta in porto” from Radamisto:

 

With a tenor voice that is not strong but nevertheless very pleasing, he sang this Cantabile completely in accord with the old style in which it is composed: that is, without any additions of his own, thereby giving the audience and me great pleasure. Mr. Harrison performed even the very simple figures . . . exactly as they appear in Handel’s work, and sought to give the piece its due only through fine tone quality and precise, clear execution. And that is very praiseworthy. Melodies and finished compositions like Handel’s arias tolerate no alterations anywhere. His melodies have such a finely chosen meaningful, expressive succession of notes that almost anything put between them is certainly unsuitable or at least weakening for the word being sung. The construction of his basses and harmonic accompaniment is such that no singer can easily change three notes without creating a harmonic error. All of Handel’s melodies . . . can produce the desired effect on the present listener only when we want their effect to be the one heard. All new trimmings remove from the listener the impression that the venerable old style gives him and in which alone he can enjoy such music.⁵

 

Then Reichardt describes the contrasting style of composition heard in Mara’s performance of Johann Adolf Hasse’s “Padre perdona oh pene!:”

 

Hasse’s style presumes an inventive singer, and whole sections, intentionally sketched out only in outline, are expected to be embellished by the singer. At that time in Italy, the new, more opulent singing style arose hand in hand with the luxuriant dramatic style in composition. Hasse availed himself of this all the more since his wife, Signora Faustina Bordoni, was one of the principal female singers in the new lavish style. Just as the old bachelor Handel worked only for his art and himself, so did Hasse work for his wife and similar singers.

Nevertheless, Hasse did not approve of extravagant additions, as seen in his letter to Giammaria Ortes⁶ (a sample of Faustina’s own embellishment is modest). While most major composers followed Handel’s practice of leaving little, if anything, to the singer’s discretion, secondary, mostly Italian composers catered to Italian singers’ desire for a skeletal melodic line to decorate.

To close the concert, Mara sang a recitative and aria from Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, followed by a full chorus from the same. According to Reichardt’s text, this concert’s success was owed to the soloists Mara and Harrison, a much better physical space, and Cramer’s orchestral leadership. Cramer was clearly exceptional—with no metronome training available, many leaders were afflicted with the same rhythmic instability as their players.

§

How did Handel view singers’ additions? Consider John Hawkins: “In his comparison of the merits of a composer and those of a singer, he estimated the latter at a very low rate.”⁷ Handel would not have tolerated the harmonic errors that characterized most singers’ own embellishment. But where did they add the embellishment that Burney mentions in his General History of Music? The answer lies in his account of Handel’s “Rival ti sono” from Faramondo, written for the castrato Caffarelli: “In the course of the song, he is left ad libitum several times, a compliment which Handel never paid to an ordinary singer.” Here, and in other Burney citations, Handel did not permit routine alteration, but restricted it to places left bare for this purpose, such as very brief Adagios or the close of a section. Perhaps this kept peace with Italian singers while protecting his work. Compare any of his conventional arias with a truly skeletal Larghetto he wrote for Caffarelli in Faramondo. According to Burney, “Si tornerò” is “a fine out-line for a great singer.”⁸ Here, the singer is expected to add notes, but nearly all of Handel’s other arias are fully embellished, except for occasional measures. Our belief that a da capo should have additional embellishment derives solely from Pier Francesco Tosi, a castrato who wrote when skeletal composition was fashionable in Italy. There is no reason to apply his advice to arias that the composer embellished adequately.

In sum, Reichardt’s account reveals standards and aesthetic values different from our own. If we had never known such things as recording technology, the metronome, period instruments that play up to modern standards, and high-level conservatory/general education, there would be no musicians with today’s advanced technique. From Reichardt’s text and his definition of Handel’s style as “heroic,” it is apparent that tempi and embellishment were restrained, and that full-bodied tone was desirable.

Notes

1. [Johann Friedrich Reichardt], “Briefe aus London,” Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde, ed. F. A. Kunzen and J. F. Reichardt (Berlin, 1792/93), Musikalisches Wochenblatt (MW) portion, 130ff., 137ff., 147f., 171f. According to Walter Salmen, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (Freiburg and Zürich: Atlantis, 1963), 57ff., Reichardt attended these London concerts in 1785.

2. The Letters of Dr. Charles Burney, ed. Alvaro Ribeiro (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 1:96.

3. Reichardt, MW, 137: “Diese Entfernung der Instrumente that für mich eine sehr angenehme Wirkung: denn ihre Nähe, besonders die der Saiteninstrumente, deren jeder einzelner starker Strich immer eine gewaltsame Erschütterung ist, macht auf meine Nerven einen höchst widrigen oft schmerzhaften und lange fortdauernden Eindruck.”

4. Reichardt, MW, 138f.

5. Reichardt, MW, 171: “Solche Melodieen und ganze Zusammensetzungen, wie Händels Arien sind, vertragen durchaus keine Änderungen.”

6. See Beverly Jerold, “How Composers Viewed Performers’ Additions,” Early Music 36/1 (Feb. 2008): 95-109.

7. John Hawkins, A general history of the science and practice of music, (London, 1853; rpt. New York [1963]), 870.

8. Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1789), ed. Frank Mercer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, [1935]), 2:819-20.

Steven Egler

Steven Egler is Professor of Music Emeritus at Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, where he taught organ for 41 years. He is also director of music and organist emeritus at First Presbyterian Church, Mt. Pleasant, where he served for 35 years (1976–2011).  He is currently dean of the Saginaw Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

This interview with Morgan and Mary Simmons of Evanston, Illinois, longtime musicians (1968–1996) at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, reveals their strong relationship as evidenced in their 65-year marriage (1953–present). We met on July 29, 2017, at their home in Evanston, where they have lived for 50 years.

They discussed their rare collaboration in several positions throughout the years, and they shared wonderful anecdotes about their time as students at the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music, various church positions, and music making in general. The Simmonses shared the importance of their respective families and the influence that their families had on them and their careers as individuals and as musicians.Morgan and Mary also revealed insights into working with two high-profile pastors—the third and fourth respectively—of Fourth Presbyterian Church:  Dr. Elam Davies (1968–1984) and Dr. John Buchanan (1985–2012). 

Thanks to Ken Wuepper of Saginaw, Michigan, for audio technology support, and to Morgan and Mary Simmons for their careful editing assistance.

 

Steven Egler: Morgan, let’s begin with you telling us about your childhood and formative years.

Morgan Simmons: I was born in Andalusia, Alabama, April 6, 1929. Although I only had one sibling, my extended family was huge with 50 first cousins. Both of my parents came from large families, and my paternal grandmother was the oldest of 16, 14 of whom I knew.

Since both my grandmothers lived across the street from each other, and I lived only a block away, I got a lot of attention growing up.

 

Were you the oldest?

Morgan: No, my sister was three years older, and for both of us family was exceedingly important.

 

Recall for us your earliest musical experiences.

