A Conversation with Gabriel Kney: the Organbuilder turns 86

Jan-Piet Knijff

This interview was first published in Dutch in Het Orgel 96 (2000), no. 5. Leonhardt had been made an honorary member (Lid van Verdienste) of the Royal Dutch Society of Organists in the previous year. Apart from small adaptations in the first few paragraphs, an occasional correction, and explanations, no attempt has been made to update the content of the article for this translation. The interview on which the article was based took place during the 2000 Leipzig Bach Festival. Leonhardt read the article before it went to the editor and was very pleased with it. I am grateful to the Royal Dutch Society of Organists and the editor of Het Orgel, Jan Smelik, for permission for its republication.*    

 

Gustav Leonhardt (1928–2012) was perhaps after Wanda Landowska—the most influential harpsichordist of the twentieth century. As Professor of Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory he introduced countless young musicians from all over the world to the interpretation of early music, especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. From his work with the Leonhardt Consort—with his wife Marie as first violinist—grew a limited but no less significant career as a conductor: Leonhardt’s contribution to the complete recording of Bach cantatas for Telefunken and his renditions of operas by Monteverdi and Rameau are milestones in the history of recorded music.

As an organist, Leonhardt has not become nearly as famous—perhaps because organists in general don’t tend to become famous in the way other musicians do, perhaps also because he limited himself to early music. Even among Dutch organists, Leonhardt remained an outsider. Therefore, his being made an honorary member of the Royal Dutch Society of organists in 1999 was an important recognition of a man who has helped define the way we have listened to and performed early music for more than half a century.

I spoke with Leonhardt in the summer of 2000 in Leipzig. He was chairman of the jury of the prestigious Bach competition for harpsichord; ironically, Leonhardt’s former student Ton Koopman held the same position at that year’s organ competition. I met the master after one of the competition rounds and we walked together to our hotels. Leonhardt is often said to have been formal; it is well known how he used to address his Dutch students with the formal pronoun u (pronounced [ü]; the equivalent of the German Sie); this must have come across as utterly prehistoric in the 1970s. But in fact, Leonhardt was extremely friendly; he conversed easily and openly about a host of topics. As we passed by the Thomaskirche, Leonhardt volunteered his opinion of the new Bach organ by Gerhard Woehl.¹ The conversation quickly moved from Woehl to Silbermann, and Leonhardt mentioned the organ at Großhartmannsdorf, which he played in the film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach: “You know, that Posaune 16 . . . ” His face and gestures spoke louder than a thousand words. I asked why no organbuilder today seemed to be able to make such a Posaune. “Look,” he said dryly yet firmly, “first of all, you have to want it.”

In 2000, at 72, Leonhardt was very much alive and well, still playing some 100 concerts a year. For a concert in Göteborg that year, he didn’t even have a hotel: he arrived in the morning, played a concert in the afternoon, and flew on to Portugal in the evening for a concert the next day. I asked whether he enjoyed traveling; he shrugged: “I mean, it’s simply part of it.” Leonhardt was happy to have the interview on his ‘free’ Friday, when there were no competition rounds. “But if you don’t mind, could we do it early?” What is early, 9 am? “Well, earlier would be fine too.” 8:30, 8 am? “Just fine.” It sounded as if 6:30 would have been OK too.

 

Jan-Piet Knijff: How did you become interested in organ and harpsichord?

Gustav Leonhardt: Through my parents, I think. They weren’t professional musicians—my father was a businessman—but they were enthusiastic amateurs. What was rather unusual was that, even before the Second World War, we had a harpsichord at home, a Neupert, a small one.² My parents played Beethoven and Brahms for pleasure, but from time to time also Bach and Telemann. Apparently they thought they had to buy a harpsichord for that. I had to learn how to play the piano as a boy; I mean, had to, it was simply a part of life. I don’t remember liking it very much. When the harpsichord came, they let me play written-out figured-bass parts. I didn’t care much for it, but of course, it must have shaped my musicality. During the last few years of the war there was no school, no water, no electricity. Marvelous, of course—especially that there was no school! Moreover, I turned sixteen that year, so I more or less had to hide from the Germans. My brother and I took turns being on the lookout. It was all very exciting. During that time, I was so attracted to the harpsichord. And since there was little else to do, I simply played all the time. And of course, there was the enormous love of Bach. Dad was on the Board of the [Dutch] Bach Society, where Anthon van der Horst conducted.³ At fifteen, I started studying music theory privately with van der Horst. Yes, that I enjoyed very much. I often pulled stops for him at concerts. That’s really where my love of organs comes from.

 

J-PK: You went to study in Basel. Would it not have been logical to study in Amsterdam with van
der Horst?

GL: Maybe, but harpsichord was high on my wish list too. And the Schola Cantorum in Basel was at the time the only place in the world where one could study early music in all its facets, including chamber music and theory. It pulled like a magnet: I had to go there.

That was in 1947, only a few years after the war, and Holland was really still a poor country at the time. There was very little foreign currency, so studying in Switzerland was not all that easy. Thankfully, my father had business contacts, so from time to time, I went on bicycle from Basel to Schaffhausen to pick up an envelope with Swiss francs . . .⁴ I studied both organ and harpsichord with Eduard Müller, for whom I still have the greatest admiration and respect.

 

J-PK: Can you tell me more about him?

GL: He was first and foremost an excellent organist, who in addition was asked to teach harpsichord, I think. He was the organist at a terrible organ, but whenever a new tracker was built—Kuhn or Metzler in those days—we went to try it out, right away, you know.

The way people played Bach on the organ was still pretty dreadful at the time, with many registration changes, swell box, that kind of thing. But even then, Müller played completely differently. For example, he would tell you that it was common to change manuals in this-or-that bar, but that that was simply impossible, because you would break the tenor line in two! So I learned from him to analyze very ‘cleanly’ and to use that as the basis for my performance.

Harpsichord playing was still very primitive in those days. The instruments I played on in Basel were simply awful. It wasn’t until later that I came to know historic instruments. The idea that you used different types of harpsichords—French, Italian—didn’t play a role at all. I did collect pictures of historic instruments, but really without wondering what they might sound like.

Strangely enough, Müller was not at all interested in historic instruments as far as harpsichords went. On the other hand, he was very precise with articulation. You had to play exactly the way Bach wrote. Bach was the order of the day. A little piece by Froberger or Couperin every now and then, but mostly Bach, really. August Wenzinger,⁵ with whom I studied chamber music, was much broader in that regard. He played the whole repertoire: French, Italian, and the seventeenth century as well. We also had to sing in the choir, Senfl and Josquin, but also monody. That was a revelation. We had Ina Lohr,⁶ who was the first to use the old solmisation system again as the basis of her theory classes. Everything was incredibly interesting.

Look, things were kind of black-and-white at the time. On the one hand there was Romanticism, and that was horrible, so you wanted something different. The Neue Sachlichkeit played an important role. I think I actually played very dryly in those days.

 

J-PK: Many people would argue that you still played dryly many years later.

GL: Everyone is free to think whatever they want, but I personally think I have allowed much more emotion in my performances over the years.

 

J-PK: Were there still others who influenced you as a young musician?

GL: [Immediately] Hans Brandts Buys.⁷ We lived in Laren, near Hilversum [between Amsterdam and Utrecht—JPK]. I played cello as well, and I sometimes played the cello in cantata performances he directed. I never studied with him, but he had an enormous library, most of all about Bach. In one word: a dream. I used to spend hours there, browsing, making notes. Brandts Buys also had a two-manual harpsichord, something quite unusual at the time. He had an enormous respect for what the composer had written. I learned that from him.

After my studies I got to know Alfred Deller, the famous countertenor.⁸ I had heard a tiny gramophone record of his and was incredibly impressed. It showed that singing could be more than a dead tone with tons of vibrato. Diction: that was what it was all about. The tone helps the diction. Deller was a master in this regard. That is incredibly important to me. We organists and harpsichordists have to think dynamically too. We have to shape the tone.

 

J-PK: After your studies you became Professor of Harpsichord in Vienna.

GL: Well, I mean, I taught there and yes, it was called ‘Professor.’ I actually went to Vienna to study conducting, even though it did not interest me very much. I don’t even remember now why I did it. It may have been at the urging of my parents. Organ and harpsichord, how was one ever going to make a living that way? With conducting one could at least pay the bills, that kind of thing.

But the most important thing in Vienna was the library. I’d sit there all day, from opening till close, copying music—by hand of course—and making notes from treatises. I still use that material today. Much has been published since, but not nearly everything.

 

J-PK: What kind of things did
you copy?

GL: Oh, everything. Froberger, Kuhnau, Fischer . . . Tablature too, I could read that easily back then—I’m completely out of practice now. I also copied lute tablatures, just out of interest.

In Vienna I got to know Harnoncourt.⁹ We were just about the only people interested in early music and played an awful lot together, viol consort also. That was relatively easy for me because of my cello background.

 

But after three years Leonhardt had had enough of the Austrian capital and returned to the Netherlands, where he was appointed Professor of Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory. At the end of the 1950s he became organist of the Christiaan Müller organ of the Eglise Wallonne, the French Protestant Church of Amsterdam.

 

GL: My wife is francophone and we both belong to the Reformed Church, so we went to the French church as a matter of course. I knew the organ already, but it was in very poor condition at the time. The action was terrible and it played very heavily. So when the position became vacant, I said that I was willing to do it on the condition that the organ would be restored properly. That was fine. I knew Ahrend already, so he restored the organ, with Cor Edskes as consultant.¹⁰ 

 

J-PK: How did you meet Ahrend?

GL: I don’t remember exactly. In any case, I had seen an organ they had built in Veldhausen.¹¹ That was a revelation back then, but I have recently played the organ again and it was still a revelation. That doesn’t happen very often, that one thinks the same way about an organ so many years later.

 

J-PK: What made Ahrend & Brunzema so special?

GL: I don’t know. They just understood organs somehow. They had ears and just knew how to get the sound they wanted.

 

J-PK: Ahrend has often been criticized for imposing too much of his own personality on an instrument when restoring it, for example
in Groningen.

GL: Well, I mean, he does have a strong personality, and in the Martini [the Martinikerk at Groningen—JPK], a great deal had to be reconstructed. In such a situation one can hardly blame anybody for putting his mark on a restoration.

 

J-PK: Was that also the case in Amsterdam?

GL: No. A lot of Müller pipes had survived in excellent condition and the new pipes Ahrend provided matched the old pipes very well indeed. Yes, the Waalse [Eglise Wallonne—JPK] is definitely the best-preserved Müller in my opinion—not that there is a lot of choice, unfortunately.¹² 

 

J-PK: You made a whole series of recordings on the organ, including composers such as Froberger, Couperin, and de Grigny . . . 

GL: . . . who really don’t belong there at all. You are totally right about that and I really don’t remember why we did it. Perhaps Telefunken wanted some diversity in the repertoire. On the other hand [he continues almost triumphantly], what should I have played on the Amsterdam Müller instead?

 

J-PK: The Genevan psalter, I suppose.

GL: [He laughs, covering his mouth with his hand.] Precisely—or Quirinus van Blankenburg.¹³

 

J-PK: As a harpsichord teacher, you have had a tremendous influence on a whole generation of harpsichordists from all over the world.

GL: Oh, come on . . . For a long time, I was simply the only one.

 

J-PK: Have you never wanted to teach organ?

GL: I’ve never really thought about that. But even for harpsichord I never had more than five students at the same time. That was more than enough. The rest of the time I was so busy with concerts and recordings.

[The conversation moves in a different direction; Leonhardt clearly wants to discuss something else.]

I don’t know if it’s on your list, but the difference between organ and harpsichord, I wouldn’t mind saying something about that. Look, the harpsichord has in a way stopped at some point in time. The organ went on, but changed completely. In my view, organ and harpsichord are intimately connected. To a large extent, the instruments shared the same literature and performers played both instruments. That stops at the end of the eighteenth century and in my mind it’s only because of its function in church that the organ has continued to exist. In other words, without the church, the organ would have died out as well. Interest in the organ at the beginning of the nineteenth century was practically zero, really.

All right, so the organ continued to exist. But over time, it changed so much that, really, it became a different instrument, at least in my view. That is a problem for the present-day organist that really does not exist for harpsichordists. How can a man serve so many masters? I don’t believe that is possible; at least, I can’t.

The problem is, we aren’t theorists. Musicologists can study different styles—that’s not a problem. But we musicians have to take the work of art in our hands . . . [an expressive gesture] . . .
and present it. That is something completely different; it demands much more ability to empathize. I have to say, when all is said and done, the colleagues whom I admire the most tend to be those who specialize at least to some extent.

[I mention an early-music specialist who at the same time is a jack-of-all-trades. Yes, Leonhardt agrees: a great musician.] But even so, you can hear that he plays so much other music as well.¹⁴ It’s a problem, of course. Take the flute: How much literature is there from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Three Bach sonatas! We harpsichordists can bathe in a wealth of early music. One can easily spend a lifetime with it.

 

J-PK: Don’t you think the old composers are so far away from us that it is more difficult to empathize with them?

GL: No, I don’t. If you really study the time and the art of the period in all its facets—painting, architecture, and so forth—a composer like Froberger can come just as close as, say, Widor. And look, Widor has become early music too by now. One has to study that just as well. It’s no longer our own time; it’s not self-evident.

