Czech, please: A conversation with Sister Anita Smisek, OP

People, look east. 

The time is near . . .

We’ve done it again. We’ve finished a holiday season replete with performances of Messiah and Nutcracker, carol services, and pageants. We’ve roared through the glorious descants by David Willcocks, the Noël variations of d’Aquin and Balbastre, and we’ve sent choir members home to their families in the wee hours of the morning. We’ve tolerated ten weeks of holiday advertising—the first Christmas displays I saw this year were in Home Depot, two weeks before Halloween—and through it all, we’ve celebrated the holiday with our family and friends.

November and December are busy organ tuning months. In the northeast where I live, we think of these as “cold weather” tunings, adjusting the organs as required by the flow and striation of heated air, or the exposure of one organ chamber to prevailing winds while the other is in the lee. In this neck of the woods, Christmas and Easter are both winter holidays, so it makes more sense to tune in November and May. In the last couple months I’ve tuned more than fifty organs in New York and Boston, shuttling in and out of buildings, greasing the bearings of blower motors, cleaning keyboards, setting temperaments, and regulating reeds.

Of the crowning of the year . . .

I’ve been doing this since the 1970s, and I’ve always thought it’s fun to poke around the choir rooms to see what music is out. It’s also fun to see little packages of goodies that have been left for the organist, sometimes even a bottle or two, and notes on white boards offering thanks for the beautiful music.

Christmas is a holiday of traditions, so each church has a list of pieces that get sung each year. And lots of those pieces are common to hundreds of churches. Carols for Choirs is ubiquitous, in all its volumes. When I was a junior chorister, starting around 1966, Carols for Choirs I was five years old. The Willcocks descant to O Come, All Ye Faithful must be the standard against which all others are judged; how many millions of people know to start “Sing, choirs of angels . . .” on D. And let’s not forget those fantasmagorical chords under “Word of the Father . . .” or the majestic progression in the last phrase of the refrain after verse 7—all those sharps! Wow. Fifty-five years later, it stills gets me every time. Nice work, Sir David.

Daniel Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata is another favorite, with its beguiling mix of Renaissance-inspired motives and rhythms, and contemporary harmonies. Choirs love to sing it, and congregations love hearing it. I was at a party with Pinkham where he mentioned that Christmas Cantata paid for his house. Nice work, Daniel.

In the past generation, John Rutter’s music has renewed Christmas for many churches. Shepherd’s Pipe Carol is a peppy little number that makes people smile, and I imagine that Candlelight Carol will be as much a staple as Silent Night, Holy Night in a decade or two. Nice work, John.

Many organists consider the French Noël variations an essential part of Christmas. I know I do. But I had an interesting moment once when a parishioner asked me what was all that French stuff I play at Christmas. He helped me realize that the people in that New England Congregational church had never heard the French carols, as familiar to a French congregation as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is to us, and equally familiar to organists. I had published the titles in the bulletin in French, meaningless to everyone except me. I knew it was Christmas music, but no one else did. Claude Balbastre (1724–99) was one of the most popular musicians in France, a virtuoso for the people. His Noël variations were wildly popular and people thronged to hear him play them, causing such a disturbance in the church that the Archbishop of Paris barred him from playing Christmas services. We should all have such trouble. Nice work, Claude.

Make your house fair as you are able . . .

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) was a British writer, best known for the more than eighty books of stories and poems she wrote for children. She won several prestigious literary awards, and the Children’s Book Circle, a society of publishers, authors, and librarians, presents the Eleanor Farjeon Award annually in Great Britain for excellence in children’s literature.

Farjeon’s People Look East is a delightful sprightly poem, familiarly set to the tune of a French carol. It was first published in the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928 and has become a mainstay of traditional Christmas music. I bet the tune is rollicking through your mind’s ears as you read. I love this carol, both for its beguiling singability, and for the marvelous metaphorical allusion it suggests. Obviously, “. . . Make your house fair as you are able . . .” suggests the pleasure of decorating our houses, yards, and church buildings for the sweetest of Christian holidays. Nice work, Eleanor.

But it means so much more. As we prepare for the celebration of the birth of Christ, we pull out the rich heritage of seasonal music. While I know it’s important to take Facebook with a grain of salt, my community of “friends” includes thousands of organists and organbuilders making thoughtful comments that enrich my experience. As we approached Christmas I saw conversations about how to finger tricky passages, how to read composers’ metronome markings, and what people might suggest for new and interesting choral music to offer during this most traditional of celebrations. Working out the slithery fingerings for Dupré’s Variations on a Noël is just another way to “trim the hearth and set the table.”¹

To the organ tuner, in addition to oiling blowers and tuning reeds, making the house fair expands to include making sure the Zimbelstern reversible works reliably. And given the usual keys for such carols as Silent Night and O Little Town of Bethlehem, it’s smart to check that B-flat and F in the chimes are sounding their best. The sickening clunk of a chime struck by a faulty hammer can change everything in that magical moment at midnight when everyone is singing with a candle in their hands.

We all love to play the French Noël variations, so it’s important to check the Cornet combinations on each organ. The classic registration is flue pipes at 8′, 4′, 22⁄3′, 2′, and the pesky 13⁄5′. Sometimes the Cornet is created by combining five independent ranks, sometimes it’s independent ranks at 8′, 4′, and 2′, plus the Sesquialtera, which comprises the 22⁄3′ (Nazard) and 13⁄5′ (Tierce) ranks, and sometimes all five pitches pull as one stop. It’s most common for those five ranks to be wider-scale flutes, although some larger organs have Cornets both as flutes and as principals. In any event, those pitches, especially the two mutations, the second and fourth in the overtone series, complement the Cromornes and Trumpets of the organ because they reinforce the predominant overtones that color the reed voices.

If the organs you play have Trumpets, Nazards, and Tierces, you can prove this to yourself. Play a note on the Trumpet and turn the Nazard on and off. When it’s on, it reinforces that pitch hidden in the tone of the Trumpet, and when you turn it off, you can hear the tone linger as a component of the reed’s voice. If you have trouble hearing it, try it with different notes until you find one that’s clearer. It works best in the tenor range. This trick also works with an Oboe, Krummhorn, or Clarinet.

The Tierce is one of the most difficult pitches to hear in any organ. They’re tricky to tune accurately. But the pitch is clearer to your ears against a reed than a flue pipe. Try it. Play the Tierce with the Octave 4′, which is the usual tuning reference stop, then play the Tierce with a reed. I bet you’ll hear the tuning easier. It’s a good trick to tune a Tierce to a reed, as long as the reed has stable pitch and speech, and as long as you check each note as you go.

In French Classic organs, the combination of Cornet was developed to reinforce the treble ranges of the reeds, which were weaker than the tenor and bass ranges. That’s a simple explanation for why there are duets between cornet trebles and reed basses. It’s also the reason for the predominance of the Grand Jeu in French registrations. Those organs have lusty, powerful reeds that sound great with a Cornet added to the treble range. Hmm. Maybe that’s why the five-rank Cornet starts at middle C. Nice work, François (Bédos de Celles).²

Trim the hearth and set

the table . . .

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG) is a spectacular example of community imagination, effort, and achievement. In 1991, a group of about ten families in the area of Boothbay, Maine, founded the original organization. They mortgaged their homes to raise the funds to purchase a 270-acre tract of coastal land, rescuing it from development, and they established the not-for-profit corporation. Corporate and private sponsorship came in at a rapid rate, and in June 2007, the gardens held a grand opening celebration. Less than ten years later, the CMBG comprises a rich collection of theme-based gardens, several public buildings with a café, gift shop, and educational facility. They present chamber music concerts and dozens of public events, and receive more than 100,000 visitors each year.

You might think that plants all grow at a common rate, but as we have visited the gardens several times each year, we wonder what they are using for fertilizer. You can almost hear the garden grow if you stand still. It’s gorgeous, thrilling, informative, and enriching. If you’re ever in the area, about forty miles up the coast from Portland, I recommend you stop in. Take a look at www.mainegardens.org.

Last year, CMBG introduced “Gardens Aglow,” an extensive lighting display festooned about the grounds. This year, with a houseful of family from out of town for Thanksgiving, we convoyed to the Gardens to witness the spectacle. Knowing it would be crowded, we arrived as they opened at 4:00 p.m., just as the sun was setting (Maine is at the extreme eastern end of the eastern time zone, and includes the eastern most point of land in the United States). We were amazed by the number of people. It was the third night of the season, and we learned that they had received more than 10,000 visitors over the previous two nights. That may not seem like much to city dwellers, but considering that the population of Boothbay is under 2,500, and the ten neighboring towns combined have fewer than 12,000 people, this is a big deal. They anticipate more than 100,000 visitors before the exhibit closes on New Year’s Day, effectively doubling the annual attendance at CMBG. Nice work, people.

The “Gardens Aglow” page of the CMBG website mentioned that the exhibit is open Thursdays through Sundays, November 18 through December 31, but closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve—that was the only time I saw or heard the word Christmas connected with the event. The tasteful jazzy music playing through Bluetooth speakers seemed Christmasy, but it was actually just the wintery classics we associate with Christmas: Let it Snow, Jingle Bells, Sleigh Ride, Frosty the Snowman. Rudolph was nowhere to be heard, abolished, no doubt, due to his connection to Santa Claus, even though Jesus makes no appearance in the lyrics. Even the word “holiday” was missing.

It sure felt Christmasy to me, as it did to our Greek Orthodox in-laws. But I thought it was nice that the marvelous event could be freely enjoyed by people of any faith, or by people of no faith.

People, look east and 

sing today . . .

The United States has just experienced a painful and nasty presidential election. The amount of abuse suffered by both the candidates and their supporters is unprecedented. Things were said across public media that wouldn’t be tolerated in school playgrounds, and people of all races and ideological backgrounds were savaged and humiliated in public. No matter how we each feel about the results, no matter how we voted, we can’t escape the fact that it was a disgraceful display, a national tantrum displayed to the rest of the world. We should all be mortified. As a nation we are better than that.

While The Diapason is not a place to express or exchange political opinions, this experience must resonate for many readers because so much of the discourse involved interpretations of religious freedom. The idea that the United States was founded on religious principles is at best only partially correct, and according to many historians, it’s patently false. Of course, there was a huge indigenous population here before European settlers arrived in the early seventeenth century. But those European settlers did not arrive with the intention of establishing a religious country, they were escaping persecution because of their beliefs.

The point was to be able to worship freely, not just as Puritans, Anglicans, or Catholics, but as members of any faith. In the age of the Internet and the culture of social media, we express and confirm our opinions through memes, especially photos taken out of context and peppered with clever captions—modern versions of a political cartoon, and the campaign season fertilized many doozies. There was one that said, “If your religion tells you to hate anyone, you’re doing it wrong.” In others it was easy to interpret that “religious freedom” meant denying someone else the freedom to worship or express themselves.