Morgan: I sang in the children’s choir of the First Methodist Church of Andalusia, and I started piano lessons when I was in the fourth grade with a very old-fashioned lady, Josie Lyons, who taught piano in the ladies’ parlor of the Methodist Church. She was a real taskmaster. If we were late to lessons we did not have a lesson, but we were still charged. She was also the organist and choir director of the church and wore very interesting attire for Sunday worship—a white satin surplice with a purple full-length skirt and matching scull cap for winter months; a white lace surplice with black skirt and matching cap for the summer.

I also took up clarinet but never perfected it; then at age 15, I began organ study. This opened an exciting new chapter in my life.

 

Mary, please tell us about your early years.

Mary Simmons: I was born February 22, 1930, in Centralia, Illinois. When I was six, we moved to Carbondale, Illinois, and I had a wonderful childhood with my sister who was five years older than I and my brother who was three years older. 

Unlike Morgan, I did not come from a large family. My mother was one of six children, and my father was an only child. This was the family that I mostly knew.

When we moved to Carbondale, I became a piano student of Helen Mathis, later Vogler, who was head of the piano department at Southern Illinois University. I studied with her until I graduated from high school, and it was good that she took such great interest in me.

When I was in the eighth grade, my mother thought that I was getting bored with the piano and suggested that I would like to study organ.

I studied organ at the Presbyterian Church in Carbondale with Eloise Thalman, who was a very good organist and took me under her wing. I loved it from the first day that I started, and during the summer, I got up early and rode my bicycle to the church to practice because I loved it so much. 

After having had a few lessons that same summer, Mrs. Thalman came to my home and said she would be taking her husband to the Mayo Clinic and asked me to play for church. What a shock that was! From that point on, I was hooked.

Morgan: Mary didn’t say that she has perfect pitch, which was discovered before she was six years old. Her native abilities are far greater than mine: I’m not a gifted, natural musician and have always had to work for everything I’ve done, so that has figured in our musical experiences through the years. 

It has occurred to me that one of the big factors that has enhanced my life is related to World War II. My father was in the military, and when I was a junior in high school we moved from Andalusia to Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was the beginning of a totally new experience for me.

Shortly after arriving at the army base, I had the good fortune of studying organ with a chaplain’s assistant, Lee Sistare, who was a graduate of Union Theological Seminary’s School of Sacred Music where he had been a student of Clarence Dickinson. He introduced me to Dr. D.’s Technique and Art of Organ Playing and plied me with stories of church music in the “Big Apple.”  

During my stay at Fort Bragg, I sang in the Chapel Choir. The chapel was only two doors from our quarters and had a small, two-manual Hilgreen-Lane organ where I was able to practice. 

Following my two years in Fayetteville, I returned to Andalusia for my senior year in high school and had lessons with another Union graduate, Henry Whipple, who lived in Montgomery. I took the bus every other Saturday to Montgomery for lessons with Mr. Whipple, who had been a student of Palmer Christian and Clarence Dickinson. On those same Saturdays, I had piano lessons with the  distinguished pianist Lily Byron Gill. She had studied with Moszkowski in Paris and was a teacher of the old school, who taught Czerny and Hanon, so I was exceedingly fortunate. 

 

How did you learn about DePauw University?

Morgan: A young chaplain, who was from Indiana and knew about my interest in organ and church music, recommended that I consider DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. I had never heard of the school, yet I was determined to go to Union once I had completed my bachelor’s degree. I was granted a Methodist scholarship and thus attended DePauw for my undergraduate study. 

I appeared in Greencastle green as a gourd, having taken the train from Alabama. Alas, I arrived without my wallet! It had worked its way out my hip pocket and went to Chicago on the Monon railroad. Believe it or not, it was returned to me a couple of days later with all the money still in it, so it was another of those serendipitous experiences that has graced my whole life.

My first-year organ teacher was Bernice Mozingo, a graduate of DePauw, and who had studied with Parvin Titus and Palmer Christian. The organ professor at DePauw, Dr. Van Denman Thompson, was very particular about taking first-year students, but at the beginning of my second year, I began my study with him. He was unlike any musician I had ever known.  

A larger-than-life individual, he graduated from New England Conservatory in one year, took postgraduate work at Harvard, and was teaching college in Arkansas at age 19. He came to DePauw when he was 20 and taught for 47 years. 

His wife, Eula Mae, blind from age three, was a very accomplished musician in her own right. Together they had seven children, the youngest of whom they named Lynnwood in honor of the person known by many as America’s greatest organist, Lynnwood Farnam. 

He was also teaching and performing Messiaen and other contemporary composers long before many other organists of the day. 

The organ used for teaching was in Gobin Memorial Methodist Church, a four-manual vintage Kimball instrument with fabulous strings, and before I arrived, the Aeolian-Skinner Company had added an unenclosed positive. In 1943, a two-manual “Baroque” organ was installed in the balcony, so we had the best of both worlds.

In terms of teaching, he was unique. During an opening conversation at the console, he would sit facing the stop jams and comment on my playing; then he would leave me alone while walking up and down the aisles of the church, return and say, “I think you’d be better to put your third finger on the B-flat.”  

He had an incredible ear. A fellow student said he called up to him during one lesson, “The vacuum cleaner is sounding a flat F sharp. You’ll have to play a little louder.” Besides being a wonderful teacher, he was a fabulous performer and improviser. 

Marcel Dupré came to the campus to play in 1948, and l listened in the back of the church while Dr. Thompson demonstrated the organ for Dupré by improvising a lengthy theme and variations. Upon its conclusion, Dupré stood up and shouted, “Prima, prima!” 

I had wonderful experiences at DePauw and made life-long friends with such people as Charles Heaton and Maureen and Art Carkeek. It was here that I was introduced to the A.G.O. There was a student chapter, and I got my feet wet during my senior year when I served as dean.

 

Mary, please tell us about your college experience and study.

Mary: When I graduated from high school, I was determined to continue organ study but also piano. I went to the University of Illinois because that was a tradition in my family. My grandfather, my father, my mother, my mother’s brothers and sister, and their spouses, as well as my sister and brother and their spouses, were all graduates, so it was a given that I would join the “club.”

I started out as a double major in piano and organ, but after two years I decided to drop the piano to a minor and really concentrate on organ. My teacher was Paul Pettinga, a fine pedagogue and a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory.

When I graduated, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do; however, my brother, who was a ministerial student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, told me about the School of Sacred Music there.

I interviewed with Hugh Porter, was accepted, and attended from 1951–1953. That was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with Hugh Porter and his wife Ethel, which was enhanced by experiences and the varied opportunities that the city had to offer.

 

Was two years the typical amount of time that it took to complete the Master of Sacred Music degree, and did it include fieldwork as well?

Mary: Yes.

 

What was Union Seminary like when you arrived in 1951?

Morgan: Mary and I both arrived at Union the same year—the fall of 1951—and were, of course, overawed by the city. It was the “golden age,” both for the seminary and for the city of New York in terms of church music. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich were both at their prime as professors at Union.

Hugh Porter was director of the School of Sacred Music, having succeeded Clarence and Helen Dickinson, who were still around and still teaching. They came on Wednesday, which was known as D-Day. 