 

J-PK: You had to practically put yourself in Bach’s shoes when you played the lead role in Jean-Marie Straub’s film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach.

GL: It wasn’t acting, you know. Performing in costume, that’s all. Just because I happened to do the same things as Bach did: playing organ and harpsichord, and conducting. Well, except for composing, of course. [A gesture of profound awe.] I found it a very respectful film, it was made with a lot of integrity, and I enjoyed contributing to it, also because Bach has determined my whole career.

 

J-PK: I think Frans Brüggen once said in an interview, ‘Leonhardt is Bach.’¹⁵ 

GL: [A gesture makes clear that he couldn’t disagree more.] I consider Bach the greatest composer who ever lived. But I also see him as a composer in his time, not just as some remarkable phenomenon. In that sense, I’m not a Bach man.

 

J-PK: Your career has mostly focused on harpsichord playing and conducting.

GL: Well, no, not conducting, that has always been a side path; I don’t do it more often than once or twice a year. The Bach cantata project, too, was really only one or two weeks a year. Conducting to me is in a way the same as playing chamber music, except I happen not to be playing.

J-PK: My point is that as an organist you have been relatively free to do whatever you wanted.

GL: That is true. The harpsichord is my livelihood; the organ is in a sense a luxury. It’s also a different kind of instrument. [Enthusiastically:] One can be crazy about an organ, I think. Harpsichords don’t really have that. That is because an organ usually has a much stronger personality than a harpsichord; that is part of what makes it such a fantastic instrument. On harpsichord, one has to work much harder to get a beautiful sound. A good organ does half the job for you if not more. A good organ dictates—in the best sense of the word—much more than a harpsichord.

 

J-PK: With all your interest in past centuries it seems that there is one aspect of our time that interests you in particular.

GL: I think I know what you mean.

 

J-PK: Fast cars?

GL: [Big smile—for a moment he looks almost boyish.] As the Germans say, Wenn schon, denn schon.¹⁶ If one needs a car at all, surely a beautiful one is better than an ugly one. I just got a new Alfa 166, three liters, and it really is a great pleasure. It’s a rather fiery one, you know, the kind that just wants to go out for a ride. In the city, he has to stay on the leash, but out of town . . . Yes, a real pleasure. ν

 

* I am also grateful to Hans Fidom, the former editor of Het Orgel who suggested that I interview Leonhardt. Finally, I thank my wife Brigitte Pohl-Knijff and the following colleagues, students, and friends for their comments on earlier drafts of this translation: Margaret Barger, Robert Brown, Jim Nicholls, Jodie Ostenfeld, and Paul Thwaites. For any dutchisms that remain I take sole responsibility.  

1. Gerhard Woehl built the new Bach organ (IV/61) for the Thomaskirche in the Bach year 2000.

2. The founder of the firm, Johann Christoph Neupert (who was apprenticed to Johann Baptist Streicher in Vienna) and his descendants were avid collectors of historic keyboard instruments. Still in business today, the firm built its first harpsichord in 1906.

3. Dutch organist, conductor, and composer Anthon van der Horst (1899–1965) was conductor of the Dutch Bach Society from 1931. He taught organ at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where his students included Albert de Klerk, Piet Kee, Bernard Bartelink, Wim van Beek, and Charles de Wolff. 

4. Schaffhausen, on the Swiss-German border, is some 60 miles from Basel.

5. August Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a cellist, viol player, conductor, and a pioneer of historically informed performance practice. He taught both cello and viol at the Schola Cantorum from 1933, where his most famous student (apart from Leonhardt) was no doubt viol player Jordi Savall, who succeeded him in 1974.    

6. Ina Lohr (1903–1983) studied violin in Amsterdam and theory and composition in Basel. One of the founders of the Schola Cantorum, she taught theory there on the basis of solmisation. She was also assistant conductor to Paul Sacher with the Basel Chamber Choir.

7. Johann Sebastian (Hans) Brandts Buys (1905–1959) came from a large Dutch family of musicians, which included some fine composers. A pioneer of harpsichord playing in the Netherlands, Brandts Buys was also active as a conductor. As a performer and musicologist he specialized in the music of his namesake, J.S. Bach. Brandts Buys had an unusually strong interest in historically informed performance and was the first in the Netherlands to conduct the St. Matthew Passion with a small choir and orchestra (1947). Leonhardt presumably took part in performances with the Hilversumse Cantate Vereniging (Hilversum Cantata Society), which Brandts Buys led during the war years 1943–1945.

8. The countertenor Alfred Deller (1912–1979) was central in reviving and popularizing the countertenor in the twentieth century. He founded the Deller Consort in 1948. Benjamin Britten famously wrote the role of Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Deller (1960), who recorded it with the composer conducting.  

9. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (b. 1929), cellist, later conductor, founder of the period-instrument ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien (1953, first public performance 1957). Harnoncourt’s Concentus and the Leonhardt Consort collaborated for a recording of Bach’s St. John Passion (1965) and shared the complete recording of Bach’s sacred cantatas for Telefunken’s Das alte Werk. 

10. Jürgen Ahrend (b. 1930), German organ builder, active 1954–2005. In the 1950s and ’60s Ahrend and his then-associate Gerhard Brunzema (1927–1992) were perhaps the most serious, consistent, and successful in reviving the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North-German organ style.  

11. In Bentheim county, Germany, near the Dutch border. The organ was built by Ahrend & Brunzema in 1957, and enlarged with a Rückpositiv by the Dutch firm Mense Ruiter in 1997.

12. Other surviving Müller organs include those in Haarlem, Leeuwarden, Beverwijk, and the Kapelkerk at Alkmaar. 

13. Apart from more imaginative works such as the cantata L’Apologie des femmes (The Women’s Apology, 1715), Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654–1739) published a Harpsichord and Organ Book of Reformed Psalms and Church Hymns (The Hague 1732).

14. Fortunately, I no longer recall whom I mentioned to Leonhardt.

15. The Dutch recorder player, flautist, and conductor Frans Brüggen (b. 1934) performed extensively with Leonhardt in such groups as Quadro Amsterdam and the trio with cellist Anner Bijlsma.

16. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’

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.

David Wagner

David Wagner holds a DMA in organ from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Marilyn Mason. He has had a career as a performer, a university professor of organ, and as a classical music broadcaster in Detroit, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and in Miami. 

Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra is the author of Bach and the Art of Improvisation, published by CHI Press of Ann Arbor, Michigan. (See Figure 1.) She earned degrees in organ performance and pedagogy, choral music education, and music theory, sacred music, and conducting at Dordt College (BA) and the University of Iowa (MFA, DMA). From 1996–2002, Ruiter-Feenstra served as senior researcher at the Göteborg (Sweden) Organ Art Center, taught improvisation courses at Göteborg University, and launched research on Bach and improvisation. While serving as professor of music at Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas (1989–1996) and Eastern Michigan University (1996–2008), she taught organ, harpsichord, theory, improvisation, and sacred music and directed the Collegium Musicum. 

In Volume One of Bach and the Art of Improvisation (Volume Two will be available in early 2016), she explains the importance of improvisation and how musicians would be well served to study and practice the art to improve their ability as players of repertoire. Ruiter-Feenstra meticulously details how Bach learned and taught improvisation. Using historic documents, she reconstructs an improvisation pedagogy method that has passed the test of time. For musicians today who were never taught how to improvise, Ruiter-Feenstra offers a sound and effective improvisation pedagogy that students and professional musicians alike can learn and own. The following conversation explores Ruiter-Feenstra’s development of this pedagogy.

 

David Wagner: Everyone has a story on how they first fell in love with music and then with the instrument that they play. What is the narrative that will give insight into where you are today?

Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra: When I was six years old, I started to play the piano. After I was able to play a few tunes, I was asked to play hymns. In my ancestors’ Dutch schools, everyone sang metrical Psalms and hymns. The Dutch immigrants had their own schools, their own churches, and their own traditions. I was born in Michigan into the Dutch Christian Reformed tradition and grew up in various Dutch immigrant villages in Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa. (From this tradition, by the way, comes Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and Dordt College in Iowa.) I remember learning Dutch words in which there was no equivalent in English and just thinking that these were English words.

Were your parents musicians?

No, they were teachers. My dad was passionate about what is now called special education and then worked in retirement homes. My mother served as an elementary school teacher and also worked with ESL (English as a Second Language) programs.

 

So, you were interested in music, they recognized that, and they said, “Let’s make sure that Pamela has music lessons.”

Yes. My mother was taking piano lessons when I was in the womb, and I always thought that had some role in developing my ear (she laughs). I started piano lessons at age six, played the violin all the way through elementary school, learned classical guitar, and then I started to play the organ when I was in eighth grade. I played the organ at first because our church needed more organists, and they said to me, “You play the piano, so why not take organ lessons?” I had played hymns in the classroom since third grade, so it felt pretty easy to transfer that to the organ. I had to figure out the pedals, and away we went. My first organ piece was the Karg-Elert Now Thank We All Our God.

 

How interesting—you learned, very early on, proper four-part chorale writing and doubling by playing hymns, and in some ways, you learned thoroughbass by example. Was this pretty much traditional music? 

Oh, yes, the Dutch congregations were singing from the Genevan Psalm tradition when I grew up, and those Psalms have fabulous sixteenth-century harmonies. Sixteenth-century harmonies feature primarily root position and first inversion harmonies, so this is a great way to begin learning harmony. Genevan Psalms have only two note values, which was also important for improvisation. If you are going to improvise and “decorate” something, it’s much easier to work with one or two note values than with many different rhythms. That’s what I would do: I would learn the Psalms and then go home and make variations on them. I practiced my piano repertoire first and then made my own pieces, my variations on hymns. 

 

You really started to improvise at a young age! Did you know at that time, as a youngster, that there was this great tradition of organists and improvisation? 

I had no idea. I just thought it was fun to do. I couldn’t leave my hands off the piano, and I would run out of pieces to play, so then I would start improvising. My parents had their stereo right next to the piano, and I would play their old LP records and later their 8-track tapes of mostly sacred choral music or hymns. I would play a track of a recording, and then go to the piano and try to play the same thing “by ear.” I would go back and forth until I figured out the harmony and the melody. Then, I would start embellishing on it. 

 

So early on it seems that you had decided, “This is for me.” When did you decide to do this for a living and become a professional musician?

Dave, this is the funny thing. I practiced my improvisation just for fun throughout elementary school, middle and high school, but I never played it for my teachers. They always, of course, asked for repertoire, and the discussion of improvisation never came up. When I got to college, I took piano, organ, and voice lessons, and thus, I had a lot to practice. Again, all of these teachers expected repertoire. No one assigned improvisation. 

 

This was not the time for improvisation, was it?

Right. The teachers hadn’t learned it, it wasn’t in the music curriculum, and so no one was teaching it and no one was learning it. I was at Dordt College in Sioux City, Iowa, and my organ teacher was Joan Ringerwole. She selected terrific repertoire and offered me many opportunities to play in chapel and with the Concert Choir. Thankfully, my organ playing with its heart and soul of congregational singing continued. I arrived at Dordt just after the installation of a three-manual Casavant organ designed and voiced by Gerhard Brunzema. Prior to joining Casavant, Brunzema had partnered with German organ builder Jürgen Ahrend, and together they restored many Arp Schnitger instruments. Brunzema, therefore, had a strong historic-instrument basis, and he built and voiced essentially a Dutch-sounding organ with a modern case at Dordt: it has beautiful Dutch vocally inspired principals and a Dutch Vox Humana that sounded reedy. I had heard adults who had this quality of reedy voices. At one of the Dutch churches I had played at, I remember a male member of the congregation who had such a reedy voice that he could cut through the entire congregation with his voice. He was a POW survivor of World War II, and he sang Genevan Psalms as if his life depended on them. His voice was in the tenor range, singing the Genevan Psalm cantus firmus, and other men would sing bass. Hearing that type of singing helped me to understand the Goudimel harmonies (often with cantus firmus in the tenor), as well as how many Dutch reed stops really had vocal models. (See Figure 2.)

 

I have heard people comment on what a wonderful instrument the Dordt College Casavant is, and I hope to be able to hear it in person some day. In growing up, you probably played electro-pneumatic and not mechanical action organs.

At my home church, we had an electronic organ. Sitting down and beginning to play this mechanical action organ was nothing less than a revelation. I became an organist for life because of this instrument.

 

It was that profound of an impact? 

It’s why I pursued organ and church music foremost. I had started out as a piano and choral education major, and I soon thought, “Wow, this organ has such beautiful, human sounds.” It was immediate, it was present, it was alive, and it breathed because it had flexible winding, just like the congregation. Those Dutch people used to sing with gusto. They had passion, and it was exciting to hear them sing. This organ sang in the same way, full of personality and color. 

 

So, what happened next?

Well, as in most universities and conservatories, at that time at Dordt College, no one was teaching improvisation. I worked a lot with choral music and still improvised in the practice room for the first few weeks that I was there. I spent a lot of time in the practice corridors, as I had so much to practice while studying three instruments. When I’d step out of my practice room to get a drink of water, I’d hear other people practicing, and it gradually dawned on me that no one else was improvising. 

 

How interesting! You were a “secret improviser.”

Exactly! I thought to myself, uh-oh, maybe professional musicians don’t improvise. I guess I had better stop. Since no one else was doing it, I thought that if I improvised, maybe people would think that I’m not a serious musician. I wondered if this improvisation “stuff” was akin to just fooling around at the keyboard when I should have been practicing “real music.” So, I stopped improvising for the first two years I was at Dordt. I was hungry for it, so I still was a closet improviser on the piano when I went home on breaks.

