A Conversation with Wilma Jensen

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

Introduction by David K. Lamb

For more than 40 years, Oswald Gleason Ragatz served as chairman of the Organ Department of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. On October 30, 2007, “Ozzie” celebrated his 90th birthday. Witnessing many changes through those years at Indiana University, Dr. Ragatz has also seen many changes in the organ world and in church music practices in the years since his retirement from IU in 1983.

I recently enjoyed the chance to visit with Dr. Ragatz in his home at Meadowood in Bloomington. Full of stories and anecdotes, as always, he was ready to recount his years at IU in full detail. What a joy it was listening to those reflections as Dr. Ragatz revisited the events in his early life that led him to his 40-year teaching position at Indiana University. 

“Guardian Angel” is a wonderful exposé by Dr. Ragatz, detailing the sequence of events that made up the path leading him to Indiana University in 1942. In the words of Oswald Ragatz, please prepare to travel with him on this journey to Indiana University.

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During my 25-year employment as organist-choirmaster in Presbyterian churches, I never heard the term predestination mentioned from the pulpit. But I understand that belief in predestination is one of the tenets of the Presbyterian faith. My Unitarian and agnostic friends shake their heads in patronizing dismay, when, instead of attributing some event to predestination or to sheer luck, I refer to my “Guardian Angel.” Probably influenced by all those charming angels in Renaissance paintings and those lovely little winged cherubs in the rococo churches in Europe, I personally would rather attribute the chain of events that greatly determined my life to an angel than to luck or to predestination. Luck never did me any good in those very brief encounters with the slots in the casinos in Las Vegas, and of course no serious angel would look after anyone foolish enough to wager hard-earned cash on those automated bandits. And I’m not a Presbyterian. But let me recount those events that directed my life, and the reader or listener can decide, Guardian Angel, Lady Luck, predestination, or whatever.

I guess I must start way back in the midst of the Great Depression and the Democratic landslide of 1932 that brought Franklin Roosevelt into the presidency, and that cleaned out all of the Republican county office holders in Logan County, Colorado, including my dad. The ensuing years found the Ragatz family trying to make a meager living from a small, 40-acre farm at the edge of my hometown, Sterling, Colorado. Farm labor, dust storms, locust plagues, and fundamentalist, straight-laced parents contributed nothing to the wished-for joie de vivre of high school student Oswald Ragatz. It must have been about then that Guardian Angel was assigned to look out for this puny kid, whose interests were music and architecture, thus contributing to the general scorn of his macho classmates.

High school days

The angel first appeared in the guise of a high school math teacher, Miss Smith. It was she who set me on the path that would lead to my escape from the dead-end existence of life on the dreary eastern plains of Colorado. It was Miss Smith who asked me to stay after algebra class so that she could talk to me, as she had some very exciting information to impart. My grade average was one-half point above that of one Verda Guenzi, and Verda and I had the highest grade average of our class. I probably should at this point give credit to the newly hired empathetic gym teacher, who had taken me in hand and had introduced me to gymnastics. This had had a marvelous effect on me. I was no longer the class wimp with C and D grades in gym. I now got an A in gym, which got me that one-half grade point above Verda Guenzi. (Was possibly Mr. Durfee the gym instructor an assistant Guardian Angel? Whatever.)

At any rate, Miss Smith pointed out that the University of Denver gave a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to the graduating senior valedictorian in the six largest high schools in the state. If I maintained a straight A average for the remaining years in Sterling High School, I would be able to go to college at the prestigious university in Denver, a city where there could also be numerous musical opportunities. That put on hold my interest in architecture; the nearest school offering architecture was Kansas U., which of course was out of the question. And anyway, no one was employing architects during the Depression.

My parents were elated by this news, and my mother, who was your basic taskmistress, went into a full cry. For the next two and half years, I became no longer the class wimp but now the class grind, the resident ant being held in some awe by the grasshoppers, my classmates. Verda Guenzi didn’t have a chance, poor girl.

Off to the University of Denver

Now things were getting under way in this chain of events. My dad’s brother lived in Denver and was married to a professional musician, a singer of some note in the city. They suggested that I live with them while attending the University of Denver. Their four sons were grown and out of college. I could pay for my room by accompanying students in my aunt’s studio and eventually accompanying her on singing engagements. There would be other duties—in-house chore boy, chauffeur for Aunt Ruth on occasions, etc.

Sterling, a town of less than 8,000, had a remarkable music program in the schools; the high school band and orchestra perennially won first place in the state competitions. I had begun playing oboe when just out of the sixth grade, and in six years had become quite proficient. In 1938 a symphony orchestra was formed in Sterling to accommodate the sizable number of graduates of the school’s music program who still lived in town and who wanted an outlet for their talent. Though still in high school, I was playing oboe in this symphony that had been organized during my senior year. 

Guest conductors were brought in for the three concerts that we played. The most important of these guests was Horace Tureman, director of the Denver Symphony. I don’t remember what we played, but there must have been an important oboe part. At any rate, when I enrolled in music theory the first semester at the university, who should be the teacher but Horace Tureman! And wonder of wonders, he recognized me. After class, he asked to talk to me, saying that he remembered me from the orchestra concert he had conducted in Sterling, and would I like to fill the opening in the Denver Civic Symphony for the second chair oboe? The pay was not great, but it enabled me to pay my uncle for my board. Did my Guardian Angel arrange for all this? But I continue.

I had played piano since I was six years old, my mother being a piano teacher. And I had my first organ lessons the summer after the eighth grade, and became the organist at the Methodist church that fall. During my last year in high school, my parents managed to scrape up enough cash to enable me to drive the 140 miles up to Denver once a month for oboe lessons and organ lessons with the organist-choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral. Now, living in Denver, I hoped to be able to continue organ lessons, although payment for same would be a problem. But not to worry, said my teacher. There was an opening for an organist at Broadway Baptist Church. He told me to try out for the job; I did and got the job. Those four years of playing for First Methodist in Sterling for little more than a Christmas remuneration had prepared me for the paying job in Denver.

So now I had enough monthly income to pay for organ lessons, textbooks, and music. I had been pretty burned out by the tension of making straight A’s during high school, so now I had decided to slack off a bit in college. However, shortly after the first semester had begun, I received a nice letter from the University Chancellor congratulating me on having won the scholarship and indicating that academic excellence would be expected of me. Furthermore, he indicated that since scholarship students were expected to give some services to the university, and in view of my experience as an organist, I would be expected to play the organ for university functions as needed—before lecture in the chapel, for example. 

This was OK by me. It gave me unlimited access to the chapel organ for practice and resulted in my being asked by the Dean of Women to furnish background music on the Hammond electric organ in the posh Renaissance room in the library where teas were the style in those days. For each of these events I was paid $3 and engendered a high profile among the female elite of the student body who were wanting to go to the teas—the girls of the Pan Hellenic Society, the Associated Women’s Students, etc.

So my fingers (on the ivories) were doing the walking—well, the earning, and my parents did not have to fork over that first dollar for my undergraduate training, just an occasional dressed chicken sent by my mother to Aunt Ruth, but that was it. I felt that I was independent, I was living in a sophisticated environment at my uncle’s, and I no longer felt inhibited by my strict parents’ restrictions—and I had a ball! I was pretty naïve and thoughtless though; things had worked out so well for me, so why worry about the future? Incidentally, I did graduate eighth from the top in my class, due to the chancellor’s veiled admonitions four years earlier. But I must continue.

Clarence who?

I am not quite finished with undergraduate years. The next vignette may seem inconsequential, but keep in mind, it turned out to be very significant. The setting: a picnic in the mountains. Who was there? I don’t remember, just a bunch of college students. What? I was sitting on a big rock eating a hot dog when a blonde girl I didn’t know joined me and initiated conversation. She was quite hep, and shortly had me telling her about my interest in organ playing. At that point, she became very excited and said that I must meet her uncle from New York, Clarence Dickinson, who would be in Denver in a couple of weeks. Her enthusiasm caused me to think that Uncle must be a man of some importance. And indeed the name was familiar to me: Dickinson was the author of the organ method text given to me by my cousin, my first organ teacher, that summer after my eighth grade. 

I was only mildly impressed, however, but I did mention this information to my organ teacher at my next lesson. Well, his reaction let me know that Clarence Dickinson was indeed a person of importance, being the head of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. So, a week later, I was playing two of my biggest pieces at St. John’s Cathedral for Dr. Dickinson, my teacher having somehow made contact with him in Denver. Tall, dignified, with white hair and mustache, Dr. Dickinson was cordial, and, I thought, politely complimentary. But I was still only mildly interested; I was probably preoccupied thinking about the impending fall Pan Hellenic formal. By the way, I never encountered the blonde niece on campus again. Was she my Guardian Angel in disguise? If so, she must have been pretty bored by my lackadaisical lack of enthusiasm. But guardian angels must be patient, and fortunately Guardian Angel didn’t forsake me, as will soon become evident. She just became a bit more devious. So I continue.

Aunt Ruth: gateway to Eastman

I have mentioned my Aunt Ruth previously. There is no doubt that she was my mentor if indeed not my Guardian Angel. She introduced me to the facets of the professional musical world, and she and Uncle Arthur took considerable pains to civilize their shy and unhep nephew from Sterling. By my senior year, Aunt Ruth had sensed my lack of a clear picture of what I was going to do the next year after graduation. My Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences had presumably prepared me for getting a job in some small-town high school teaching history or social studies. But it was obvious that my interest and talents lay elsewhere—in music, of course. 

Aunt Ruth had a former voice student who had gone to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and had high praise for the school. It sort of became understood during my senior year that I should go to graduate school the year after graduation from Denver. So I applied to Eastman and was accepted. However, I don’t remember now that I was particularly concerned about the financial requirements this expensive school would entail. I guess that I naïvely assumed that it would work out some way. It always had, hadn’t it? Of course, if there were sounds of fluttering angel wings, I didn’t notice.

I taught some organ students during the summer and played oboe in the Sterling summer band. So I had a little money in my pocket when I started out for New York with my two friends in the model A Ford. We traveled economy class, camping out, cooking our own food, and cheating on entrance fees at places like Mount Vernon. After two weeks of travel and visiting the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, we arrived in Rochester. The semester had not yet started, but I went into the Eastman office to see what a student did about housing. There was no men’s dormitory, but I was given a sizeable list of rooming houses near the school that catered to Eastman students. The person I talked to about this looked at a register of entering students (probably to see if I were indeed a legitimate entrant), and seeing that I was to be an organ student she immediately told me that an organ job was open and would I like to try out for it? 

And OK, yes, a lady had called for an organ student to come to her home and play her pipe organ during tea that she was hosting. It was intimidating that in view of the address this would undoubtedly be in one of the mansions out on East Avenue where the old elite of Rochester held forth. Well, I had brought with me my “tea time” music, thanks to those $3 gigs I’d played for at the University of Denver—I’d “been there, done that.” This gig was indeed in a mansion on East Avenue and was on an Aeolian pipe organ, the instrument of choice in those days for those who could afford such a pipe organ in their home. And needless to say, the pay was considerably more than $3. And, when I had my audition at Emanuel Lutheran Church, I got that job. So I had money to pay for my room and board—board by eating on $1 a day at a cafeteria across the street from the school.

Did Guardian Angel arrange it that I got to Eastman several days before the other students arrived, so I had no competition for these jobs and the opportunities to make some money?

By this time things had improved for my parents. Sterling was having a modest oil boom, and new houses were being built. Three blocks of our farm abutted on a subdivision, and it became possible to sell some of our property for city lots. I felt able to ask for tuition money, since I’d cost my parents nothing for my undergraduate education.

Life at Eastman

I found life at Eastman a far cry from my Denver experience. As an undergraduate in Denver, I had played an organ concerto with the Denver Junior Symphony, the Grieg piano concerto with the University Orchestra, and the organ part to the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony with the Denver Civic Symphony. Big deals!!! Big toad in what I now found out had been a fairly little puddle. My uncle, who was somewhat of a VIP in some circles in the city, reported stiffly one evening at dinner that when he had that day been introduced to someone, he was asked, “By any chance are you related to Oswald Ragatz that young organist?” May I say, that that “made my day.” Country nephew, indeed!

But things now were different in Rochester. I was just a new student in one of the top professional music schools in the country. And believe me, there is no place more competitive than a big music school. Nearly all of my fellow graduate students had undergraduate degrees in music, many from Eastman itself. During my time at Eastman I learned discipline, humility, and respect for what the music profession really was like.

My Guardian Angel was no doubt cheering a bit seeing her/his protégé getting his comeuppance. But I was not being crossed off the list that year. Oh no! So I must continue this saga.

About the Lutheran church: it had an organ the likes of which I had not encountered. At that point, the organ world in the United States was just beginning to become aware of a renaissance in organ tonal design that had begun in the middle of the 20th century. The new instruments that were being built by many European builders and by a few avant garde builders in the United States were referred to as Baroque organs because the builders were attempting to design their organs on the tonal principles of the great old European organs of the 17th and 18th centuries. The organ at my church was a newly built instrument by the Walter Holtkamp Company, one of the first of these avant garde American builders. After a year with this organ at Emanuel Lutheran, I understood how to use it. This experience became very valuable for me, as will be noted later on.

The choir director at church was a talented young man who was the choral person in one of the big Rochester high schools, and his church choir was made up almost entirely of high-school age singers. I was getting some very good experience in choral techniques by observing how Ernie Ahern worked with the choir. I had had no training in choral work up to this point. The second year in Rochester, I actually did some private coaching with Mr. Ahern, and what I learned became the basis of my career as choirmaster through all my life.