Mrs. Dickinson was quite a character and was the first woman to have received a PhD from Heidelberg University. She was said to be able to talk the horns off of a Billy goat and that she had talked her way into a required course that had been previously closed to female students. She wrote her doctoral dissertation, in German, on Italian art of the Renaissance. 

The Dickinsons taught a course about the history of sacred music, and Dr. D. taught
a course on oratorio solo accompaniment.

Both Mary and I studied with Hugh Porter whose style of teaching was quite a contrast to what I was accustomed. He was very much on-the-bench and over your shoulder while humming and tapping rhythms and penciling, and it took some time to get used to his more hands-on approach.

 

Would you liken him to anyone more recent, such as Russell Saunders’s style of teaching?

Morgan: Perhaps. He had studied with Lynnwood Farnam, a perfectionist of the first order. I have no first-hand knowledge of Russell’s style, but I had the good fortune to study one summer with Arthur Poister following my doctoral degree. With him the music was paramount—the technique secondary!

I also studied with Marilyn Mason who emphasized technique: careful fingering and pedaling. With Dr. Thompson you learned by osmosis!

In New York, one could experience an oratorio every Sunday. At that time, Dickinson was at the Brick Church, Frederick H. Candlyn was at St. Thomas, Harold Friedell was at St. Bartholomew’s, Norman Coke-Jephcott was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Robert Baker was at First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and Vernon DeTar was at Ascension. DeTar was very smart: he presented his oratorios on Monday evenings, thus avoiding competition.

Those were exceedingly memorable occasions; I remember DeTar conducting Honegger’s King David with the Witch of Endor being portrayed by Madeleine Marshall, who was the diction teacher at Union and a wonderful person. We became close friends, and she subsequently came to Evanston to do a program for our A.G.O. chapter. It was a heady time to be in New York. No question!

 

Mary, what can you say about your time at Union?

Mary: My experience was a little different from Morgan’s. He more was interested in the theological studies than I was, although I loved being there and making friends. We had chapel five mornings a week and, like many of us who had jobs related to the seminary, I was in charge of the choir robes. I was constantly cleaning the robes, removing candle wax, and replacing collars. 

I especially remember having a course from Harold Friedell on writing descants. I loved doing that and composed some pretty good ones as a result. I also studied composition with Norman Lockwood for a very short time.  

During my second year, I served a small church in the Bronx with an integrated congregation. In spite of the fact there were so few children in the area, they wanted me to start a children’s choir, so we scheduled the rehearsals for after school. It was an extra trip for me, because I had to take two separate subway lines and a bus to get to the church. 

I did, however, manage to get a small choir to perform some decent anthems. It was a learning experience for me, and I especially enjoyed the children. 

When Morgan and I were married, one of the fathers brought some of the children to our wedding. It was such a thrill to have them there.

 

Morgan, please tell us about your fieldwork experience at Union.

Morgan: For two years, I was fortunate to serve a Lutheran church in New Rochelle, which had had a Union person before me. We were able to perform Messiah with outside soloists (“and I accompanied,” whispered Mary). 

For the first time I had the joy and privilege of working with children’s choirs. Years later after going to Fourth Church, I realized how much I missed this phase of music ministry.

It was a tradition that the Porters invited the entire student body to their cottage in Connecticut for a retreat at the end of each academic year. That’s when Mary and I became serious with one another. The following October, we became engaged and made plans to be married in James Chapel at the seminary. Because our parents and many friends would be attending our commencement, we set Sunday, May 17, 1953, as our wedding date. Dr. Lewis J. Sherrill, author of a powerful book, The Struggle of the Soul, and my spiritual advisor, performed the ceremony. Like the Porters, he and Mrs. Sherrill became like family to us.

Hugh played for our wedding, and our reception was held on the 15th floor of Riverside Church. We left the city for our honeymoon in pouring rain, drove up the Hudson to a rustic cottage, and returned Tuesday for commencement to receive our Master’s degrees. You can imagine the flurry of activity surrounding all of these events!

Following graduation in the summer of 1953, Mary and I were named as musicians for the first Montreat Conference in North Carolina. We accepted this invitation with the provision that, if I were drafted, I would not be able to fulfill my obligation to the conference. Sure enough, I was drafted and had to return to Alabama to report for duty, leaving Mary alone to complete the term. Upon my return to Alabama, my father was diagnosed with a serious illness for which I got a month’s deferment. 

I was in the infantry and trained at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in the crack platoon of the division. The only way that I got through the ordeal was to rely on my sense of humor and say to myself, “If only so-and-so could see me now, crawling with a rifle on my belly under live ammunition!” We were known as the top unit with an A number-one record for performance. 

 

What do you mean by “crack”?

Morgan: “Crack” refers to the discipline that was used in an attempt to “break” (or “crack”) you, but I got through it. 

As fate would have it, Frederick Kent, who had been in the class ahead of me at DePauw, worked in the Third Army Chaplain’s Office at Fort Jackson. He asked me where I would like to be stationed after basic training, and I said Fort Benning. This was the closest base to my home in Alabama and where my sister and brother-in-law were stationed. Being another serendipitous experience and following those eight weeks of hell, I ended up with a plum job at Fort Benning. I was able to practice, took a speed-reading course, and enrolled in a French course, knowing that I was going to need it for my doctorate.

 

Mary, where were you at this time?

Mary: I was with Morgan’s parents in Andalusia. Upon Morgan’s return home after basic training, his father brought out a bottle of champagne for celebration.

Describe your time in Columbus, Georgia, and your activities there?

Mary: After this, we moved to Columbus, adjacent to Fort Benning, where I got a job on the post and did some organ subbing in the area.

Morgan: During that time, we got involved in the church music life of Columbus and were instrumental in founding the Columbus Chapter of
A.G.O., for which I served as its first sub-dean.

 Since I was stationed there for 18 months, we also determined that, if Mary got pregnant by a certain time, we’d be able to take advantage of the Army hospital. It worked and our son, David, was born on May 5, 1955. We call it a historic birthday: 5555!

I was released from the Army that June and then attended summer school in New York to begin work on my doctorate at Union. 

 

Please tell our readers about your year (1955–1956) in England where you attended the Royal School of Church Music.

Morgan: Prior to separation from the Army, I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship, and the following September, Mary and I and our four-month-old son sailed for England where I began study at the Royal School of Church Music at Croydon. At that time and for many years, the Royal School was housed in Addington Palace, which once served as the summer palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary, David, and I had gracious accommodations on the second floor of the magnificent edifice. 

Cyril V. Taylor, a very fine biblical and musical scholar, was the warden of the School. He had been with the BBC Radio Ministry, and at the RSCM, he taught courses on psalmody and hymnody. This is where I became interested in the subject of my doctoral dissertation: Latin Hymnody: Its Resurgence in English Usage. Subsequently, I researched the translation of Latin hymns into English and did a fair amount of research at the British Museum in London.