So what changed?

During my junior year, Joan Ringerwole invited Klaas Bolt, the famous Dutch organist who improvised at St. Bavo Church at Haarlem in the Netherlands, to come and give a concert.

Bolt wanted to have a “Psalmfest” at the concert, where people were invited to sing with the organ. He featured Genevan Psalms, and he improvised on them with great expression and keen understanding of the colors of the organ and how to use his articulation and registrations to make the organ sing the texts. His organ playing was so alive that I thought, “This is the kind of life I heard in the great Dutch singing of my childhood.” His playing had that level of affect and passion and breathing that I missed hearing in a lot of organ playing when it was just repertoire. Hearing Klaas Bolt improvise was a life-altering revelation to me. Here was a professional musician, and to my ears, his playing was more alive than almost any playing I had heard on the organ. Then I realized every musician has to learn to improvise. Even if musicians never improvise in public, they will play their repertoire in a more profound and musical manner from having practiced improvisation. They are going to breathe; they are going to know the music from the inside rather from the outside. If we just learn music with our eyes and our fingers, we know it a little bit from the outside. We don’t know it from the inside the way an improviser does.

 

Why do you think that is so?

An improviser has to know what makes music work, and what doesn’t make it work. Sometimes you learn most from what doesn’t work. You can’t just say that it didn’t work; you have to ask the question why it didn’t work. How can I fix it, and how can I avoid doing what doesn’t work the next time?

 

After hearing Klaas Bolt, what was the next step for you?

The first thing I did was to begin to improvise again. 

 

In other words, it was like saying “Hello, my name is Pamela, and I’m an improviser!” You became a member of Improvisers Anonymous!

[She laughs] Wholeheartedly! 

 

What did your teachers think of your revelation?

They still wanted to hear repertoire. So, I was still improvising privately in the practice room, but I was improvising and not thinking any longer that it was something I should not be doing. It was really quite the opposite. I no longer felt that I cared if anyone heard me improvising outside the practice room. I started decorating hymns when I played for chapel services at Dordt. When I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa, Delbert Disselhorst and Delores Bruch offered a strong sacred music program. They encouraged me to make variations on hymns, and I was able to practice improvisation within a liturgical context. It was OK to make variations on hymns. 

 

Improvisation and the art of improvisation was something that never really died out in Europe, correct? 

Oh, yes, until recently, it was still required in France and the Netherlands and some parts of Germany. My European colleagues, mentors, and friends were also teaching improvisation, which was so important. That entire pedagogy of teaching improvisation side-by-side with theory, history, and repertoire, however, never really caught on in the United States. 

 

It is starting to be taught here now, isn’t it?

Yes, that is true, although we don’t have a long “apprenticeship” tradition here in the States the way they did in France and in the Netherlands. What is needed is an integrated improvisation pedagogy from which teachers can learn it first, and then learn how to teach it. That’s why it is essential to have a pedagogy that anyone can own. Initially, I think it is great to have a teacher for improvisation, but ultimately it is important to have a pedagogy with steps that you can take and apply on your own. Once you understand those steps, then anyone can become her own improvisation teacher. I had to figure that out for myself, because I didn’t have an improvisation teacher, and I wanted to improvise. 

 

Did you find your improvisation teacher?

I did study improvisation briefly with Klaas Bolt. I also studied with Harald Vogel in Germany and worked a few times with William Porter. 

 

Both Klaas Bolt and Harald Vogel had their European methodology that grew out of a long tradition.

That is why I wrote Bach and the Art of Improvisation. What I wanted to get at in the book was this premise: Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the greatest organ improviser the instrument has ever known and will ever know. So, what was his methodology, and how did he teach his students? I was fortunate to work in Sweden with the GOArt project. GOArt gathered an international group of scientists, musicologists, performers, acousticians, physicists, organbuilders, woodworkers, artisans, and historic preservationists together. We had an entire team of amazing experts studying the tradition of the antique organs and trying to decipher why so many of the antique organs sounded so much better than modern organs. Hans Davidsson started asking these types of questions, and we all joined in with various ideas for figuring out how the instruments were made, how they sounded, and how and in which contexts they were played.

 

So it started from the standpoint of the sound of this musical instrument.

Yes, and then it branched out into how was that sound used, and what did that sound inspire? One of the things that inspired me to keep improvising was that I loved to test out historic organs with improvisation. With improvisation, I have “nothing between my fingers and my ears and the instrument,” so I can more keenly assess the soundscape. This way, you spend more time listening. If you start out with repertoire you are thinking, “Did I hit the right note?” and then you forget to listen sometimes. Improvisation is a great way to test an organ. I do this every time I encounter a new instrument, even if I am playing a concert on it and I will be playing mostly learned repertoire. I begin by improvising through the stops, because I want to hear what is the character of the sounds and in which soundscapes do they coexist most naturally and happily? What does the organ tell me about touch and technique, what does it want to say, and why? 

 

How many years were you involved in this project?

I was in Sweden with GOArt for six years, and it was a fabulously stimulating collaborative project. GOArt is the acrostic for the Göteborg (Sweden) Organ Art Project, which Hans Davidsson initiated and led. The stunning, colorful North German organ built with antique techniques by Munetaka Yokota, Mats Arvidsson, and a highly skilled team represents the apex of the GOArt research in the late ’90s into the new millenium. Those of us who were among the interdisciplinary team of researchers followed the organ building stages of hand-planed wood, sandbed-cast metal, fire-forged iron rollerboards, the physics of wind flow, and we tested sounds, wind pressure, and key action along the way. When the organ was completed, it was thrilling to hear the range of strong, yet vulnerable, transparent, singing sounds of the organ. In my double CD recording of Tunder’s organ works (see Figure 3), I savored the colorful palette of soundscapes by exploring in turn the various families of stops represented on each of the four manuals of the organ. Selecting like stops side-by-side reveals the infinite variation in aural nuance that one can hear in the best instruments, strong congregational singing, and in historic improvisation.

 

Goodness! You really immersed yourself in this project!

I truly did. We had regular symposia. The organists would learn what the physicists were discovering, and they in turn were listening to what performers, pedagogues, and improvisers were discovering. That is how I was able to dig so deeply into the archival material on how Bach and all of his predecessors learned improvisation, and then how Bach and his pupils and successors and other traditions built on this basic methodology. This is an ongoing story of evolution on how musicians learned and taught improvisation. I’ve spent years and years discerning how improvisation pedagogy works. I’m grateful for many opportunities over the years to test out those ideas with wonderful students in the States and in Europe.

 

In Volume One of Bach and the Art of Improvisation, you write, “Improvisation is really extemporaneous composition.” I really love that idea. 

You have to be able, to some degree, to think out the music in your head away from a keyboard before you even play your first note. Here is an example. We have our presidential State of the Union address. The President is reading his speech from a teleprompter for his State of the Union address, but he has a hard copy of the address on paper in front of him. This idea of oration, or the art of giving speeches, goes way back before the days of teleprompters, before the Common Era, to the time of Greek orators. Greek orators had to have a memory that worked in a way different from what we think about when we memorize music. In memorizing music, many people memorize every note. The Greek orator’s memory was much more like a blueprint or an outline for a speech, because they didn’t have computers, or printers or teleprompters. They had to memorize the outline of their speech, and then they decorated the interior lines of that speech. Johann Sebastian Bach was still using that art of memory when he was improvising, and that is what I do also when I improvise. 

 

So you improvise from a mental outline?

Yes, I have a blueprint in my brain; I want to know the beginning, the middle, and the end of what I am doing before I even begin, even though I don’t know specific notes, or even sometimes where the improvisation is going to take me. Within that mental/aural blueprint, there is an “introduction” (Exordium) where you want to grab the listener’s attention. The Greeks did this too. You want to play something “flashy” to say, “OK, this is going to be the mood and the character of the piece, and the key of the piece,” and after that, you launch into something of a narration (Narratio). In the narration, you “tell” the listener what you are going to do, just like the orator is saying, “This is what I plan to discuss.” You are staying in your home key at this time, as you are telling the story at the beginning. Then you have a proposition (Propositio), a new idea that you want somebody to know about. Then, scientifically, to show people that your idea or ideas hold some weight and truth, you have to argue your point (Confutatio). Again, this is what the Greeks would do, they would argue against their proposal, but brilliantly, they would turn the argument on its head to confirm (Confirmatio) the truth of their original proposition. So, in these “confutatios” in music, you can explore other ideas or other snippets of ideas, or take those ideas to new keys; this is what we would call the development section in what is known as sonata-allegro form. However, you come back and confirm it with your recapitulation and return to your home key. After you have confirmed your main proposition, then you end with a conclusion (Peroratio) that has a “bang” and some sort of bookend effect that hearkens back to your original opening attention-grabbing statement.

 

I have heard that composers don’t have to be good improvisers, but good improvisers have to be good composers. 

That is true. Yes. C. P. E. Bach said that. Improvisers learn a great deal from investigating existing compositions and asking questions about specific works in the manner a curious child or tenacious archaeologist might keep asking, “Why?” 

Here’s an example. Knowing that Georg Böhm taught the young Bach made me wonder what influences Böhm’s compositions had on Bach. Böhm’s keyboard works provide excellent material for improvisers, as they are fairly easy to analyze. With a strong thoroughbass foundation, one can emulate some works of Böhm in improvisation. I explored this approach to improvisation pedagogy in Bach and the Art of Improvisation and in my harpsichord CD, Bach’s Teacher Böhm & Improvisation. (See Figure 4.)

I selected a præludium, partita, dance suite, and fughetta of Böhm to perform and then chose specific chorales that would work well with those genres. On the second half of the CD, you can hear my improvisations on those chorales in the style of Böhm, recycling the same genres in new ways. In my Bach, Improvisations and the Liturgical Year CD, I took inspiration from Bach works to improvise on chorales on the Pasi organ at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, Washington. (See Figure 5.) Improvisers make their nests from snippets of material and enduring designs from the
finest composers.

 

Getting back to what you said earlier about copying what you had heard, it makes me think of Mozart. One of the great composers was an improviser at a very young age.

It is said that Mozart had many things worked out in his head before he ever put a note down a paper—very much like a great improviser. 

 

I always figured that people were born with some sort of “improvisation gene” and you either had it or you didn’t.

No, it is like any other skill. It takes work. You cannot become an Olympic ice skater the first time you put on a pair of skates and venture out onto the ice! Just like Olympic athletes, accomplished improvisers have invested thousands and thousands of hours of practice, studying, and coaching. Even as an improviser, “going down the wrong path” can be very instructive. Like any skill, it doesn’t drop from the sky, it is a matter of giving the skill deep, regular focus and attention, sprinkled heavily with perseverance.

 

Can you speak to the benefit of actually copying out a piece of music instead of just making a photocopy?

In Bach’s time, everyone had to copy music. I have my students copy music, for instance, copying out one of Bach’s Inventions from his own hand. They can see that in Bach’s handwriting, there is gesture; it isn’t just some sort of robotic computer-generated notation. You can learn from how notes are written and beamed together. You also learn different clefs like the C clef, so you learn relationships; you are not reading by note names, but rather by intervals and relationships of distance on the page and how that translates to the keyboard. It is as if you are reading words and phrases instead of looking at individual letters. (See Figure 6.) Remember how it was when you first began to learn typing? You first have to think of each key individually, and after a while your fingers know where the keys are, and you can type a word and then later a phrase. It is the same thing with improvisation. No matter how proficient someone is as a player of repertoire, one has to start from the very beginning as an improviser. 

 

This really is very humbling. 

Yes, it is, but it is also very much worth it!

 

It was interesting to learn from your book Bach and the Art of Improvisation that Bach was very demanding of his students, and yet also was extremely practical in what he taught.

Oh, yes, Bach was genuinely interested in getting right to the work of experiential learning. Bach usually took a chorale melody and a thoroughbass. That was the blueprint; the chorales had a soprano and a bass line, and students would have to fill in the alto and tenor part. Wouldn’t it be great if theory could now be taught in conjunction with improvisation? If students had their hands on the keyboard, they would learn theory much better and as an integrated part of musicianship, because they would store information in various memory sources—the tactile, the visual, the aural, and the analytical. The more synapses you have firing, the more aspects of music will make sense on multiple levels. 

 

Also with Bach as a teacher, wasn’t it true that you could not move on “to the next step” without mastering what had been assigned to you?

Ah, yes, Bach’s students weren’t allowed to proceed to repertoire and improvisation before they had their fingering in place!

 

Did Bach know about different fingering traditions, or what today we would call “early fingering”?

Yes, he most certainly did. In fact,
C. P. E. Bach was still documenting it after Bach’s death. This type of fingering was still being used during the time of Bach’s son.

 

Didn’t J. S. have a profound effect on what we consider today as “modern fingering?” 

Bach was one of the first to use the thumb to the same extent as the fingers, which astonished other musicians at the time. Some of Bach’s music doesn’t work exclusively with early fingering described in 16th- and 17th-century treatises. Because of this, the so-called modern scale fingerings used today were already chronicled by C. P. E. Bach as one of several options. Significantly, though, this was not the one and only option. The performer was offered different fingerings for the same passage, and could select the most appropriate fingering to the style and tempo of the piece, to the note values and function of particular passages, to the size of the musician’s hand, and for the articulation desired. Using a palette of fingering choices offers much more sophisticated playing results that can imitate bowing, tonguing, and most importantly, singing.