One other facet of the Rochester experience must now be mentioned to make clear how the chain of events developed. If one link in the chain had not been there, there would have been no chain. When I obtained the list of rooming houses suitable for an Eastman student, my choice was purely arbitrary (or was Guardian Angel getting into the act again?). The first place I investigated was a big, old, three-story Victorian home, housing a dozen or so men, half of whom were students, the others single professional men. The maiden lady that ran the establishment had a nice vacant room (due, I presume, to the fact that I had gotten there before other students had arrived in the city). It was a congenial bunch of fellows, who all seemed to be on a tight budget, so we frequently ate supper en masse (I could hardly honor the meal as dinner) at the aforementioned cafeteria. 

Wilson College

One of the students, a fine violinist, and I became very good friends. It turned out that John’s father was the head of the music department of Wilson College, an undergraduate woman’s college in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. When John came back from Christmas holidays, he told me that the organ teacher at Wilson College was going on sabbatical the second semester the next year, and his father, Prof. Golz, thought I might want the job as substitute for a semester. Of course I was most interested, and as a matter of fact I went down to Chambersburg with John during spring break to be interviewed. I played for Prof. Golz, and he seemed pleased and offered me the job. A real teaching job with a salary—$850 for the semester as I remember it! But that was 1940, and remember, I was eating on a dollar a day, so that seemed like a gold mine. I was just beginning to cope with the competitive stress of Eastman and the demanding teaching of Harold Gleason, my organ professor, so I was very glad to stay on at Eastman for the summer and fall semesters, which enabled me to get a second major, namely in music theory. Then in January of 1941, I arrived at Wilson College, with its faculty comprising chiefly elderly ladies. Now that was an interesting experience for a 23-year-old kid hardly dry behind the ears. It could furnish material for another different document, but that would have no relevance in this tale, except for two non-Wilson people with whom I made friends.

There was a young lawyer in Chambersburg who was very interested in music, and since there were not many opportunities for social contacts with people in their twenties, he immediately contacted me, and we became lifelong friends. He lived with his mother in Chambersburg, and they were frequently visited by his sister Selma, a music teacher in Baltimore and a graduate of N.Y.U. Selma was about my age, and we became good friends also—we dated in fact.

The semester at Wilson College was all too short, and I was having to face a very uncertain future. World War II was in full cry, and I had registered for the draft while in Rochester. So that dark cloud was hovering over my head. But I had had no word from Uncle Sam, so in the meantime I had to hunt for a job. I registered membership with a teacher’s placement agency in Chicago—Clark Brewer. And in May I went to New York to interview with a couple of agencies there. But they wouldn’t even take my registration. Colleges were retrenching because of the war and were hiring no new faculty. 

That was a very low moment in my life. For the first time I was faced with having no idea what to do next. I was suddenly out in the big world. I started walking aimlessly up town on Fifth Avenue, my mind swirling. I may even have contemplated how near the Hudson River was and how long would it take one to drown oneself. But maybe I wasn’t that far down or that stupid. At any rate, by the time I’d walked from the ’40s where the agencies’ offices were and reached 59th Street and the beginning of Central Park, my befuddled mind began to remember that Selma, who of course had lived in New York City while attending N.Y.U., had at some point asked me why didn’t I look into Union Theological Seminary. That had seemed like a dumb statement. A seminary? I didn’t want to be a preacher! Far from it!

Oh, that Clarence

But now my tiny memory began to function, and by the time I got up to the Metropolitan Museum, I thought of the blonde at that picnic in the mountains years ago, and her uncle, Clarence Dickinson, who was the head of the School of Sacred Music at—yes—Union Seminary in New York City. With a quick visit to a phone booth, where wonder of wonders there was a phone directory, I determined that Union Seminary was at 120th Street and Broadway. The next 50 or so blocks were covered with considerable resolution, and crossing over west to Broadway, past the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Columbia University, I found the Gothic towers of Union Seminary and its quadrangle, which occupied two city blocks. 

Hot, tired, still dispirited and thinking that this was totally mad, I entered the main entrance and located the offices of the Music School. When I made it known to the secretary that I might be interested in becoming a student there, things began to move very rapidly. I was ushered into Dr. Dickinson’s office, where I was warmly greeted by Dr. Dickinson and then was introduced to Mrs. Dickinson, who, it developed, actually seemed to manage the business end of the school. The introductions were barely over when Dr. Dickinson said he remembered my playing for him in Denver, and that I had played very well. Where had I been since then? Eastman? Teaching at Wilson College? Interesting. Well, of course they would be delighted to accept me as a student working on the two-year curriculum leading to the Master of Sacred Music degree.

I had no money? No problem! The dormitory had two-room suites for students at $10 a month, and I could work a shift in the refectory for all my meals. And all of their students were placed in churches in Manhattan and in communities around New York City—on Long Island, in Westchester County, in Connecticut or over in New Jersey. Auditions for a job would be set up for me during the next month.

I could hardly believe all this. An hour earlier I was plodding the streets of New York wondering if I should be heading for the Hudson River. And had I listened, I might have heard Guardian Angel wildly flapping wings and snarling, “Oh ye of little faith, you silly twit. Why do you think I had that blonde girl join you on that rock that afternoon in the Rocky Mountains? And all of that other stuff we went through to get you this far!” Of course I wasn’t listening, but I do hope that I had the good grace to think that too many good coincidences were beginning to occur. My parents once had told me that the German name Oswald meant “Chosen of God.” What’s in a name? Maybe I should have paused to think. But of course, pausing and thinking were two things I’d not yet learned to do.

So I was set for two more years, Uncle Sam willing. I went back to Rochester for the summer to finish my master’s thesis. I had enough money saved up from that great salary at Wilson College to pay for a room at the Y, eat at the cheap cafeteria, and pay train fare to New York City twice for auditions.

The second audition was at Hitchcock Memorial Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, a posh suburb in Westchester County. As it turned out, this was one of the prime jobs the Union students had. I would be replacing Robert Baker, a doctoral candidate at Union, who had just been hired at First Presbyterian in Brooklyn, a real, full-time professional position. I felt the audition went well, but nothing definite was said at the conclusion of my playing and answering questions. I would have a junior choir, a choir of twelve high school girls, and a professional quartet—VERY professional. The soprano had just sung a solo recital at Town Hall and the contralto was singing at the Metropolitan Opera a couple of years later, and several years later I read a rave review of her Carmen sung in Vienna. 

This would not be the first time I was faced with a task for which I was not really prepared. But I will say, without professing any modesty, that I never ducked. I learned how to conduct from the console by doing it—not that that quartet needed as much conducting as I thought I should be doing. At the end of the interview the chairwoman, an elegant middle-aged lady, said she would like to take me to dinner at the Scarsdale Country Club. That didn’t scare me: my aunt and uncle had seen to it that I knew how to behave at dinner, hold the chair for the lady, use the flatware from the outside in, etc. I seemed to pass muster with my hostess, since she informed me at the conclusion of the evening that I was hired. Eureka! Not only was the salary quite sufficient to pay for the organ lessons (which were outrageously high even for those times), tuition, and incidental living expenses, but even for a concert and opera now and then and a few heady evenings taking a date dancing to big name bands on the Astor roof.

Life in New York City

Guardian Angel now left me for a time as I devoured the life in New York. Our church jobs only required our presence at Sunday morning services, so a number of very compatible friends from Union would rush back to Manhattan by 3 o’clock, meeting at one of the big churches that had afternoon vesper services, oratorios, etc. A typical Sunday afternoon would be St. Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue at 3, where the 60-voice choir sang an oratorio every Sunday with a stunning organist on an enormous triple organ—chancel, rear gallery, and dome, playable from a single console in the chancel. Then over to St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue to hear a fine boy’s choir sing the 5 o’clock vesper Evensong. Then after a quick snack at our favorite bar, Tops, it was to St. Mary the Virgin Church on 46th Street, where the young avant garde organist, Ernest White, presided over a high-church late Evensong service. When I heard Mr. White play, I knew that I would have to study with him someday—which I did one summer after I had been at I.U. for a couple of years. These experiences taught me more than all the courses at the School of Sacred Music about what music could be in an enlightened church—with money. I HAD A BALL, needless to say.

It was the summer after the first year in New York, and I had had a very lucrative June playing for eight or more fashionable Scarsdale weddings. I was set indefinitely at the Scarsdale church and at Union, and after the M.S.M. degree I could continue working on a doctoral degree at Union, as had my friend, Robert Baker. I had dreams of eventually also moving on to some big Manhattan church. But this had to wait for a few decades for one of my students, who now is at the First Presbyterian Church in New York and is a big name there. Guardian Angel had other plans.

Hoosier holiday

Mail time was always a time of anxiety. Several of my friends had been drafted, but there was no message from the government for me. BUT, there was a letter from Clark Brewer Teachers’ Agency in Chicago telling me that there was an opening for an organ teacher at Indiana University. INDIANA? That was just a state to quickly get through when one was en route from Colorado to New York (with the exception of that adventure at Spring Mill Park in 1939). But I could get my expenses paid to Bloomington, and—always on the lookout for a deal—I figured I’d go to Indiana and then on to Colorado to visit my parents. I hadn’t been home for two years. I would go by train and stop off in Rochester to take my orals on my master’s thesis. Sneaky. Smart. I wasn’t even remotely interested in a job in Indiana.

So that is what I did, and after a night sitting up on a train from Rochester to Indianapolis, and then a bus to this village in the wilderness, I was even less inclined to take it seriously. After a night in a hot room in the Graham Hotel, I wandered out to the campus, past yellow clay around the old business school and the auditorium, both of which had just been completed. With the help of a kind lady who thought I was a new student (my ears were slow to dry), I found the new music building. First I was interviewed by Dean Sanders, a smooth, formidable, sophisticated young man, and then by the chairman of the theory department. Then I was taken up to a small practice room where the only organ on the campus existed. And guess what? The instrument was a Holtkamp almost identical to the one I’d had in Emanuel Lutheran in Rochester. And of course I knew how to handle it. (Did Guardian Angel snicker smugly?) 

So I played a couple of big pieces, and because I didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the job, I was cool, probably to the point of being arrogant. Consequently, I greatly impressed the interviewers. It was explained to me that there was one organ major who would be a senior. Her organ teacher, who was also a pianist and taught theory, had been drafted. The organ “department” had been set up two years before when one Mary Christena had come over from the main campus wanting to major in organ. An organ curriculum was hastily fabricated, the Holtkamp was promptly purchased, and now they needed a regular organ teacher to get Miss Christena through her senior recital. 

I would teach any other organ students that might show up when it was learned that there was an organ teacher (there were nine of them), I would teach two sections of freshman music theory (after observing the chairman of the department teach another section of the same class each day), a music appreciation class for the general student body (there were about 70 enrolled, it turned out), and I would conduct the Choral Union, the only choral group on campus. This would result in my conducting in the auditorium a performance of Messiah, with orchestra, just before Christmas. I had never conducted an orchestra, to say nothing of an orchestra with a big chorus of 90 or so singers. But as I said earlier, I was not one to duck. I was new at academia and didn’t know that this teaching load was brutal and now would be considered illegal. It was a job, and I intended to be a success at any cost.

But I wasn’t offered the job on the spot, which was of no concern to me. I wanted to go back to New York. As a matter of fact, I called my parents and suggested that they come east instead of my going on to Colorado. They would meet me in Chambersburg, where I would go to visit Rudy and Selma Wertime. Did I tell Dean Sanders about this? NO, of course not. (Guardian Angel almost gave up on me at this point.) Three days later, my family and I were at the Wertimes in Chambersburg, when I got this irate call from Dean Sanders wanting to hire me. I don’t know how he found me. He probably contacted someone at Union who knew I had a girlfriend in Chambersburg and knew the name. I never asked. Maybe Guardian Angel slipped him a note.

So I was being offered a real job, a permanent job, albeit in the hills of Indiana. Well, I stalled a bit. My parents pushed, Guardian Angel was pushing, I am sure. I thought that surely that draft would get me any day, and a job at Indiana University would look good on my résumé some day, so I gave the dean a reluctant “yes.” The Dickinsons called me a day later suggesting that I postpone the appointment for a year, so I could finish the degree, but that was out of the question since Miss Christena would be awaiting her new teacher in September. So after a week in the city with my parents, I was off to Bloomington, Indiana, for an entirely new life, and as it turned out, a wife.

Mary Christena turned out to be a fine organist, and again I was faced with a situation I wasn’t quite ready for. But I didn’t duck, and she got a performer’s certificate with distinction for her senior recital. It was not until after Mary’s graduation that the student-teacher relationship segued into a more personal one. After a summer of dating, Mary went to New York to Union Seminary on my recommendation. I wanted her to experience the school, and especially the milieu of New York City and the great church music. However, she spent only one semester at Union, terminated by my going to New York to propose at Christmas. And that event can be subject for another paper—shorter than this one, I assure the reader. We were married June 4, 1944. (I never had trouble remembering that date. The assault on Normandy was to take place that week.)

There is one loose end that must be taken care of in closing: THE DRAFT. During my first Christmas vacation at I.U., I had three recitals scheduled in the East—for the American Guild of Organists Chapter of Baltimore, before the New Year’s midnight service at First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and in Chambersburg. Of course I had as yet not learned how to cope with the stress of this sort of behavior, and I took sick on the B. & O. train returning from Washington to Indiana. A few days later, my landlords called a doctor, and I was promptly swished off to the hospital in an ambulance with a severe case of pneumonia. (Guardian Angel was taking severe measures!) 