A particularly poignant moment occurred less than a week before the election, when members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested in front of New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Their message was against the vanity of the arts and included hateful derogatory language directed at the faculty and students. The students responded elegantly. They came out onto the sidewalk with their instruments to play patriotic and religious music, and spoke eloquently about the importance of the arts to our shared human expression. Nice work, Juilliard students.

This was a small protest. Only three members of the Westboro Baptist Church were involved, including the daughter of the church’s founder, and fewer than a hundred students responded. It was not covered by major newspapers. Without social media it wouldn’t have amounted to much. But it was symbolic of how hatred and intolerance allows some people to condemn huge segments of society, justifying that intolerance by excerpting passages from the Bible out of context.According to my quick Google search, Playbill Magazine was the most prominent publication to carry a story with photographs. You can read the article at http://www.playbill.com/article/juilliard-students-greet-westboro-bapti….

Love the Guest is on the way.

A few days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, I was invited to visit Trinity Church Wall Street to inspect the organs there. I lived in Boston then, and while I had seen dozens of hours of television coverage of the attack, I was surprised by the devastation, the misery, and even the smells I encountered. St. Paul’s Chapel, the neighboring church building that is part of the Trinity family, had instantly been converted into an emergency aid station, providing rest, refreshment, medical attention, even massages to the rescue workers. And the iron fence surrounding the property became a poignant memorial, adorned with photos of missing people and lost loved ones and expressions of national loss and unity through poetry, art, music, and memorabilia.

I had a brief encounter with the church’s rector, a tall handsome guy with an enviable white coif, and suggested to him that it seemed a little strange to be thinking about a pipe organ in the midst of that immense tragedy. He responded that the work of the church had never been more important—and he meant all of the work of the church.

Many, if not most of us who read and care about The Diapason, serve the church in at least one capacity. We plan and present the church’s music, maintain and prepare its musical instruments for worship, sharing the message of the church through its music and through all forms of artistic expression. As we work through the next seasons of the Christian year, we should be aware of how bruised we are as a people. Our work has never been more important. Celebrate the talents and gifts you’ve been given, nurture them through study and practice, and return them to the church and to the nation, doing all you can to make this a better world. It matters. And it’s important. Go do it. Good work, people. ν

Notes

1. Eleanor Farjeon also wrote the poem, Morning Has Broken, popularly set to the Gaelic tune, Bunessan.

2. François Bédos des Celles (1709–1779), familiarly known to organbuilders as Dom Bédos, was a Benedictine monk and master organbuilder. His treatise, L’art du facteur d’Orgues (The Art of Organ Building), published in 1768, is still central to the education of every modern organbuilder.

Christmas musings:

Several suggestions for a
“Giving or Receiving” book list

While surveying the vast array of books, scores, and recordings packed into nearly every room of our house, I often reflect on the immense amount of research, practice, and sheer hard work required to produce each item. Quite a number of them have been gifts from family, friends, students, or the authors/performers themselves. Since vacating my university studio-office in August 2015 the ability to locate specific items from this large collection has decreased exponentially. Piles of music are found in closets and stacked in random spots, including the garage, which is filled to overflowing with filing cabinets. Newly installed bookcases are loaded with items needing to be shelved in some logical order. Thus, I seem to spend more and more time searching, which allows less time for researching. But, on the positive side, I have rediscovered many items not accessed for decades, and, as the author Charles R. Ballard wrote, circa 1890: 

I hear of many a ‘latest book’;

I note what zealous readers say;

Through columns critical I look,

With their decisive ‘yea’ and ‘nay’!

At times I own I’m half inclined

O’er some new masterpiece to pore;

Yet in the end I always find

I choose the book I’ve read before!

Such was the case during the last weeks of autumn as I spent many pleasant hours renewing acquaintance with Joseph Wechsberg’s The Best Things in Life. This author, born in Moravia, found himself in the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite his less-than-rudimentary knowledge of English (but equipped with a sturdy brain and a multi-linguistic background) he was able to become a stylish writer and prominent contributor to The New Yorker, where his essays on travel, gourmet dining, and amateur chamber music (in which he participated as a violinist who owned a genuine Stradivarius) catalog only a few of the delightful offerings that were anticipated eagerly as they appeared in print in the iconic magazine, well known for its literary standards.

My copy of Wechsberg’s 224-page tome held even more delights than I had remembered. (Note to readers: be sure not to overlook the chapter on “The Art of Listening.”) One thing that I had totally forgotten was that the book had been a gift from organist Cameron Johnson (deceased far too soon in 1993), my fellow student and best friend during our Eastman School graduate years. Cam sent it as a Christmas present in 1966, only three years after our mutual final commencement. When I came upon his generous inscription on an inside blank page, I was moved to tears. As I face the nearly impossible task before me of cataloguing all the hidden treasures in the collection I am sure there will be many more such discoveries, but few will bring back such golden memories as these. Wechsberg’s memoir (published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto) may be located in antiquarian sources: an online search revealed prices for it that ranged from four cents to $189, so acquiring this book could fit nearly any budget. For an instructive read from an author who immediately becomes a friend, I recommend The Best Things in Life.

Among the better things for pursuing life, library, and happiness are thirteen enchanting books written by Mark
Schweizer. Shortest of these, related to his St. Germaine mystery series, is the “Seasonal Entertainment” (so designated by the author) The Christmas Cantata (2011), a slim offering of just slightly less than 100 pages. It is the heartwarming tale of a fictional Christmas Eve “miracle” told in alternating flashback and present-time installments. Mentions of composer/master teacher Nadia Boulanger, Mozart, Paris, Widor, and Virgil Thomson (to drop only a few names) set the scene and a gently moving conclusion comforts the soul, but might cause some furtive tears, as well. A story rather reminiscent of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi in its ability to warm the heart while allowing plenty of laughter, it is available from St. James Music Press (sjmpbooks.com). I suggest ordering multiple copies to share with others. Your music- and mystery-loving friends will thank you not only for this novella, but also for the introduction to the madcap escapades of Hayden Konig, police chief and organist-choirmaster of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in this imaginary (but slyly realistic) North Carolina town.

A recommended recording

Luca Oberti disc

French composers Louis Marchand (1669–1732) and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749) are quite well known to organists, but I do not recall having seen their names very often (if ever) on harpsichord recital programs. I do own the scores for each man’s complete works for our instrument but I must confess that I had not spent much time delving into these slim collections. Recently, however, I purchased Italian harpsichordist Luca Oberti’s single-disc offering of the complete Pièces de Claveçin from both composers (Stradivarius CD STR37025, recorded in 2014, with a total playing time of 62 minutes and 55 seconds), and his sensitively played recital encouraged an examination of the printed pages. The disc comprises four dance suites (two from each composer), all four of which begin with a Prelude (more or less un-measured). Marchand’s suites are in D Minor (nine movements) and G Minor (eight movements) each originally published in a separate volume, the first in 1699, the second in 1702. There are, additionally, three pieces, one (La Vénitienne) that appeared in a collection (1707), the other two found in manuscripts. Clérambault’s first suite (C Major) consists of eleven movements: my favorite among the unmeasured preludes begins it, and the finale is a second menuet: a miniscule rondo that Oberti chooses to play on the buff stop for an enchantingly delicate ending. Suite Two (C Minor) comprises only five items: the Prelude and four dances: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. The fine-sounding instrument is by Andrea Restelli (1990), based on an instrument by Goujon-Swanen.

Twenty-first century music
for harpsichord

The British Harpsichord Society, an organization founded in 2002, is “free and open to all.” Simply accessing its website will reap information on enrollment (recommended) and grant access to its online journal. Under the rubric “Listening” one may find detailed information about the society’s pioneering disc of prize-winning compositions selected by jury at the UK’s first-ever contemporary harpsichord composition competition, a 2012 event that garnered more than ninety entries from composers representing eighteen countries.

The site also contains information about the resulting compact disc, Shadow Journey, issued by Prima Facie records (http://ascrecords.com/primafacie/). The list of participating players is a stellar one: Maggie Cole, Mahan Esfahani, Goska Isphording, Penelope Cave, Jane Chapman, Christoph Kaufmann, and our own Elaine Funaro (who plays music by Aliénor-winning composers Thomas Donahue and Ivan Božičević among others). The BHS kindly sent a copy of their premiere disc, but having not seen scores for any of the fourteen pieces recorded, I do not wish to comment on likes or non-likes. For those who are both adventurous and curious about new trends in harpsichord repertoire, this disc will be a welcome guide, but not an easy listening experience nor particularly genial background music. The idea of including music by the competition’s jurors is a good one, allowing, as it does, some possible windows into the soundscape of ears and minds that selected the winners. Congratulations to the British Harpsichord Society for this valuable addition to the ever-expanding repertoire of the harpsichord.

In conclusion: One small Christmas gift for our readers

Since our column began with a recommended memoir, here, in a sort of ABA form, is a short excerpt from Letters from Salzburg (A Music Student in Europe, 1958–1959), published by Ivar Lunde’s Skyline Press (Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 2006). Comprising more than fifty letters I wrote to my parents, as well as excerpts from personal travel diaries, comments (in bold italics) about things better not shared with the elders, and a generous sprinkling from photographs taken during the European sojourn, this book preserves a period-picture of post-war Austria, Italy, France, and northern Europe during their gradual rebuilding from the devastation caused by two consecutive world wars. This unprecedented educational experience changed the lives of all 88 students who participated in the first year-long program of required foreign study initiated by Oberlin College: the entire class of junior music majors was sent to spend a full academic year at the Salzburg Mozarteum. No exceptions possible: not a single junior music class was available at the Ohio campus.

What follows is excerpted from pages 46–50, documenting my first Christmas away from home (I had just turned 20). Four of us expatriates pooled our finances to rent a Volkswagen for the holiday trip south from Salzburg to Rome and Tivoli, with a return via Assisi and Venice.

Interlude I: Christmas in Italy

[Organ major teacher] Professor Sauer’s unmarried daughter Lotte worked as a secretary in the administrative office of the Mozarteum. Always kind and helpful to us students, Fräulein Sauer was a pleasant person to “pop in” and see. She surprised me with her response to my excited announcement, “We are going to Italy for our Christmas vacation.” 

“Oh,” said Lotte Sauer, “how I envy you.”

“Fräulein Sauer,” I replied, “surely you have been to Italy many times. Why would you envy us?”

“Yes, Herr Palmer, I have been to Italy many times . . . but I envy you the first time.”

Florence, 25 December 1958: We hopped into the car and drove up the winding road to Fiesole. After parking the car in the main square we began to climb the hills, reveling in the warm sunshine, the panorama stretched before us, and the wonderful feeling of being out in nature after a large meal.