The clavichord is the instrument Bach advocated most for keyboard practice, as the instrument itself is the finest technique pedagogue. The clavichord offers its best blooming sound when the player plays with relaxed arm weight, with the hand and arm lined up above the key to be played. (See Figure 7.) If the player uses less than ideal fingering and arm weight, the sound will be weak and dull, instead of rich and colorful. The clavichord tangents press up on the strings, allowing for infinite light and shadows in the dynamic range, as well as Bebung, an ornamental vibrato accomplished by pressing weight in and out of the string. Practicing on the clavichord translates to an ideal organ technique and organ playing that sounds much cleaner (clarity of touch and articulation) and more expressive. 

 

You suggest that it is helpful to learn to improvise in the Baroque style. Why?

Most students learn theory from a Baroque perspective first, culminating in analyzing Bach chorales. My vision is to have theory and practice, history and performance integrated as one art. Already, students start with Baroque harmonies in Bach chorales. From there, it is relatively easy to stretch out those tertiary harmonies vertically as well as stretching the harmonic rhythms horizontally to take more space as melodies develop, which is what happens in much nineteenth-century music. The improvisation pedagogy developed in Bach and the Art of Improvisation is a series of steps derived from the repertoire. This pedagogy can easily be transferred to any pattern-based music improvisation (music organized in modes and scales) from medieval music to Messiaen.

 

In your pedagogy, what is the first step? 

I always begin where the student is at and build appropriate steps from there. If the student needs a better foundation in relaxed technique, fingering, hymn playing, note reading, and analysis, we work with those aspects immediately and introduce improvisations such as musettes, ostinatos, and two-voice counterpoint. My students, other professional musician friends, and I have had great fun in developing “improvisation societies” in which we improvise for and with one another on various themes. This puts the improvisation psychology into a friendly environment and allows participants to inspire each other by becoming a “counting choir” to help the improviser keep track of the meter and tempo, by playing rondos, in which each person can try out a small phrase at a time, by offering constructive feedback, fresh ideas, and accountability for practicing.

 

Where do you then proceed from there? 

I use chorales with soprano and thoroughbass and cadences so that each improviser can hear and sing the cantus firmus as well as the harmonic basis, and know with each sense how to fill in inner voices. Gradually, improvisers can work to harmonize a given soprano and to create upper voices from a given thoroughbass. From thoroughbass and chorales, I introduce how to decorate one line at a time using appropriate figures to fit proper voice leading and harmonic function, both with two-part counterpoint and with four-part harmonies. This leads to chorale preludes and dance suites, which get into exciting meter and rhythmic variations. 

 

Bach and the Art of Improvisation, Volume Two is ready to go to press. What is the focus of the second volume?

In volume two, I offer free works, but still within a thoroughbass and chorale framework: interludes and cadenzas, preludes, fantasias, continuo playing, partimento, and fugue.

 

I’d like to hear more about those last three. What about continuo playing?

Many modern continuo-playing realizations simply designate block chords for the thoroughbass harmonies indicated. Some of these are not even careful with appropriate ranges to fit with the soloists, voice leading, or doubling. In contrast, Bach’s continuo playing was described as creating a quartet out of a trio. Instead of resorting to block chord-type continuo, he would most often play the left-hand bass line given and improvise a right-hand part that would fit ideally in dialogue and duet with the other solo voices. When I started improvising in this way in continuo with ensembles, I was astonished at how much more sophisticated it sounds, as well as how much more it enhances what the other instrumentalists are doing.

 

What is partimento?

Partimento is an improvisation pedagogy practiced by many Italians, notably Adriano Banchieri, Bernardo Pasquini, and Girolamo Frescobaldi, as well as several German musicians in the 17th and 18th centuries. Italian composers influenced the art of improvisatory flourishes in keyboard free works. Froberger is a wonderful example of that Italianate influence from his teacher Frescobaldi, as I demonstrate in my Froberger on the 1658 De Zentis CD played on an original 17th-century Italian harpsichord. (See Figure 8.) In his toccatas, Froberger introduced cosmopolitan influences: Italianate improvisatory virtuosic passagework, French dance and overture rhythms, and strict imitative counterpoint practiced by German composers and the Palestrina lineage of contrapuntalists.

The cross-pollination between Italy and Germany was evident in partimento works, including fugue. After Bach taught his students how to work with thoroughbass in chorales, free works, and continuo playing, he introduced partimento fugues in his early fugal pedagogy. (See Figure 9.) In partimento fugues, the subject and answer are introduced. After the initial entrances, the partimento features thoroughbass only. The improviser’s role was to solve the puzzle by placing additional subject entrances in the fugue according to where they fit with the harmony indicated by the thoroughbass. For example, with a four-voice fugue, the improviser fills in the missing voices and remaining harmony in four-voice counterpoint. Most improvisers enjoy puzzles, riddles, or Sudoku. Partimento is a similar musical game and valuable improvisation pedagogy tool. 

So you can use partimento for fugues?

Yes, Bach did, as did Handel. In Volume Two of Bach and the Art of Improvisation, I show examples of partimento fugue as a starting point for fugal improvisation. Bach certainly moved beyond that in teaching, composing, and improvising fugues, and in my final chapter, I offer applications for how to create increasingly professional fugues. 

 

I think most people would feel daunted by the thought of improvising fugues.

Yes, and they did in Bach’s day, too. It is truly possible for anyone who is willing to practice with great attention and perseverance. The results are exhilarating.

But the solution is, as Bach did, to build up each of the improvisation pedagogy steps so incrementally, that fugue becomes simply the next rung of the ladder. 

 

And that’s exactly what you do in Bach and the Art of Improvisation!

Douglas Reed

Robert Clark taught at the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1981, and at Arizona State University, Tempe, from 1981 until his retirement in 1998. One of his most noted achievements as a performer was his recording, Bach at Naumburg, on the newly restored organ built by Zacharias Hildebrandt in 1747, an organ tested and approved by J. S. Bach and Gottfried Silbermann.  

In the United States Clark served as a consultant to many churches, and was directly responsible for the building of the first two modern mechanical action organs in Arizona: Victory Lutheran Church in Mesa and Pinnacle Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale. He was also advisor for the Richards & Fowkes organ at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Clark has served on many juries for organ competitions, including St. Albans and the Grand Prix de Chartres. In 1992, he received a plaque from the Central Arizona Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, inscribed “Master Teacher.” Clark recently moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Houston, where his daughter, Barbara, will continue her career as a teacher of voice at Rice University beginning in fall 2013.

On May 19 and 20, 2012, the author spoke with Professor Clark at his home in Cincinnati.

Douglas Reed: Thank you for this opportunity to talk. Please tell about some of your early musical experiences that shaped you as a musician.

Robert Clark: It began in kindergarten. In the classroom there was a mockup of a pipe organ that fascinated me. I spent the entire playtime pretending I was an organist. When I was about six years old, I went behind the stage where things were going on at church [First Methodist Church, Fremont, Nebraska] and saw for the first time a Universal Air Chest of an Austin organ. I pushed the flap that opens the door, and, of course, I noticed a great change in pressure. I was totally fascinated.  

 

You’ve mentioned motion or movement training in school.

Yes. The term was not used, but it was pure Dalcroze eurhythmics involving step-bend, step-step-bend, making phrases with your arms, going in circular motion and in advanced cases, walking two steps against three bounces of the ball or vice versa. Dalcroze eurhythmics was part of my training as early as fourth grade, as was moveable-Do solfège. My claim to fame was being able to hear and sing descending major sixth and ascending minor third intervals.

It was a very unusual public school system in Kansas City. I don’t know whether the name Mabelle Glenn means anything to you, but she edited several volumes of Art Songs for School and Studio. In the 1930s, she conducted the Bach St. Matthew Passion at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. During her long career, she was renowned in music education and, surprisingly, convinced the administration to include music in the daily curriculum of the grade schools in Kansas City.

 

What other things influenced you as a youngster? Did you study piano?

Oh, yes. From the fourth grade until I finished high school, my teacher was Margaret Dietrich, who had been a pupil of Josef Lhévinne at Juilliard. Much of the elegance and detail in his playing was transmitted from her to her students. Believe me, she was a strong personality and pushed me very hard at a time when I was quite lazy.

Miss Dietrich would probably be 105 years old now, although I did see her when she was in her nineties after she and her husband had moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. It was very good to see her again. She even told me I could call her Margaret! 

 

Did you study the organ during that time?

Yes, much to my piano teacher’s dissatisfaction (laughter), I did take organ lessons. My first piece was Song of the Basket Weaver, one of the St. Lawrence Sketches by Alexander Russell. I had my first church job when I was 14, playing a two-manual and pedal Estey reed organ. That’s when I became fascinated with playing the famous Toccata by Widor.  

 

Then you majored in organ in college. What led to that?

That’s what I wanted to do! I went to a small school, Central Methodist College, in Fayette, Missouri, and from there to Union Theological Seminary, where I did my graduate study in the School of Sacred Music. Orpha Ochse was one of my teachers at Central. I alternated organ lessons between Orpha and Luther Spayde, who was a strict Dupré advocate. Orpha suggested many subtleties not otherwise available. She was also my first-year theory teacher. 

 

Did you study with N. Louise Wright and Opal Hayes at Central Methodist College?

I certainly did. Miss Wright was one of those very colorful, flamboyant people who made you think you were better than you were. Miss Hayes taught Bach and technique, and Miss Wright taught interpretation.

 

Then you went from Central to New York City?

I did. My first teacher was Clarence Dickinson. I was much too immature and opinionated to understand his breadth of knowledge and approach to teaching. He knew the tradition of Widor and other European masters of his era. Lessons were at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, where there was an E. M. Skinner organ, recently replaced.

That was 1953. Interestingly, I went to the other extreme with Ernest White, who was known for playing as if the keys were hot! He did not force his theories upon me and respected my individuality. I played a debut recital in his studio at St. Mary the Virgin, and that’s probably the only recital I played from memory without dropping a single note.

 

Ernest White had a series of studio organs, right? 

Yes, this was the largest. It was up on the second floor of St. Mary the Virgin. It was quite the thing; it was very controversial and very well should have been!

 

Tell us about other experiences that you had in New York.

While a student at Union Seminary, I had many meaningful experiences. For example, I heard the New York debut of Jeanne Demessieux at Central Presbyterian Church, the “Carnegie Hall” for organists in those days. Quite a number of us went to hear Demessieux, and we all fell in love with her. She played with very high spike heels, the type that would pull up a grate from the sidewalk! Her pedal technique was built around that. I heard her play her repeated-note etude for the pedals—with the spike heels. Indeed!

 

One time, you mentioned the Langlais Suite Médiévale in association with your time in New York.

Yes. I was possibly the first student organist to play that work in the United States. Messiaen was even more controversial. The first piece I learned was the Apparition de l’église éternelle. I wrote my master’s thesis on Messiaen and also translated his Technique de mon langage musical before the “official” translation became available.

  

Let’s talk more about your teachers. You’ve mentioned studying with Gustav Leonhardt.

I knew him when he was not yet 30, on his first trip to the United States. He taught a course on performance practice at a Union Seminary summer session. I had a few lessons on an organ that he disliked and some harpsichord instruction. All of a sudden it wasn’t a case of limiting but of greatly enhancing the possibilities of what a performer could do. He had an incredible stash of information about early sources. Being typically Dutch, he could speak four different languages. So in the class he would read something off in the original language, and finally it occurred to him that no one could understand what he was saying, so he began translating. 

We had many good experiences, including a chance encounter one Sunday afternoon as I was taking the uptown subway. We ran into each other on the way up to see the famous medieval complex, The Cloisters. We had a very good time doing that. He had a great deal of knowledge about medieval art. I simply admired his whole approach to music making, which was very elaborate.

 

When you say he opened up all kinds of possibilities rather than limiting them, what exactly do you mean? 

He spoke about different ways ornaments could be played, places where you would or would not play notes inégales—all of the options open to the musician. Would you play over-dotted, double-dotted, neither, or something in between?  

I remember a subsequent class he did at the University of Michigan. He spent an entire session on about three measures of music. It was the sarabande from the C-minor French Suite. He talked very much about the expressive nature of this: if we over-hold this, such would happen, but if we don’t overhold, something else will happen. I remember something he told me in the early 1950s and which I strongly believe: dynamics are achieved by variations in touch and articulation and by rhythmic adjustment.   

 

Did Leonhardt perform at that time?

Oh, yes! I heard him perform many times. I heard him perform the one and only time on an electro-pneumatic organ at St. Thomas Church in New York City, and he said, “Never again!” And he didn’t. He commented on what a nice place this would be to have a fine mechanical action organ, and finally Taylor & Boody fulfilled that dream. Leonhardt was also a very fine fortepianist, incidentally.  

 

Are there other teachers or musical experiences you would like to mention?

One of my good experiences was being a fellow judge at the Fort Wayne competition with Arthur Poister. He was very insightful and was usually right in his perceptions of the musical personality and even gender of the competitors. 

 

Let’s talk about Bach. I’m curious about how your perspective on Bach has changed over the years. You mentioned learning with the Dupré edition. What has happened?

