First Presbyterian Church, Marietta, Georgia: Chancel Choir Holy Land Mission Tour

John BIshop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Personal settings

Not long ago Wendy set the wallpaper-screensaver option on her PC so it would scroll randomly through her files of photos. Her machine often sits on the desk in her home office, which is next to our bedroom, so as it lazes through her photos I can see a travelogue of the vacations we’ve taken, family holidays, special parties we’ve hosted. Because our daughter Meg lives in Greece, we’ve been there several times, Wendy many more times than I, so there are lots of photos from islands in the Aegean and Ionian Seas and ancient archeological sites. It’s fun to see them casually as I dress, pack and unpack suitcases, and move around the house.

Not to be left behind, I went to System Preferences/Desktop, then screensaver/iPhoto/Photos. I clicked “change picture (every minute),” “random order,” and “translucent menu bar” so I could keep working. Perfect. Worked like a charm. There’s a beautiful photo of our friend Michael by the shipwreck at the south end of Monhegan Island in Maine, there’s one of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, but oops, there’s one of the engraved data plate on the old Century motor of a huge organ blower. How romantic.

And there’s one of the interior of an expression box that I don’t recognize. I’m pretty sure it’s a Swell box (not Choir or Positiv) because there are a couple strings, Trumpets at sixteen, eight, and four, an Oboe, and Vox Humana.

I take hundreds of photos in the usual routine of my work, and my hard-drive says there are around 24,000 in files. Lots of them show beautiful places, lovely buildings, and spectacular organ cases, but most are intended to show details about the dozens of organs I visit every year. It’s not very good casual amusement, but it might be fun to spend a couple hours writing about what I see as random photos appear.

Here’s a photo of members of the Organ Clearing House staff loading a dumpster in front of a church on Central Park West in New York City. We’re a few blocks from the Dakota, the snazzy residential building where John Lennon lived, in front of which he was murdered, and where Yoko Ono still lives. Just across the street, immediately inside Central Park, is Strawberry Fields, the memorial to Lennon dedicated by Mayor Koch in 1985. It’s pouring rain, and some scrap-metal scavengers have shown up asking if they can take stuff from the dumpster. Sure, why not—so they load a couple dilapidated vans with galvanized windlines. There’s something poignant about discarding pipe organ parts. We don’t take it lightly, but there are some times when it’s best to give the heave-ho to material of poor quality that we feel doesn’t merit the effort of renovation.

George Taylor and Barbara Owen share a laugh in front of the organ built by David Tannenberg in 1800, restored by Taylor & Boody, and installed in a new recital hall at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Old Salem, North Carolina. Paula Locklair, director of the museum, is sharing the joke. This was taken during the dedication symposium several years ago. Peter Sykes played the dedicatory recital, which included the premiere of the commissioned work, Salem Sonata, by Paula’s husband Dan Locklair, composer-in-residence at neighboring Wake Forest University. This was a showcase restoration and I discussed it in detail at a recent conference in Montreal, where several colleagues and I were talking about the conundrums of restoration.

There’s a hair-raising catwalk across the top of the Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall at Yale University. You walk across just behind the façade pipes, occasionally bridging deep abysses and looking through the gaps between the pipes down into the vast auditorium. It’s one of hundreds of special views the organ-guys get that are difficult to describe and not for the faint of heart. It’s a little like the suspension bridges made of rope found in the Himalayas, strong enough to support a yak. There are thousands of wooden seats in Woolsey Hall, and this photo shows that quite a few have been replaced or refinished.

Lobster boats moored in Muscongus Bay off Medomak, Maine are bobbing in floating sea-ice. When we think of a difficult day at work in the organ chamber, we forget the challenging conditions in which other people work. As much as I love boats, I’d rather do just about anything in a pipe organ than spend a day hauling lobster pots on a rough wintry sea. It takes the myth out of the price of lobster. Please pass the butter.

During a recent trip to Bermuda, my colleague Amory Atkins and I completed the tonal finishing of a new pipe organ in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Hamilton. One afternoon after work we walked along Front Street, passing a huge cruise ship from the Holland America Line. The ship’s passengers were crowding all the stores, doing their best to part with their money during the time allotted. But lucky for the shops, we were to find out that we’d all have an extra day. Tropical Storm Maria came blasting through and the ports and airports were closed. I had to explain to Wendy that we needed to spend an additional unscheduled day on that little island.

In Boston, we live in a building that originally served as a warehouse for the Boston Naval Shipyard in the neighborhood known as the Charlestown Navy Yard. Our neighbor is the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship in the United States Navy. Keeping with naval tradition, the ship fires a gun at sunrise and sunset. Since it’s a residential neighborhood, here and here alone, the Navy observes a modified sunrise that occurs conveniently at eight a.m. A couple years ago, a family moved into a neighboring condo and was dismayed by the disturbance. They tried to start a neighborhood movement to get the Navy to stop firing the guns. The Navy didn’t budge. One of the historic buildings in the neighborhood is a ropewalk built in 1837, which supplied rope for the U.S. Navy until the shipyard closed in 1975. It’s more than 1,100 feet long inside. You can find videos on YouTube that show how rope was made in ropewalks—there’s one still operating in the U.K.

This summer we dismantled a tiny two-manual organ built in 1986 by Casavant for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Osterville, Massachusetts. This is on Cape Cod, about an hour-and-a-half from Boston—a beautiful and upscale vacation community where the high season is in the summer. Karen Crosby is the church’s energetic and effective music director, who took the choir on tour to England last year, and who brings such beautiful music to that little parish. The congregation has undertaken a significant rehabilitation of their building, which was originally built as a summer mission, and we have removed the organ to storage for safekeeping. Doesn’t look as though it will be back for Christmas because the building project is a little behind schedule.