Passing a Roman ruin, I climbed faster than the rest, and lost them—not intentionally. It was, however, gratifying to have a few moments alone. I found the St. Francis Monastery, built on Roman-Etruscan ruins of the Fiesole fortifications and then saw one of the rare views of a lifetime: the red sun setting over Florence. As twilight came on swiftly, I heard the monks sing the closing lines of a Palestrina motet, and I rested and worshipped briefly in the small chapel before going out again into the dusk, the Italian dusk of Christmas.

Walking back down to the church I met the others, and led them up for the magnificent view. We all sat in silence watching the day of Christmas fading away, and quietly we thought our thoughts of home and loved ones. While the last red rays still lingered over Florence, while the tall, slim pines and leafy olive trees were still silhouetted against the approaching night, we turned to the picturesque tearoom on the hill. It was six o’clock.

David Herman, DMA, MusD, is Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music and University Organist at the University of Delaware. The author of numerous reviews for The Diapason, David has enjoyed playing hymns in churches of various denominations for more than fifty years. His recent CD includes music by his teacher Jan Bender and by Bender’s teacher, Hugo Distler.

Through the diverse work of nearly every organist runs a common thread: We are called upon to play the organ for religious services. This is the first in a series of articles that will offer ideas for enriching service playing; these articles were originally written for Crescendo, the newsletter of the Philadelphia AGO chapter and are used with their permission. Mention is occasionally made of the “young organist”—this is not a reference to age, but of skills and experience. Many “young” organists of all ages have keyboard skills and have been pressed to move from the piano bench to the organ bench. In this first installment, we will turn our attention to hymn playing.

Hymns must dance, even when they

“slow dance.”—Bruce Neswick

Hymn playing is a large topic—and the most important of them all, as it is the heart of what we do as church organists. A comprehensive treatment of hymn playing would include topics such as touch, breathing/phrasing, repeated notes, pedaling, registration, tempo, and, especially, attention to the text. You have probably recognized these as the same skills necessary in playing organ literature convincingly.

The service player, moreover, must consider many additional aspects. These include the different “personalities” of hymn texts and tunes; musical leadership; variety—in registration, texture, and harmonization; and, most importantly, bringing the words of the hymn to life. “Present the ancient truth as a present truth,” as Erik Routley once wrote, referring to hymns from previous centuries.¹

In short, hymn playing deserves a book and course of its own. What follows here are merely a few thoughts, with the hope they may be of some use and interest.

The organist as leader

First, some technical aspects. It is worth mentioning just what we’re about as organists during congregational singing. We are not the peoples’ accompanist; to accompany is to support, and, ultimately, to follow. That’s what we do, for example, when accompanying a vocal or instrumental soloist. When the people are singing they depend upon the organist for leadership—a significant, if subtle, difference.

The organist has a number of important decisions to make on behalf of the people. These include interpreting the “character” of the hymn, perhaps even determining the key; and setting the tempo. Having established these essential musical ingredients, the organist then invites the people to sing by way of an intonation: an introduction that is both music and signal. As the hymn unfolds, the organist maintains the tempo and sees to other musical ingredients—including phrasing and appropriate changes in texture and registration—with polite, but firm, insistence. Through all this, the organist encourages the faithful (nearly all of whom are musical amateurs) to sing and helps to interpret the texts of the hymns.

How is all this accomplished? What to do, for example, when the tempo (or spirit) sags? The answer: Of most importance in effective musical communication is the organist’s strong sense of rhythm, accomplished through touch. In other words, the same technical skills needed for a compelling performance of a Bach fugue or a French organ symphony are those we draw upon in leading congregational song. The late Robert Glasgow, one of my teachers and a man who didn’t waste words, was once asked at a masterclass to “say a few words about rhythm in organ playing.” “Well,” he replied, a bit bewildered by the question, “I’m very much for it.”

Playing the text

All this reinforces the fact that hymn playing is technically demanding. It requires a strong sense of rhythm, confidence in touch, and at least the beginnings of a dependable pedal technique. Hymn playing is especially challenging for the less-experienced organist, who is understandably concerned about playing notes; but ultimately, this really is about playing words!

Hymns are poetry, as we know; it is the hymn’s tune that we play. It is the wedding of hymn and tune that we sing. Out of respect for the hymn text, many British hymnbooks display it, separated from the music, at the bottom of the page so that the poetry can be seen and appreciated. Young organists (of all ages) often find it necessary to fix their attention on the music of the hymn, and become anxious when told they must also follow the text. If the words of each stanza are not considered, the result is playing the first stanza again four or five times. Indeed, there can be significant changes in mood and even in rhythm from one stanza to the next. (Think of the rhythmic variables among the stanzas of “For All the Saints.”)

Some of us have played hymns for a very long while and, as a result, we need not spend quite so much time working out the notes each week. My pre-Sunday preparation focuses on reviewing the hymns’ words: the phrases and stanzas. Realizing that the congregation will breathe when they need to, I nevertheless mark places in my hymnbook where the choir and I will not breathe, to help make clear the poet’s thoughts.

In earlier times I recommended that the organist sing aloud with the people. I changed my mind, however, when in a workshop some thirty years ago, John Ferguson made a convincing case for the organist’s forming the words mentally but not actually producing a sound. He was right: This allows the organist to be both involved with the text and to monitor the peoples’ singing. I want to be certain that the congregation is “with me,” not only in tempo but in spirit. I also believe that, if I can hear the people singing, the organ is not too loud.

Pedaling

Playing the pedal (bass) part of a hymn can be as difficult as trio playing. Until an organist has developed the requisite pedal technique, it is better to not use pedals on hymns, even though this will likely increase the challenge for the hands. Example 1 shows an in-between solution: to pedal only occasionally—on long notes (pedal points) and at cadences, where the feet can prepare the primary scale degrees (tonic and dominant notes).

Q: How long may you hold on to a pedal point?

A: For as long as it sounds good!

Working out the pedal part is a challenge for all of us who like to write in pedaling marks, as hymnbooks typically have the settings notated in “choral” style, with insufficient room above the bass line for writing in pedaling.

Tempo

Tempo is a tricky and somewhat subjective matter, especially since the same hymn might call for different tempos depending upon such factors as hour of the day, age of the congregation, acoustics of the worship space, and the number of people singing. The organist sets the tempo, of course, which then must be maintained from beginning to end, through clear touch and rhythm.

Hymn introductions

Hymn introductions function as musical signals. They alert the congregation that it is time to sing, and provide essential information about the key, tempo and, perhaps, the nature of the hymn. What an introduction need not have to provide literally is the hymn tune, played all the way through (although this is typically what the British do).

In a hymn introduction, the organist can exercise some creativity in crafting a hymn “intonation,” by improvising or composing one, or using one of the many thousands in print by various composers. (See Example 2.)

Links

No, not golf or computer links. These refer to the precise amount of time inserted by the organist between the intonation and stanza 1, and between subsequent pairs of stanzas. This rhythmic silence is crucial in both giving the people time to breathe as well as signaling when they sing.

The link between stanzas is created by either adding a certain number of beats (if the last note of the tune is short, as in Example 3a), or subtracting beats (when the final note is long, say, a whole note, as in Example 3b). The great majority of people in our congregations are musical amateurs and we want to use all possible means to encourage them to sing energetically and with confidence.

Registration

“Flue” pipes on an organ are the strings, flutes, and principals. The first two are indispensible for accompaniment and in playing many organ pieces. Principals, on the other hand, excel at leading. A solid registration of principals 8′, 4′ and 2′ (crowned, perhaps, with a mixture) provides clear and encouraging leadership to the congregation. Normally, it is preferable to not overload the registration with 8′ stops; better to have stops of higher pitches, which sing out above the register of the congregation. Use manual 16′ stops carefully and sparingly and avoid celestes and the tremulant.

Above all: Listen to the congregation. If you can’t hear them, you may be playing too loudly!

Voice leading and texture

People often ask: “In passages with repeated notes, which do I tie and which should be repeated?” It’s not possible, I think, to declare an “always” rule for this (although some books do). Repeated notes in the melody of any hymn are always repeated—perhaps even overenunciated. Think of the opening notes of Rhosymedre. The best treatment of repeated notes is the use of “half-values” (that is, changing repeated quarter notes to eighth notes and eighth rests), shown in Example 4. As for the other voices, I suggest listening, to both the organ and the response of the congregation, making modifications in touch as needed.

Variety

A hymn may have four or five or— thank you, Martin Luther!—ten to fifteen stanzas. Why should all of them be played the same way? After all, the words change from one stanza to the next. Variety does not mean drastic or melodramatic musical gestures, unnecessary interludes, constant modulations, etc., but variety in response to the hymn text—musical interpretations that inspire the congregation to “sing ancient truths as present truths.” (See Routley’s comments below.) In the meantime, here are some easy ways to introduce variety in your hymn playing:

• Change registration (between stanzas, not within a stanza), reflecting upon aspects of the words.

• Solo the melody by using a trumpet or similar stop. Or better: Do you have young people in your congregation who play instruments? Most of us do. Recruit one or more to play the trumpet or other instrument on the melody of selected stanzas of a hymn. He/she can be thought of as a supplementary organ stop; and the young person will be thrilled to be a part of such an important activity.

• Drop out the pedals for a significant change (lightening) in overall sound.

• Occasionally, drop out the organ completely for a stanza. This requires preparation and the presence of a confident choir, who have been clued in as to what will happen. This can be very effective, even dramatic, on the right stanza and allows the people to find, and “center on,” their voices.

• Use alternation. Lutherans in 16th-century Germany continued the venerable process known as Alternatim Praxis—alternation. Carl Schalk described it this way: “The congregation, singing the unison chorales unaccompanied, alternated with (1) a unison . . . choir (the schola), (2) a choir singing polyphonic settings of the chorale (the choir), or (3) the organ, playing chorale settings.”²

Yes, that’s right: The organ can “play” a stanza of the hymn by itself. Other possibilities for alternation: men and trebles; right and left sides of the naves; choir and congregation. An example: Have the choir sing stanzas 5 and 6 of “For All the Saints” in parts. Perhaps from the aisle, before going on into the choir stalls. Alternation is meant to enhance, of course, not distract or annoy. So, the details of such a plan should be clearly laid out in the Sunday bulletin, especially when doing this for the first time.

• Sing in parts. None of these suggestions require the organist to depart from the harmony in the hymnbook. In many churches, the people wish to sing hymns in parts. This precludes, of course, the possibility of the organist’s occasional playing of alternate harmonizations (something many of us enjoy doing). Blessed is the church, then, that has the tradition of “unison on first and last stanzas, parts on the middle stanzas.” When the choir uses this plan, the people usually follow. This allows for the introduction (carefully) of varied harmonizations to enrich the hymn singing. These can be improvised (if thought out in advance), composed by the organist, or played from any number of fine publications written for this purpose.