We have reached a new level of understanding of articulation in terms of listening. After all, a pure legato or even over-legato are types of articulation, but if one reads treatises like J. J. Quantz’s On Playing the Flute, one learns how wind players rehearsed. It was tonguing that made a difference, and of course listening to string playing makes a difference. Where does one change a bow? These are all deviations from a pure legato. Even a seamless legato is a form of articulation and, in fact, harpsichordists deal with over-legato. 

 

How has the revival of mechanical action influenced your thinking?

It has influenced my thinking entirely. My first European trip came quite late, in 1977. I played many of the great organs in Europe. The organ at Kampen, the Netherlands, was the last organ I heard in Europe before returning to the United States. The next day, I heard a chiffy Positiv Gedeckt on the organ at Hill Auditorium and thought, “This will not do.” So, I found a way of getting to a tracker-action organ even though it wasn’t a very good instrument. Students would have lessons in an unheated church in the winter simply for this experience. And then I took many groups of students and others down to the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Toledo, where the important Brombaugh organ, now in Rochester, used to be. We learned a great deal from this opportunity.

What did you learn?

I learned about the sensitive interplay between winding and touch, and realized I could find detail in the music that could not be found any other way. Indeed, the fastest key action is not electro-pneumatic. With a good mechanical action, the response is immediate, providing complete contact with the instrument. Contrary to conventional wisdom, many of the great European instruments are not hard to play. Of course, as the pallets become larger, the action becomes heavier. For example, with a typical basse de trompette, the touch and speech of the lower notes affect timing and interpretation. This is as it should be! It shouldn’t be all the same. I tell my students that the only “perfect” action that does everything consistently is the electronic organ! 

 

And when you’re playing with manuals coupled and a huge sound, you tend to play differently.

Of course. If you listen to my Naumburg recording, the last variation of Sei gegrüsset was played with all three manuals coupled, and it becomes very grand. One plays quite broadly when the action is heavier, whereas the other variations call for a lighter registration and touch. In the partitas, particularly in Sei gegrüsset, there are also many things that relate directly to the playing of string instruments. 

Think of the difference between playing a violin and playing a cello or a gamba. I’m always very happy with students who have played a wind instrument or string instrument or have had experience singing. Anyone wanting to be an organist should learn another instrument. 

 

Can you speak more about singing?

Articulation involves attack as well as release. If you were singing all legato, there would be no consonants, no words. It would be just one stream of sound, which is vocally impossible.

 

You’ve said, “Put a D or a T on that note.”

Yes, but only on a good organ with suspended mechanical action is that possible, because it has to do with the speed of attack and release. I recommend A Guide to Duo and Trio Playing by Jacques van Oortmerssen for comprehensive understanding of early fingerings and their impact on articulation.

 

Let’s talk more about teaching and learning. What are the three most important things to consider when learning and performing a piece?

Traditionally, we say “rhythm, rhythm, and rhythm.”

  

How do you start an organ student? Do you have a teaching method?  

Some of the older teaching methods are outdated. So many deal with absolute silence and space, up and down, no give and take. Music doesn’t work that way. I don’t agree with the idea that we delay learning Bach until we understand historic fingerings. There’s one method that starts with some rather uninteresting music of the Romantic era, but the student is not ready for Bach until he or she knows how to use historic fingerings. Who knows what is “historic” anyway?! Nobody has the same hand. Finger lengths are different. The balance of the hand is different. I think just simple things that are good music are the best way to start: Renaissance pieces, easier Bach, some pieces in the Orgelbüchlein. It is not necessary to delay learning Bach. Early and modern fingering should be included within modern teaching approaches, not as separate entities.

 

In recent decades, there has been a great deal of emphasis on early fingerings.

You may be surprised, but since I came back from Europe, I’ve been almost exclusively into historic fingerings for early music. That doesn’t mean always doing the same thing the same way, but there are times when paired fingerings—3-4-3-4 ascending and 3-2-3-2 descending in the right hand—work on a good sensitive instrument. The trio sonatas include marked articulations that are very much related to wind and string playing. For me, usually the marked articulation determines the fingering anyway. I tend to write slurs rather than numbers in my music.

Do you have any particular memory techniques? You mentioned using solfège.

Yes, I use solfège, but memory, like doing anything else well, simply takes time and practice. I have no gimmicks whatsoever in memorization. It is an extension of the learning process. The ultimate test is to be in a quiet room without scores, and being able to hear every note in a performance the way you want to hear it. And that’s the most secure way to memorize. Without this ability, one tends to rely entirely on a mechanical approach.

 

You have a nice selection of artwork in your apartment. How important is study of the other arts—the visual arts, even film—for a musician?

A good example of Baroque performance practice that few people mention lies in the art of Peter Paul Rubens, whose works are among the finest Baroque paintings. They are full of motion, huge sweeps of the brush, and great detail within those. A good place for any musician to visit would be the Rubens gallery at the Louvre. 

 

Please talk about the sense of motion as it relates to rhythm. Many performances are very speedy and metronomic, but without a sense of movement. 

Well, Duke Ellington once said, “Man, if it don’t got that swing, it ain’t music.” (laughter)

 

You have mentioned the term “lilt.” How does one achieve that?

The harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm had her students learn the steps for the dances used in Bach’s keyboard suites. They would learn the choreography of the allemande, sarabande, the courante, and gigue in their various forms, bourrée, gavotte. This is a very good idea. The more we can see things moving, the better! 

 

What about conducting and singing a line? You’ve recommended the Kirkpatrick edition of Scarlatti sonatas. He recommends walking.

Oh, yes. That’s very good basic reading. It’s an essay on rhythm in the first volume of the Schirmer edition of the Scarlatti Sixty Sonatas edited by Kirkpatrick. That’s very good information. It’s in a question/answer format. Question: “How do I sense the shape of a phrase?” Answer: “By dancing it.” Learn the difference between rhythm and meter: meter is regular; rhythm is essentially irregular. Rubato does exist in Baroque music but not exactly as in Chopin. Kirkpatrick said, “Rhythm is the superimposition of irregularity upon regularity.”

 

Dare we talk about the metronome?

What you should do if you have a metronome is to throw it in the dumpster. It creates arithmetic, not rhythm. 

 

You’ve often mentioned continuo and the value of accompanying, working with other instrumentalists and vocalists. 

Working with other musicians, one discovers many of the subtleties of articulation derived from bowing and tonguing. I learned the hard way not to jump ahead of one’s fellow musicians; you have to listen to the breathing of the musician. I would often jump ahead of the wind instrument player, and I’d be playing before he completed taking a breath! Many organists have this panicky thing: “If I don’t get moving, it’s not going to go!” You must leave space for breathing. Not every instrument is like the organ, where you can have a continuous supply of wind.

 

There has been a great resurgence of interest in improvisation in the American organ world. Can you speak about your views on improvisation and how it relates to performance in general?

In our country we used to have maybe an annual “be nice to improvisation day” and that was the beginning and the end of it. But in France, where the study of improvisation is obligatory, this begins in childhood and continues throughout a musician’s entire career. It’s not a thing acquired quickly or easily.  

Particularly in music before the Romantic era, improvisation was par for the course. But if Liszt and other Romantic virtuosos were to play in a modern-day academic setting, matters would be quite different.

 

These are some fairly major changes from the Dupré method at Central Methodist!

Well, I studied with Dr. Dickinson in 1952. How many years has it been? We’re not doing anything the way we did 60 years ago. Airplanes are not the same. Cars are not the same. The way we dress and the way we think are not the same.  

 

You taught at the University of Michigan for 17 years. Who were some of your closest colleagues at Michigan?

My closest friend in the organ department was Bob Glasgow, who was an inspiration even though we were occasionally different in our approach. Another very dear friend was Ellwood Derr, who was really a historian but taught music theory. He knew an incredible amount about music in general, and you could go to him with almost any question. Another colleague, John Wiley, was very much an expert on Russian music. 

At Arizona State University, Frank Koonce, the classical guitar teacher, and I became good friends. The late Bill Magers, the viola teacher, taught my daughter and was recognized as one of the great viola teachers in the country. There are many other former colleagues including Robert Hamilton, a noted pianist.   

 

You have mentioned Louise Cuyler a number of times.

Yes. There are many stories about her. One time she brought to class a 78 recording of a Beethoven string quartet, which did not meet her standards. She grabbed the shellac record off the turntable, tossed it into the waste basket, and then went apologetically to the library.

 

And what about Eugene Bossart?

Oh, he died recently at the age of 94. He helped so many people. His few detractors were poor musicians, as he demanded only the very best. And 99% of the time, he got it. Yet, he was the kindest person! I remember him calling me once after I had played harpsichord continuo for the St. Matthew Passion. He yelled on the phone, “Hello! Is this Marcel Dupré??” What he really liked was the recitative regarding “The Veil of the Temple.” Yet, he could be super critical and get away with it.

 

Let’s talk about your recordings, particularly your experience at Naumburg.

Jonathan Wearn, the British recording producer, was very particular in recording. After the initial tapes were made, I spent several days with him editing at his home in England. Many of my recordings have some editing, although my Clavierübung III recording has almost none.

 

Had you made any recordings earlier in your career?

No. The Naumburg recording got good notices, I thought, so I went back home to one of my favorite organs, built by Paul Fritts, one that I’d had a voice in designing, and made “Bach on the Fritts.” And then “Bach and Friends on the Fritts.” There are seven recordings in all. I really had wanted to record on the Treutmann organ in Grauhof, but this was not possible because of the illness of my wife. 

 

Speaking of the Fritts—after teaching at Michigan, you moved to Arizona State and taught for 17 more years. It was during this time that you led the creation of the new performance hall and the Fritts organ. Could you speak about
that process?

That was a battle. In the first place, nobody trusted that type of acoustic. It was not designed for piano recitals. The harpsichordists usually like it, but everybody was concerned, “We’ve got to deaden that some way or the other!” I don’t know how many suggestions were offered. We finally made sort of a dual system where drapes could be drawn manually, and I used that very often in teaching when the room was empty.  

 

What led you to start that project? Was there no good concert hall or teaching instrument at Arizona State?

All we had was an Aeolian-Skinner in Gammage Auditorium. It was one of the late, very thinly voiced Aeolian-Skinners. But since the scalings were surprisingly large, it was revoiced and opened up quite a bit by Manuel Rosales. There was no substantial tracker organ available, except for a few old ones that were quite good up in the northern part of Arizona. There is now a second Fritts in Tucson.

During our first year of recitals, we had overflow audiences. Performances had to be played twice every Sunday, one at 2 pm and the other at 5 pm. There was great appeal among the musical public!

 

Can you give some background on the Orgelbüchlein edition that you and John David Peterson prepared?

I visited the Stadtsbibliothek in East Berlin, and the librarian there was very American-friendly. In fact, he had travelled in the United States. I was allowed to pick up the original manuscript of the St. Matthew Passion. It was like touching the Holy Grail! Luckily, the librarian mailed me a microfilm of the Orgelbüchlein. I shared it with John, who was working on the same project. I might say that the Orgelbüchlein that we prepared goes back to 1984, and it is an edition that needs to be revised—not a great deal, though, because we were dealing with the autograph, and there are simply variants of the autograph that need to be acknowledged.

 

Were the Stasi after you in East Germany?

Oh, yes! They were after any American. It was the typical situation where one saw a face in public and then two days later that same face appeared again. One time I was trapped inside the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg because I didn’t know how to work the key, and a man came, speaking perfect English, to explain how to turn the key. As a matter of fact, the tower of that church is the highest point in the town, and the chief spy looked out from there. She knew everything that went on in that city, including my presence!

After the big change I went to what’s called the Runde Ecke. This museum showed many of  their methods of interrogation, uniforms, and obscene paintings. Every phone in the country was wired. 

 

What were some of the musical experiences you had in East Germany?

I had wanted to go to Stralsund to hear the organ there. The organist was Dietrich Prost, and we hit it off very well. His English was probably as deficient as my German, but we understood each other; we got to the organ and without saying a word we agreed that there was something important there. And he said, “You play like a German!” “Du bist Deutsch!” We had coffee and cake. Many of the musicians in local churches were eager to meet with Americans. Often we went for conversation, coffee, and cake. I remember being in one of the towns near the border and the local organist was complaining, “Here we are only a few kilometers from West Germany, and we cannot see our closest friends and relatives!”

 

Did you play any of the Silbermann organs?

I think I played every one in existence except one that wasn’t playing. In Crostau, they said, “The organist is sick, and the organ is sick.” Strangely enough, one of the finest Silbermanns is the least known, in Pfaffrode. There is some speculation that it might have been the original Rückpositiv for the organ in Freiberg.

 

What about Hildebrandt organs?  You mentioned Naumburg. 

Oh, yes. That was before the restoration and there was enough there that I could get an idea of what the original was like. Of course, the organ had been provided with electric action in the early 1930s, but there were enough original pipes left that I got a pretty good idea of the sound. Another colleague, Thomas Harmon, did quite a bit of research on that. The restoration didn’t take place until after the reunification of Germany. Christian Mahrenholz was one of the leaders in promoting the restoration as early as the 1930s.

 

Did you go to Dresden on that trip?

I went to the Katholische Hofkirche, now Holy Trinity Cathedral. We were told by the tourist guides, “Don’t go in there. Nobody’s there.” But we went in, and we met the organist, Dietrich Wagner, who had lived through the infamous fire in Dresden and told us all about that. He was very friendly and made suggestions on my playing—that I deal with the acoustic because I was playing too legato. I sent him some editions of things not available in East Germany. So, that
was good.