I was very ill, and had not the sulfa drugs just come on the market, I might have died. But after three weeks, I was released, only to go back to my room to find THE letter from Uncle Sam telling me to report for induction in Indianapolis. Why had it taken them so long to find me? I had registered in Rochester, giving my address as Sterling, Colorado, but I found out later that my registration had been sent to Sterling, Pennsylvania, wherever that is.  And when they finally found me, it was discovered that I had registered as a conscious objector—and that is another story—so interviews had to be made with all sorts of people in Colorado to see what sort of a jerk I was. (Was Guardian Angel back of all this? Surely not . . . ) But now I was going through induction in Indianapolis, then, pale, and suspect. The late January quota for draftees was unusually low that month, and after the examining doctors took a good look at me and they took a look at my 1-A-O classification, I was told that I probably wouldn’t do much good for the U.S. Army and to go back to I.U. “and teach them how to sing the Star-Spangled Banner.”  

So that’s how I met my wife. Do I believe in a Guardian Angel? Sometimes I almost think that I do. Maybe everyone has a similar chain of events that direct them through life. They just don’t spill the whole tale in a writer’s club. I leave it up to you, with apologies for being too forthcoming. n

What a pleasure it has been to prepare this essay for publication in The Diapason to honor and celebrate the 90th birthday of Dr. Oswald G. Ragatz. This inspirational tale provides a glimpse of the organ and church music scene in New York in the early forties, as well as the documentation of the beginning of the I.U. Organ Department at that same time. When Dr. Ragatz retired in 1983, that organ department that he found in Bloomington in 1942 with the Holtkamp organ in the practice room had grown to a department with a notable historic concert organ in the I.U. Auditorium, two respectable studio organs, and eleven pipe organs in practice rooms for student use. Ragatz built the department to a level where it could take its place along with the other large university organ departments in the United States. Currently, the organ department of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University is one of the largest institutions offering degrees in organ in the United States.  

With approximately 400 living IU alumni organists, the former students of Oswald Ragatz can be found all over the U.S. and in several foreign countries. Teaching and playing in both churches and universities, these Indiana University organists carry the Ragatz legacy with them in all of their endeavors. We salute you, Dr. Ragatz. Happy birthday and many happy returns.

—David K. Lamb

Joseph E. Robinson received his B.A. from California State University at Long Beach and his M.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He studied piano with Charles Shepherd, and organ with Clarence Mader, Paul Stroud, and Robert Prichard. He studied choral conducting with Frank Pooler and Howard Swan. During 1970–71 he was an organbuilding apprentice with the Schlicker Organ Co. under the direction of Herman Schlicker. He was organist at the University United Methodist Church in Buffalo, New York, and later St. James’ United Methodist Church in Pasadena, California. Now a retired business systems analyst, he is currently organist for the Mission Lake Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His interest in pipe organs and their music was sparked years ago when, as a sixth grade student, his class was taken on a field trip to a recital on the Mormon Tabernacle Organ. He has been married 35 years to his wife Pat, who has given her support for the large pipe organ in their home. One day during construction Pat said, “You need help, and I have found just the help you need—G. Donald Harrison.” She had found a golden retriever named Harrison on a rescue site. Harrison is now a happy member of the family.

I meet Herman Schlicker  

After completing a master’s degree, I talked over options with my teacher, Robert Prichard. Since I was very interested in all things related to pipe organs, a career in organbuilding looked promising. Mr. Prichard was well acquainted with Herman Schlicker, and broached the subject of my joining his firm as an apprentice. Schlicker was not interested. He said that the best apprentices come right out of high school and he had bad luck with those who had master’s degrees.   

Herr Schlicker flew to Southern California on business, and so it was arranged that while he was here I would be his chauffeur. One stop that I remember was at what is now the Crystal Cathedral. Their first building contained a small Wicks organ, which was to be replaced with a substantial instrument. Schlicker was among the contenders. At another stop, I was disgusted with the way they treated Mr. Schlicker—didn’t they realize they were talking with a great man?

After our final stop, Schlicker said to come on to Buffalo, and I would be their newest apprentice. I drove my red Corvair across the country and rented a room from Mrs. Herbst, who had rented to many a Schlicker apprentice. She asked us to keep our stereo playing of organ music down—it reminded her of her husband’s funeral. 

The factory

The factory is described in sales literature from the late 1960s:

From a modest beginning, the company has expanded to include 65 persons at the Buffalo factory-office, as well as sales and service representatives throughout the United States. The construction of the present modern factory was begun in 1947, and since that time six additions have been made to the building, giving a total working area of over 36,000 square feet, and including a spacious erecting room. 

That there was no master plan for this expansion from the beginning was obvious. For example, there was a large room devoted to lumber, that in most respects functioned well. However, there was no loading dock, or even a door to the outside. When a lumber truck came, Herr Friedrich (foreman) would announce “LUMBER!” and we would all drop what we were doing and rush to the truck to unload the lumber piece by piece and feed them through a window in the lumber room. On a cold winter day, that was a very unpleasant task.

Factory tours

Occasionally music committees or groups of organists would tour the factory. I was among those selected to conduct the tours. At first I would meet visitors at the door and then physically take them through the building, saying this is where we do this, and this is where we do that. Then I witnessed a tour led by Manuel Rosales, who was then at Schlicker Organ Co. He started at the melting pot in the pipe shop, went step by step in the construction of an organ, ending in the erecting room. Even though there was some crisscrossing in that method, it explained the organbuilding process better, and I changed my approach accordingly.  

Organization chart

When Schlicker described the apprentice position to me, he said that I would work in all aspects of organbuilding and eventually be able to do any task. In fact, his factory was full of workers that could do any task. He was proud of that. So, organization was simple: Herman Schlicker, President; Ken List, Vice President; Herr Friedrich, Foreman; organ builders, and apprentice, with a few exceptions such as the accountant. In practice, however, people would tend to gravitate to that which they did best. Take Don Bohall, for example. In many organizations, he would be referred to as Service Manager. He could quickly diagnose and fix problems, clearly the best man to call if an organ under the ten-year warranty experienced an unexpected malfunction. I asked Don how he managed to be exempt from the lumber calls. He told me that after I had been there a few years and made myself valuable in a particular operation I could announce that I was no longer going to do lumber. But I would have to be sure I was valuable enough. Some who tried that too soon were no longer doing lumber or anything else at the firm.  

Apprentice duties

The apprentice program at Schlicker’s was more typical of the German apprentice system than what we are used to in the USA. The view at the Schlicker Organ Company was: we pay you for this time and so you do whatever we ask of you, be it sweeping, cleaning messes, painting walls, or shoveling snow! So this, I thought, is why people who have worked so hard for a master’s degree don’t like it here. I was told a story of one such, who after driving from California worked one day, got in his car and drove back home. One unhappy apprentice had given the place a nickname “Stalag 15-30” [the address was 1530 Military Road]. Stories of this nature were a kind of unofficial initiation exam. 

Information on a need-to-know basis

At graduate school, you are filled with information and encouraged to ask questions and find answers. There were many things I wanted to know. For example, on most three-manual Schlicker organs, the pedal contains a unit 16–8 principal rank, but the 16 and 8-foot stopped flutes are always separate ranks. How come? I learned that awhile before my arrival, some former employees had stolen plans, records, scalings, and materials—everything they needed to make copies of Schlicker organs. So Mr. Schlicker was now cautious in sharing information, and an apprentice is at the bottom of the totem pole in need-to-know. 

I got my lecture in Schlicker organ design in a most unexpected way. One holiday season, there was in the factory a 32′ Bombarde, which was to be placed in an organ previously finished with that stop prepared for. Schlicker had placed a small two-rank unit organ in a Buffalo bank for publicity purposes. Since I could play, I was assigned to play Christmas music on the little organ while the bank was open. One day after the bank closed, I returned to the factory, where I was greeted by Ken List. Ken said, “So how is Merry Christmas on the Gedeckt?” I responded, “Well, it’s OK, but that little organ really lacks a proper foundation. Too bad we could not have hooked up that 32′ Bombarde with it.”  

Schlicker overheard the conversation, and while I thought anyone would recognize that I was being outlandishly facetious, Schlicker thought I was serious that the third rank in an organ should be a 32′ Bombarde. “You are there representing the Schlicker Organ Company,” he said. “You know nothing. A lot has to happen in an organ before you include a 32′ Bombarde.” So I heard all about small to medium to large organs in a very informative lecture, though I could have done without the frequent “You know nothing” comments.  

A wiring error

An electro-pneumatic organ was being set up for testing. There was a testing wiring harness used for such purposes. I said, “I have never done this before; there are surely a lot of wires here.” I was told, “There is nothing to it, just start here at the end, and take each wire in sequence.” So I did, but it was the wrong end. Final result was that low C sounded from the highest note on the keyboard and vice versa. I started to play a hymn. “What on earth are you doing?” “I thought I might never again have the opportunity to hear music inverted and wanted to see what it sounds like.” “You idiot, why don’t you just broadcast to the world what a fool you are!” So I stopped abruptly. Fortunately this was the testing wiring harness and not the organ’s permanent wiring.

A bright and dim bulb

Sometimes my education was of use. When something unusual came along, such as “What the heck is an 8/9 None?,” I would know the answer. There was a fine older gentleman, whose name I unfortunately no longer remember, who was in charge of Schlicker consoles. He would review with me console layouts, controls, order of stops, etc. He said, “You know much more than those guys. You should be recognized for your knowledge and taken off the lumber run.” Obviously I liked him. On the other hand, as the wiring example shows, in construction matters I was a rookie. One day I was assigned to a task and heard rumblings, “I don’t know why they assigned HIM this task. HE doesn’t even know how to use a HAM-MER.” The speaker usually got this task. Since in this case it was an overtime task, I was robbing him of time-and-a-half pay. Welcome to the world of office politics. I did not like it, and was a rookie there as well. Fortunately for future employment I learned 1) never be cruel to someone and 2) never be the company scapegoat. 

Organ pipes

Most flue pipes were manufactured in the pipe shop. Reed pipes built to Schlicker specifications were imported from Europe. For flue pipes it was considered that for the vast majority of cases, such things as tuning scrolls, pipe slotting, and tuning collars were detrimental. Take tuning collars, for example. A tuning collar means that at the top of the pipe there is a sudden increase in scale. On bass pipes that were nearly cut to length, the effect is minimal. But on treble pipes, the distortion of pipe shape is considerable. Thus Schlicker organs had pipes cut to length and were cone tuned. This practice was one reason why Schlicker mixtures had outstanding cohesion with the principal chorus.  

The Schlicker sound

Open-toe voicing, low wind pressure, low cutups, etc. are only part of the story. It is well known that some Aeolian-Skinner contracts, such as the Mormon Tabernacle and Grace Cathedral, specified that G. Donald Harrison do the final voicing. It is the artist who does the finishing that gives an organ its distinctive sound; thus organs of the same manufacturer may sound different depending upon who does the finishing. At the Schlicker Company, we had two superb voicers who finished at least the more important instruments. Wally Guzowski voiced with a bold, fresh, exciting sound. I decided that someday I would like him to voice my residence organ when I could afford such. Louis Rothenberger Jr. had a more elegant, refined sound. [We always specified the Jr. because LR senior had also been a voicer.] 

They were aware that their styles were different, and Wally told me that they worked together to try and make a uniform result. There should be a specific sound quality associated with the brand. These men produced some instruments of distinction. As voicers, they would physically adjust pipes. As finishers in the final location, they would sit at the console, playing through a rank of pipes, pick a note and shout a command to someone like me in the pipes: “Lower the languid,” “Pull the upper lip forward,” “Narrow the windway,” “Increase the cutup,” and so forth.

Deterioration of the Schlicker sound 

As years have passed, I have noticed that some of my favorite instruments no longer have the magic they possessed when they were new. More is involved than just my ears getting older; recordings of the original instruments captured the magic. Here is what I think may have happened. Schlicker instruments were cone tuned and were very stable in tuning within themselves, but the whole instrument goes flat in winter and sharp in summer.

Take a fictitious organ service man Sam Cifodelance, for example. Sam gets a customer who has a Schlicker organ. He orders some tuning cones from a supply house. In winter, when the organ goes flat, he pounds the pipes with the pointed end of the tuning cones to bring the pitch up to A440. In summer, he pounds the pipes with the other end to bring the pipes down to A440. Over time this attention alters pipe mouth dimensions slightly, and what was an outstanding sound becomes an ordinary sound. 

This theory is an educated guess, but I do know that who does the servicing makes a huge difference, is a concern of organbuilders, and improper servicing deteriorates an organ’s sound. It saddens me that some of my favorite instruments have deteriorated. 

Schlicker’s bias

Bad for Aeolian-Skinner, but providential for Herman Schlicker was the rise in popularity of the Orgelbewegung. With his strong German accent and experience in German organbuilding, he was in an ideal place to be the foremost American builder in that style. I discussed with Schlicker a trip to Europe I was going to take. We went through the German instruments I was going to see. “Yah, you must see that,” he would say. For Holland, “There are some good things there.” For France, “A waste of time.”  

The good consultants

One of the first things you do as an apprentice is to rack pipes on a windchest. Here were some pipes that looked like a double row of little milk cans with their lids soldered on top. This experimental rank had been specified by Paul Manz. Louie Rothenberger Jr. was having a very difficult time getting the pipes to speak at all. I made the comment, “I don’t see why we need organ consultants at all. A church should just choose a builder and let their expertise do the job.” Louie responded, “You are new here. You will eventually have the opportunity to visit many organs. When you do, compare those that were built under consultants such as Paul Manz, your teacher Clarence Mader, Paul Bunjes, E. Power Biggs and so forth, with those that had no consultant. I think you will find that our best organs had consultants such as these.” He was right!