Ultimately, hymn playing is about inspiration. For me, few musical experiences can top that of leading and encouraging a large congregation in singing a great hymn. The rewards and satisfaction can be tremendous. We’ve all been inspired by great service players, some of whom have been our own teachers.

Let’s allow Routley to have the last word:

It is your duty, your contribution to the service, to interpret as well as to play.

You are taking those words and notes out of the printed book and presenting them to the congregation as a new, fresh, contemporary thing.

Do nothing mechanically, by habit, or lightly, or casually.

Do all by decision. Do all after thought and prayer.

And may the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,

and may He prosper our handiwork.³

Additional resources

• The Association of Lutheran Church Musicians offers several hymn-based recordings, including a hymn festival by Paul Manz and Martin Marty. See www.alcm.org/marketplace/.

• David Cherwien provides many useful suggestions in his book on leading congregational song, Let the People Sing! A Keyboardist’s Creative and Practical Guide to Engaging God’s People in Meaningful Song (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1997).

• John Ferguson and others have created “Mini-Courses on Hymn Playing,” available from the publications section of the AGO website: http://ago.networkats.com/members_online/members/createorder.asp?action….

• Stuart Forster, Hymn Playing: A Modern Colloquium, offers contributions from eleven prominent organists (MorningStar Music Publishers, 2013).

• Gerre Hancock’s book on improvisation, Improvising: How to Master the Art (Oxford University Press, 1994) remains one of the standards in the field. 

• David Heller’s Manual on Hymn Playing: A Handbook for Organists offers techniques at all levels (GIA Publications, Inc., G3642, 2001).

• Noel Jones, A Catholic Organist’s Guide to Playing Hymns. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015 (available from Amazon).

Notes

1. Erik Routley, The Organist’s Guide to Congregational Praise (London: Independent Press, 1947), 12, quoted in Austin Lovelace, The Organist and Hymn Playing (rev.) (Carol Stream, Illinois: Agape, 1981), 26.

2. Carl Schalk, ed., Key Words in Church Music, rev. and enlarged (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2004), 26–27.

3. Routley, The Organist’s Guide, 12–13, quoted in Lovelace, The Organist and Hymn Playing, 26.

The University of Michigan 52nd Conference on Organ Music presented works ranging from the 16th-century organ Mass Missa Kyrie fons bonitatis, to the world premiere of Three Pieces for Organ by Czech composer Jirí Teml, along with a new event—an improvisation competition

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in organ performance/church music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song are available through Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts. 

Gale Kramer, DMA, is organist emeritus of Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Detroit, Michigan, and a former assistant professor of organ at Wayne State University. As a student and graduate of the University of Michigan he has attended no fewer than 44 of the annual conferences on organ music. He is a regular reviewer and occasional contributor to The Diapason. His article, “Food References in the Short Chorales of Clavierübung III,” appeared in the April 1984 issue of The Diapason.

The University of Michigan 52nd Conference on Organ Music took place September 30–October 3. The annual conference is organized by Marilyn Mason, who has brought world-class performers and scholars to Ann Arbor for some 51 years. The conference offered a feast of sounds, from the 16th-century organ Mass Missa Kyrie fons bonitatis, to the world premiere of Three Pieces for Organ by Czech composer Jirí Teml; performers ranged in age from “twenty-somethings” to seasoned veterans. This year’s conference inaugurated a new event—an improvisation competition. The five contestants dazzled the audience with their ingenuity, creativity, and ability to transform a simple melody into new music. As Michael Barone commented, “The organ is a magnificent creation, but it only comes alive when people play it.” 

Sunday, September 30

4 pm, Hill Auditorium

The opening event, Kipp Cortez’s master’s degree recital, signaled the excellence and vitality that were to mark the entire conference. His formidable technique was apparent in his program: Carillon by Leo Sowerby; Prelude, adagio et choral varié sur le thème du ‘Veni Creator’, op. 4, by Maurice Duruflé (the performance was enhanced by the singing of the Gregorian hymn by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church compline ensemble, directed by Deborah Friauff); Les Corps Glorieux (Le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, VII) by Olivier Messiaen; Rhapsody in D-flat Major, op. 17, no. 1, by Herbert Howells; and Variations sur un vieux Noël by Marcel Dupré. The latter was a tour de force. The crowd stood and cheered his playing. 

8 pm, Hill Auditorium

Almut Roessler, the renowned interpreter of Messiaen’s organ works, was scheduled to perform; however, due to circumstances beyond her control, she had to cancel her U.S. tour only two weeks before the conference. David Wagner was chosen to play the concert in her place. He was a great choice: a native Michigander, born and raised in Detroit, a sought-after recitalist, a well-known radio personality, and professor of music and university organist at Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. He is the program director and music host of the classical music station WRCJ-FM in Detroit. He opened and closed his recital with William Mathias’s Processional (1964) and Recessional—pieces that exploited the instrument’s broad and rich spectrum of colors. Dr. Dave “the artist” and Dr. Dave “the raconteur” delighted the crowd with four centuries of organ music and commentary, explaining the connection between these disparate works: Versets on Veni Creator Spiritus by Nicolas de Grigny; Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582, by J. S. Bach; and Sonata No. 1, op. 42, by Alexandre Guilmant. These composers are linked together by fortuitous events. Wagner pointed out that while no autograph copies from de Grigny exist, we have J. S. Bach’s hand-copied manuscript of de Grigny. He also related that in 1908 Guilmant directed the first publication of de Grigny’s organ works and that Guilmant played the basis of his Symphony No. 1 on the organ built by the Farrand & Votey Company in 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which was purchased by the University of Michigan in 1894 and has since been named the Frieze Memorial Organ. It was rebuilt and reconditioned by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company of Boston and resides in Hill Auditorium. 

Tuesday, October 2

Michael Barone, host of Pipedreams, presented a fascinating pastiche of recordings culled from his vast library in his lecture, “Imagining the Future, Celebrating the Past.” He presented organ music by contemporary composers who are stretching the boundaries of old forms, combining other instruments with the organ, and implementing Danish and Norwegian folk songs, jazz, and blues in new ways. Barone played numerous examples of intriguing new music for the organ that finds inspiration in J. S. Bach and old hymn tunes.

The first composer on his list of “cutting edge” composers was Henry Martin, who teaches composition at Rutgers University; he received the 1991 National Composers Competition and the Barlow International Composition Competition in 1998 for his Preludes and Fugues for Piano. Barone commissioned him to compose organ preludes and fugues in G major and E minor for the 25th anniversary concert of Pipedreams that took place at the 2008 AGO convention in Minneapolis; Ken Cowan premiered the works. Since then Barone has commissioned preludes and fugues in D major and B minor, which Cowan premiered in 2009; Prelude and Fugue in E Major, premiered by Isabelle Demers in 2012; and Stephen Tharp has agreed to premiere the next set of preludes and fugues. 

Henry Martin’s “new music” interjects jazz, burly elements of dissonance, kaleidoscopic colors, and shifting textures into the constructs of the preludes and fugues of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. In his Prelude and Fugue in G Major the virtuosic demands are apparent in the perpetual motion of the prelude and the driving intensity of the fugue.  

To illustrate the pulsing life of organ music today, Barone played many recordings of live improvisations as well as new music. This list includes only a few of the recordings presented: Gunnar Idenstam, Folkjule: A Swedish Folk Song Christmas and Songs for Jukksjarvi: Swedish Folk Songs; Matt Curlee/Neos Ensemble of jazz-styled arrangements for organ, violin, vibraphone, and drums; Barbara Dennerlein playing jazz on the pipe organ; and Monte Mason, Psalm 139 for choir, organ and electronics.

Barone continued by pointing out that Paul Winter in his Winter Solstice concerts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine uses the organ as the bedrock of his composition, and that Cameron Carpenter, playing in the Royal Albert Hall in London at end of the Olympics, stretched the boundaries of organ composition and made us feel as uncomfortable as Bach’s contemporaries were with him. Barone admonished us to find new audiences for the organ, to go beyond all the wonderful pieces we know, and explore the huge amount of repertoire that’s not played and can be adapted “if you push the right crescendo pedal.”

One of the most enlightening and entertaining events of the conference was Steven Ball’s lecture/recital, “Introduction to the Theater Organ,” given at the Michigan Theater, which proudly houses a 1927 Barton theater organ, the oldest unaltered organ in Ann Arbor. Steven Ball wears several hats—organist at the Michigan Theater, University of Michigan carillonneur, and manager of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, as well as director of music at the Catholic Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit. 

Ball began his presentation with a quiz. We were given the specifications of four pipe organs and asked to identify the country of origin, location, builder, date, and whether it was a theater organ. The last question was difficult: how can you tell from the specifications if the organ is a theater organ? The answer is, you can’t! Dr. Ball’s lecture was fueled by the criteria applied to the selection of each of the 2,500 instruments in the Stearns Collection: i.e., each piece was chosen to show how instruments evolve, aid in the study of organology, and promote the understanding of world cultures and music.

Ball explained what happens when a musical instrument evolves, and pointed out there is a cultural relevance and progression accompanying this evolution. (1) There is a dialogue between builders and composers. When the Barker Lever was introduced in 1837 to the organ at St. Denis, an envelope was being pushed, facilitating the composition of new organ music. (2) Change is marked by acoustical evolution: sound gets louder and the compass expands. He noted that the theater organ was specifically voiced and designed to duplicate the sounds of an orchestra, and using analog technology first produced what we know as “surround sound.” (3) As instruments evolve, they become more vocal in nature—organ students are constantly told to let the music “breathe.”

Steven Ball offered a brief history of the theater organ, commenting that Robert Hope-Jones created more patents for the theater organ than anyone. He invented the Tibia Clausa, stoptabs instead of drawknobs, increased the wind pressures (ranging from 10 to 50 inches), and enclosed the pipes behind walls and thick swell shades for greater expression. The merger of his company with Wurlitzer in 1914 ended in disappointment and led to his suicide in 1915. In 1927 Wurlitzer cranked out an organ a day for a demanding market, and organists were paid for playing in the theater.

The Michigan Theater organ, opus 245, was built in 1927 by the Barton Company, which employed 150 people, taught students to play, and placed them in theaters throughout the Midwest. The instrument is only one of 40 that exists in its original home with its original operating system intact, which includes combination action and console lift. 

Steven Ball also proved to be the consummate entertainer. For 30 minutes we watched “One Week,” a silent film starring Buster Keaton, while he improvised on the Barton organ. What fun to watch and hear the misadventures of Buster Keaton in high style. 