 

We’ve been talking about all kinds of professional stuff. Would you like to talk about your family and their part in your life?

I have four children and three grandchildren. My son, Robert, lives in Los Angeles and does technical work with pathologists. My daughter Susan lives in Oxford, Michigan. She is Mrs. Music through the entire area and manages the Rochester Michigan Symphony Orchestra. She’s a fine cellist and plays the piano. She sings and teaches maybe twenty or
thirty students.

The twin of my son is Jill, who is very focused and controlled with everything she does. At the beginning of her career in New York, she won a grant from the Bosch Foundation. Then her husband was moved back to Deutsche Telekom in Germany, and she now works in an executive role in the famous tower in Bonn.

 

What about Barbara?

I could write a book about her. She’s a singer, very gifted and very devoted to teaching at the Cincinnati Conservatory. I wish she would perform more, because she is at the prime of her career vocally. She knows how to communicate a song in an ever-positive stage presence. That would include eye contact, gesture, and movement.   

 

And your wife, Evelyn?

Evelyn was a singer. She studied at Westminster Choir College and was a good organist in her own right and also had a beautiful soprano voice. She was busy raising the children, but made a point of keeping a voice studio for many years. 

 

What do you think of the combination of organ and piano?

We performed William Albright’s Stipendium peccati for piano, organ, and percussion.

 

Did you participate in one of the Seven Deadly Sins before that?

The preface of the score encourages all the performers to experience each of the seven deadly sins—but not necessarily together. So, we imagined walking out on stage pretending to be angry, hamming it up, growling at each other, shaking fists, and that sort of thing. We had a lot of fun imagining that, and then we settled down and went out to perform. I also did a work for organ and brass conducted by William Revelli, the only person I know who used the moveable-Do system as I do. 

 

That was in Hill Auditorium?

Yes. John David Peterson was at the piano, and Bill Moersh, a graduate of the Berklee School in Boston, was
the percussionist. 

 

You’ve often mentioned Catharine Crozier. 

The first time I heard her, I think I was 14 years old, and I was so moved by that. She played the Roger-Ducasse Pastorale. But I could not figure out what she did with the Brahms
Schmücke dich, because it was not what was on the page, and of course, she played the chorale tune in the pedal. I revered Catharine. She was a perfectionist and had incredibly high standards. Some of her interpretive ideas might be out of fashion today, but I love every inch of ground she walked on!

 

Are there other fine performers you admire?

Any of the fine violinists—Zino Francescatti, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern. Rachel Podger and Andrew Manze, both fine Baroque violinists. Pablo Casals. Fine pianists of any stripe. I like to hear good musicians of any type. I like to hear good oboe players and good flute players. And of course, singers!

 

Finally, please give your perspective on the current state of the organ profession, especially regarding teaching and learning.

David Craighead advised even his most gifted students to be able to do something else if necessary. Considering the realities of today’s organ world, is this anything but being honest, especially to students who dream about being on the back page of the organ journals?

There are teachers who attempt to transfer their own prejudices to their students. It is our duty to deal with gifted students who are free to ask questions. I can say that some of my best students are ones who disagreed with me or others. In fact, at least two of my students have a background playing the accordion! Sometimes these people can be very annoying or irritating, but they can be brilliant musicians.

Too much teaching is, “Me teach. You do.” Or with some students, it is, “You play. I copy.” The most important thing is to TEACH IMAGINATION!

 

Recordings by Robert Clark

Bach and Friends on the Fritts. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 018.

Bach at Naumburg. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 041.

Orgelbüchlein & More Works by J.S. Bach. Robert Clark & John David Peterson at the Fritts Op. 12 in Organ Hall, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 019.

Robert Clark Plays the Brombaugh Organ, Op. 35 at First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois. ARSIS SACD 405.

Robert Clark Plays Organ Works from the Land of Bach. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 034.

Bach Clavierübung III. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 042. 

 

 

Douglas Reed

Robert Clark taught at the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1981, and at Arizona State University, Tempe, from 1981 until his retirement in 1998. One of his most noted achievements as a performer was his recording, Bach at Naumburg, on the newly restored organ built by Zacharias Hildebrandt in 1747, an organ tested and approved by J. S. Bach and Gottfried Silbermann.  

In the United States Clark served as a consultant to many churches, and was directly responsible for the building of the first two modern mechanical action organs in Arizona: Victory Lutheran Church in Mesa and Pinnacle Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale. He was also advisor for the Richards & Fowkes organ at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Clark has served on many juries for organ competitions, including St. Albans and the Grand Prix de Chartres. In 1992, he received a plaque from the Central Arizona Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, inscribed “Master Teacher.” Clark recently moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Houston, where his daughter, Barbara, will continue her career as a teacher of voice at Rice University beginning in fall 2013.

On May 19 and 20, 2012, the author spoke with Professor Clark at his home in Cincinnati.

 

Douglas Reed: Thank you for this opportunity to talk. Please tell about some of your early musical experiences that shaped you as a musician.

Robert Clark: It began in kindergarten. In the classroom there was a mockup of a pipe organ that fascinated me. I spent the entire playtime pretending I was an organist. When I was about six years old, I went behind the stage where things were going on at church [First Methodist Church, Fremont, Nebraska] and saw for the first time a Universal Air Chest of an Austin organ. I pushed the flap that opens the door, and, of course, I noticed a great change in pressure. I was totally fascinated.  

 

You’ve mentioned motion or movement training in school.

Yes. The term was not used, but it was pure Dalcroze eurhythmics involving step-bend, step-step-bend, making phrases with your arms, going in circular motion and in advanced cases, walking two steps against three bounces of the ball or vice versa. Dalcroze eurhythmics was part of my training as early as fourth grade, as was moveable-Do solfège. My claim to fame was being able to hear and sing descending major sixth and ascending minor third intervals.

It was a very unusual public school system in Kansas City. I don’t know whether the name Mabelle Glenn means anything to you, but she edited several volumes of Art Songs for School and Studio. In the 1930s, she conducted the Bach St. Matthew Passion at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. During her long career, she was renowned in music education and, surprisingly, convinced the administration to include music in the daily curriculum of the grade schools in Kansas City.

 

What other things influenced you as a youngster? Did you study piano?

Oh, yes. From the fourth grade until I finished high school, my teacher was Margaret Dietrich, who had been a pupil of Josef Lhévinne at Juilliard. Much of the elegance and detail in his playing was transmitted from her to her students. Believe me, she was a strong personality and pushed me very hard at a time when I was quite lazy.

Miss Dietrich would probably be 105 years old now, although I did see her when she was in her nineties after she and her husband had moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. It was very good to see her again. She even told me I could call her Margaret! 

 

Did you study the organ during that time?

Yes, much to my piano teacher’s dissatisfaction (laughter), I did take organ lessons. My first piece was Song of the Basket Weaver, one of the St. Lawrence Sketches by Alexander Russell. I had my first church job when I was 14, playing a two-manual and pedal Estey reed organ. That’s when I became fascinated with playing the famous Toccata by Widor.  

 

Then you majored in organ in college. What led to that?

That’s what I wanted to do! I went to a small school, Central Methodist College, in Fayette, Missouri, and from there to Union Theological Seminary, where I did my graduate study in the School of Sacred Music. Orpha Ochse was one of my teachers at Central. I alternated organ lessons between Orpha and Luther Spayde, who was a strict Dupré advocate. Orpha suggested many subtleties not otherwise available. She was also my first-year theory teacher. 

 

Did you study with N. Louise Wright and Opal Hayes at Central Methodist College?

I certainly did. Miss Wright was one of those very colorful, flamboyant people who made you think you were better than you were. Miss Hayes taught Bach and technique, and Miss Wright taught interpretation.

 

Then you went from Central to New York City?

I did. My first teacher was Clarence Dickinson. I was much too immature and opinionated to understand his breadth of knowledge and approach to teaching. He knew the tradition of Widor and other European masters of his era. Lessons were at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, where there was an E. M. Skinner organ, recently replaced.

That was 1953. Interestingly, I went to the other extreme with Ernest White, who was known for playing as if the keys were hot! He did not force his theories upon me and respected my individuality. I played a debut recital in his studio at St. Mary the Virgin, and that’s probably the only recital I played from memory without dropping a single note.

 

Ernest White had a series of studio organs, right? 

Yes, this was the largest. It was up on the second floor of St. Mary the Virgin. It was quite the thing; it was very controversial and very well should have been!

 

Tell us about other experiences that you had in New York.

While a student at Union Seminary, I had many meaningful experiences. For example, I heard the New York debut of Jeanne Demessieux at Central Presbyterian Church, the “Carnegie Hall” for organists in those days. Quite a number of us went to hear Demessieux, and we all fell in love with her. She played with very high spike heels, the type that would pull up a grate from the sidewalk! Her pedal technique was built around that. I heard her play her repeated-note etude for the pedals—with the spike heels. Indeed!

 

One time, you mentioned the Langlais Suite Médiévale in association with your time in New York.

Yes. I was possibly the first student organist to play that work in the United States. Messiaen was even more controversial. The first piece I learned was the Apparition de l’église éternelle. I wrote my master’s thesis on Messiaen and also translated his Technique de mon langage musical before the “official” translation became available.

  

Let’s talk more about your teachers. You’ve mentioned studying with Gustav Leonhardt.

I knew him when he was not yet 30, on his first trip to the United States. He taught a course on performance practice at a Union Seminary summer session. I had a few lessons on an organ that he disliked and some harpsichord instruction. All of a sudden it wasn’t a case of limiting but of greatly enhancing the possibilities of what a performer could do. He had an incredible stash of information about early sources. Being typically Dutch, he could speak four different languages. So in the class he would read something off in the original language, and finally it occurred to him that no one could understand what he was saying, so he began translating. 

We had many good experiences, including a chance encounter one Sunday afternoon as I was taking the uptown subway. We ran into each other on the way up to see the famous medieval complex, The Cloisters. We had a very good time doing that. He had a great deal of knowledge about medieval art. I simply admired his whole approach to music making, which was very elaborate.

 

When you say he opened up all kinds of possibilities rather than limiting them, what exactly do you mean? 

He spoke about different ways ornaments could be played, places where you would or would not play notes inégales—all of the options open to the musician. Would you play over-dotted, double-dotted, neither, or something in between?  

I remember a subsequent class he did at the University of Michigan. He spent an entire session on about three measures of music. It was the sarabande from the C-minor French Suite. He talked very much about the expressive nature of this: if we over-hold this, such would happen, but if we don’t overhold, something else will happen. I remember something he told me in the early 1950s and which I strongly believe: dynamics are achieved by variations in touch and articulation and by rhythmic adjustment.   

 

Did Leonhardt perform at that time?

Oh, yes! I heard him perform many times. I heard him perform the one and only time on an electro-pneumatic organ at St. Thomas Church in New York City, and he said, “Never again!” And he didn’t. He commented on what a nice place this would be to have a fine mechanical action organ, and finally Taylor & Boody fulfilled that dream. Leonhardt was also a very fine fortepianist, incidentally.  

 

Are there other teachers or musical experiences you would like to mention?

One of my good experiences was being a fellow judge at the Fort Wayne competition with Arthur Poister. He was very insightful and was usually right in his perceptions of the musical personality and even gender of the competitors. 

 

Let’s talk about Bach. I’m curious about how your perspective on Bach has changed over the years. You mentioned learning with the Dupré edition. What has happened?

We have reached a new level of understanding of articulation in terms of listening. After all, a pure legato or even over-legato are types of articulation, but if one reads treatises like J. J. Quantz’s On Playing the Flute, one learns how wind players rehearsed. It was tonguing that made a difference, and of course listening to string playing makes a difference. Where does one change a bow? These are all deviations from a pure legato. Even a seamless legato is a form of articulation and, in fact, harpsichordists deal with over-legato. 

 

How has the revival of mechanical action influenced your thinking?

It has influenced my thinking entirely. My first European trip came quite late, in 1977. I played many of the great organs in Europe. The organ at Kampen, the Netherlands, was the last organ I heard in Europe before returning to the United States. The next day, I heard a chiffy Positiv Gedeckt on the organ at Hill Auditorium and thought, “This will not do.” So, I found a way of getting to a tracker-action organ even though it wasn’t a very good instrument. Students would have lessons in an unheated church in the winter simply for this experience. And then I took many groups of students and others down to the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Toledo, where the important Brombaugh organ, now in Rochester, used to be. We learned a great deal from this opportunity.

What did you learn?

I learned about the sensitive interplay between winding and touch, and realized I could find detail in the music that could not be found any other way. Indeed, the fastest key action is not electro-pneumatic. With a good mechanical action, the response is immediate, providing complete contact with the instrument. Contrary to conventional wisdom, many of the great European instruments are not hard to play. Of course, as the pallets become larger, the action becomes heavier. For example, with a typical basse de trompette, the touch and speech of the lower notes affect timing and interpretation. This is as it should be! It shouldn’t be all the same. I tell my students that the only “perfect” action that does everything consistently is the electronic organ! 

 

And when you’re playing with manuals coupled and a huge sound, you tend to play differently.

Of course. If you listen to my Naumburg recording, the last variation of Sei gegrüsset was played with all three manuals coupled, and it becomes very grand. One plays quite broadly when the action is heavier, whereas the other variations call for a lighter registration and touch. In the partitas, particularly in Sei gegrüsset, there are also many things that relate directly to the playing of string instruments. 