When I was at Occidental College, I played among other things French Romantic organ music that I liked. I commented to my teacher Clarence Mader how well the Schlicker played that music. He replied, “Yes, you need French reeds to play that music and I requested that Schlicker include them in the Swell One division.” I bring this up because on his own, Herman Schlicker would not have given the Swell One division a French flavor. Somehow they managed to do that and yet have it integrate beautifully with the rest of the instrument, resulting in far greater versatility. The very best instruments somehow achieved a result of being more than the sum of their parts, a joy to play and to hear. 

The not-so-good consultants

These are the ones who think they know more about organbuilding than the organbuilder, specifying scales, wind pressures, mouth widths, voicing techniques and so forth. One such organ had so many conditions that the final result did not have the distinctive Schlicker sound. Herman Schlicker summed it up thus: “It might as well have been built by ———.” [I don’t know if ——— would want to claim it either.]

In finishing an organ, Wally Guzowski explained to me, “You have to be very diplomatic with the organists. When they tell you what they want, smile and nod your head like you agree with them.  When they are gone, disregard everything they said. Organists know nothing about organ finishing.” A quite common occurrence in finishing an organ would be the arrival of the organist with some last requests for what was going to be his instrument. At that time, it is too late. A successful finishing process brings out the maximum beauty a pipe was designed to give. An organist’s request to now make a German Principal more like a French Montre, for example, robs the instrument of its potential. That decision should have been made long before.¹

Insubordination

I was given two rules, which probably came about due to prior difficulties with employees who were also organists: 1) When you are on an assignment do not play the organ, even during a break or after you are done. Customers are charged by the hour and we don’t want them to think they are paying for you to play the organ. 2) Because you may be called at any time to travel, do not accept a church organist position. It is not fair to the company, the church, or yourself. Rule 1 was difficult to manage; we worked on some beautiful instruments. But I did manage this rule in spite of working on some instruments I longed to play. 

 After arriving in Buffalo, each Sunday I visited various churches to see and hear organs and get a feeling of that particular church. One Sunday, I visited the University United Methodist Church. While certainly not the finest organ in town, the people were very friendly and when they discovered that I was from California and knew no one in town, they invited me to meals and made me feel at home and said, “You have friends here.” Shortly thereafter their organist moved away. “Do you play, Joe? Would you mind substituting for a while till we find a permanent organist?” A few Sundays later, “We want you to be our organist.” “Impossible—I can be called out of town at any time without notice.” “We can have someone fill in on the piano when that happens. Please be our organist.” It seemed like this would work; they knew I would leave without notice when Schlicker called. I would fulfill my obligation to him, and what he did not know would not hurt anyone. This happy arrangement continued for many months. 

I have a couple theories of how Ken List found out about this arrangement. “Joe, you have to tell Schlicker.” I dreaded that conversation, but I was caught, so I set up a time to meet with him. Schlicker told me he understood after all the time I had put into learning to play the organ that I would not want to just let the talent die. So he instructed me to resign and he would arrange for me to have practice time at his church, which had a very nice organ. As a naive young person, I thought as long as I can do my job, he has no business telling me what I can and can’t do on my own time. And there were many around me who encouraged that thinking. Perhaps more than the mundane tasks, this kind of thing is the reason Schlicker had trouble with master’s degree organists. In subsequent employment ‘my own time’ would be redefined by being on call 24/7 with aids such as beepers and later, cell phones. One boss would even follow me into a restroom stall. So now I see that Schlicker was at least trying to meet me half way. 

Money

Perhaps because organs are very expensive instruments, money is a problem in organbuilding. Herman Schlicker was a master of finance. We did not look forward to his daily rounds at the factory. “Robinson, why don’t you gold-plate it while you are at it?” That comment translates to the work is very good, but your progress is too slow and we can’t afford it. So I would speed up. Then, “Robinson, what is this? It will never do! The Schlicker organ is a quality instrument.” While making us employees stressed out during his rounds, he did achieve the right balance, getting us to do good work with enough production speed to be cost effective and keep the firm in business. After he died, that balance was lost and the firm eventually went bankrupt, as have far too many organbuilding firms.²

As an apprentice I made very little. One day I got an unexpected raise. Congress had just passed an increase in the minimum wage, and the salary I was making was below the new minimum. Schlicker added an extra five cents an hour because he did not want to be seen as paying minimum wage. As an apprentice, I rented a room. Most full-fledged organbuilders lived in apartments. I wanted to live in a house in the suburbs and I did not see that happening at any time in the future if I stayed on my current path. Many things I loved about organbuilding—your part in making a thing of beauty. But there were other important things to me that were either denied or out of reach. So my house in the suburbs was financed by leaving organbuilding and becoming a business systems analyst. And I am quite happy with my self-built 22-rank residence organ. Unfortunately, lack of space in my residence made it impossible for the third rank to be a 32′ Bombarde.

The author wishes to thank Justin Matters for permission to use the photographs of Schlicker organs.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of The Diapason.

Lee Dettra retired four years ago after 53 years of serving churches and universities in Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware. A graduate of Westminster Choir College, he also earned the Master of Sacred Music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and holds the American Guild of Organists’ Fellowship and Choir Master certifications. His study of the organ was mainly with Alexander McCurdy and Searle Wright.

In 1985 Lee Dettra was appointed by President Reagan as organist and choirmaster of the Cadet Chapel at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, where he served until 2000. There he presided over the 325-rank, 20,142-pipe organ and conducted the Cadet Chapel Choir, which sang at the annual service for the U.S. Army at Washington National Cathedral.

Lee and his wife Janet, who live in Delaware, have three children and four grandchildren. He was the first organ teacher of their son Scott, who has been organist and associate director of music at Washington National Cathedral for the last five years and is now director of music at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas.

Scott Dettra is director of music at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas, where he oversees one of the nation’s largest Anglican music programs. Prior to his appointment in Dallas, he was organist and associate director of music at Washington National Cathedral for five years. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Scott Dettra holds two degrees from Westminster Choir College and has studied jazz piano at Manhattan School of Music. His principal organ teachers have been Joan Lippincott, Dennis Keene, and his father, Lee Dettra. He is also organist of The Crossing, Philadelphia’s new-music choir.

He has performed at national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, and the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. Festival appearances include the Lincoln Center Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Arizona Bach Festival, the Bermuda Music Festival, and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

His debut recording, Tongues of Fire (Pro Organo), featured French music performed on the 325-rank organ of the Cadet Chapel at West Point. Majestus (Loft) features large-scale organ favorites performed on the Great Organ of Washington National Cathedral. Scott Dettra performs throughout the United States and Canada under the management of Karen McFarlane Artists.

Joyce Robinson: Do you have any musical ancestors? And are any of your grandchildren musical?

Lee Dettra: My parents were amateur violinists and actually met playing in the Norristown, Pennsylvania Community Orchestra in the 1930s. My mother taught public school music, having earned a music education degree from Beaver College. Janet’s and my granddaughter (the oldest of our four grandchildren) plays the trombone in her high school band.

JR: How did you and your brother Philip become interested in the organ? What was your training?

LD: My grandparents purchased a home organ when I was nine, and I began organ lessons with my piano teacher in Pennsylvania, Eleanor Fields Holden, a Curtis grad. My younger brother Philip, now an accomplished pianist and architect as well as a church organist and choirmaster in North Carolina, soon followed with piano study and eventually organ study. When my family moved to Florida when I was in junior high, I first studied organ with Herman Siewert at Rollins College, and, when he retired, with Ruth Richardson Carr at Stetson University. Philip and I both studied piano with Maude Beiser when we were in high school. During this time I served two churches as organist in our home town, Mount Dora. 

I began college at Houghton, where I studied organ with Charles H. Finney and piano with Eldon Basney. I then transferred to Westminster Choir College (graduating in 1963), studying with Theodore Keller and then Alexander McCurdy (both Farnam students). After serving in my first full-time church position in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I entered the School of Sacred Music at Union Seminary in New York, where in 1968 I earned the Master of Sacred Music degree, studying with Searle Wright. About this time I earned the AGO’s Fellow and Choir Master certifications. I then served First Presbyterian Church in Sharon, Pennsylvania (also teaching organ at Thiel College), and then First and Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, where I also founded and conducted Wilmington’s Center City Chorale, and taught organ at the University of Delaware.

It was during this time that Scott, our youngest of three children, was born. From 1985 to 2000 I was organist and choirmaster of the Cadet Chapel at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. During these years Scott and I both served as accompanists of the Masterwork Chorus in New Jersey under Andrew Megill. When I retired from West Point, my wife and I moved back to Delaware, where I served Immanuel Episcopal Church on the Green in New Castle for six years.  

JR: When did Scott show interest in the instrument? 

LD: From a very early age he exhibited interest, ability, and a natural talent for music. He began organ study at around age eight, after several years of piano lessons. During high school he served as organist for churches in Highland Falls, New York, and Newburgh, New York, before entering college.

JR: Were you able to give him access to the major instruments you played?

LD: Beginning in Wilmington, and continuing at West Point, Scott had access to the organs, where he practiced and had his lessons with me. He eventually gave several recitals on the West Point organ in recent years.

JR: Have the two of you ever worked together, or presented any duet programs?

LD: In his early years Scott and I gave some recitals together, where we included some duets. Then at Trinity Church in Princeton, when he was assistant organist there, we presented a “Dueling Organs” recital, where we played a Sousa march encore with both of us at the same organ.

JR: You have held positions in large and prominent churches and chapels, including at West Point. What advice did you pass on to Scott about handling such a responsibility?

LD: Do your best, taking changes in your stride, and even if you have ten weddings to play in one day, as I did once at West Point, try to keep it all “fresh”!

JR: Can you tell us a bit about your West Point position—was it at all different from an organist-choirmaster position at a church? What was the required repertoire?

LD: It was a joy and a privilege to work with the fine cadets at the U.S. Military Academy. My duties included conducting the Cadet Chapel Choir (which sang for the Sunday morning Protestant service and did some touring), teaching a music appreciation course in the English department, giving VIP tours of the 1500-seat Gothic Cadet Chapel, conducting Handel’s Messiah with orchestra and chorus each December, planning the organ recital series, playing carillon recitals, playing for many funerals of graduates, overseeing the maintenance of the organ, and playing the Cadet Chapel organ for the Protestant service and many weddings (attending their rehearsals as well).

JR: Just how many weddings?

LD: Any weekend might include four rehearsals and four weddings, with my busiest weekend involving 21 weddings, ten of which were every hour following two Sunday morning services. Many weddings required much organ repertoire, as I tried not to repeat preludial music too often. (Most processionals and recessionals got repeated many times, though!)

JR: One biographical item mentions television recording, including for the BBC. Please tell us about that. 

LD: While at West Point I recorded a few pieces several different times for the BBC, as well as for some American programs. These featured the West Point organ—now 390 ranks—the world’s largest organ in a religious building and third largest in the world, surpassed only by the Atlantic City Convention Hall organ and the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia, which Scott and I have both played. While at West Point I recorded a CD—West Point Classics, which is available through the Organ Historical Society. (Scott’s CDs are available there, also.)

JR: You have helped present a POE. How did it go, and how did it make you feel about the organ’s future?

LD: I was very encouraged by the talent and enthusiasm of the 30 students who participated in the Wilmington, Delaware POE in June 2011. Even at the various levels of playing exhibited, all were so enthusiastic, and so grateful to find others their age who were also interested!

JR: What changes have you observed in the organ world?

LD: Of course, the knowledge of earlier performance practice has colored interpretation greatly since my first organ study. The other change, as exemplified by POE attendance, has been an increased interest in the organ, giving much hope for the future!

JR: How are you spending your time in retirement?

LD: In 2008, after 53 years of serving churches and universities in Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware, I retired from regular church work, but have done a lot of substituting, as well as quite a few organ recitals. Actually, this year I am serving as assistant organist of the Episcopal cathedral in Wilmington, Delaware—the Cathedral Church of St. John—assisting Eugene Lavery in the fine program there, which includes the Cathedral Choir School of Delaware. I am enjoying once again being part of weekly playing—on the Noack and Möller organs there.

§

Joyce Robinson: Tell us about beginning organ study with your father.

Scott Dettra: I grew up watching my father play the organ in church and was fascinated by both the music and the instrument. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do what he did. I don’t specifically remember our very first lessons, although I know they were when I was eight years old. I had been taking piano lessons since I was three, so I already had several years of keyboard experience under my belt. People always ask if I could reach the pedals when I was eight and the answer is yes, although I could only reach with my toes originally (great practice for when I later learned about Baroque performance practice!). Some of the topics I remember covering in early lessons were legato, finger substitution, basic registration, and hymn playing.

JR: How were lessons handled?

SD: We didn’t have a regular schedule for lessons. We would just have one whenever it was convenient. If I had a day off from school I would go to work with Dad, practice all day, and have a lesson. We also had a one-manual and pedal instrument at home that Dad built from a kit. So there was always an organ available.

JR: You were only nine years old when you had your first job.

SD: My first church job came through my father. Silverbrook United Methodist needed an interim and I played for four weeks. It was Advent of 1984, if I recall correctly. There was no choir to conduct. I prepared a prelude and postlude each week, along with hymns and service music. My mother took me on Sundays because Dad was busy at his own church, obviously.

JR: And you played at Riverside Church when you were eleven.

SD: John Walker invited me to play at Riverside for their Youth Sunday in 1986 after he and I met at West Point, where he was playing a recital on my father’s series. I played the postlude—Toccata and Fugue in D minor (no less!). Obviously, it was a thrilling moment for an eleven-year-old!

JR: Is your mother musical, too? How did she manage in a multi-organist household?

SD: Mom is a registered nurse and doesn’t play any instruments. She enjoys singing and has sung in Dad’s church choirs for as long as I can remember. Obviously, she has heard more than her share of organ music over the years and has always been a great support for both of us. 