Improvisation competition

For the first time in the conference’s long history, an improvisation competition was included. One could feel the excitement as the audience filed into the sanctuary of St. Francis of Assisi Church for the final round. The sacred space, with its live acoustic and three-manual, 1994 Létourneau Opus 38, provided a perfect venue for the competition. The five finalists were chosen from a preliminary round based on submitted recordings. Judges of the preliminary round included Joanne Vollendorf Clark, Gale Kramer, and Darlene Kuperus. The judges for the final round were Karel Paukert, William Jean Randall, and Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra. 

The five finalists were given 30 minutes without an instrument to plan their improvisation, which was to combine a prelude, a toccata, or a fantasia with a fugue on the tune Picardy, and also include a free improvisation on a given theme. Their complete performance time was to last no more that 15 minutes.  

It was intriguing to listen to each competitor’s treatment of the themes, to hear music composed before us with marvelous fluidity and agility. We heard borrowings from the medieval ages to the present. No one envied the judges.  

Bálint Karosi was awarded the Earl Moore first prize of $3,000; Timothy Tikker was awarded the Palmer Christian second prize of $2,000; Naki Sung Kripfgans the Robert G. Glasgow third prize of $1,000; and Steven Hoffman and Matthew Samelak the runner-up prizes of $500.

The behind-the-scenes organizer, Michele Johns, and her committee of Gale Kramer, Darlene Kuperus, and Marcia Van Oyen did a superb job in planning this remarkable event.

8 pm, Hill Auditorium

It was a privilege to hear Karel Paukert perform Czech organ music as well as pieces that embody the spirit of improvisation. His program gave ample evidence that the repertoire for organ is crossing new boundaries, using colors and timbres in new ways. His playing of Frammenti by Karel Husa (b. 1921), Toccata and Fugue in F Minor by Bedrich Antonín Wiedermann (1884–1951), and Adagio and Postludium from Glagolitic Mass by Leos Janácek (1854–1951) was infused with rare sensitivity and energy. He played cutting edge music by Jirí Teml (b. 1963) and Greg D’Alessio (b. 1963) with the same intensity. We were honored to hear Paukert play the world premiere of Jirí Teml’s Three Pieces for Organ.  

Paukert’s choice of “Albion II” from Albion by Greg D’Alessio was a shining example of what can emerge in organ repertoire when tapping into the resources made available in the digital age. Paukert played a score for organ and electronic tape with sounds, he explained, “derived from the electronically processed tonal palette of the McMyler Organ by Holtkamp at the Cleveland Museum of Art.” This piece for organ and electronic accompaniment is definitely New Age music; spellbinding magic resulted by combining digitally manipulated with acoustic sounds of the pipe organ. He concluded his concert with two well-known works, both of which are improvisatory in character and spirit: Jehan Alain’s Deuxième Fantaisie and Franz Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on the Name of B.A.C.H.

Wednesday, October 3 

9:30 am, Blanche Anderson Moore Hall

The 16th-century organ Mass, Missa Kyrie fons bonitatis, was performed by students of Professor James Kibbie: Andrew Earhart and Colin Knapp, with chants sung by Joseph Balistreri. The score will be published by Wayne Leupold in 2013 and is the culmination of ten years of research by Scott Hyslop.   

The performance was followed by Scott Hyslop’s lecture, “Pierre Attaingnant: The Royal Printer and the Organ Masses of 1531.” Hyslop’s interest in classical French music was the basis for his doctoral thesis. His continued work on the topic is about to see its fruition in his publication of the performance edition of Attaingnant’s Missa Kyrie fons bonitatis. Hyslop explained that it was a unique accomplishment for Attaingnant to be able to print three items (staff lines, notes, and text) simultaneously and that in 1537 Attaingnant became the official printer and book seller to King Francis I of France. Unlike the popular Missa Cunctipotens, the Missa Kyrie fons bonitatis contains the Credo, which agrees with Paris usage. The new edition will include an accessible essay on musica ficta written by Kimberly Marshall. 

2 pm, Hill Auditorium, 

lower lobby

Renate McLaughlin, a graduate student of Marilyn Mason, lectured on “Karg-Elert: a musician at the wrong place and the wrong time.” She documented events in the life of the composer that had a negative influence in keeping him from enjoying the recognition he deserved during his lifetime. She presented interesting biographical details that showed him to be out of touch with reality and a man lacking in common sense. Her question of why his dreams of fame and glory were never realized was answered in her lecture topic. 

3 pm, Hill Auditorium 

The students of James Kibbie played Symphonie No. 6 in G Minor, op. 42, no. 2, by Charles-Marie Widor. His students gave polished performances. The performers and the movements they played were: Colin Knapp (Allegro), Matthew Kim (Adagio), Matthew Dempsey (Intermezzo), Stephanie Yu (Cantabile), and Andrew Lang (Finale). 

8 pm, Hill Auditorium

Timothy Tikker, a doctoral candidate studying with Professor Marilyn Mason, programmed an interesting mix of well-known and lesser-known repertoire. Well-known pieces included Mendelssohn’s Sonata in B-flat Major, op. 65, no. 4; J. S. Bach’s Partite diverse sopra il Corale Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig, BWV 768; Max Reger’s Toccata and Fugue in d/D, op. 59, nos. 5 and 6; and Messiaen’s Dieu Parmi Nous from La Nativité du Seigneur. It was in the lesser-known pieces that Tikker communicated what seemed to be the essence and soul of the music. He captured the intensity and drama of Ross Lee Finney’s The Leaves on the Trees Spoke. Tikker set the stage of Vincent Persichetti’s Do Not Go Gentle for organ pedals alone, op. 132, by playing a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his poem. Likewise, he seemed to revel in the lyricism and quiet loveliness of Herbert Howells’ Quasi lento, tranquillo from Sonata for Organ. 

Conclusion

We thank Marilyn Mason and all who participated in the 52nd Conference on Organ Music. You offered us a sip of the elixir of life and we left refreshed. 

—Marijim Thoene

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in organ performance/church music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song are available through Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts. 

Monday events

Guest lecturer Susanne Diedrich of Wupperthal, Germany described rhetorical/musical devices used in Bach’s Orgelbüchlein, such as circulatio, suspiratio, katabasis, anabasis, and exclamatio, which were illustrated in performances by U of M students Timothy Tikker, Renate McLaughlin, Josh Boyd, and Kipp Cortez.  

Speaking on the history of organ improvisation, Devon Howard of Chattanooga, a graduate of the University of Arizona, outlined possible reasons for the decline of improvisation in this country, as well as for its resurgence. He urged students to learn improvisation as a way to understand composed works more thoroughly. Howard’s model of imitation, assimilation, and innovation presaged the method described by the next speaker.

Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra proposed a model of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, by which one might create an improvisation by imitating extant compositions. In illustration of her book Bach and the Art of Improvisation, she performed a recital of five works by Bach, Pachelbel, and others, following each with an improvisation derived from some aspect of its model. She also highlighted some of the pedagogical resources available for teaching improvisation, distinguishing three different approaches and three levels of proficiency.

Seven high school students from the Interlochen Arts Academy, prepared by their teacher Thomas Bara, performed a stunning program in the afternoon slot. Joseph Russell, Garrett Law, Hannah Loeffler, Michael Caraher, Emily Blandon, David Heinze, and Bryan Dunnewald played with poise, spirit, maturity, and musicality.

Professor James Kibbie and his colleague Professor David Jackson and the University of Michigan Trombone Ensemble (19 players) brought the evening to a high point. Kibbie and Jackson presented works for organ and trombone by Koetsier, Schiffmann, and Eben. The trombones (senza organo) made an impact in a canzona by Gabrieli and a transcription from Morten Lauridsen. Kibbie’s solo performance of “Moto ostinato” and “Finale” from Eben’s Sunday Music crowned the evening.

—Gale Kramer

Gale Kramer, DMA, is organist emeritus of Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Detroit, Michigan, and a former assistant professor of organ at Wayne State University. As a student and graduate of the University of Michigan he has attended no fewer than 44 of the annual conferences on organ music. He is a regular reviewer and occasional contributor to The Diapason. His article, “Food References in the Short Chorales of Clavierübung III,” appeared in the April 1984 issue of The Diapason.

Photo credit: Marijim Thoene

Performing Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony

A conversation with conductor Andrew Grams and organist Jonathan Rudy

Joyce Johnson Robinson is consulting editor of The Diapason.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)—

 pianist, organist, poet, dramatist, writer, music editor, and composer—is popularly known for his orchestral works Danse Macabre and Carnival of the Animals. He studied organ and composition at the Paris Conservatoire and served as organist of the church of Saint-Merry (1853–57) and subsequently at the church of La Madeleine in Paris. His music for organ comprised a small portion of his works: some collections of preludes and fugues, improvisations, rhapsodies on Breton themes, and a few single works.

Saint-Saëns’ compositional output includes five symphonies, two of which—youthful works—he withheld from publication, so the fifth symphony, in C minor, written in 1886, was designated No. 3. This symphony was dedicated to the memory of his friend Franz Liszt, who died ten weeks after the work’s London premiere, without having heard the work.

Symphony No. 3 has the nickname “Organ,” which instrument, with the piano, is part of the orchestral ensemble. The organ does not feature as a soloist, but it is strongly present in the finale. Symphony No. 3 is structured in two large sections, although it could be presented in a more typical four-movement design.

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra (ESO) of Elgin, Illinois, presented this symphony in February, the concluding work on a program that also included Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake, Respighi’s Fountains of Rome, and Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The program was conducted by music director Andrew Grams and featured organist Jonathan Rudy (of The Diapason’s 20 under 30 Class of 2016). Prior to the orchestral rehearsals and performances, we explored some of the performance issues of this symphony with conductor and organist. [NB: The Illinois Council of Orchestras named the Elgin Symphony Orchestra Illinois’ Professional Orchestra of the Year in 2016; the council had also named Andrew Grams the 2015 Conductor of the Year in the professional orchestra category.]

About the organ

As the performance venue, the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin, lacks a pipe organ, a Rodgers Infinity 361 digital instrument was supplied by Triune Music of Elmhurst, Illinois. Triune Music first partnered with the ESO around 20 years ago, when then music director Robert Hanson wished to rent a digital organ; he sought an instrument with clarity, and both Swell and Choir division 16′ and 4′ couplers, so that organists would have a specification available as would be found on any major concert hall pipe organ. According to Steven Smith of Triune Music, who installed the organ in the Hemmens auditorium, the challenge at a site like the Hemmens auditorium is to provide enough sound for the organ to be a solo instrument without making the orchestra unable to hear themselves, since speakers are positioned only a few feet above or behind the orchestra, rather than higher up, as they would be with pipe organ chambers. Triune made use of a special speaker system that throws the higher frequencies of the organ sound upwards so it would not interfere with the ability of the musicians to hear each other on stage; they also employed four large sub-woofers that were “floor-loaded,” that is, aimed into the hardwood floor of the stage, increasing the decibel level of the low frequencies to a point where the audience could feel them.  (Interesting fact: Steven Smith had also been the organist for a previous ESO performance of Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 in 2008.)