I had a few organ lessons with Sir William Harris who, at that time, was organist to the Queen at Windsor. I took the Langlais Suite Brève to one lesson, and after hearing one page, he shut the book and said, “I will not listen to such music.”

Then I had the audacity to think I could study with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music. During our initial session and in no uncertain terms, he informed me that I wasn’t ready for him!

He sent me to William Lovelock, professor at Trinity College in London. Like Van Denman Thomspon, he was also a mind-blowing musician. He could write out a melody, harmonize it by writing the alto line, then the tenor, and then the bass, just one voice at a time. So I had almost a year’s study of basic harmony with Lovelock, which complemented my undergraduate and graduate school experiences. 

Gerald Knight, director of the Royal School, was a gracious host to Allen Sever (another Fulbright Scholar) and me and took us on trips to Ely, York, and other cathedral cities. 

I also had the amazing opportunity of hearing Lessons and Carols at Salisbury and King’s College, Cambridge.

We were introduced to Prince Philip during a reception for all Fulbright scholars at the English-Speaking Union. Another time, Sir William McKie, organist at Westminster Abbey, entertained Mary and me for tea. These encounters were among the highlights of our time in England. 

 

After being in England for a year, you returned to Union where you pursued your Doctor of Sacred Music degree.

Morgan: Yes, but unfortunately, we had to shorten our time in England because of my father’s illness, so we returned four weeks earlier than had been scheduled. 

My father died in July 1956, and we returned to Union that September where I began my doctoral study. 

I also assumed the position of minister of music at the Bound Brook Presbyterian Church in Bound Brook, New Jersey, succeeding our friend, Charles Heaton, who had just completed his doctorate at Union. It turned out to be a wonderful experience since the church had a long history of fine church music going back to the days of Ifor Jones, esteemed conductor of the Bach Choir Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

 

Of mention on the current website of Bound Brook Presbyterian Church is: “Many of our former directors of music have become of note in their field. Ifor Jones who was here in the 1930s became the third director of the Bach Bethlehem Choir and has edited many Bach cantatas and anthems. Morgan Simmons was here in the 1950s and went to and retired from Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Other noted names are Charles Heaton and Clifford Case, former U. S. Senator.”

Morgan: Thanks for doing your homework! I had not known of Senator Case’s relation to the church, which is the third oldest church in the state of New Jersey, founded in 1688, and has missed only one service in its history. That was when a battle was being fought during the Revolutionary War on the church grounds. 

We had a blizzard one year while we were there, but we held church with 17 in the choir and 50 in the congregation. I was never so proud of a choir!

Ifor Jones and E. Power Biggs had been contemporaries at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and both came to the United States in 1930. Although Jones was an organist, Biggs excelled in organ and Jones in choral work.

The Bound Brook Church offered abundant opportunities to put into practice what I had already learned and was continuing to learn. 

We had a large children’s choir program of six choirs and enjoyed annual subscriptions to children’s concerts in New York City for six Saturdays each year. They heard orchestral music, took boat trips, and learned about city life—a testament to the generous support of the congregation.

There was a good choir library, also. During our first year, we did the Bach Magnificat, about which the chairman of the music committee was initially very uncertain, but she was delighted that we could actually “pull off” something like that! 

 

Was Mary with you in that position?

Morgan: Oh, yes. Mary was always there accompanying.

 

So Mary, were you playing all of those oratorio accompaniments before they became published scores for organ?

Mary: Yes. I always loved accompanying, even in high school.

Morgan: Our second and third children were born while we were in New Jersey—one between children’s choir rehearsals on a Saturday morning, and the other between church services on a Sunday morning. 

 

How convenient!

Mary: We had a good apartment that came with the job, good train service into New York, and made lifelong friends.

Morgan: At Union, I was studying during the summer with Marilyn Mason (as mentioned above) who was also working on a doctorate. Plus, I studied with John Huston, organist at First Presbyterian Church.

Also mentioned earlier, my doctoral dissertation centered on Latin hymnody. It included the study of plainsong hymns being introduced to the Church of England during the middle and latter part of the nineteenth century.

The dissertation was accepted by Oxford University Press in New York but was rejected by the London office, so it was never published. Mary did all the typing of the 300-page document, and I penned in more than a 100 musical examples in four copies, no less.

 

Did you include footnotes?

Morgan: Oh yes!  

Mary: And I was pregnant at the time!

Morgan: In addition to the dissertation requirement, I had to write annotated program notes for six organ concerts and six choral programs.

 

Now, tell us about your move to Evanston and your job at First United Methodist Church.

Morgan: After six years at the church in New Jersey, I received a joint appointment here in Evanston at First Methodist Church, which became First United Methodist Church, and Garrett Seminary, which became Garrett- Evangelical Theological Seminary. That appointment began in January 1963, and I succeeded Austin Lovelace in both of those positions. Once again, we had the opportunity to do excellent repertory at First Methodist. 

Before Alice Millar Chapel was built in 1962, the church was closely associated with Northwestern. It was the site of many of the university choral concerts as well other musical events.

Shortly after we arrived, the church was the venue for an all Randall Thompson concert with Randall Thompson himself in attendance. On many occasions, we collaborated with the choral forces at Northwestern.  

Mary was technically not on the staff, but she did all of the organ accompanying for the church. We made many close friends, both at the church and at Northwestern.

 

Mary, how did you deal with the orchestral reductions to piano that were then the only available keyboard scores for these large choral works. Did you think that this was a difficult task at all?

Mary:  We did consult the orchestral scores, and I could pull out things that were important. Most of the time, however, I used the accompaniments in the vocal score in order to figure out what should be highlighted.

Morgan: One of Mary’s specialties was the Brahms Requiem, which we performed both in Evanston and later at Fourth Church. In addition to the organ, we added timpani and harp. 

With other scores, such as the Mozart Requiem, we used orchestra, although the first time we did the Mozart at Fourth Church, we used just the organ.

 

Speaking just a bit ahead of ourselves, what was the condition of the organ when you first went to Fourth Church? 

Morgan: It was the original 1914 E. M. Skinner organ that had undergone some additions and changes in the late 1940s, but there had been no mechanical changes. There were no general pistons, yet it had three master pistons that controlled divisional pistons number four, five, and six but not the couplers. We also used one of those master pistons as the general cancel since there was none, and it was important for silence. Needed sound could be provided by the crescendo pedal! 

That first year, Mary played the Mozart Requiem without general pistons, and it was quite something. Also, the organ had 230 dead notes when we went there!

 

Why did you move from First United Methodist, Evanston, to Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago?

Morgan: Essentially, I was not reappointed to my position at the church in Evanston, not on musical grounds but rather ministerial difficulties. There was much turmoil going on in the church at the time, and I was going to be without a job. 

One Sunday in June 1968, a distinguished gentleman appeared after the postlude and introduced himself as chairman of the music committee of Fourth Presbyterian Church. I knew that Fourth Church was looking for an organist, but I also knew that it was the sort of place where one did not apply. He said that they were looking for a new organ and wanted to know what my opinion was. He gave to me the names of three companies that they were considering, complimented me on the service, and left.