JR: Did you ever want to do anything else?

SD: When I was in the second or third grade, I was fascinated by some of the early personal computers and remember telling people I wanted to be a computer programmer. But I never seriously considered another profession. I did flirt with jazz piano quite a bit while in high school and actually began my college career at Manhattan School of Music as a jazz piano major. I think that was the extent of my teenage rebellion!

JR: What about study with your other teachers? 

SD: After one semester at Manhattan School of Music, I changed my major to organ performance and studied with Dennis Keene. Although I only worked with him for one semester, this was a very important time for me in my development as an organist. He was the first teacher I had ever had besides my father and his teaching engaged me in a new way. I still use and value many of the things I learned from him during that semester and am very thankful to have had the opportunity to study with him. When I transferred to Westminster Choir College I studied with Joan Lippincott, who is wonderful in every possible way. I finished out my college years with her and continued on for my master’s. I am so thankful for the time I spent studying with her and treasure our relationship to this day. 

JR: Your prior position was as organist at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Were you at all affected by the recent earthquake there? 

SD: Life at the cathedral was exciting and busy. The earthquake caused considerable damage and forced us to close the building for almost three months. It will take many years and tens of millions of dollars to repair all of the earthquake damage. During the closure, many services and events were moved to other venues (including major services for the opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and an entire weekend of services and concerts for the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks), a logistical challenge met with the utmost distinction by the entire staff. Happily, the organ did not seem to have suffered any damage in the earthquake. In fact, we used the downtime to repair some of the most pressing maintenance issues threatening the instrument.

JR: What were the special challenges, especially musical challenges, of a position in such an internationally prominent cathedral? 

SD: The most challenging thing was the lack of practice time on the cathedral organ. The organists are unable to practice during the day, when the building is open for tours. Another challenge was the musical pace. That was also the thing I loved most about the job. With seven choral services each week, the choir and organists go through a vast amount of repertoire very quickly. I loved that there was at least one service to play almost every day I came to work.

JR: You gained some new and notable exposure at the 2010 AGO convention, particularly for your endurance in playing multiple programs on the same day. Obviously you have inherited your father’s stamina genes! Where do you get your energy?

SD: To be completely honest, I didn’t realize all three programs were scheduled for the same day when I agreed to them. That said, I approached it as a fun challenge. It was an exhausting day to be sure, but we should all have a few of those now and then! As for where my energy comes from, I love to perform and never have trouble gathering the energy necessary to do so.

JR: Following the convention, you came under management. Has that changed your life in any way?

SD: My concert career is very important to me. I love playing recitals, traveling to places I have not yet been, meeting new people, and playing a variety of instruments. Being under management with Karen McFarlane Artists has certainly shed a new spotlight on that part of my career, for which I am very grateful.

JR: Which are your preferred works and who are your favorite composers?

SD: For me, all music begins and ends with Bach. His music has always been my first love. Other composers for whom I have a particular admiration are Franck, Widor, Duruflé, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Healey Willan. 

JR: You studied jazz piano—was that an end, or a means?

SD: At the time it was an end, but now I see it as a means. My high school band director got me interested in jazz in a big way. I had a church job throughout high school, but my real love was playing jazz piano, not organ music. My background in jazz has certainly had an influence on my organ playing, but not a large one. I think it influences my continuo playing more than anything. Realizing figured bass is really no different from reading a jazz chart.

JR: You have been involved with the Embassy’s promotion of concerts—you presented recitals in Washington D.C., and also in Barbados. What is this program and how did you come to be involved in it?

SD: This has not been a formalized program so much as a few isolated events. In the case of my recital in Barbados last year, it was very exciting to work with our embassy there to connect with music students in local schools. We played music for and with each other and had some very interesting question and answer sessions. 

JR: Tell us about your new position as director of music at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas.

SD: I could not be more excited about my new position at the Church of the Incarnation. Having had the privilege to assist several excellent directors in a number of prominent programs—John Bertalot, Jim Litton, Mark Dwyer, and Michael McCarthy come to mind immediately—I have a strong urge to run my own program at this point in my career. The program at the Church of the Incarnation offers everything I’m looking for, including excellent choirs, a commitment to traditional Anglican liturgy and repertoire, and a large and active parish that we can make the center of our family life.

JR: There seems to be a sort of musical migration down to Texas! First the Hancocks moved back there; Ken Cowan and Isabelle Demers will be teaching there; and now you. Any thoughts on this?

SD: Several people have commented on the fact that Ken, Isabelle, and I are all heading to Texas at the same time. I can only speak for myself when I say that while I never pictured myself in Texas, I have found there an exciting  position that will challenge me and allow me to grow in new ways. And I will be very happy to have such excellent colleagues nearby.

JR: What are your goals and plans for the future?

SD: My main goal is to continue to grow as a musician, both in the church and on the concert stage. That means continuing to challenge myself with new projects, new repertoire, and new ways of doing things. I would like to grow as a conductor, an aspect of my musical life I haven’t spent a great deal of time cultivating thus far. I would also like to continue to record, but only when I feel I have something interesting to say about a particular part of the repertoire. I also have non-musical goals and dreams, such as earning my private pilot’s license and hiking the Appalachian Trail.

JR: Thank you, Lee and Scott—happy trails to you!

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

A matter of manners

In the first days of the twentieth century my great-grandfather and his seven brothers ran a large and successful silk business, importing thread from China and weaving fabric. There was a sprawling mill complex in Manchester, Connecticut bearing the family name that included a company assembly hall, which is still home to a lovely organ by E. & G. G. Hook. Glad to know my forebears had good taste in pipe organs. Eight grand houses shared an expanse of lawn, one of which was still my great-grandmother’s home when I was growing up. Each year at Columbus Day we drove to Manchester for a visit, and I remember exploring that huge house with its endless corridors, seemingly dozens of bedrooms, and a third-floor playroom complete with a swing hung from the ceiling.

Hanging in our guest bathroom we have reproductions of flowery advertisements from the company, touting showrooms in Manhattan, and depicting tidy maids helping their mistresses with their frocks. My great-grandmother would have hated Downton Abbey.

Lunch at that house was a formal affair with fancy china, and plenty of forks, knives, and spoons, and we were coached in their proper use. After my great-grandmother died, the immense brass candlesticks from her table were converted into lamps, one of which lights my desk as I write today.  

My grandfather and father were both Episcopal priests, which had the trickle-down effect that my siblings and I were brought up accustomed to a succession of fancy and formal dinners, endless stacks of elegant china, stemware, and utensils having found their way through the generations to our adolescent dinner table. Now that my parents are living in a retirement community and their household has been downsized a couple times, we have realized that our children and the subsequent generations will have little to do with all that finery. Beautiful as it is, the stuff is a nuisance because the gold bands on the plates mean they can’t go in the dishwasher.

These remaining traces of formality in family life combined with the community’s expectation of the rector’s family (ever wonder how Preachers’ Kids got such a reputation?) mean that we were brought up to know good manners. We knew which fork to use for salad, and how to set the table with the dessert forks and spoons in the proper place, and yes, there were always dessert forks and spoons. My father carved the meat at the head of the table, passing plates to my mother at the foot, ensuring that the food was cold before anyone could take a bite. The most senior female guest was seated to Dad’s right, male to Mom’s right. It was usually obvious who those people were, but I bet there was more than one feather ruffled when someone who considered herself to be senior was seated in the middle of the table. When we ate at my grandparents’ table, the carving went a little better. Poppy had been a surgeon before entering the priesthood and the turkey seemed to fall apart into appropriate serving sizes the moment he lifted his oft-honed scalpel of a carving knife!

Today when we entertain, Wendy sets a beautiful table, but sometimes I can’t help speaking up to protect the memory of that grand succession of mothers who brought me up to know which way the dessert fork should face. What is it they say, choose your battles?

I’ve read many novels about life in the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and chuckle because so many of the dinner-table rituals I grew up with are present at the tables of the Captain while at sea, battles or no battles. And British officers serving in distant outposts of the empire were never without their silver and table finery, their sherry and port wine, a custom exquisitely lampooned by the British comedy troupe Monty Python. We can deduce that the formalization of dining rituals set the stage for freer exchange of ideas in conversation.

When you get right down to it, good manners in just about any situation are a statement of respect for the occasion and the people participating in it.

§

A couple months ago, I wrote of my fascination with the fast-growing world of cell-phone Apps. Those snazzy little bits of software that are being created to simplify our lives at ninety-nine cents a pop seem like gifts from God because they drop from heaven with no effort at all, with the potential of enlightening us like mega-bytes of holy grail. But in fact, when used without consideration, our cell phones and all they contain are playing a large role in the decay of social order. How’s that for sounding like an old, um, codger?

But I don’t think I’m being sanctimonious. How many of us have stood tapping our feet in a long line at the bank while the guy at the teller window can’t finish his transaction because he’s on the phone? How many of us have traveled to attend a meeting that was continually interrupted by its leader answering his phone or e-mails while we wait? (“Sorry, I’ve been waiting for this call.”) And how many of us have tried to pass someone on a city sidewalk who’s weaving from side to side and walking at a snail’s pace with a phone glued to her ear, making herself into a double-wide with her gesticulations?

You’re sitting in a coffee shop enjoying your non-fat-triple-shot-soy-praline-half-caff beverage. Nice, but there are two people in the shop with their ties loosened and sleeves rolled halfway up their cubits, laptops open, talking in full voices on the phone. One is fighting with his wife; the other is clearly the most brilliant and insightful businessperson in town. So much for reading the paper—on my iPad.

Under the pews

Last week I got together with a friend in New York. We had lunch in a nice little French café, then walked to his church to see the organ. It’s a large old church with a fascinating nineteenth-century organ, but what really caught my eye was on the literature table in the narthex—a stack of photocopied sheets with the title “Church Etiquette Page.” It starts out defining Christ’s presence in the Tabernacle, suggesting that it’s appropriate to bow or genuflect when walking past, and continues with a statement: Please observe the following courtesies when you are visiting the church.

• Silence is the norm while in church. Conversation is to be confined to the narthex or the courtyard. Since the acoustics in the church are very fine, any necessary talking needs to be at a whisper.

• Proper attire is expected. Since this is relative to taste and fashion, you are expected to use your good judgment.

• Food and beverages have no place in a church. However it is permitted in the narthex and courtyard. The use of alcohol and tobacco is prohibited on church premises. This is not the O.K. Corral.

• Gum is not to be chewed in church.*

• Running is inappropriate. Parents or caretakers need to stay close to their children. Adults mustn’t run either, unless they’re chasing after a child.

• Reading newspapers, using cell phones, applying cosmetics, changing clothes (yes, it’s happened) and other similar activities do not have a place in church.

• Refuse should not be left in the pews or the floor around you.

• Dogs are allowed to enter the church as long as they observe silence and know the difference between a holy water font and a fire hydrant. After all, they can be better behaved than some humans.

• Smoking is simply not to occur anywhere on church property.

*Please use this paper to discard your gum rather than the underside of a pew.

How did that priest know I’ve been sticking gum under the pew? I thought I was getting away with it. But how refreshing to see this simple expression expecting respect. By setting out a code of decorum with a twinkle in his eye, he has taken the pressure off anyone who didn’t know how to behave in church, while giving a nudge to those who know perfectly well but seem to have forgotten. I’ve heard many stories from colleagues who, sitting in princely splendor at their console in the chancel, look out across a congregation full of Tetris, Words-With-Friends, e-mails, and texting. One told me how a man answered a phone call during worship, then walked around behind a pillar, thinking that would keep his fellow worshippers from hearing him. (“Hey Mister, churches have acoustics!”)  

One of my Words-With-Friends friends is organist of a church in Hawaii. Last week she shared a YouTube video on the subject of cell phones in church, saying that she used to play for the church in the video. Here’s the link—it’s worth a look: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2_c81Nnsc0.

But organists, don’t think you’re exempt from this rant. At 10:45 on a Sunday morning I receive a text from an organist, “cn u fx ded note tmrw?” Hey, you’re still sitting on the organ bench, sermon probably halfway through. Put your phone away. From the pews fifty feet away congregants can see that pale glow reflected on your face. We know it’s not the console indicator lights, and it’s certainly no halo. Let’s not txt our friends from the organ bench during worship. I know it happens a lot.

Who is it?

On January 10, 2012, music director Alan Gilbert was leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. According to an indignant blogger:

It was in the fourth movement. (Funny how these disturbances never happen in fortissimo passages.) After the last climax, as the movement begins to wind down, toward that sublime last page of the score where music and silence are almost indistinguishable. In other words, just about the worst possible moment. (After a quick check of my Dover score, I think it was about 13 bars before the last Adagissimo.)

You guessed it. A cell phone rang. The iPhone Marimba. In the front row. In Avery Fisher Hall. It kept ringing. It rang and rang.  

Someone in the audience yelled, “Thousand dollar fine.”

The first sentence of reviewer Daniel Wakin’s article in the January 12 edition of the New York Times read, “They were baying for blood in the usually polite precincts of Avery Fisher Hall.”
Maestro Gilbert stopped the performance, turned to face the audience, located the offender and stood staring at him. An article in the January 11th issue of (the online version of the famous British newspaper) added, “During a pause of several minutes, the music director asked ‘Are you finished?’ When the culprit didn’t reply he said: ‘Fine, we’ll wait.’” Holy cow! The incident was covered and commented on by newspapers around the world. Google “Alan Gilbert cell phone” and you’ll get a flood of newspaper stories.