Most digital organs today permit the selection of a “genre” of voices  (French-style sounds, or German). The Infinity 361 organ has a “Voice Palette” feature that permits more than one sampled rank to be available on any of its speaking stops. For instance, one could draw the 8′ Principal, but by turning a knob, change to another related voice, such as Open Diapason, Octave, or Montre, and save the chosen voice to a piston. As such, the organist can choose a broad English Diapason, an American Classic Mixture, and a French Chorus Reed simultaneously, depending on the colors desired.

§

Joyce Johnson Robinson: Maestro Grams, why did you want to program the Saint-Saëns Third Symphony?

Andrew Grams: Because I like doing it! It’s a great, great symphony. I played it the first time, as a violinist, at school.

JJR: How many times have you presented it?

AG: At least four. Once was even down in Adelaide, Australia.

JJR: Were these all with pipe organs?

AG: Not all. Adelaide was, North Carolina Symphony was not. I don’t remember all of them.

JJR: In the score, are there certain passages that you’re already thinking you need to check?

AG: For me, it’s just let’s go through it and see what it’s like and see what the issues are, and make adjustments as needed. And adjustments can be done very quickly.

Jonathan D. Rudy: That’s right! Very quickly. And I know for me, one of the biggest questions is just hearing it together for the first time, to know if there is such a thing as too much on this organ—

AG: There is. There’s going to be. I think you’ve got a lot of juice available to you.

JDR: I’m looking forward to see where we strike that, and then adjusting registrations from there. Right now I’ve just got every possibility and then some registered, so we’ll make some quick adjustments.

JJR: Jonathan, how are you preparing for this since you have limited time to familiarize yourself with the organ?

JDR: Of course, regular and patient practice is the ticket for truly mastering a piece. But in an ensemble setting like this, it is extremely important to take time and understand how one fits and functions with the group as a whole. This involves careful (full) score study, listening, analysis, and thought. For example, knowing that the organ’s first entry in the piece functions as the harmonic foundation for the string’s unison melody influences my registration choices here. In such cases, I’d choose to utilize the full 8′ chorus for a lush and harmonically foundational sound. Regarding the instrument, I’ve had some practice over the last few years adapting to instruments a few days in advance of performances. What I typically do is study the stoplist, and as far as I’m able, consider registration choices in advance. I also try to prepare the works on similar organs (especially where mechanical action is involved) in my local area.

JJR: How long did it take you to acclimate yourself to this instrument, especially since it has features that aren’t on pipe organs?

JDR: That was the fun part about it. In practice it’s a pretty standard layout—the pedal and the manual layout is AGO standard, so that wasn’t really an issue. The touch was very friendly, I thought, for being an electronic instrument, and it had a nice resistance to the key—that wasn’t an issue. But, knowing that for every stop, there’s often one, two, or three alternate stops that you can choose—that was rather interesting. It did allow for some more flexibility in the tone I was looking for and the color—for example, Saint-Saëns is a French composer, and probably composed with Cavaillé-Coll in mind. He certainly wrote his organ music that way. So being able to choose, say, a Montre, over a Principal, over other styles, was helpful in this case. But it did take a little longer to come up with that general crescendo, which I have purposed for this. Lots of options!

JJR: This symphony is such a wonderful piece, with its thematic interweaving, especially in its latter half. Maestro, are you performing it as two or as four movements?

AG: I think of it as two, but I think you can make an argument to do it as one big movement, and not have such a big gap between part one and part two. I think in practice it’s probably a good idea to relax and shake it out before we launch into the Scherzo proper, but I agree with you. I can’t remember the first time I ever heard the piece; but I know that I always loved it. And as I went through the university years and started to learn more about composition, about how things are built, my appreciation for the piece grew and grew, because not only is it exciting and grand but it’s so well put together. There’s that passage just before the long transitional passage into the Finale, where he’s got this nice fugato and then he just adds all the previous touches on top of each other. Every time I get to that passage I think, “This is the best stuff in the world!”

JDR: He takes that transformation from some of his peers at the time—definitely Franz Liszt, definitely Brahms, they were both known for their motivic transformation like that. But I love how he works that style into his well-constructed traditionalist compositions. There’s so much emotion, but everything is restrained; everything is brought into the form. I think that’s really exciting—as you said, the construction builds up the piece.

AG: Pristine. It’s like one of those really intricate stained glass windows that portrays something not terribly complicated but it’s made up of these tiny little pieces of glass that have been put together in such an amazingly well-fit, well-constructed way that you know exactly what you’re looking at.

JDR: It’s really cool how the organ and orchestra play off each other. They’re very much equal partners in the music; it’s not meant to put the organ on display; the organ is meant to be—

AG: It’s a complement. First and foremost, it’s Saint-Saens’s Third Symphony. “Which one is that one?” “It’s the one with the organ.”

JR: Maestro Grams, how do you approach a piece for the orchestra? Is it in terms of tempos or lines?

AG: For me, I think it’s balancing all of the variables that you get—but this applies to any sort of orchestral performance. (to Jonathan) Your variable is you don’t know necessarily what instrument you’re going to play. My variable is whatever orchestra I’m working with—even if it’s my orchestra—I’m not playing it, so I’m not really in control of what’s happening, so I need to figure out, as we work on things, how do I make everything sound the best that I can? And it might not necessarily be exactly what I have in my head, but it’s really truly how do I get everybody to sound their very, very best, for whatever that group is going to be, at that time.

JJR: The organ appears in two movements, first as a quiet accompanist, later as a stronger support and even with some solo passages. How difficult is it to gain the proper balance? 

JDR: As an organist and an ensemble player, I will need to bring out the best of my accompanimental skills. In many ways, playing with an orchestra is akin to accompanying choral and anthem music, and requires sensitive listening and careful registration choices to balance with the colors of the orchestra. This symphony really isn’t an organ “solo,” but a true ensemble piece. The organist must carefully make choices that bring the color of the instrument to the table, but doesn’t overpower the orchestra at times.

JJR: Of the movements or sections in which the organ appears, is any one more challenging than another?

JDR: They have their challenges in different aspects, particularly in terms of registration. It’s hard to say one movement is more challenging, because the slow movement presents a different set of difficulties and choices (registration, balance) than the finale (slightly more technical, more registration choices, etc.). 

I know I’m going to be changing everything today. I’ve already about changed every single piston in some small minute form because I’m still experimenting and getting to know this organ, and getting to know what registrations I’m really starting to like in which sections. So I think that’s one of the challenges, especially in the soft section. You just want to find the most delicate and beautiful of sounds to begin that movement, the second half of that movement. So I’m experimenting with that.

One of the musical challenges for me, I think, is in the last movement, and that’s the metric displacements a little bit. If you listen to the piece, which I’ve done for a long time, you may hear the meter happening at a different spot than what’s written. So I’m still working a little bit to make sure I’m counting clearly through those measures—and I’m going to be watching like a hawk, by the way, for those spots where the organ comes in on the off beats. It’s written as a downbeat. That’s going to be a fun part as well—definitely challenging.

JJR: How about when the organ and the piano are together? Is that any potential problem, because there’s a lot going on there?

AG: I don’t think so. The important piano textures are usually all in the passages without the organ. There is so much loud activity everywhere that it’s “everybody have at it.”

JDR: Right. You’re thinking after the first solid chords and then the piano comes in. And then the organ has some quieter solid chords in the background, and I think those can come slightly out of the texture a little bit.

AG: A little bit—but not much. It’s commentary.

JDR: Exactly. You want less volume and more color at that point. And I’d like to give a shout out to Triune Music—Steve and Mark [Mackeben] and everyone else that brought this organ into place. When they installed it they actually spent some time before they brought it and worked on the registrations and came with some suggestions, which I thought were very helpful. They know this instrument very well. 

JJR: Gentlemen, thank you. I’m very much looking forward to the performance.

AG: Well, I hope that we knock your socks off.

JDR: This instrument sure has that capability, and I know the orchestra does.

Thanks to Diane Handler of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra and Steven Smith of Triune Music for their assistance.

Andrew Grams is music director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra. The 2015 Conductor of the Year from the Illinois Council of Orchestras, Grams has led orchestras throughout the United States, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestra. In Canada he has led orchestras in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver; on other continents, he has led orchestras in France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Born in Severn, Maryland, Grams began violin study at age eight; he received a bachelor of music in violin performance from the Juilliard School in 1999, and a conducting degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2003. His website is andrewgrams.com.

Jonathan Rudy is a candidate for the doctor of music degree in organ and sacred music from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he earned his master of music degree, studying organ with Janette Fishell and choral conducting with William Gray and Richard Tangyuk, and where he has served as associate instructor of music theory and aural skills. His undergraduate work was at Valparaiso University, studying organ and sacred music with Lorraine Brugh and Karel Paukert. He is a member of The Diapason’s “20 under 30” Class of 2016 and is under the management of Karen McFarlane Artists.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is consulting editor of The Diapason.

Norberto Guinaldo holds the Master’s degree in Music Theory and Composition from the University of California at Riverside and the Diplome Superieure d’Orgue from the Schola Cantorum in Paris, France, where he studied with Jean Langlais. In the U.S.A. he also studied organ with Clarence Mader. He has been organist at the United Methodist Church of Garden Grove since 1965, and organist at Temple Ner Tamid in Downey, California since 1962.

Norberto Guinaldo has won first prizes in composition in 1964, 1966, 1967, 1970, and 1986. He has been a recipient of numerous commissions, including Oblations of Remembrance (AGO) premiered in 1989; Rhapsody on a French Carol (private patron), written for the inauguration of the horizontal trumpets of the great organ of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles; and Novissimis, a 45-minute work premiered on February 15, 1998, for the inauguration for the new Glatter-Goetz organ at Claremont (California) United Church of Christ.

He wrote and premiered Credo, an hour-long work in twelve sections for the Far-western Regional Convention of the AGO in 1983. In addition to organ music, he has written piano and choral works and music for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Several of his works have been featured in recent years by Michael Barone on Pipedreams.

Norberto Guinaldo has performed in the U.S.A., as well as in Europe, Argentina, and Mexico. Norberto now lives with his wife Melinda in Fullerton (Orange County), California. Their children Clay, Roy, Marcell, and Cordelia, their families, and eleven grandchildren also live in Orange County. His website, www:guinaldopublications.com, features one hundred titles, either in singles editions or in collections.