That afternoon I received a call from Elam Davies, pastor of Fourth Church, who said that Mr. McLeod and his wife had attended First Methodist Church that morning and liked what they heard. He then invited me to have lunch with him the next day and told me that they were looking for a new organist. We met for an interview, after which he offered me the job. He said that he had plenipotentiary power and was able to do this if I was interested. I told him that the offer was very enticing, but that I had an appointment with a pastor from another church and was not yet in a position to make a commitment.

The next evening I met with Louis Evans, Jr., pastor of the Presbyterian Church in La Jolla, California, who did not have plenipotentiary power and who was not in a position to offer me the job.

The next morning, Elam called me and inquired where this church was. I told him, and he soon got back to me after having looked up the statistics and said, “It looks like a good church, but there’s only one Fourth Church!” I told him that I thought he had majored in persuasion in seminary, and the rest is history. I never had a contract, never had a secretary.

 

What about the administration of the music program at Fourth Presbyterian?

Morgan: I did all of that myself as well as all of the church publications for a time. I did all of my own typing, along with Mary’s assistance in proofreading.

Right at the beginning of my tenure, the organ was front-and-center: they were definitely going to replace the instrument.

Mary: I’d like to intersperse here that it was Elam who suggested that I should be on the payroll. Thus, I became a regular member of the paid staff as associate organist.

Morgan: Unlike any other pastoral relationship that I had prior to this, there was a bond with Elam right from the beginning. We worked together from 1968 to 1984.

At one point, there were a couple of disgruntled choir members who tried to get me fired. Elam said that, even if there were no choir remaining in the loft, I would still be organist and choirmaster. That’s how strong his support was for me. Even after his retirement to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, we remained close friends.

One of my biggest responsibilities was developing the choir. Dr. Davies gave me the authority to hire and fire as necessary, but it took me four to five years to create the choral sound that I carried in my head.

The choir was all paid, and as a result, one always exchanges one set of problems for another. Having never worked with a paid singer before, let alone an all-paid choir, I was presented with a whole bevy of challenges and potential for tension in the ranks as well as dealing with prima donnas.

 

Please talk about the installation of the Aeolian-Skinner in 1971.

Morgan: Elam Davies did not have a good experience with the organ in his previous church in Pennsylvania. As a result, he was determined that the organ was going to be an Aeolian-Skinner, and we engaged Robert Baker as the consultant. We also worked closely with then president of the Aeolian-Skinner Company, Donald Gillette.

The organ was finally installed in the fall of 1971 and was essentially crammed into a very tight and remote space. It replaced the E. M. Skinner instrument of fifty-nine ranks with one of 125 ranks, which made for even tighter quarters.

The big problem was that Aeolian-Skinner was essentially bankrupt at the time, and they cut all kinds of corners on the mechanics of the console, including the combination action, which was very unsatisfactory and which eventually had to be completely replaced. Robert Baker played the dedicatory recital, and we had an organ recital series during the rest of our tenure.

 

Considering that you were there as the organ was being planned, what input did you have regarding the stoplist?

Morgan: I insisted that we had to have a Harmonic Flute on the Great, yet I had to fight for it since in those days 8′ stops were not in vogue! I also insisted that we retain the French Horn. We also saved as much of the original E. M. Skinner pipework as possible.

The very first Kleine Erzähler was included in the 1914 organ, and there is a letter in the archives from E. M. Skinner in which he says the following:

 

I have invented a new stop through my study over this case. I wanted to [include] a Flute Celeste of which I’m very fond; [however] it takes a considerable room and I set about finding a way to take less room. I wanted to make the stop softer than usual, so I had some pipes made to a small scale from the model of my Erzähler. The result is a most beautiful combination—I think the most beautiful soft effect I have ever heard. The sheer beauty of this stop gives me a very great asset and adds another to my list of original stops. I call it Kleine Erzähler which means ‘Little Storytellers.’ The stop is so talkative I have always said it named itself. 

 

It has been retained in the new instrument by Quimby Pipe Organs, along with the Harmonic Flute (1971 Aeolian-Skinner, Opus 1516) and the French Horn (1914 Ernest M. Skinner Company, Opus 210).

 

Considering that Rev. John Buchanan was such a prominent figure in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., describe your day-to-day working relationship with him?

Morgan: John and I had a very good relationship, but it acquired a new dimension because it was my first time  to work with a senior pastor who was younger than I.

Initially, I intuited that John felt I was still “wedded” to my relationship with Elam. It took some time to convince him that this was definitely not the case and that he had my total respect, admiration, and affection. He was very supportive of the music ministry, bringing to the equation his own accomplishment as a trumpeter and love for brass music that eventually led to the establishment of a fine ensemble that continues to enhance worship.

Elam was very much a hands-on pastor; for instance, he’d tell the young assistant pastors when they needed to polish their shoes. I missed that with John because there were times when I thought staff needed to be called to account. 

Elam also had a mind like a steel trap, came to staff meeting with no notes, took no notes, and yet quoted verbatim what was said and who had said it. He kept a calendar in his head, and you knew that he was on top of everything that went on in the church. If he trusted you, you had his total support, yet his was a different style of administration as well as a different style of preaching which was very dramatic and frequently went off topic. By contrast John’s sermons were perfectly crafted, informed by insatiable reading, and on point—qualities that led to his international prominence.

 

Upon your retirement from Fourth Church in 1996, the following quote from the Chicago Tribune speaks volumes.

Quote of John Buchanan, Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1996, “Organist Retires On a High Note.”

 

Pastor John Buchanan, while praising his [Morgan’s] ‘impeccable musicianship,’ also noted one job drawback for Simmons. Over 27 years, Simmons had sat quietly, between musical offerings, through ‘2,688 sermons and 1,700 weddings,’ a patience required in few other art forms.

 

Among your many activities, you’ve enjoyed success as a composer. What can you say about your composing?

Morgan: Most of my compositions can be described as “occasional” pieces. For instance, the impetus for Cityscape was the 1992 annual Festival of the Arts at Fourth Church, “Faces of the City.” It is based on a three-note descending scale (C-B-A) which comprises the opening notes of the popular song, “Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town.” Coincidentally, these same pitches are the beginning of Old Hundredth  (sung every Sunday at church) and are incorporated in the concluding movement of the work, “The Magnificent Mile,” an allusion to the location of Fourth Church. 

Reflections for Oboe and Organ was written for Ray Still, renowned former oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and premiered by the two of us in a recital at Fourth Church in 1976. 

Because I am not gifted with a keen ear like Mary, composing is an arduous task, most of which is done at the keyboard. I may get a musical idea, but I don’t commit it to paper without checking it out at the piano. The sounds of the Fourth Church organ and the acoustics of the building also influenced the coloration of many of my compositions.  

Prelude on a Melody of Sowerby features the Kleine Erzhäler and Celeste, which Sowerby would have heard and played. The piece builds to full organ after a blast from the Festival Trumpet, which dates from the 1971 Aeolian-Skinner.