But wait, there’s more. On January 7, the Dayton (Ohio) Philharmonic Orchestra was starting its Saturday evening concert with Debussy’s Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun” when a baby started to cry. It cried and cried. The Dayton Daily News reported:

The youngster had been wailing for quite some time when [conductor] Gittleman stopped the music, turned to the audience, and asked that the child be removed. Some audience members applauded . . . . Gittleman said he’s had to stop concerts due to cell phones in the past, but this was the first time a child had caused enough commotion to require him to stop and begin a piece again. “The very first noise that the baby made was just as the flute was beginning her solo,” he says. “The piece begins with a big, long, famous, hard, flute solo and my job at the beginning of that piece is to make the flute as comfortable as possible.”

The story continued:

Many who attended the concert as well as those who heard about the incident felt that it was handled in the best possible way.

Jim and Ellen Ratti of Middletown are season DPO subscribers who witnessed ‘the whole affair.’ “The baby cried several times, not just once, and due to the outstanding acoustics in the Schuster, the sound carried throughout the concert hall,” Jim says, adding the cries were very loud, disruptive and distracting.

“I’m sure that some will say that Maestro Gittleman was inconsiderate and rude for calling attention to the offending parent(s),” he adds. “My reply to those criticisms would be that it’s inconsiderate and rude to bring a child of that age to an event which holds no interest for him or her. It is also inconsiderate and rude to disrupt the listening pleasure of everyone else in the concert hall, or to expect that such disruption would be excused.”

My grandmother would have agreed. But had she been the conductor in either of these situations, she wouldn’t have had to say a word. Just one look. Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, had nothing on her. You might as well be using the wrong fork.

§

Anyone who knows me might call me a hypocrite for ranting about cell phones. To borrow a phrase from a colleague-friend, I hold the thing “like a crack pipe,” checking e-mails constantly, texting friends with quick thoughts and observations, keeping up with phone messages. I use it to check the weather, keep my calendar and contacts, look up maps and directions, choose restaurants, make travel reservations, and even sometimes, to the horror of our daughter, Google to find the answers that end dinner-time arguments. (Yes, Roger Maris did hit his 61st home run in the 161st game of the 1961 season. Nice symmetry.)

I think the cell phone has made possible great flexibility for people during the working day. And well used, it’s a vehicle for good manners. There’s no excuse for not calling to say you’re on your way, but you’ll be a few minutes late. But we need to create a new social order to deal with them. Here are a few general rules I propose to the social court:

• Don’t put a phone ahead of a personal, face-to-face conversation.

• Don’t let your phone call impede or delay someone else.

• Don’t let your phone diminish anyone else’s enjoyment of anything.

• Don’t assume that it’s okay with everyone around you to be forced to listen to your conversation.

Does anyone out there in Diapason land want to add to my list?

A few weeks ago a bad thing happened to my iPhone while crossing Broadway in lower Manhattan. Luckily, there was an AT&T store right there and twenty minutes later I was upgraded to the iPhone 4S. For those not familiar with the jargon, this is the new model which includes Siri, a voice-recognition program that allows you to speak to your phone, asking it to place a call, send a text message, or pretty much anything else, except to play an audio book. I asked the polite female computer-generated voice to play one of the books in my audio library. She replied, “I’m not able to do that.” I said, “You can’t play an audio book?” “I’m not able to do that.” “What good are you?” “Now, now…” “I’m sorry.” “That’s OK.”  

Next, I have no idea what got into me: “You’re cute.” Her reply: “You say that to all the virtual assistants.”

Cathryn Wilkinson holds an Associate certificate from the American Guild of Organists and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa School of Music. She has published articles on opera and hymnody of Slovakia, where she worked as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, and most recently on American and Slovak hymnody in Companion to the Lutheran Service Book (Concordia Publishing forthcoming). From 2004–2011, she was the organist at First United Church of Oak Park, in the 1917 building of First Congregational Church on land from the Scoville family of Oak Park.

A musical village on the edge of a metropolis

From 1920–1940, the organists at churches in Oak Park, Illinois distinguished themselves, certainly by talent, but also by hard work and a vision that went beyond playing hymns for their congregations. With the resources of Chicago just a few miles away, Oak Park might not be classified as a typical town. But recounting the contributions of a generation of Oak Park’s organists shows the extent of the opportunities that were open to professional musicians of this era. In small ways, their legacy lives on in today’s churches; in larger ways their musical accomplishments are an inspiration for our generation.  

In the mid-nineteenth century, visitors journeying across Illinois by horse and wagon often overnighted in Oak Ridge, about 15 miles from Chicago’s bustling commercial district. At this crossroads, on the site that grew into the village of Oak Park, the welcoming home of Joseph Kettelstrings had served as an impromptu tavern and hotel from the mid 1830s. Beginning in the 1840s Chicago emerged as a mecca for city dwellers, who could obtain the latest innovations from the east coast on the edge of the prairie via the city’s burgeoning freight networks. In a pattern that retraced itself all across the Midwest, the Kettlestrings family gradually divided and sold off property to new settlers. In the case of Oak Park, sales were restricted to those “people who were against saloons and for good schools and churches.”¹ By 1851, the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad line connected Chicago southwest to Joliet and soon extended on to the Mississippi River. Hospitality and convenience steadily attracted more residents with a can-do spirit to Oak Park, with the population reaching 4,600 in 1890.   

In the early years of the 20th century, Oak Park mirrored the progress that swept across the quickly industrializing North American landscape. By 1940 the village population had reached a high of 66,000, growing more than 100% in the years between the wars. The former settlement earned the nickname “The World’s Largest Village,” and it could have been, in political jurisdiction and in mindset. However, these villagers were not a common lot; among them are counted many innovative and enterprising scions: Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Doris Humphrey, and Ray Kroc. In the economic recovery after the Great Depression, a euphoria of success seemed to waft all across American society, spurring innovation and business growth. The aura of achievement was embodied in Chicago’s centennial celebration in 1933 with a hugely popular and privately financed world exposition, “A Century of Progress.”

Chicagoans formed and supported an extensive variety of professional and amateur musical organizations. Some were based on ethnic identities, such as the Chicago Welsh Male Choir, and others on business connections, such as the Illinois Bell Telephone company chorus. Organists were connected through the Chicago Choir Directors’ Guild, the local Organists’ Club, the Chicago Club of Women Organists, and the Illinois AGO chapter, founded as the Western Chapter in 1907.  

Although overshadowed by Chicago’s museums, cultural centers, performing arts, and industry, Oak Park developed a significant cultural identity in its own century of progress. The Scoville family donated land along the main thoroughfare and funds to construct a public library in 1888. William Corbett conducted a village orchestra in the 1880s, and at about that time, the Congregational Church hosted concerts by the Rubenstein Club. Dr. Methven, as president, and Mrs. Clarence Hemingway, conductor and mother of Ernest, produced concerts with the Oak Park Choral Society in 1897. Oak Park and its eastern neighbor Austin formed a local chapter to support the vision of Edward and Marian MacDowell’s newly conceived colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. By 1935, 100 years after its settlement, Oak Park boasted a semi-professional Civic Symphony Association, the Warrington opera house, several movie theaters open even on Sundays, and a Civic Music Association organizing local concerts.   

Home to good churches

Central to Kettlestrings’s vision and the community-building ethic that shaped the village was the establishment of churches. The first makeshift church building was an unassuming 1855 frame structure known as “Temperance Hall,” shared by several dozen worshippers of varying denominations. Dora Kettlestrings, the daughter of Joseph, led a cappella singing for services in this hall. A memoir of early days recounts that Mr. Blackner ran a New England-style singing school in Oak Park and his wife played a parlor organ in Temperance Hall.² The first denominational building constructed in Oak Park was Emmanuel Lutheran Church in 1867, a German congregation. 

With the construction of the landmark stone edifices of First Congregational Church in 1873 and First United Methodist in 1874, several congregations anchored Oak Park’s central commercial district, just two blocks from the train line to Chicago. The saying went, “When you get where the saloons stop and the churches begin, you are in Oak Park.”³ Modeled on European cathedrals, these buildings accommodated several hundred worshippers and symbolized the key role that religion played in the village. By the 1930s, at least seven congregations in the village registered memberships above 1,500. Perhaps largely due to the immigrant population, which in the 1920s and 30s hovered around 50% non-natives mainly from northern Europe, a commitment to maintaining churches in the European style was unquestioned.  

Fine pipe organs were de rigueur in these churches. E. M. Skinner, Austin, and Casavant each installed large showcase instruments in Oak Park in the first decades of the 20th century. Many of these organs served well into the 1980s. The organists who played them, along with school and private music teachers, provided musical experiences for the whole village. Some of the organists were heard nightly at Oak Park’s movie theaters as well as Sundays at the church.  

Radio is king for the 

King of Instruments

Edwin Stanley Seder (1892–1935), First Congregational Church

Seder served as organist at First Congregational Church in Oak Park from 1921 to 1935. This congregation built on the site of the Scoville family’s apple orchard in 1873 and in the 1890s they hosted the MacDowell Society’s concerts. By Seder’s time, the first church had been replaced with a spacious English Gothic revival building.  

Seder held a music degree from the University of New Mexico, where he also taught before moving to the Chicago area. His musical accomplishments show him to have a broad command of organ and choral repertoire. At First Congregational, he maintained a choir skilled and balanced enough to present Bach cantatas and Messiah. He also accompanied the Chicago Bach Chorus in many Bach cantatas. With this group he performed the Christmas Oratorio at Orchestra Hall on Michigan Avenue. In one program of extreme dimensions, the Chicago Bach Chorus performed the Magnificat, five cantatas, and the Actus Tragicus, according to the Tribune’s Douglas, “both ardently and with respect.” Seder played Bach’s Prelude in E-Flat and the St. Anne Fugue at one Bach Chorus concert. For the Chicago
Singverein he accompanied Bruch’s Das Lied von der Glocke, op. 45. He frequently accompanied his wife, soprano Else Harthan Arendt, in recitals of Baroque music, both in Oak Park and throughout Chicago venues. Upon Seder’s untimely death in 1946, Arendt became the music director at the church.    

A regular feature of The American Organist in the 1920s and 1930s was a listing of service music submitted by members. There is no indication on what basis these lists were selected; many of the submissions are from the same organists on a regular basis. They worked in congregations with some of the country’s better-known music programs, such as Lynnwood Farnam at Holy Communion in New York and Ray Hastings at Temple Baptist Church in Los Angeles. From a review of several of the service music submissions, character music and opera excerpts from concert venues were quite commonly heard during worship services, and hymn-based voluntaries only on occasion.

In 1922, Seder reported having played Festival Toccata (Fletcher), Allegro in F (Guilmant), Largo from the Ninth Symphony (Dvorák), Grand Choeur Dialogué (Gigout), Sunset and Evening Bells (Federlein), and “March” from Tannhäuser (Wagner) at First Congregational Church. On Palm Sunday in 1923, he performed “The Palms” (Faure), “Jerusalem” (Parker), Prelude to Parsifal (Wagner), and “Palm Sunday” (Mailly). He performed these works on the church’s 4-manual Skinner organ (Opus 274) of 69 ranks, which was situated in the front of the nave high above the altar with the console hidden by a carved wooden screen.    

Seder played, not only behind this screen on Sundays, but also out of sight for many radio listeners. The advances in broadcasting and electronic technology in early 20th-century America strongly impacted the organ world. Chicago radio station WLS, funded by Sears, Roebuck (the World’s Largest Store), began broadcasting in 1924 and from day one employed theatre organist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Early rival WGN (the World’s Greatest Newspaper) was financed by the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune’s reviewer Elmer Douglas wrote a daily review of radio broadcasts, which were the new sensation. The public considered musical broadcasts on the airwaves just as much a performance as a live concert. Douglas was particularly enamored of the playing by organist Edwin Stanley Seder, who began playing for WGN radio broadcasts in 1924. Douglas wrote in great detail about each work—for example, singling out some of Seder’s improvisations and the beautiful Sanctus from Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass, presumably transcribed by Seder for organ. On nearly any given day at 6:30 p.m., listeners throughout Chicago could tune in to WGN and hear a live organ recital by Seder.  

Seder performed upwards of 1,000 concert broadcasts, first on an Estey organ at the station, and later on a Lyon & Healy organ constructed specifically for the WGN live broadcast studio in Chicago in 1924. The radio organ was played in a studio designed by acousticians with walls covered in silk brocade to provide optimal tone quality. Reportedly in December 1925 Seder reached the mark of having broadcast his 1,000th piece without ever having repeated a work on the air.

His radio presence certainly brought recognition. He had gained the post of professor in the organ department at Northwestern University in Evanston in 1919 and also taught at Chicago’s Sherwood Music School. In 1934, he joined the music faculty at Wheaton College Conservatory, in the far western suburbs of Chicago, where he taught history, organ, and conducting.   