Think of the difference between playing a violin and playing a cello or a gamba. I’m always very happy with students who have played a wind instrument or string instrument or have had experience singing. Anyone wanting to be an organist should learn another instrument. 

 

Can you speak more about singing?

Articulation involves attack as well as release. If you were singing all legato, there would be no consonants, no words. It would be just one stream of sound, which is vocally impossible.

 

You’ve said, “Put a D or a T on that note.”

Yes, but only on a good organ with suspended mechanical action is that possible, because it has to do with the speed of attack and release. I recommend A Guide to Duo and Trio Playing by Jacques van Oortmerssen for comprehensive understanding of early fingerings and their impact on articulation.

 

Let’s talk more about teaching and learning. What are the three most important things to consider when learning and performing a piece?

Traditionally, we say “rhythm, rhythm, and rhythm.”

  

How do you start an organ student? Do you have a teaching method?  

Some of the older teaching methods are outdated. So many deal with absolute silence and space, up and down, no give and take. Music doesn’t work that way. I don’t agree with the idea that we delay learning Bach until we understand historic fingerings. There’s one method that starts with some rather uninteresting music of the Romantic era, but the student is not ready for Bach until he or she knows how to use historic fingerings. Who knows what is “historic” anyway?! Nobody has the same hand. Finger lengths are different. The balance of the hand is different. I think just simple things that are good music are the best way to start: Renaissance pieces, easier Bach, some pieces in the Orgelbüchlein. It is not necessary to delay learning Bach. Early and modern fingering should be included within modern teaching approaches, not as separate entities.

 

In recent decades, there has been a great deal of emphasis on early fingerings.

You may be surprised, but since I came back from Europe, I’ve been almost exclusively into historic fingerings for early music. That doesn’t mean always doing the same thing the same way, but there are times when paired fingerings—3-4-3-4 ascending and 3-2-3-2 descending in the right hand—work on a good sensitive instrument. The trio sonatas include marked articulations that are very much related to wind and string playing. For me, usually the marked articulation determines the fingering anyway. I tend to write slurs rather than numbers in my music.

Do you have any particular memory techniques? You mentioned using solfège.

Yes, I use solfège, but memory, like doing anything else well, simply takes time and practice. I have no gimmicks whatsoever in memorization. It is an extension of the learning process. The ultimate test is to be in a quiet room without scores, and being able to hear every note in a performance the way you want to hear it. And that’s the most secure way to memorize. Without this ability, one tends to rely entirely on a mechanical approach.

 

You have a nice selection of artwork in your apartment. How important is study of the other arts—the visual arts, even film—for a musician?

A good example of Baroque performance practice that few people mention lies in the art of Peter Paul Rubens, whose works are among the finest Baroque paintings. They are full of motion, huge sweeps of the brush, and great detail within those. A good place for any musician to visit would be the Rubens gallery at the Louvre. 

 

Please talk about the sense of motion as it relates to rhythm. Many performances are very speedy and metronomic, but without a sense of movement. 

Well, Duke Ellington once said, “Man, if it don’t got that swing, it ain’t music.” (laughter)

 

You have mentioned the term “lilt.” How does one achieve that?

The harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm had her students learn the steps for the dances used in Bach’s keyboard suites. They would learn the choreography of the allemande, sarabande, the courante, and gigue in their various forms, bourrée, gavotte. This is a very good idea. The more we can see things moving, the better! 

What about conducting and singing a line? You’ve recommended the Kirkpatrick edition of Scarlatti sonatas. He recommends walking.

Oh, yes. That’s very good basic reading. It’s an essay on rhythm in the first volume of the Schirmer edition of the Scarlatti Sixty Sonatas edited by Kirkpatrick. That’s very good information. It’s in a question/answer format. Question: “How do I sense the shape of a phrase?” Answer: “By dancing it.” Learn the difference between rhythm and meter: meter is regular; rhythm is essentially irregular. Rubato does exist in Baroque music but not exactly as in Chopin. Kirkpatrick said, “Rhythm is the superimposition of irregularity upon regularity.”

 

Dare we talk about the metronome?

What you should do if you have a metronome is to throw it in the dumpster. It creates arithmetic, not rhythm. 

 

You’ve often mentioned continuo and the value of accompanying, working with other instrumentalists and vocalists. 

Working with other musicians, one discovers many of the subtleties of articulation derived from bowing and tonguing. I learned the hard way not to jump ahead of one’s fellow musicians; you have to listen to the breathing of the musician. I would often jump ahead of the wind instrument player, and I’d be playing before he completed taking a breath! Many organists have this panicky thing: “If I don’t get moving, it’s not going to go!” You must leave space for breathing. Not every instrument is like the organ, where you can have a continuous supply of wind.

 

There has been a great resurgence of interest in improvisation in the American organ world. Can you speak about your views on improvisation and how it relates to performance in general?

In our country we used to have maybe an annual “be nice to improvisation day” and that was the beginning and the end of it. But in France, where the study of improvisation is obligatory, this begins in childhood and continues throughout a musician’s entire career. It’s not a thing acquired quickly or easily.  

Particularly in music before the Romantic era, improvisation was par for the course. But if Liszt and other Romantic virtuosos were to play in a modern-day academic setting, matters would be quite different.

 

These are some fairly major changes from the Dupré method at Central Methodist!

Well, I studied with Dr. Dickinson in 1952. How many years has it been? We’re not doing anything the way we did 60 years ago. Airplanes are not the same. Cars are not the same. The way we dress and the way we think are not the same.  

 

You taught at the University of Michigan for 17 years. Who were some of your closest colleagues at Michigan?

My closest friend in the organ department was Bob Glasgow, who was an inspiration even though we were occasionally different in our approach. Another very dear friend was Ellwood Derr, who was really a historian but taught music theory. He knew an incredible amount about music in general, and you could go to him with almost any question. Another colleague, John Wiley, was very much an expert on Russian music. 

At Arizona State University, Frank Koonce, the classical guitar teacher, and I became good friends. The late Bill Magers, the viola teacher, taught my daughter and was recognized as one of the great viola teachers in the country. There are many other former colleagues including Robert Hamilton, a noted pianist.   

 

You have mentioned Louise Cuyler a number of times.

Yes. There are many stories about her. One time she brought to class a 78 recording of a Beethoven string quartet, which did not meet her standards. She grabbed the shellac record off the turntable, tossed it into the waste basket, and then went apologetically to the library.

 

And what about Eugene Bossart?

Oh, he died recently at the age of 94. He helped so many people. His few detractors were poor musicians, as he demanded only the very best. And 99% of the time, he got it. Yet, he was the kindest person! I remember him calling me once after I had played harpsichord continuo for the St. Matthew Passion. He yelled on the phone, “Hello! Is this Marcel Dupré??” What he really liked was the recitative regarding “The Veil of the Temple.” Yet, he could be super critical and get away with it.

 

Let’s talk about your recordings, particularly your experience at Naumburg.

Jonathan Wearn, the British recording producer, was very particular in recording. After the initial tapes were made, I spent several days with him editing at his home in England. Many of my recordings have some editing, although my Clavierübung III recording has almost none.

 

Had you made any recordings earlier in your career?

No. The Naumburg recording got good notices, I thought, so I went back home to one of my favorite organs, built by Paul Fritts, one that I’d had a voice in designing, and made “Bach on the Fritts.” And then “Bach and Friends on the Fritts.” There are seven recordings in all. I really had wanted to record on the Treutmann organ in Grauhof, but this was not possible because of the illness of my wife. 

 

Speaking of the Fritts—after teaching at Michigan, you moved to Arizona State and taught for 17 more years. It was during this time that you led the creation of the new performance hall and the Fritts organ. Could you speak about
that process?

That was a battle. In the first place, nobody trusted that type of acoustic. It was not designed for piano recitals. The harpsichordists usually like it, but everybody was concerned, “We’ve got to deaden that some way or the other!” I don’t know how many suggestions were offered. We finally made sort of a dual system where drapes could be drawn manually, and I used that very often in teaching when the room was empty.  

 

What led you to start that project? Was there no good concert hall or teaching instrument at Arizona State?

All we had was an Aeolian-Skinner in Gammage Auditorium. It was one of the late, very thinly voiced Aeolian-Skinners. But since the scalings were surprisingly large, it was revoiced and opened up quite a bit by Manuel Rosales. There was no substantial tracker organ available, except for a few old ones that were quite good up in the northern part of Arizona. There is now a second Fritts in Tucson.

During our first year of recitals, we had overflow audiences. Performances had to be played twice every Sunday, one at 2 pm and the other at 5 pm. There was great appeal among the musical public!

 

Can you give some background on the Orgelbüchlein edition that you and John David Peterson prepared?

I visited the Stadtsbibliothek in East Berlin, and the librarian there was very American-friendly. In fact, he had travelled in the United States. I was allowed to pick up the original manuscript of the St. Matthew Passion. It was like touching the Holy Grail! Luckily, the librarian mailed me a microfilm of the Orgelbüchlein. I shared it with John, who was working on the same project. I might say that the Orgelbüchlein that we prepared goes back to 1984, and it is an edition that needs to be revised—not a great deal, though, because we were dealing with the autograph, and there are simply variants of the autograph that need to be acknowledged.

 

Were the Stasi after you in East Germany?

Oh, yes! They were after any American. It was the typical situation where one saw a face in public and then two days later that same face appeared again. One time I was trapped inside the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg because I didn’t know how to work the key, and a man came, speaking perfect English, to explain how to turn the key. As a matter of fact, the tower of that church is the highest point in the town, and the chief spy looked out from there. She knew everything that went on in that city, including my presence!

After the big change I went to what’s called the Runde Ecke. This museum showed many of  their methods of interrogation, uniforms, and obscene paintings. Every phone in the country was wired. 

 

What were some of the musical experiences you had in East Germany?

I had wanted to go to Stralsund to hear the organ there. The organist was Dietrich Prost, and we hit it off very well. His English was probably as deficient as my German, but we understood each other; we got to the organ and without saying a word we agreed that there was something important there. And he said, “You play like a German!” “Du bist Deutsch!” We had coffee and cake. Many of the musicians in local churches were eager to meet with Americans. Often we went for conversation, coffee, and cake. I remember being in one of the towns near the border and the local organist was complaining, “Here we are only a few kilometers from West Germany, and we cannot see our closest friends and relatives!”

 

Did you play any of the Silbermann organs?

I think I played every one in existence except one that wasn’t playing. In Crostau, they said, “The organist is sick, and the organ is sick.” Strangely enough, one of the finest Silbermanns is the least known, in Pfaffrode. There is some speculation that it might have been the original Rückpositiv for the organ in Freiberg.

 

What about Hildebrandt organs?  You mentioned Naumburg. 

Oh, yes. That was before the restoration and there was enough there that I could get an idea of what the original was like. Of course, the organ had been provided with electric action in the early 1930s, but there were enough original pipes left that I got a pretty good idea of the sound. Another colleague, Thomas Harmon, did quite a bit of research on that. The restoration didn’t take place until after the reunification of Germany. Christian Mahrenholz was one of the leaders in promoting the restoration as early as the 1930s.

 

Did you go to Dresden on that trip?

I went to the Katholische Hofkirche, now Holy Trinity Cathedral. We were told by the tourist guides, “Don’t go in there. Nobody’s there.” But we went in, and we met the organist, Dietrich Wagner, who had lived through the infamous fire in Dresden and told us all about that. He was very friendly and made suggestions on my playing—that I deal with the acoustic because I was playing too legato. I sent him some editions of things not available in East Germany. So, that
was good.

 

We’ve been talking about all kinds of professional stuff. Would you like to talk about your family and their part in your life?

I have four children and three grandchildren. My son, Robert, lives in Los Angeles and does technical work with pathologists. My daughter Susan lives in Oxford, Michigan. She is Mrs. Music through the entire area and manages the Rochester Michigan Symphony Orchestra. She’s a fine cellist and plays the piano. She sings and teaches maybe twenty or
thirty students.

The twin of my son is Jill, who is very focused and controlled with everything she does. At the beginning of her career in New York, she won a grant from the Bosch Foundation. Then her husband was moved back to Deutsche Telekom in Germany, and she now works in an executive role in the famous tower in Bonn.

 

What about Barbara?

I could write a book about her. She’s a singer, very gifted and very devoted to teaching at the Cincinnati Conservatory. I wish she would perform more, because she is at the prime of her career vocally. She knows how to communicate a song in an ever-positive stage presence. That would include eye contact, gesture, and movement.   

 

And your wife, Evelyn?

Evelyn was a singer. She studied at Westminster Choir College and was a good organist in her own right and also had a beautiful soprano voice. She was busy raising the children, but made a point of keeping a voice studio for many years. 

 

What do you think of the combination of organ and piano?

We performed William Albright’s Stipendium peccati for piano, organ, and percussion.

 

Did you participate in one of the Seven Deadly Sins before that?

The preface of the score encourages all the performers to experience each of the seven deadly sins—but not necessarily together. So, we imagined walking out on stage pretending to be angry, hamming it up, growling at each other, shaking fists, and that sort of thing. We had a lot of fun imagining that, and then we settled down and went out to perform. I also did a work for organ and brass conducted by William Revelli, the only person I know who used the moveable-Do system as I do. 

 

That was in Hill Auditorium?