On the occasion of the Fourth Church Morning Choir tour to Britain in 1990, I composed settings of the Canticles and responses for Evensong, which the choir sang at Bath Abbey, a service at which my mentor Cyril Taylor and his wife were in attendance. The highlight of that tour was the singing of his magnificent hymn tune Abbots Leigh in his presence and in that awesome building.  

 

Your hobbies include gardening and needlepoint. Please tell us how you became interested in these wonderful, non-musical activities. (The photos included here of your garden and needlepoint are testaments to your skills and artistry.)

Morgan: I began doing needlepoint at the age of 18 under the guidance of one of my aunts. The gardening goes back to age four when I was given a dedicated space in our yard for my own plantings. Addiction to the plant world has only grown through the years.

The needlepoint includes over 30 pieces for Fourth Church—mainly the chancel cushions, a cross with attendant panels and replicas of stained glass—plus the large 4′ x 4′ tapestry of The Burning Bush which hangs in the new building at Fourth Church and which was created in honor of the musicians who have served the church.

 

Why needlepoint?

Morgan: It is therapy: I don’t sit still well. I guess that it has had something to do with my itchy fingers!

 

In a statement that you sent to me before the interview, you said the following:

 

I was always sensitive to the fact that I had BIG shoes to fill. In Isaac Newton’s words, ‘If I have seen further than others, it was only by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ I wouldn’t dare to presume that I’ve seen further than others, but I am acutely aware that I have a BIG debt to those who have gone before me.”

 

Because you are a giant in our field, what do you have to say to those of us who are standing on your shoulders?

Morgan: I’ve spoken about the fact that I don’t have outstanding, native musical ability. Whatever success I’ve had has been a combination of managerial and musical abilities. Additionally, I believe that I have a good balance of IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient). 

My IQ is not “off the charts,” but I think that my emotional quotient and my personality play a large part in my ability to relate to people. This is particularly important in working with choirs.

The voice is difficult to teach because you cannot see it, so you have to use your imagination to convey ideas. I would make comparisons between fabrics and sound—beige chiffon or “tweedy” and other such comparisons—to which people could relate. I often quoted the maxim expounded by William Self:  “No one is a soloist; everyone is a soloist,” superb advice for creating a unified quality of sound. This is difficult for me to talk about, and, if anything, it might be perceived to be conceited.

 

I don’t think that you are being conceited. Rather you are being honest and, as you feel comfortable, revealing of your skill in working with choirs.

Morgan: Through the years, I’ve gone through much self-searching and self-evaluation, and I’ve tried to conquer (not necessarily “the demons”) but various issues. I’ve experienced Dalcrose Eurythmics, yoga, acupuncture, and Alexander Technique. 

My sister used to say that the definition of an A-type personality is one who smacks one’s face against the automatic door because you get there before it opens for you. Needless to say, she and I were both A-types and could recognize the trait in each other.

 

Are you saying that this is something you’ve had to conquer over the years?

Morgan: Yes, it’s been both a bane and a blessing—a compulsion to measure up to the goals and responsibilities that I’ve set for myself. There is a big dose of “driveness” in my makeup that comes from my inner drive and my family background.

 

Do you have something else to share about experiencing the world at an early age?

Morgan: As a child, I had the good fortune of being exposed to the outside world. My mother was an incredibly independent woman and well ahead of her time. In 1940, she organized an 8,500-mile driving trip from Alabama to Portland, Oregon, and back. There were seven of us—my mother, sister, and I, an aunt, and a friend of my mother, and her two daughters—piled into a 1938 Buick! 

We stayed with friends and relatives along the way as well as in motor tourist camps (as they were called then), and this was long before the interstate highway system! We saw the Grand Canyon, the World’s Fair Exposition in San Francisco, with Johnny Weissmuller and Esther Williams. Additionally, we visited the Mormon Tabernacle, Carlsbad Caverns, and Yellowstone Park. This was just the start of the world opening up to me.

In the summer of 1949, I joined my family in Germany where my father was stationed. That was the first year of the Salzburg Festival, which we attended, and we also visited Bayreuth where I had the opportunity to play Wagner’s piano.

During our time at Fourth Church, we took the choir on three European tours: Salzburg and Vienna, England, and Italy.  

 

How did the Fourth Presbyterian Church Anthem Series (Hope Publishing Co.) come to be?

Morgan: This was a result of our friendship with George Shorney, who was at that time president of Hope Publishing Co. He became a member of Fourth Church—and I don’t want this to sound immodest—because of the music.

There are 16 anthems in that series: 11 were composed during our years and five were added after our retirement.

 

Who initiated the Morgan and Mary Simmons A.G.O. Scholarship for Young Organists?

Morgan: John Buchanan’s older daughter Diane married Rick Andrew, whose parents, Edith and Edward Andrew, initiated the scholarship with the A.G.O. upon our retirement from Fourth Church in 1996. It is presented annually for students attending a P.O.E. (Pipe Organ Encounter).

I’d like to add that I think the P.O.E. program is one of the best things that has ever happened to the Guild.

 

You also developed an arts series and organ recital series during your tenure at Fourth Church.

Morgan: Before Elam Davies retired, I proposed an arts festival, which he strongly supported by designating funds for its inception. Robert Shaw, Maya Angelou, Dave Brubeck, Gwendolyn Brooks, and other luminaries were featured on this series, which continued until our retirement.

 

Might you comment about the future of our profession?

Morgan: The drop in A.G.O. membership is alarming, yet better and better organists and instruments are appearing on the scene. 

 

What do you think is the reason for the decline in A.G.O. membership?

Morgan: I think that it’s a reflection of society: people are generally not “joiners” anymore.

 

Might it have something to do with the organ’s role in current-day worship?

Morgan: Case in point: some years back I attended a study program at St. Olaf College, and while there I attended a Lutheran church in Northfield. Sitting silent in that church was a fine, tracker instrument while the service was led by piano and guitar. This was disturbing. I’m sorry to say that this is not an uncommon occurrence!

 

Another common thread among those whom I have interviewed is that they have all said the same thing: they became interested in the organ due to their early exposure to the organ in church. Unfortunately, young people are not being attracted to the organ and its music like in the “old days.” This has adversely affected the number of those who are entering the profession.

Morgan: As an early teen, I thought that I was going to enter the ministry, but I eventually realized that my speaking voice was not of the right caliber to occupy the pulpit.

 

Do you have any words of wisdom to pass along to our readers as well as to the next generation of organists and church musicians?

Morgan: I wish that I had some words of wisdom, but I can honestly say that some of these young players are just fabulous. I believe that the future of the profession is in good hands if they can persevere with grace and commitment in the challenging times in which we live.  

 

Thank you, Morgan and Mary. You are the great musicians of the Magnificent Mile!

Leonardo Ciampa

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

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

—Yuko Hayashi

 

Yuko Hayashi is gone.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Early years in Japan

(1929–1953)

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

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

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

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

 

Study in America (1953–1960)

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Leonhardt and Heiller (1960–1966)

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

First European tours (1968)

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

 

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

Old West Church (1974)

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

As a teacher

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

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

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

 

Later years

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Notes

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

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

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

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Luchese, op. cit., p. 60. 