Editor’s note: This feature is presented this month as Norberto Guinaldo celebrates his 80th birthday. It will be continued next month.

Ah! The United States! Country without equal in the world. Its citizens, inheritors of a legacy hard to fathom in its totality. The birthplace of most of the greatest simple and complex inventions that have advanced civilization to a degree and with a speed never imagined before. Its institutions of learning, store-houses of knowledge that have provided the tools and means that have bettered the lives, not only of its citizens, but those of the most civilized countries in the world.

Public records tell us that there are close to 1,600 public universities and 2,400 private ones. Would one guess that there might be a music department in each one of them? Would there be a sacred music or an organ department within them? Not in each one, but could one guess that to be the case in the majority? How about half of them? Or maybe one-fourth? That would be a lot of organ departments, wouldn’t one think? And what about colleges?

Tell this to someone coming from a third-world country (ignorant of these realities), and he wouldn’t believe you. To even think of one-tenth of that would stagger the imagination. The abundance of things available to us makes it hard to comprehend that what we take for granted may be totally unavailable or very hard to obtain in some countries. Perhaps the following story will give you an idea of what it was like for a young man pursuing a dream (and maybe amuse you!).

Childhood

I was born in 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of an Italian mother and a Spanish father. Both were ten years old when their families migrated to that country in the 1920s. Considering that it was about two years after the end of World War I, economics were probably the reason for the move. Both were baptized Catholic, yet no one in their families practiced their religion in their adoptive country. Argentina was a self-proclaimed Catholic country in those days.

By the time I was born, my parents were attending a “storefront church”—a religious organization that, for decades, met in rented commercial buildings. That was “church” for me as a child and as a young adult. We never set foot inside a Catholic church and we, the children, wouldn’t dare to! You see, among the good things of our religious education in common with many other Christian organizations that base their beliefs in the Bible, we were also taught—actually subtly indoctrinated—with peculiar beliefs that put the Catholic Church in a pretty bad light. These peculiar beliefs acquired a coloring bordering on the bizarre when the subject would come up at home in conversations during our growing years. Young children are particularly sensitive during their formative years when given information they don’t really understand, and it can cause damage in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, I personally developed a fear of all things “Catholic.”

There was no music making at home or musicians on either side of the family. The radio brought us all kinds of music; my father would occasionally listen to a classical music station. And I, as a small child, had no interest in it.

My earliest recollection of any music other than popular was in our “storefront church.” There was a harmonium there to accompany the hymns and an old German gentleman who played it.

I still can picture looking at him from behind, how he moved his elbows up and down, and I always wondered why he did that. It occurred to me decades later, thinking of the poor fellow, that perhaps he had arthritic fingers and that when tried to cross the third finger over the thumb in both hands, the elbows would go up and come down then in a more normal position. He looked to me like a big bird slowly flapping his wings!

We lived just outside the periphery of the city of Buenos Aires. There wasn’t much culture there. The best of European civilization was found in the heart of the city, which people called “El Centro”—the universities, concert halls, theaters, the beautiful architecture, the great churches, and refinement.

My mother was a high-class seamstress who had years before worked for an exclusive clothing store in downtown Buenos Aires. Our house was always full of women cutting patterns to make dresses. (Seventy years ago that was the thing to do, if you wanted to dress well and pay little!) Among these women was a young girl who lived around the corner from us; she played the piano and had a beautiful German upright piano in her home (a luxury then, for a “blue collar” family). My mother asked her if she would teach me to play the piano, she would teach her to make dresses (as an even exchange, I suppose!).

Early music lessons

I was seven at the time and had no interest in music nor any desire to learn an instrument. In grade school there were no pianos, and patriotic songs (only) were sung to the accompaniment of recorded music. There were no incentives in this environment to awaken any desire to learn music. I obeyed my mother and surrendered myself to the experiment. After a month of lessons away from the piano learning note values and beginning solfege, Alba, my teacher, sat me at the piano. I remember to this day (and I don’t know why, considering the circumstances), I felt a thrill all over my body as I faced that keyboard! It was January 17, 1944—written on the first page of my theory book, which I still have in my possession.

From that time on, two lessons a week, and an hour practice every day at her house, of course, since we didn’t have a piano and wouldn’t have one for four more years. Logically, she learned to make dresses faster than I learned to play piano, so my mother paid her a small monthly fee for the lessons, which went on for years. Evidently I took a liking to the piano because by the third year I was playing a lot of music. Alba taught me well.

By age ten (1947) my parents, with much sacrifice, bought a used piano. I was so excited! Unfortunately, beautiful as it was on the outside, it was a disaster on the inside. It wouldn’t hold the tuning longer than a week. The sound was awful. But there was nothing I could do. Yet, it was good to have my own instrument, bad as it was, to move my fingers on and practice the music. Because of it, I started buying music and playing anything that caught my attention. I learned to sight-read with great speed. By then I was playing Bach’s three-part inventions, sonatinas, some Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as tangos and Argentine folkloric music.

First church position

Around that time my “church” had to find another “storefront” location. The old German gentleman disappeared, and I was asked to play the harmonium for services. It was 1948. This 11-year-old boy, in his last year of grade school was “drafted,” against his wishes, to be a church organist? Truly, the word “organ” was never mentioned. I was called to play the harmonium, and the title “organist” would never have occurred to me because I did not know what an organ was! After a few tries, I picked up the “legato” technique quite easily and naturally. 

In those days high school was not obligatory, and children, after grade school, would go on to whatever money-making jobs they felt inclined to do or were available. Fortunately my parents wanted me to go on with my education.

At 12, I was two years too young to go to high school, but it seemed that age didn’t matter to school officials as long as you could pass the entrance exam, and I did. I finished high school two years younger and perhaps still a bit immature also!

Political climate

Argentina was, through all my schooling years, under the leadership of dictator Juan Domingo Perón and his cronies in every position of government, and the ever-present non-elected personality Eva Perón, the famous “Evita,” the dictator’s wife. In 1952 while in my fourth year of high school, Eva Perón, then in her 30s, died of cancer. Suddenly the whole country went into mourning. All radio stations cancelled all programming and played classical music—24 hours a day for 30 days. (Even the Peronistas thought that it was a bit too much!) 

It was during this period that I began to hear real organ music for the first time. The great organs of Europe and their organists were now in my home via recordings. I was overwhelmed with the grandeur of this music and a glorious sound. It touched every fiber of my being and put me on a quest to find a way to learn more about the organ, but more importantly, to find one and to learn to play it! But where to go? Were there any in Buenos Aires? Were there any teachers? Schools? I had to find out.

The big city

I had been in the city as a child with my father, but now I began to explore it on my own, even though I was a bit too young to roam around a big city alone. Truly, it was a bit unnerving. Its architecture attracted me, especially the churches. With trepidation, I began to enter those magnificent buildings looking for organs. I was overwhelmed; I was seeing beauty everywhere! I found many organs and wondered who played them? I tried to imagine how they might sound in those spaces according to what I had heard on the radio.

Going to the city on Sundays to a Catholic Mass, even with the pretext of going to listen to an organ, was out the question. I was still under my parents’ control and still had my duties at the harmonium. Just the thought of bringing this subject up at home made me uneasy. It would have created an ugly situation, the “vibes” of which would have lingered for days! My young mind was being assaulted by all kinds of questions, especially, “Who are the lucky ones who worship in such magnificent places, while we had to do it in such dreadful ones?”

By 1953, my last year of high school, I continued to explore the city, even playing hooky from school many times. And the quest to finding organs was extended to finding organ music. It was the next obvious thing to do.

The search for organ music

There were various large music stores, well supplied with materials, printed music as well as instruments—mostly of European provenance, catering to musicians in a city proud of its artistic heritage. Conservatories of music abounded, both public and private. Teachers trained in Europe and also home-grown supplied well-trained musicians for its symphony orchestras, opera houses, and the many other ensembles, and soloists of all sorts. But where was music for the organ? The great body of centuries-old literature that forms the main part of an organist’s library was nowhere to be found!

I asked myself: what do these organists here play on Sunday? I found a few collections of transcriptions of Baroque Italian masters (for manuals only), a book of easy fugues by Rheinberger and others (for manuals only), which sounded good on the harmonium, a book of pedal exercises by Nielsen (which, obviously, I couldn’t use and bought anyway), and a locally published anthology for the organ edited by Ermete (Hermes) Forti (soon to be my teacher)—30 works for both manuals only and manuals and pedal, covering pre-Baroque to Romantic (mostly easy), German and French works, including Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Minor (“The Cathedral”) and the not-so-easy Cantabile of César Franck, and lo and behold, I found Volume I of Buxtehude’s works—Ciaconas, Passacaglias, and Canzonas edited by Josef Hedar and published by Wihelm Hansen. Quite a find! But no Bach yet. 

However, the Forti collection provided a taste of it and of things to come. I also found the Toccata, Villancico, y Fuga by Alberto Ginastera, the famous Argentine composer. Quickly I started to play these pieces on the piano and the harmonium. But I needed an organ on which to practice, and most urgently, organ lessons.

Organ lessons

One day, at a rehearsal of a choir put together for a special occasion by my religious organization, talking to a girl from another town, the conversation went from mentioning the harmonium to mentioning the pipe organ, a subject obviously foreign to me at the time. However, she said she was taking organ lessons, “real organ” lessons! I knew at that moment that God was reading my thoughts and had brought me there that night to make the connection I needed to begin to do what I wanted to do!

My new-found friend Dolly Morris (of Irish descent) was taking lessons from Maestro Ermete (Hermes) Forti, a transplanted Italian, the organist at the Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento, which housed the 1912 Mutin-Cavaillé-Coll organ, the largest organ in Argentina: 69 ranks, 83 stops. Lessons took place at the Escuela Superior de Organo de la Ciudad Buenos Aires on Saturday afternoons in a house owned by the Catholic diocese in the old and “ritzy” part of town, on a Hammond organ of two manuals and a 32-note pedalboard.

It was December, the end of the school year, and there was going to be a concert by one of the students (yes, on the Hammond organ!). Dolly invited me to attend, and I was there promptly at the appointed time, with great expectations. (I asked myself later, why couldn’t this concert have taken place in a church and on a real pipe organ?) I really needed to hear a live performance on one of those good organs of Buenos Aires. That was to happen later. Now I wasn’t about to ask questions. I learned later by experience, that in Argentina’s organ world, there were no answers to a lot of legitimate questions. You just went with the flow.

A young lady organist played a wonderful concert, and at that time, just seeing the perfect synchronization of hands and feet making beautiful music made me ecstatic and somewhat envious, to the point of not caring that the music came out of an electronic instrument. I just loved it! To me, any organ with two manuals and pedals, at that time, was an organ I wanted to play, period!