In addition to his teaching, broadcasting, and service playing, Seder earned the FAGO certificate and became president (dean) of the Chicago AGO chapter. During his tenure he led the chapter in planning for a series of weekly noonday recitals in Chicago venues. He concertized frequently in Oak Park and Chicago. He was once presented by the Chicago AGO chapter in recital at St. James Cathedral. He was invited to perform at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, home to a 4-manual Skinner, Opus 327, and at the dedication of the 121-rank Kimball organ at New First (Union Park) Congregational Church of Chicago in 1927. Two representative recitals at First Congregational in Oak Park reveal that much of his repertoire showed off the orchestral organ through recent character music and opera transcriptions:  

Concert Overture in B Minor (Rogers)

“Allegro” from Sonata I (Guilmant)

Danish Song (Sandby)

March of the Gnomes (Stoughton)

Serenade (Rachmaninov)

Rhapsody (Cole)

A second program opened with a repeat performance of Stoughton’s March of the Gnomes, followed by:

Overture to Der Freischütz (Weber)

Minuet (Zimmerman)

Bells of St. Anne (Russell)

Brook (Dethier)

Concert Overture (Hollins)

Seder’s concerts often featured complex works by Bach, such as Komm Gott, Schöpfer from the Leipzig chorales, which he played along with one of the few works he composed, The Chapel of San Miguel, on a program in Winnipeg in 1929.⁴  

Music for the masses

Edgar A. Nelson (1882–1959), First Presbyterian Church

Philip Maxwell of the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote often about Edgar Nelson’s many performances for very large audiences in Chicago. He mentions that one of Edgar Nelson’s favorite passages in the Bible was “Sing unto him a new song:  play skillfully with a shout of joy” (Psalm 33:3).⁵ Maxwell did not document Nelson’s shouts of joy, but Nelson’s skillful playing is well documented. His career was centered around First Presbyterian Church in Oak Park, in the “church corridor” of the city’s commercial district, but his impact went far beyond.  

Nelson was born into a musical family of Swedish heritage and followed in his father’s steps as a church musician. Beginning in 1909 and continuing for 47 years, he was music director at First Presbyterian Church, playing an organ by the Hall Company, with whom he may have consulted on the design. Hall had also installed an organ for the Bush Temple of Music, a well-known piano store in Chicago.  

While he was working at First Presbyterian in Oak Park, Nelson was also a student at the Bush Conservatory in Chicago, one of several prominent private music schools established in the early 20th century. Nelson later joined the faculty there. As church music director, he presented organ concerts and conducted musical revues, such as a musical arrangement of The Thurber Carnival. He also directed children’s and adult choirs and composed incidental music for the church’s Christmas pageants, which were remembered later by church members as being fabulous. The church music budget provided for a paid quartet of local professional singers, which Nelson conducted for Sunday services. Not until the early 1950s with new pastoral leadership was a volunteer choir and a handbell ensemble formed.  

Dr. Nelson played Sunday mornings in Oak Park for a congregation of 1,600 and then for 40 years headed into Chicago each afternoon to Orchestra Hall, where he conducted a choir of 125 voices at the Chicago Sunday Evening Club until 1956. The club was a source of pride for the greater metropolitan area and eventually drew a national audience through radio broadcasts. Every Sunday night local businessmen and travelers would fill the 2,000-seat concert hall for a nondenominational Christian service featuring prominent religious speakers such as Henry Sloane Coffin from Union Theological Seminary and W.E.B. DuBois from Atlanta University. Founded in 1908, the Chicago Sunday Evening Club still produces a weekly cable TV broadcast. “30 Good Minutes” is aired on WTTW, where production moved from Orchestra Hall in the 1960s.

The club’s leaders, who included Rev. Clifford W. Barnes, an internationally known church activist and Chicago philanthropist, offered an additional level of status to the CSEC, as did Daniel Burnham’s beautiful Orchestra Hall venue from 1904. Dr. Nelson played the Lyon & Healy organ there, Opus 164 also from 1904, which at 4 manuals and 56 ranks was reported to be the largest instrument the Chicago-based company ever built. The CSEC services included performances by the club’s own chorale, which pre-dated the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s resident chorus by several decades.    

Dr. Nelson was respected and well known in Oak Park through his long tenure at First Presbyterian Church. Also, due to his post as conductor, and from 1938 until shortly before his death, general choral director for the annual Chicagoland Music Festival, his reputation extended much further. Beginning in 1930, the Chicago Tribune Charities sponsored this event annually for 35 years, reportedly attracting more than 10,000 singers at a time to Soldier Field. The outdoor stadium was usually home to the Chicago Bears football team, but for a few days each August, in Chicago’s sweltering summer heat, a musical crew headed by Nelson organized singing contests and performances for choral ensembles from as many as sixteen states. On one occasion, more than 80,000 people were expected in the audience, purchasing tickets at $1.50 each. Participating choirs were auditioned because the number of choirs that wished to perform was far greater than the organizers could accommodate. The festival presented not only classical choirs, but also represented Chicago’s varied ethnicities with African-American gospel choirs, accordion ensembles, and popular country vocalists as well.   

When he was only 28 years old, Nelson was honored by King Gustaf V of Sweden with the Order of Valhalla, during a tour of Scandinavia with the Swedish Choral Club of Chicago, which he directed.⁶ In 1930, he became president of Bush Conservatory of Chicago. Two years later, when the Bush Conservatory was subsumed under Chicago Musical College, Nelson continued on as president of the merged school. His legacy was such that the Chicago Conservatory of Music dedicated a concert hall in his honor after his death, naming it the Edgar A. Nelson Memorial Hall.  

In addition to his teaching and administrative roles, for 44 years Nelson conducted the 200-voice Marshall Field Chorus, associated with Chicago’s landmark department store on State Street. For more than ten years, Nelson was the accompanist for the prestigious Apollo Musical Club. This independent auditioned chorus of about 80 voices sold standing subscriptions to its concerts of oratorios, cantatas, passions, and other large choral works such as Bach’s B-Minor Mass in Orchestra Hall. A Chicago Tribune reviewer referred to Nelson’s accompanying there and for numerous vocal recitals as consistently ideal. The Apollo Musical Club’s director in the early 20th century was Harrison Wild, notably also a founding member of the American Guild of Organists in 1896 and the Chicago (originally the “Western”) chapter in 1907. When Wild retired from the Apollo Club in 1928, Nelson took on the role of conductor and held that post until 1951.  

In 1937, living in the technological age that followed the century of progress, Nelson was among the musical experts chosen by the Federal Trade Commission for a panel to review the issue of a new organ. The panel was to advise on the validity of claims by the Hammond Clock Company of Evanston, Illinois that its electronic instruments were organs. No doubt many organists saw the clock company’s invention as a threat. Nelson joined the majority opinion of the panel, which concluded that the so-called electronic organ did not meet the accepted definition of an organ. This verdict did not hold back the Hammond Clock Company, nor did it intrude on Nelson’s indefatigable musical activity or impeccable musicianship.

Casavant makes their mark 

in Oak Park

George H. Clark, Grace Episcopal Church

In the early years of the 20th century, Mrs. Linda Holdrege Kettlestrings, who married into Oak Park’s founding family, served as organist at Grace Episcopal Church. The building was a gracious English Gothic revival structure completed in 1905 on the “church corridor.” Mrs. Kettlestrings also accompanied silent movies at Oak Park’s Lamar Theater two blocks away.⁷ In 1922, just a few years after the firm of Casavant Brothers of St-Hyacinthe, Quebec celebrated their 40th anniversary, they installed Opus 940, a 65-rank, 4-manual organ for Grace Episcopal Church. Chicago was already home to a dozen organs by Casavant, but this was only their third in Oak Park, and by far the largest in this village, which The Diapason had declared to be a prominent organ center. The Chicago Tribune reported the cost of Grace’s new instrument at $50,000.⁸ In 1947, Marcel Dupré performed a solo recital to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the instrument. 

At the time of its installation, the church’s organist was George H. Clark. Born in England, Clark was raised in the English choirboy tradition of London’s smaller parishes. He studied with Joseph Bonnet—for how long and where is not known, but Clark often included works of Bonnet on his recital programs.  

Clark kept good company. He was chosen to be one of three organists performing for a festival AGO service on April 24, 1928 in celebration of the new Möller organ, Opus 5196, at nearby Austin Congregational Church. The other performers were William H. Barnes, the noted author, organ designer, and past dean of the Chicago AGO chapter, and Harold B. Simonds, organist of St. Chrysostom’s Church in Chicago.  

Clark had a 2-manual organ installed in his Oak Park home in 1926. Opus 1162 was the fourth Casavant organ in Oak Park and featured a 16′ Bourdon in the pedal division. Whether Clark was duly impressed with Casavant’s work or due to some other circumstance, he became Casavant’s Chicago sales representative in 1932. His first instrument was purchased by Saint Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Church in Oak Park. This was Opus 1467, a 3-manual instrument of 24 ranks. Clark played the inaugural organ recital featuring repertoire that frequently appeared on concert listings of the period: an excerpt from
Tannhäuser, Borodin’s “At the Convent,” an unnamed work by Guilmant, and a transcription of the “Hallelujah” chorus. 

A dean and director from 

Chicagoland’s best  

Raymond Allyn Smith and Theodore Kratt, First Baptist Church

Just two blocks from the principal church corridor of Lake Street stand the First Baptist and First United Methodist churches. The Methodist congregation was Oak Park’s first, formally organized in 1872 as the First Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1925 the present building, designed by noted Oak Park architect E. E. Richards, was completed and the Skinner organ company installed a pipe organ in the same year. This was Oak Park’s third Skinner, Opus 528, with four manuals and 43 ranks—all three organs within three blocks of one another.  

The nearby First Baptist congregation housed the second Skinner in the village, a 4-manual organ of 38 ranks, Opus 358, dedicated on April 25, 1923. This organ replaced the small pump organ that had been donated to the Baptist church by the pastor in 1882. In 1922, the congregation, which had grown to a membership of nearly 1,600, called Raymond Allyn Smith as organist. Smith was a graduate of the University of Chicago and conductor of glee clubs at both Beloit College and the University of Chicago. A native of Ohio, he studied organ, piano, and composition, first at Oberlin College and then with organist Robert W. Stevens in Chicago.⁹ Smith most likely would have been close to the installation of Skinner’s gargantuan 110-rank organ in Rockefeller Chapel on the University of Chicago campus. He consulted with William H. Shuey, who had preceded Edwin Stanley Seder as organist at First Congregational Church and knew its 1917 Skinner organ well, on the specifications for First Baptist in Oak Park.  

According to the account of the organ’s installation in The American Organist, First Baptist Church completed its red brick building with English Gothic features, purchased the organ, and installed ten tower chimes, all without carrying forward any debt.¹⁰ The chimes were a memorial in honor of George H. Shorney, some of whose descendants are still active in this congregation today. Smith planned a series of recitals and choral events throughout the year to celebrate the acquisition of the new organ. He collaborated with Theodore W. Kratt, the church’s music director. Kratt had graduated from the Chicago Musical College in 1921, later joining the faculty at Maine Township High School, and serving First Baptist Church until 1928. He conducted a Sunday choir of sixty voices at First Baptist. He founded an Oak Park choral society of 100 augmented with approximately fifty singers from a junior choral society for special concerts, given in the sanctuary that seated nearly 1,000.¹¹ The choir’s repertoire included cantatas and oratorios, one example being Elijah by Mendelssohn.  

A celebratory program one month after the organ’s installation, most likely with Kratt conducting and Smith accompanying, included a mix of vocal, choral, and piano repertoire by contemporary composers (Amy Cheney Beach, Sergei Rachmaninov, Camille Saint-Säens), chorus excerpts by Gounod and Sullivan, an organ work by the ever-popular Pietro Yon, and the “Hallelujah Chorus,” which frequently appeared on concerts during this era. The final work was an organ transcription of the March from Verdi’s Aida.  

Smith not only performed in the Chicago area; he was invited elsewhere as a soloist. His program in 1923 for the ongoing recital series at the University of Illinois, home to a 4-manual, 59-rank Casavant, follows:

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Bach)

Sonata No. 4 in D Minor (Guilmant)

Echoes of Spring (Friml)

Notturno (Mendelssohn)

Am Meer (Schubert)

Au Convent (Borodin)

Toccata from Symphony No. 5 (Widor)¹²

Smith’s colleague and music director at First Baptist, Theodore Kratt, completed his Mus.D. at the Chicago Musical College in 1932. He moved on to other positions, first as orchestra conductor at Miami University of Ohio, incidentally a position organist Joseph W. Clokey had formerly held, and then as Dean of the School of Music at the University of Oregon. Later music directors at First Baptist of Oak Park were Herbert Nutt (1930–34) and Robert MacDonald (1935–39).  

Let the organist do it!

Miss Etta Code (d. 1953), St. Edmund’s Catholic Church 

This Catholic parish, one of two established in 1907 in Oak Park, was served for 49 years by its founding priest, Monsignor John Code, with the help of his sister Etta Margaret, who played the organ. Miss Code, after 46 years as organist, was remembered at her funeral for her love of God and her zeal for His church. She is quoted on her guiding philosophy as having said, “The purpose of church music is to pray in song, not to entertain. It is an office once entrusted to priests. To make it an occasion for mere artistic display is to insult the God who is on the altar.”¹³ 

As a child, Etta grew up with John and five other brothers in a musical family in Chicago’s St. Columbkille parish, one of many Irish enclaves that yielded generations of successful Americans. The matriarch of the family was Mary Code. With her children, she formed a family ensemble in the home, playing mandolins, harps, and guitars for the neighborhood.  

Miss Etta Code studied piano, harp, and organ at the Chicago Musical College. After graduating, she moved to Oak Park in 1907 to help her brother John nurse along the new Catholic parish in the village’s commercial district. The congregation first met in a barn on the old Scoville property in the center of town and then in 1910 moved into a stately English Gothic building about three blocks from Oak Park’s “church corridor.” Miss Code’s duties included managing the parish office, teaching at Chicago’s historic Ogden School, directing the catechism classes for the parish school, and helping the needy callers who appeared at the rectory. In a more unusual role, at an outdoor parish fundraiser on the lawn of one of Oak Park’s baron-era mansions, Miss Code was described as one of the “Oak Park beauties” who set up the “cigar booth” for entertainment on the lawn.  