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

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

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

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

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

25. Phone conversation with the author, year unknown.

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

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

John Bishop

The Kotzschmar Organ

At 2:23 a.m. on January 24, 1908, a fire started, ironically, in the wiring of a new-fangled fire alarm system that was housed in the office of the city electrician on the third floor of City Hall in Portland, Maine. Public alarm was quickly raised, but freezing temperatures hampered the operation of the primitive fire fighting equipment, and the building was completely destroyed.

City leaders lost no time recovering from the disaster. The New York architectural firm of Carrère & Hastings, newly famous for their design of the New York Public Library completed in 1908, was engaged to design the new building, which was built, decorated, and furnished in just a few years and was ready for dedication in the summer of 1912.

Less than four months after the City Hall fire, on April 15, 1908, Portland’s most highly revered musician, Hermann Kotzschmar, passed away. A German immigrant, he had been encouraged to move to Portland by Cyrus Curtis, an interior decorator, prominent citizen, and music lover, who had heard Kotzschmar perform in Boston. When Kotzschmar and his wife moved to Portland, they lived in the Curtis home until they were established and could find a home for themselves.

Hermann Kotzschmar became organist at First Parish Church in Portland, formed an orchestra and choral society, and was the beloved teacher of scores of young musicians. The friendship that developed between Curtis and Kotzschmar was so close that Cyrus Curtis named his son Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis (1850–1933). Cyrus H. K. Curtis made quite a success of himself, founding the wildly popular The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies’ Home Journal, and later acquiring The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Evening Post, and The New York Evening Post. He amassed a vast fortune and was a prolific philanthropist.

After learning of Hermann Kotzsch-mar’s death, Cyrus H. K. Curtis approached his lifelong friend, Adam Leighton, former mayor of Portland and chair of the City Hall building commission, offering to purchase a huge pipe organ to be installed in the auditorium of the new City Hall as a gift to the people of the city of Portland. He commissioned the Austin Organ Company of Hartford, Connecticut, to build the organ, and wrote to Mr. Leighton, 

 

I have given them carte blanche to build [the] organ, unhampered by any organist or music committee, and without any prejudice or pre-conceived notions of my own, knowing that they are better qualified to build the right kind of instruments than I could be or any committee whose member might differ in their views as to what was best.

 

He continued, 

 

As this organ is to be a memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, I have asked [Austin] to provide some sort of place in the organ front for a bust of Mr. Kotzschmar and I am writing Mrs. Kotzschmar for photographs of her late husband with the idea of putting them into the hands of the best sculptor I know.

 

The cost of the organ was not to exceed $30,000, and Curtis’s gift made necessary alterations in the plans for the building, at a cost totaling $23,244.75, which was quickly authorized by the City Council.

On July 1, 1912, Mayor Oakley Curtis and the Portland City Council approved the formation of a music commission of three persons who would serve three-year terms. The commission would be responsible for the maintenance of the organ and the selection and hiring of the municipal organist. The virtuoso Will C. MacFarlane was appointed the city’s first organist; he was on the bench on Thursday, August 22, 1912, for the dedication of City Hall and the Kotzschmar Organ. The program opened with Léon Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, followed by a prayer and Owen Brainard of Carrère & Hastings presenting the mayor with the keys to the building.

Chairman Leighton gave a report to the assembly that included the announcement that the cost of the building was $930,934.34. His report concluded, 

 

And now, Your Honor, Mayor Curtis, please accept from the fellow members of the building commission their hearty good-will, along with the formal relinquishment of stewardship of this beautiful structure, which is destined, we believe, to enhance Portland’s title to the compliment it so often receives of being the most beautiful city of the New World.

 

Cyrus H. K. Curtis then took the stage:

 

Mr. Mayor: 

I present to the City of Portland through you, this memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, who for more than fifty years was pre-eminent in this city as organist, composer, and teacher, a man who was loved by all classes for his kindly spirit, his high ideals, and his devotion to music.  

He cared little or nothing for material things or for fame­—he never sought them, but here is his monument—a monument to one who did something to make us better men and women and appreciate that indefinable something that is an expression of the soul.

 

Cyrus H. K. Curtis purchased three different Aeolian organs for his home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and in 1926 he purchased the immense Austin organ (146 ranks!) for Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia as a gift to the University of Pennsylvania. The depth of his devotion to the art of music is seen in the heritage left by his daughter, Marie Louise Curtis Bok, who worked at South Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School, teaching underprivileged children.¹ She realized the need for a high-quality school of music that would be available to anyone, and in 1924, founded the tuition-free Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in honor of her father, so the influence of Hermann Kotzschmar is actively alive in Philadelphia as well as in Portland.

 

The Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ

The Kotzschmar organ had a wonderful career as a cultural icon in the center of the city’s artistic life. A succession of brilliant musicians served as municipal organist through the first half of the twentieth century. But by the 1970s, the organ had fallen onto hard times. The city’s budget was strained, and its leaders found it difficult to preserve the budget for the care and use of the organ ahead of essential services.

In 1980, Berj Zamkochian, organist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, brought a group of friends to see the Kotzschmar Organ. Among them was Maurice Prendergast, late of Kennebunk, Maine, who was impressed by the organ but dismayed by its condition. A few days later, he visited the offices of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and presented executive director Russ Burleigh with a check for $10,000 to be used for repairing the organ. As the organ was owned by the city, Burleigh felt that it would be inappropriate to accept the gift on behalf of the orchestra, and conferred with PSO president Peter Plumb. The idea of forming a non-profit group devoted to the care of the organ emerged, interested parties negotiated with the city to assume the responsibility for the care of the organ, and in 1981, the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (FOKO) was founded, with Peter Plumb as founding president.

A board of directors was established, fund raising began, and FOKO presided over critical repairs to get the organ back on its feet. Concert programming was renewed, and the organ regained its active presence. When the City Hall auditorium was renovated in the 1990s, the organ was removed from the hall for safe keeping, and the stage was significantly enlarged. Through heroic efforts by FOKO and the herculean devotion of organ curator David Wallace, in 1997 it made its triumphant return to the newly renamed Merrill Auditorium.

 

Transition and growth

Ray Cornils was appointed Portland’s tenth municipal organist in 1990.² Ray’s tenure of 27 years in that position is the longest in the history of the position. His consummate musicianship, his gracious and welcoming personality, his affinity for working with young people in FOKO’s vast educational efforts, and his skill at nurturing the complex relationships between FOKO and the City of Portland have been essential to the growth and success of FOKO. Ray was patient with the failing and recalcitrant organ, coaxing it through its dying breath on numerous occasions and helping scores of visiting organists navigate its treacheries. Ray’s ability to show the organ in its best light, no matter the circumstances, was central to its continued prominence.