What she had accomplished was what I wanted to do. I remember even today at the distance of 63 years, some of the hour-long program: a Bach chorale-prelude, his famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and Nicolai Rimski-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumble Bee!

Dolly Morris offered to introduce me to Maestro Forti, but this had to wait for a few months. I had to figure out how to pay for lessons since I wasn’t working; but I had to find an organ to practice on, and find Bach’s organ music. The question was, where?

A place to practice

My high school was in San Martin, the town adjacent to mine. There was a very attractive old church built around 1850. I decided to go take a look to see if there was an organ. Back in the wide and high loft there was one; I could see the pipes. It looked quite small judging by the height and width of the loft. It was obvious that if I were going to have an organ to practice on, it would have to be in a Catholic church. Now at age 16 the childhood fear of things “Catholic” was still there, and to ask for permission to practice the organ meant talking to a priest. The thought of it petrified me.

Catholic priests walking down the street in their cassocks and Roman hats was a daily and familiar sight then, but talking to one on his “own turf” was a totally different matter. I’d picture him asking me if I was Catholic, where I attended Mass, and since truly I couldn’t lie, it meant an embarrassing situation, and I would be denied.

Some of my classmates urged me to talk to Padre Clovis, the rector, because, according to them, he was “a nice guy.” I did, and he said yes. No questions asked. Wow! My practice time had to be after school, around 5:30 p.m. The first day I went up to the organ loft I found this rather small pipe organ with a reversed console. I noticed the straight pedalboard, 27 notes. Not bad. I opened the lid, one keyboard! Small disappointment—no problem; enough to synchronize hands and feet. I had dreamt of someday playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and the beauty and “novelty” of two manuals (probably to any new organist) was that of moving back and forth between them. That was shot right there! Well . . . I thought, can’t have everything!

I tried the first stop: Gedeckt 8′. I will never forget the sound of this stop. The beauty of it brought tears to my eyes, I could have played on it alone for hours. And did, actually, many times afterwards. There was also a Flute 4′, a String 8′, and a Principal chorus at 8′-4′-2′ and Mixture III. Heaven! Who could resist that ensemble! It was beautiful and loud—a long shot from the harmonium. I tried Bach’s E-minor Prelude and Fugue (“The Cathedral”). No problems with the hands, but since I hadn’t had any lesson I did not know the correct position of the feet on the pedals. I did what I could. I loved what I was hearing. One thing bothered me though—why were there so many people in the church at 5:30 p.m. on a weekday? The church seemed to be packed every afternoon. Obviously, I knew absolutely nothing about their religion! Practicing with such a large audience really bothered me. I was conscious of them (obviously praying), and my starting and stopping, and, of course, the volume. As a “newcomer” to the instrument, I couldn’t resist the lure of Full Organ—an experience never to be forgotten!

Nobody complained until one afternoon I heard a loud voice yelling from down below things I couldn’t totally decipher. I stopped playing, looked over the railing, and realized that the tirade was directed at me. An old man with a long beard and handlebar moustache was looking up and shaking his cane at me telling me to stop the “infernal noise” because he couldn’t concentrate on his prayers. I did stop and waited for a considerable time hoping he’d be gone after a short while. It seemed, though, that his prayers were quite long, because, as soon as I started playing he would again start to yell, shaking his cane towards the organ loft. The experience shook me up pretty good, and my fear of everything Catholic was reinforced within me again. From that day on, every time I went to practice I dreaded to find him there, fearful of his yelling at me as soon as I started to play.

It happened many times on and off through many months. Between him and the large pious audience, it was hard to concentrate, and my nerves were, every time, shaken pretty bad.

From time to time, proud of my new find and feeling pretty special being an “organist,” I bragged about it with my musical friends from school whom I took from time to time to the loft to show off. They were appreciative. They had never heard that little organ sound like that.

One Saturday I took a female classmate, a fan of the music of Bach, up to show what little I had accomplished (without lessons, I should mention). She was seated by me on the bench. After a while I heard heavy footsteps rushing up the wooden stairway, when suddenly I see the figure of Padre Clovis rushing towards us from the door at the top of the stairwell, red in the face and yelling things at the moment I couldn’t understand. He gave us a “dressing down,” heard probably by the celestial court above!

A true Argentine, when angry, will just yell to make a point and to show displeasure. I don’t remember now the words of his tirade but the word “immoral” or “immorality” stuck in my young mind never to be forgotten! It seemed that we had “committed a sin” of some kind by being there alone together. Was mixed company forbidden in the organ loft, I asked myself? I wasn’t totally clear about it. What I knew was that the situation was extremely embarrassing, and I felt terrible for my friend who, by the way, was a Lutheran.

I profusely apologized for myself and my friend and claimed ignorance (and may have even asked to be forgiven, I don’t remember clearly). Padre Clovis said something to lighten up the situation, and he was his old smiling self again. I don’t remember if that was the last time I played that organ or shortly afterwards. Too many nerve-racking situations! It wasn’t worth my mental health. Time to try the Organ School, but before I did that I had to find, somewhere, somehow, the organ music of Bach.

The search for Bach

For a long time, whenever I had the chance to go to the city, I would explore every used bookstore in the hope that someday, I’d find what I needed. In the process, I would go in and out of antique stores that I found on the way. I loved them; it was like visiting museums! One day I found a choir book (on the floor), the kind you see in medieval paintings on a stand with a group of monks reading from it and singing. The covers (about 24″ x 22″) were wooden, with wrought-iron hinges; the pages: parchment; the music: Gregorian. The book was being gutted and sold page by page. I asked: what for? The answer: lamp shades. I felt sick to my stomach. I asked: how much? Ten pesos each. I bought two, that’s all the money I had. I still have them framed in my office.

A sad and wonderful reminder of my “searching” days—a connection to a past that later would come alive to me, as I learned what this “Gregorian” stuff was all about: the beginning of Western civilization’s music. More and more antique stores. I loved the smell and the stuff in them. Who had been the owners of so many beautiful things?

I never missed the opportunity to ask about music books. The answer was always, “Sorry, no!” But one day the store clerk told me to look on a very small and low bookshelf out of the way in a corner. He thought he might have seen some organ music there.

I couldn’t believe what saw! Right there among old books were three beautiful hardbound tomes. On the back of each was printed: Bach Orgelwerke, marked Tome I, Tome II, Tome III. When I opened them I saw they were the twelve volumes of the original German edition of C. F. Peters, bound in groups of three. The binding was exquisite. One could see that they had never been used. There wasn’t a mark in them or sign of use. They were in mint condition!

I saw on the first blank page of each volume some pencil writing in German and Spanish stating briefly the content. Who may have been its owner? The clerk had no idea how they got there or when. If the owner had been an organist in Buenos Aires or even a student, there would have been marks of use. But nothing. What a find—I had to have them!

I asked the clerk, “How much?” “275 pesos,” he said. Oh, no! Where am I going to get that money? My Dad would never give that amount; he earned 1,000 pesos a month! That would be more than one-fourth of his earnings! I wouldn’t even ask! I wasn’t working yet, although I had a piano student at the time who paid me 10 pesos a lesson. My student was the daughter of an American couple that heard me play one day and asked me to teach the girl. They lived in a mansion in an exclusive area of the city. I thought she wouldn’t mind giving me an advance on the lessons if I explained the purpose for the money.

At the end of one lesson I worked up some nerve and said to the mother: “Mrs. Valentine,” . . . She cut me off before I finished the phrase and said, “I know, I know. . . . Amy is not practicing like she should. . . . I don’t think she’s really interested, and it’s wasting everybody’s time, so why don’t we just stop the lessons now.” I was stunned. It was of no use at that point to say anything but to agree with her and say good-bye. I not only did not get the money, I lost my student! There went my Bach books (I thought). I had to find the money somehow before those books were sold.

Aunt Rosa (actually my mother’s aunt), an old Italian woman, tough and hard working, had a grocery store in a nearby town and had always shown a soft spot in her heart for my brother and me. I thought I’d ask her for a loan (not a gift) to buy the books because I knew I could repay, somehow, a little at a time. I tried to explain what the loan would be for. But, like Mrs. Valentine, she didn’t let me finish my first sentence and said, “Are you asking me for money? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Next time I see your mother I’m going to tell her about this, and see what she’s going to say! Now, get out of here!” “OK, Aunt Rosa! OK! I’m sorry I bothered you.” There went my Bach books again! Afraid of losing them I went back to the antique store to see if they would hold them for me for a period of time if I put some money down. They said yes. I did. Now to find the rest!

At the corner near the high school there was a bookstore owned by the Martinez family. Maria Elena, the daughter, was a classmate of mine during the five years of school. Mrs. Martinez took a liking to me from the day I set foot in the store. Years later she said, reminiscing, that I looked “forlorn”—I’d say, probably scared to death of the new environment! I became a regular in her home, a social place for many students. Since they had a fine piano, it became a place of music making before and after classes. Mrs. Martinez became a second mother to me, a counselor and a mentor, and their home a second home. Her husband, a would-be professor with an incredible mind regarding any subject dealt with in high school, coached me for many of the exams I had to pass. He was a poet also and had written volumes. (I still have one of his manuscripts, which, many years later, he would give me, as a gift.) With this background it is no surprise that when I went to her explaining why I had to have those books of Bach’s music, the money to buy them was in my hand immediately. I had my Bach Orgelwerke!

Organ lessons

My parents provided money for basic things needed in high school, and that was all. They were totally “hands off” regarding my musical interests at that time. Did they even wonder why I was so crazy about the organ, an instrument so foreign to their experience? It was left to me to find the means to reach my goals and dreams, and they left me alone. 

Now was the time to check out the Escuela Superior de Organo. Dolly Morris introduced me to Maestro Hermes Forti one Saturday afternoon before classes. I watched (with envy) how people played Bach’s music on the Hammond organ. There were quite a few students that Saturday. I happened to see a practice schedule on a board with students’ names and took a quick look at it. At that moment I was hoping (probably against hope) to see my name there someday. I was so eager to learn! Dolly had told me about the monthly fee for the lessons. I knew for sure there was no way to find the money for that.

Feeling very awkward and embarrassed, I told Maestro Forti that I wanted to study organ but since I was still in high school and not working I had no financial resources. “Can you play something for me?” he asked. “I’ll try,” I responded, and sat at an organ totally new to me with a pedalboard, the type of which I had never seen and a manual touch that seemed odd. I stumbled through the “Little” Prelude and Fugue in C of Bach. He told to come next Saturday to begin lessons and wrote my name on the practice schedule. I had time assigned to me for my practice twice a week. I finally had what I needed to begin to work on my dream: Bach’s music, an organ, and a teacher!

To be continued.