The parish Mass schedule found Miss Code at least once a day in the organ loft, playing for the liturgy and singing the solo parts while accompanying herself on the church’s Casavant organ, and sometimes on harp. The size of the parish, which grew beyond 2,000 in the 1930s, dictated that there would be frequent named Masses and on many weekdays the organist had to accompany as many as three of them. When the church acquired a 16-rank Casavant pipe organ in 1913, Miss Code most likely consulted on this project. That year the church made a partial payment of $1,155 on the instrument. Casavant installed two instruments in Oak Park in 1913. The other, at 53 ranks, was built for the First Congregational Church but sadly lost when lightning struck the church’s steeple four years later. St. Edmund’s Casavant, now the oldest remaining in Oak Park, was refurbished in 1952, just one year before Etta Code’s death.

Miss Code organized a number of ambitious musical celebrations to commemorate events in the parish’s life. She was frequently noted as an accompanist and organ soloist outside of regular Masses. In honor of a parish member who donated extensive decorations for the building’s interior in 1920, she arranged a sacred concert, featuring William Rogerson and Vittorio Arimondi, soloists from the Grand Opera Company (later the Chicago Lyric Opera). Other performers came from the Theodore Thomas Orchestra in Chicago (later the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and St. Edmund’s choir of 34 voices. Miss Code accompanied and played a “Finale” by Guilmant, presumably from an organ sonata. The male chorus of the Catholic Casino Club sang sacred excerpts in Latin by Gerasch and Kreutzer. The repertoire spanned from Mozart and Haydn to Gounod. A reviewer in the local Oak Leaves reported that the church was packed that evening, and “not the least convincing contribution was Miss Etta Code’s organ accompaniment of the intricate and exacting scores and her rich and voluminous interpretation of Guilmant’s organ recessional.”  

Miss Code seemed to show an affinity for opera, having directed at the Warrington Opera House in Oak Park, where there was a resident orchestra. The Warrington billed itself as “the only legitimate theater outside of the Chicago Loop” and it was large enough to seat 1,500 people. The following year, since the first sacred concert was so well received, Miss Code organized a repeat performance, again with Messrs. Rogerson and Arimondi of the Chicago Grand Opera Company, and noted Chicago organist Adalbert Hugelot. Hugelot played Gesu Bambino by Pietro Yon, many of whose works are frequently found on recital programs of this era. Several vocal solos from Handel (“Where’er You Walk”) to Verdi (Ave Maria) contrasted with Grieg and Tchaikovsky transcriptions played by a string quartet from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  

The sacred concerts did not continue on this scale in future years. The church’s annual expense for parish music was $415 in 1921, on a par with the amounts given for European sufferers and Irish relief. This was sufficient to sustain a choir, which met regularly every Friday night, even throughout Oak Park’s hot summers. During the school year, students at the parish school presented musical plays and concerts by the student band. Miss Code served both students at the school and friends throughout the parish and the village. Father Code referred to her as his “first assistant” at St. Edmund’s. At her death, 95 parishioners and local church and community groups requested memorial masses for her. 

Value added

The careers of Edwin Stanley Seder, Dr. Edgar Nelson, George Clark, Raymond Smith, Theodore Kratt, and Miss Etta Code spanned an era in which the organ’s standing was as solid as the pillars surrounding their churches. In spite of economic hardships and the staggering scale and speed of world events from 1920–1940, these musicians held on to a constant discipline of planning, practice, and performing that enriched their communities with live music. They may have worked in a village, but they worked at a level that rivaled larger urban centers like Chicago. Their legacy shows that the society that heralded the era of radio, streetcars, Gershwin, and Guthrie also valued the centuries-old tradition of organ-playing in its churches.

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center

Hard pieces and 

recalcitrant passages

This month I am writing about the phenomenon of pieces being difficult and the related phenomenon of specific passages being hard to learn: either difficult by any standard or surprisingly difficult—for reasons that may seem elusive—for a particular student. This is not a very systematic or methodological discussion: just a few ideas—almost just random thoughts—that I think are interesting or that may help some students or teachers. 

We all believe that some pieces are harder to learn or to perform than other pieces. This—just as a basic fact—is probably as close to uncontroversial as anything gets in the field of music and music teaching in general, or of organ-playing and organ teaching in particular. We don’t necessarily all agree as to which pieces are more difficult and which less so. Most of us, from our own experiences as players and from what we have seen with our own students or other performers, know that different pieces or sorts of pieces are more or less difficult for different players, and at different times in one player’s career.

Repertoire in order of difficulty

When I first acquired copies of one or two volumes of the Peters edition of the Bach organ music—in about 1971, at the age of about fourteen—I noticed that the separately bound Preface included a listing of all of the (non-chorale based) pieces arranged according to difficulty. I was excited about this, since it seemed both useful and authoritative. I allowed it to influence what pieces I chose to work on—though not in a logical or consistent way. Sometimes I would choose a piece because I thought it was easy enough to be within my grasp, sometimes I would spurn and reject pieces that were described as being “easy,” because I thought that working on them would be sort of embarrassing, classifying me as “not very good.” Needless to say, this was all rather silly. 

I did continue for a long time—after my studying had become at least a bit more systematic and effective—to cast sneaky glances at the list out of the corner of my eye. I would pat myself on the back just a little a bit whenever I put in some work on a piece in the top half or so of the difficulty scale. I pretty much stopped doing this when Eugene Roan, with whom I had by then started taking lessons, mentioned casually to me one day that an eminent recitalist he know thought that piece x was much more difficult than piece y—the opposite order from the Peters list. This introduced me to the idea that this whole difficulty thing could be relative, though at that point in my career I couldn’t have said how or why this might be so. 

Reger and Straube

Another way that the concept of difficulty as a kind of independent variable in pieces of music came to my attention when I was first getting interested in organ was through hearing the story of Max Reger and Karl Straube. The idea was that Reger had made his organ pieces more and more difficult in the hope of writing something that Straube, his good friend who was also the leading German organ virtuoso of the time, would be unable to play. It was also said that he never succeeded: that Straube “won.” There are a couple of interesting things about this. One is that, of course, it is trivially easy to write a piece that is unplayable, if that is really all that you want to do. All that you need to do is to write notes that are too far apart in compass to reach.  The music does not have to be particularly complex or intricate or fast. However, a piece that is really unplayable will, in fact, not be played. That is never in any composer’s interest. Not surprisingly, composers—whether they are writing for Karl Straube or not—tend to approach daringly close to that “unplayable” line, and then to decide not to cross it. This is as true of a composer like Beethoven, who stated bluntly that he didn’t care what performers could or couldn’t do, as it is of composers like Bach or Franck, whose keyboard compositions arose out of their own work as performers and improvisers. 

It is also interesting that Straube—as a student, before he had met Reger in person—was in fact drawn to Reger’s music in part because it was first presented to him as being too difficult to play. Straube’s teacher Heinrich Reimann showed him Reger’s then very recently published Suite in E Minor, op. 16, telling him that it was unplayable. This seems to have motivated Straube to learn it, which may or may not have been Reimann’s intention all along. I myself, when I was still more-or-less a student, occasionally started to work on a piece because someone had said to me that I could not learn it. (This was never, in my case, one of my own teachers.) I always learned something valuable from the attempt, although it did not necessarily result in my mastering the piece in question at that time.

Aspects of difficulty 

When we talk about a piece’s being very difficult, we are almost always talking about the learning and reliable playing of the notes: the right notes, in the right order, at a suitable tempo. That is not to say that anyone denies that other aspects of playing a piece can be difficult. In fact, performing even a simple piece in such a way that it is extraordinarily compelling, beautiful, interesting, thought-provoking, disturbing, whatever we want it to be, is probably as hard and (at least) as rarely achieved as playing a difficult piece competently. However, that is indeed a different thing. When students ask whether the Goldberg Variations or the Dupré Prelude and Fugue in G Minor is too hard for them, they are rarely inquiring about whether the teacher thinks that they can project the deepest meaning of the piece effectively. Of course, there is always this relationship between what might for the sake of simplicity be called the two types of difficulty: that the better-learned the notes of a piece can become for a given player—the closer the piece can come to feeling easy once it has been learned—the more of a chance there is that a performance can also be musically effective.

The piece that I happen to have been practicing the most in the week or so before I sat down to write this column is the “In Nomine” by John Bull that is found in volume 1 of The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The makers of a list like the Peters Bach organ repertoire list would probably put this piece at the easy end of “moderate” or the somewhat high end of “easy.” It is in three voices throughout, but none of the voices is very busy or intricate. For much of the piece the middle voice lies in such a way that it could be taken by either hand, so there is a fair amount of fingering flexibility. It is (though this is obviously subjective) not a piece that many people would think should go very fast: certainly not fast enough to make playing it into an athletic challenge—which some of Bull’s pieces are. This is a piece that I used to play a lot and, as best I can remember, I did indeed initially choose it because it was not too athletic. Bull’s Walsingham or King’s Hunt would have seemed beyond me many years ago. However, it occurs to me that this piece is a good illustration of the relationship between note-learning difficulty and tempo. There is—literally—a set of tempos at which this short Bull piece would be harder to play than the Reger Opus 16: that is, a mind-bendingly fast tempo for the Bull and a glacial tempo for the Reger. In order to achieve my inverting of the difficulty of these two pieces, the tempos would have to be so extreme that they would both be well outside what anyone would ever do. However, within a more realistic range of performance tempos, the Bull can become a virtuoso challenge of its own, and the Reger can move from the “impossible” all the way down to the “very hard.”

Difficult passages

Many pieces that have a reputation for being very hard are as difficult as their reputations suggest only in spots. For example, the Bach F-major Toccata is considered one of his hardest organ pieces. It earned a very high place on “the list”—maybe at the very top, certainly close. However, long stretches of the piece are really not hard at all. The opening has nothing going on in the pedal, and the two manual lines are somewhat intricate, but not remotely beyond the bounds of the “intermediate” for anyone. Then there is a pedal solo, which is also quite learnable. The following two pages are essentially a recap of this opening: carefully designed by the always pedagogically aware composer to be a bit longer and a bit trickier than the opening itself, but similar in nature. Then, beginning at about the fifth page, the hands and feet start moving together, and things get more complex. Still, however, the notes fall into place quite naturally. Most players I know who have worked on this piece report that this section yields nicely to practicing and is not more difficult than other Bach prelude-type pieces. It is the three brief passages that involve the return of the opening motif of the piece, this time in manuals and pedal together, that seem really hair-raising to many of those who work on the piece. This is not everyone’s experience, but it is a common one. Other very difficult pieces can be analyzed this way as well: perhaps most of them. In the Goldberg Variations, for another example, probably about eighty percent of the writing is no more difficult than the average for The Well-tempered Clavier or Handel harpsichord suites. That is not, by any standards, “easy.” But it is the remaining fifth or so of the work that gives it its reputation as “only for advanced players.”

One source of difficulty in working on pieces of music is unfamiliarity with a particular style or the technical tendencies of a particular type of music. Ralph Kirkpatrick, in his preface to his edition of sixty Scarlatti sonatas, first outlines a set of rigorous ideas about how to work on the sonatas, both as to analysis and as to practicing. Then he says that if a student approaches six sonatas this thoroughly he or she will not have to do the same with the next sonata or later ones. The particular shapes of a given kind of music become ingrained. I myself, as a player who has worked more on Baroque music than on anything else, find it much easier both to sight-read and to learn Baroque pieces—even complex and difficult ones—than music from a later era. To me this suggests patience. If a student is working on his or her first piece from a particular genre or style or time period, then that piece is going to be harder than the next one will be. That should not be surprising.

Practice strategies

If a student is interested in working on a piece that seems too hard, I am extremely committed to letting him or her do so and to making it work. The first step for me is to try to figure out whether the difficulty is found in a few spots or more or less throughout. This affects learning strategy. In the first instance, I will suggest to the student that we break the piece up and completely abandon any thought that it is one unified piece—just for the time being of course, but with a lack of impatience as to how long that time will be. Then the easier—more “normal”—parts can be practiced and learned in a “normal” way, systematically and carefully, along the lines that I have written about before. The extremely hard passages can be treated as intensive exercises: analyzed, taken apart, put back together and practiced to within an inch of their lives. 

A piece that is quite difficult—perhaps too difficult for the student—and of much the same difficulty throughout simply needs to be taken apart and practiced well. The key here is to make sure that the student understands what the process will feel like. Anyone can practice anything effectively if it is kept slow enough. In this context, the meaning of a piece’s being “too hard” is simply that working on it correctly will take a long time. Would the student rather work on this piece for a very long time, or postpone it, work on other pieces in the meantime, and wait to work on the proposed piece later? This is simply a matter of what the student prefers: either approach is fine for helping him or her to become a more accomplished player. 

In fact, it can be perfectly useful and helpful for a student to work on a challenging piece even if he or she never really learns it—assuming that the failure to learn it is of the right sort. If the goal is to perform a piece then, by definition, that piece must be practiced until it is learned and secure and ready to go. However, if the goal is to use the process of working on a piece to become a better player in the long run, then it doesn’t matter whether the time put in practicing that piece is followed by more time with that same piece (eventually leading to its being learned) or by practicing a new piece. The choice to practice a hard piece up to a certain point and then let it go is perfectly acceptable, assuming that the student is happy with it, and understands that it is a process, not a failure. And of course, that same piece will be there for the student to come back to later. In fact, the first round of work on the piece will leave that piece in very good shape to be picked up again later: it will probably even get better during any time that the student takes off from it. It will be sinking into the subconscious mind. The only technical requirement for this approach to be fruitful is that the work done on the piece—or any section of it—be accurate and technically sound, but below tempo. If the piece is put aside in this way, it should be put aside at a slow tempo but otherwise exactly as it should be.

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. A selection of Gavin Black’s organ performances can now be heard on YouTube by searching on his name at the YouTube website.