Ray was equally essential to the lengthy task of the renovation of the organ, working with the organ committee through dozens of complex meetings, assisting in raising funds, and continuing as the ambassador for the Kotzschmar Organ. He helped play the organ out of the hall as the renovation began and played it back into Portland as a renewed instrument. In many ways, Ray Cornils has been “Mister Music” for the city of Portland and the state of Maine.

David Wallace first met the Kotzschmar Organ at the age of six, the beginning of his devotion to the instrument, and the formation of his career as an organbuilder. David’s zeal was essential to the organ’s survival through budget cuts, near abandonment, and the immense chore of bringing it back to life after the renovation of the hall. Although news reports heralded the return of the “restored” Kotzschmar Organ, David knew as well as anyone that its days were still numbered.

In 2007, the reality of the organ’s condition was made clear to the board of directors, and plans for a serious and comprehensive renovation of the organ were formed. You can read in depth of the history of that process, from startled realization, to the thrill of the organ’s second triumphant return to the hall in 2014 on FOKO’s website at www.foko.org/2012-renovation/.

During the 2016 annual meeting of FOKO’s board of directors, Ray Cornils announced his retirement, to be effective after the traditional holiday concerts, “Christmas with Cornils,” in December 2017. A search committee³ was formed in October 2016, whose work started with the realization that the newly renovated organ could serve as a vehicle for a new life for the organization. Purposefully intending to remain open to structuring a new position around the talents of the next municipal organist, the committee solicited applications, reviewed recorded submissions, and selected six finalists who would travel to Portland for live interviews and auditions in May and June of 2017. After the auditions, the committee quickly reached a unanimous decision.

 

The Eleventh Municipal Organist

On Monday, September 18, 2017, the board of directors of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ voted unanimously to accept the recommendation of the search committee to appoint James Kennerley as Portland’s eleventh municipal organist. That evening, at its regular bi-monthly meeting, the Portland City Council welcomed an ensemble named Burundi Drummers Batimbo United in a colorful thunderous performance in City Council chambers. They took special action to change residency requirements for Class C board members of the non-profit Portland Fish Exchange, made several special proclamations brought forward by Mayor Ethan Strimling, and acted on the order to appoint James Kennerley as municipal organist, effective January 1, 2018.

James Kennerley began his formal musical education as a chorister at Chelmsford Cathedral, where proximity to the organ inspired his interest in the instrument. He holds degrees from Cambridge University and The Juilliard School, and the prestigious diploma as a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. After holding positions at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut, and St. Mary the Virgin (Times Square) in New York City, he presently serves as organist and choirmaster at the Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch in New York City, where he directs a professional choir of 18 voices.

James won first place in the 2008 Albert Schweitzer National Organ Playing Competition and was winner of the 2013 composition competition of the Association of Anglican Musicians. He is active in New York and abroad as an organist, harpsichordist, singer, and conductor.

Recently, James and I sat together in my apartment in New York City to chat about the start of his work in Portland. He spoke eloquently about the role of the performer, bringing thought-provoking expression, musical and artistic statements both old and new, and outright entertainment to sacred congregations and secular audiences alike. But while serving a church is to be organist to the people of the church, serving as a municipal organist is to be an ambassador, a host, and a musician all at once.  

He expressed his excitement about getting to know the people of Portland and to drawing audiences to the city from afar. James and his wife, Emily, had gotten to know Portland earlier through visits with friends who live there—friends who consider Portland to be a hip and up and coming place to live, “the Brooklyn of the East Coast!” It is a city of about 65,000 residents (the size of a usual neighborhood in New York City), in a metropolitan area of about 250,000, and is home to a fleet of flourishing arts organizations including the Portland Art Museum and the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

The recent renovation of the Kotzschmar Organ is testament to the population’s commitment to the arts. It’s hard to believe that $2,400,000 could be raised for such a purpose in a city that size. By contrast, with all its cultural wealth, there is no public secular pipe organ in New York City.

James spoke of the newly renovated organ in the beautiful auditorium as a fresh canvas on which to paint a new musical picture. His vision as host is to welcome the city’s residents and visitors into City Hall, into a world of the arts including offerings from all disciplines.

By comparison, he spoke of the chef and owner of a fine restaurant, welcoming patrons into comfortable surroundings where an exciting world of things both familiar and unexpected is waiting.  Perhaps one weekend, we’ll depart from the usual menu and venture into an interesting world of exotic cuisine. Perhaps one week, we’ll invite a guest chef to approach the home stove and present something new to the neighborhood.

And as we talked, he took the restaurant metaphor further. He and Emily had just returned from a vacation in Europe, where they traveled off the beaten touristy path to remote villages in Spain where no one spoke English and where restaurants didn’t offer English menus. With little or no command of Spanish, and by cobbling together some understanding of Latin, and wisps of other languages, they ordered meals and were sometimes surprised by what turned up.

James compared that experience to the average citizen who shows up for a concert, is handed a menu in a foreign language, and takes his chances from limited knowledge as to what’s coming. The maître d’hôtel escorts the diner to his seat, unfolds the napkin, offers a glass of water, and explains the intricacies, the ingredients, and philosophies of each dish. The performer as host, as maître d’hôtel, can introduce a composer, place the music in the appropriate geographic and political context, and draw the average listener into an enlightened experience that is otherwise unattainable. The more you know about something, the easier it is to order and enjoy something unfamiliar.

 

The hot seat

The search committee established a tough audition process. Merrill Auditorium is a very busy place where time is at a premium, and the committee balanced the desire to hear the largest possible number of live auditions with the need to provide candidates with time to prepare at the organ. Candidates were given two hours of practice time to prepare one hour of audition performance. Just look at all those knobs. It was a daunting task.

James Kennerley had never played the Kotzschmar Organ before his audition, and in those two precious hours, he mined the tonal ore of the instrument to the deepest depths, and produced a program that included sophisticated serious music, glimpses into whimsy and fantasy, and a virtuosic romp of his own creation on the Brazilian smash hit, Tico-Tico no Fubá.  

Portland audiences, you have no idea how much you’re going to love welcoming James Kennerley as your eleventh municipal organist. Come early, come often. Bring your friends, lots of friends. We’ll be happy to recommend restaurants. It’s a big hall. There are plenty of seats. It’s going to be a blast.

 

Notes

1. Marie Louise Curtis’s first husband was Edward Bok, editor of her father’s magazine, The Ladies’ Home Journal. Their son, Curtis Bok, was Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Their grandson, Derek Bok, was president of Harvard University. Marie Louise Curtis’s second husband was the violinist Effrem Zimbalist, director of the Curtis School of Music. His son, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., was an actor, renowned for his starring roles in 77 Sunset Strip, and The F.B.I. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr’s., daughter, Stephanie, played Laura Holt in the NBC detective series, Remington Steele.

2. Will C. MacFarlane served two tenures, from 1912–1918, and 1932–1934.

3. Members of the search committee included John Bishop, Tom Cattell (president of the FOKO board of directors), Andy Downs (director of public facilities for the city), Elsa Geskus, Tracy Hawkins, Brooke Hubner (executive director of FOKO), Peter Plumb, Larry Rubinstein (chair), Harold Stover, and Mark Terison.