Yes. John David Peterson was at the piano, and Bill Moersh, a graduate of the Berklee School in Boston, was
the percussionist. 

 

You’ve often mentioned Catharine Crozier. 

The first time I heard her, I think I was 14 years old, and I was so moved by that. She played the Roger-Ducasse Pastorale. But I could not figure out what she did with the Brahms
Schmücke dich, because it was not what was on the page, and of course, she played the chorale tune in the pedal. I revered Catharine. She was a perfectionist and had incredibly high standards. Some of her interpretive ideas might be out of fashion today, but I love every inch of ground she walked on!

 

Are there other fine performers you admire?

Any of the fine violinists—Zino Francescatti, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern. Rachel Podger and Andrew Manze, both fine Baroque violinists. Pablo Casals. Fine pianists of any stripe. I like to hear good musicians of any type. I like to hear good oboe players and good flute players. And of course, singers!

 

Finally, please give your perspective on the current state of the organ profession, especially regarding teaching and learning.

David Craighead advised even his most gifted students to be able to do something else if necessary. Considering the realities of today’s organ world, is this anything but being honest, especially to students who dream about being on the back page of the organ journals?

There are teachers who attempt to transfer their own prejudices to their students. It is our duty to deal with gifted students who are free to ask questions. I can say that some of my best students are ones who disagreed with me or others. In fact, at least two of my students have a background playing the accordion! Sometimes these people can be very annoying or irritating, but they can be brilliant musicians.

Too much teaching is, “Me teach. You do.” Or with some students, it is, “You play. I copy.” The most important thing is to TEACH IMAGINATION! ν

 

Recordings by Robert Clark

Bach and Friends on the Fritts. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 018.

Bach at Naumburg. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 041.

Orgelbüchlein & More Works by J.S. Bach. Robert Clark & John David Peterson at the Fritts Op. 12 in Organ Hall, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 019.

Robert Clark Plays the Brombaugh Organ, Op. 35 at First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois. ARSIS SACD 405.

Robert Clark Plays Organ Works from the Land of Bach. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 034.

Bach Clavierübung III. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 042. 

 

 

In perfect harmony

All musicians know what harmony is: chords, voice leading, dissonance, and resolution. We know harmony as one of the persnickety courses you’re required to take in school, in my case taught by a tyrannical and sometimes abusive professor. When you master the craft of harmony, or at least understand it enough to be dangerous, the magic of music is unlocked for you. You may have always known that Bach’s music was special, but dig into its structure and mathematics, and it becomes otherworldly. Paradoxically, the more you know about, the less you can understand it. I think it’s the mystical equivalent of how Rembrandt, Rubens, or Hobbema could mix linseed oil and pigment and make light flow from their paintbrushes.

But harmony is more than a mathematical exercise or an enigmatic code. It’s a way of being. It’s a way of managing the life of a community. Dictionary definitions use words like “pleasing,” “agreement,” and “concord.” 

 

How green is green?

I have vivid memories of two special moments in my childhood when I experienced something “live” for the first time. One was the first time I walked into Fenway Park in Boston with my father to see a Red Sox game. Dad was an avid fan, and I had watched dozens of games on (black and white) television with him. I’ve never seen grass so green as it was at Fenway that day. It was breathtaking, and I’ll always remember it.

The other was the first time I heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra live on their “home field.” There was something about the sonority of those double basses that I knew could not exist anywhere else. And the scale of the thing—the sea of black suits, the amber hues of fifty or sixty stringed instruments with their bows moving precisely in parallel, the gleaming polished brass in the back row, the majestic proscenium arch, and of course, the huge display of gold façade pipes of the great organ. 

That impression has evolved over the years to include the idea that a hundred highly trained musicians spread out over a vast stage, playing simultaneously, is one of the great expressions of the human condition. I love witnessing the precision of all those instruments assuming playing positions, the conductor’s downbeat, and the instant expression of sound. It moves me every time. Young and old, men and women, liberals and conservatives, and from all races and backgrounds, baring their souls and their intellects toward a common result. What a world this would be if our politicians worked that way.

Let’s take it a step further. Strip those musicians of their paraphernalia. No violins, no piccolos, no drums, no hardware at all. What have you got? A choir. It’s elemental. The instruments are the human bodies themselves. Isn’t it amazing that you can give a pitch and have them sing it back, out of the blue? And I love the sound of a hundred people drawing breath at the same instant. It gives new meaning to the phrase, corporate inspiration!

 

What sweeter music 

can we bring?

While I know some musicians consider John Rutter’s choral music to be saccharine, or too sentimental, few of us would fail to recognize this opening line from one of his lovely Christmas carols. I think his music is terrific, not necessarily because of its intellectual content, but simply because it’s beautiful. I’ve been rattling on about harmony as if it’s the essence of music, but what about melody? A Mozart piano concerto, a Schubert song, and as far as I am concerned, anything by Mendelssohn draws its beauty first from melody. I think John Rutter is one of the best living melodists. 

Whenever I put a new piece by Rutter in front of a choir, invariably, they loved it. Congregations lit up with smiles, and people went home humming. Beautiful harmonies, catchy rhythms, gorgeous tunes. So what if it’s sweet and sentimental?

Rutter was born in 1945, which makes him eleven years older than me. But when I was fourteen years old, singing in the choir in my home parish, I saw his name in that green Carols for Choirs published by the Oxford University Press. He was in his twenties when he started creating those arrangements and newly composed carols, and a choir member once said to me, “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without John Rutter.” (She was referring to the Shepherd’s Pipe Carol with its snazzy organ licks.)

I’m not thinking about John Rutter because I’m yearning for Christmas. As I write, a late spring is finally beginning to look like summer in Maine, after a long harrowing winter. And besides, he has written plenty of music for other occasions. But the other day, while lurking about Facebook, I came across a brief video, The Importance of Choir, produced by J. W. Pepper, which markets Rutter’s music in the United States. It’s three and a half minutes long, with two basic camera angles, showing Rutter in the obligatory Oxford shirt (unbuttoned at the neck) and sweater, summarizing his long-gestated reasoning of why choirs are important. He says:

 

Choral music is not one of life’s frills. It’s something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community, and our souls. You express, when you sing, your soul in song. And when you get together with a group of other singers, it becomes more than the sum of the parts. All of those people are pouring out their hearts and souls in perfect harmony, which is kind of an emblem for what we need in the world, when so much of the world is at odds with itself. That just to express in symbolic terms what it’s like when human beings are in harmony. That’s a lesson for our times, and for all time.

 

It may sound as though he’s describing a perfect choir—one that could hardly exist. But he continues, “Musical excellence is, of course, at the heart of it, but even if a choir is not the greatest in the world, it has a social value, a communal value . . . a church or a school without a choir is like a body without a soul.”

“Not one of life’s frills.” I love that. It’s such a simple statement, and it rings so true. When the human essence of the thing is described so eloquently, the concept is elevated to become essential. You can watch this brief but meaningful video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-Pm1FYZ-U, or type “John Rutter the importance of choir” into the YouTube search field. 

An important foundation of tomorrow’s choristers is the youth choir of the local church. Ideally, it’s a group of kids who dependably attend rehearsals, where they’re taught musical and vocal fundamentals. I remember wonderful experiences with the kids at my last church, when they responded to challenges and took pleasure in mastering complicated music. But it was a short season. That was a community where lots of families had second homes in ski country, and as soon as there was snow, off they went. Oddly, the kids often came to weekday rehearsals, but then missed Sunday mornings. 

And ice time. Holy cow. Peewee hockey teams jockeyed for reserved time at rinks, and since that time was so highly valued, coaches were happy to get a 5 a.m. slot. By the time the kids got to church at 8:30, they were beat up and exhausted. And in the schools, when budget time came around, arts and music (as if they could be separated) got cut long before football and even cheerleading.

And I’m talking about young kids in public schools. Take it to the next level where colleges and universities produce scholarships for athletes with sometimes only cursory academic requirements, and the priorities of an institution can really be questioned.

 

Take one for the team.

I’m not what you’d call an all-around sports fan, but I do love baseball. Our move last year from Boston to New York has made things complicated for me. There’s a precision about baseball—an elegance in the strategies. The application of statistics makes it the closest thing in sports to a Bach fugue. And since that first breathtaking glimpse of the greenest of green grass, I think I’m safe saying I went to hundreds of games with my father, who had the same seats for forty years. I love telling people that the two of us attended twenty-five consecutive opening day games at Fenway Park. That’s many thousands of hours, and I know that an important part of my adult relationship with my father happened in those seats (Section 26, Row 4, Seats 13 and 14—on the third base line).

And when they were playing well, it was a pleasure to watch the carefully choreographed 6-4-3 double play. Or a pitcher and first baseman trying to bluff a base runner. I think I understand the importance of teaching teamwork, which I suppose is the root of why there’s such a strong emphasis on sports in schools. But if choir, or band, or orchestra isn’t teamwork, I guess I’m missing something. 

Later in that video, John Rutter challenges those who are responsible for institutional budgets to acknowledge the central importance of the arts and especially ensemble music in education, saying that it’s “ . . . like a great oak that rises up from the center of the human race, and spreads its branches everywhere.” To carry that thought a little further, as long as the squirrels don’t get there first, that great oak will drop thousands of acorns which, assuming good conditions, will grow to become tomorrow’s great trees.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why cuts in a school’s budget should affect the arts before sports. I know I’m biased, and I surely know that people will disagree with me, but to quote the late Robin Williams, “I’m sorry. If you were right, I’d agree with you.” Football is just a game, while music—learning to play an instrument or singing in a choir—is a centuries-old centerpiece of human expression. And the more we hear in the media about new understanding of the lasting effects of games like football on the human body, the more I wonder how it can be justified. Singing in a choir doesn’t cause concussions or brain damage, and it exposes students to the history of our culture in an important way. I’d say “it’s a no-brainer,” if it wasn’t so very brainy.

 

Tools of the trade

American jazz pianist Benny Green said, “A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.” The development of harmony is a fascinating story of evolution. Pythagoras lived on the Greek island of Samos from about 570 BC to 495 BC. It was he who, listening to the blows of blacksmiths’ hammers on anvils, first noticed and described the overtone series, which is the root of all intervals. He must have had terrific ears, and his deductions about the math that became music are no less spectacular than Galileo and Copernicus sitting on a hilltop at night for long enough to deduce that the earth rotates on its axis while orbiting the sun.

The identification of the overtone series led to organum, where two voices chanted in parallel motion. Then, maybe an inattentive monk made a mistake and went up instead of down, creating a dissonance that demanded resolution. It only took a few hundred years for that brotherly slip to turn into the harmonies of Dunstable, Dufay, Ockeghem, Lassus, Sweelinck, Schiedemann, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and the rest is history.

Our tyrannical music theory teacher helped us understand the tools and the building blocks of music—those rules that define the difference between the music of Josquin des Prez and Felix Mendelssohn. Major and minor, diminished and augmented chords are arranged in sequence—progressions—that lead the listener from start to finish of a piece. They are analogous to the ingredients that are combined to produce a luscious dish.

 

Make it up as you go along.

Last week, I was preparing an organ in New York City for a colleague’s recital. But since it was to be a program of improvisation, we agreed it couldn’t be called a recital. Taken literally, the word implies “reciting” something that has already been written. In the hours before the concert, he received themes submitted on-line and in person, and a program was distributed that listed the compositional styles he would be using: Classic French Suite, Baroque Prelude and Fugue, etc.

Improvisation is the realm of the jazz musician and the organist. There’s something about the organ that lends itself to monumental improvisation, and there’s something about improvisation that propels a musician to a different level.

There’s a parlor-stunt aspect to improvisation. Sometimes the themes are humorous, like that for The Flintstones, which was submitted by the audience the other night. We chuckle as we hear a tux-clad performer using the clichés of classic French organ registration to warble that tune, invoking visual images and lyrics associated with childhood Saturday mornings. Imagine Fred and Wilma wearing powdered wigs. But we marvel at the skill, and the knowledge of harmony, of regional and historical compositional styles, as he conjures up a never-heard-before majestic piece of music right before your eyes, or is it your ears?

It’s easy to figure why the organ, so deeply rooted in the history of the church, would be such a perfect vehicle for improvisation. The musical heritage of the church, of any church, is based on simple melodies such as plainchant and hymn tunes. And how much of the literature of the organ is based on tunes like Veni Creator Spiritus, or Nun danket alle Gott?

While improvisation seems like magic, it’s based on solid knowledge of the tools and building blocks of music. Don’t think for a moment that Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, or Ella Fitzgerald are just doodling. Charles Tournemire or Pierre Cochereau are not doodling. They’re serious, carefully constructed, thoughtful pieces of music.  If they weren’t, they would never survive the relentless scrutiny of recording, or of reconstruction for “re-performance.”

 

It’s not a frill.

Music. There’s something about it. Is that a trite thing to say? How did any of us get involved in music enough to bother with reading this journal? No musician purposely sets an educational course to financial success. It’s the love of it, the caring about it, the need for it. In choirs, we find community without parallel, human cooperation and collaboration that can serve as a model for everything else we do. In improvisation, we create masterpieces for the moment. When the last echo dies away, it’s gone, making space for another.

Hundreds of generations of scientists, philosophers, and artists have collaborated to give us this music, which inspires, thrills, and soothes us. It’s not a frill. It’s not an elective. It’s essential. Don’t waste your vote. ν