Now there’s a big organ. There are two 32-foot ranks mounted horizontally along the back wall of the String Division in the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia: Contra Diaphone and Contra Gamba, both with 24-inch scale. Good heavens, that’s a big expression chamber! And there’s John Bishop standing casually in front of them wearing a terrible necktie and the ID badge of the AGO national convention. When I was a kid and didn’t know any better, I had the impression that the Wanamaker Organ was a freak show that existed only to be huge. When I was growing up in Boston, the tracker revival was in high gear, and new organs by Flentrop, Fisk, Andover, Noack, and Bozeman were everywhere. Why would anyone need more than 20 ranks to get their point across? More than 400 ranks, how decadent. Oh remember not the sins and offenses of my youth, but according to Thy mercy look Thou on me, O Lord!

Our friend and Wendy’s client Kenn Kaufmann is a brilliant naturalist with an unusual life story. He left home as a young teenager, with his parents’ blessing, setting out on a Big Year—criss-crossing the country in an attempt to set a record for sighting the most species of birds in twelve months. His memoir, Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand (Houghton-Mifflin, 1997, now available in paperback), is a lovely piece of writing describing this adventure, tracing the history of his teen-age romances, and his realization that it was more important to learn about the habits and lifestyles of the birds rather than accumulating the most sightings. He has since launched a series of outstanding field guides. He serves regularly as an instructor at an Audubon Camp on an island near our house in Maine, and most years he and his wife Kim spend a few days with us coming or going. Here’s Kenn photographing moths on our back porch. If you leave outdoor lights on all night you’ll attract dozens of species of moths, from little pink guys that look like bubble-gum stuck to the clapboards to the huge and dramatic Luna moths that hang out most of the day. Kenn and Kim have shown us that our neighborhood is exceptionally rich in biodiversity, adding greatly to our appreciation of the world around us. There is more to life than pipe organs!

One of the privileges of working in church buildings is to be surrounded by beautiful and inspiring architectural features. But I’ve serviced this little Hook & Hastings organ for 25 years, tuning twice a year as well as a couple of minor overhaul projects, and I can’t escape the notion that the light fixtures in the nave look like milking-machines.

In the old days when inspecting an organ in preparation for proposing a renovation, or for offering an organ for sale, I sat on the organ bench and laboriously wrote down the specifications, trying hard to get the spellings and accents right, and accounting for all the console controls. After the introduction of digital cameras, I realized I could get all that with a few photos. There are hundreds of photos in my machine of stop jambs, keyslips, pedalboards and toestuds, and coupler rails. It would be quite a quiz to see how many I could identify by sight alone. I didn’t recognize the last two I saw. I assume they’re neatly stored in folders that identify the organ. I hope so.

That was a large organ—an entire truckload of reservoirs and wind regulators. Funny how a small instrument can get all its wind from a single wedge-bellows. There must be 75 regulators in this truck. Last week we took out an old organ that had been powered by a five-horsepower Spencer Orgoblo. It took six guys to get it down the front steps of the church and into our truck. At the same time, we were helping the organbuilder get the components of the new organ into the gallery. Our guy Dean carried the blower for the new organ up the stairs on his shoulder.

Stephen and Lena Tharp work at the console of the Austin organ in Merrill Auditorium of City Hall in Portland, Maine. Stephen played a terrific recital there last summer and we grabbed a few days for a quiet visit before they returned to New York. This is the Kotzschmar Organ, named for Hermann Kotzschmar, a prominent musician in Portland who was sponsored by the father of publishing magnate Cyrus H.K. Curtis. (The H.K. stands for Hermann Kotzschmar—old man Curtis named his son for the admired musician!) After City Hall was destroyed in a spectacular fire that started by negligence in a fireworks factory and burned more than half the city, Cyrus Curtis offered to donate a concert organ to the City of Portland for installation in the new auditorium. 2012 brings the centennial of this venerable organ, and the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (a local not-for-profit corporation that supports and operates the organ) is announcing the centennial renovation of the organ. The Portland City Council has voted to extend a bond issue to provide more than a million dollars toward this project. During a choral concert in the auditorium on November 6, city officials and officers of FOKO announced the capital campaign that will fund the thorough renovation of the organ, effect repairs to the hall, endow the positions of Municipal Organist and Organ Curator, and support continuing exciting educational programs that FOKO offers to the community. How’s that for a city with 64,000 residents?

And there I am on the day of our wedding, wearing a snazzy white linen jacket and pink necktie—much better than the flowery job I was wearing in Philadelphia. Wendy and I were married at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newcastle, Maine in August of 2005—what a lucky day for me. St. Andrew’s is the first church building designed by Henry Vaughan. He was in his twenties, and the local legend has it that he painted the ceiling frescos himself. His last church building was the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.—some ascendancy. The church has a neat little organ by George Hutchings, and dear friends Stuart Forster and Michael Murray shared the bench for the wedding. This was just on the heels of the landmark decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and then Chief Justice Margaret Marshall allowing same-sex marriages, and Stuart and Michael were married two months later in a grand affair at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall. Organist Robert Lehman and the choir of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut (another Henry Vaughan building!) provided the music.

Early this past summer the Organ Clearing House rescued a marvelous organ by Ernest Skinner, built in 1911 for Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The organ had fallen into disrepair in the 1960s, and as organs like this were rapidly falling out of favor at that time, there was no effort made to repair it. It has 66 ranks, a four-manual bat-wing console, and it includes some of the landmark voices found only in such instruments, like a behemoth of a 32-foot Double Open Wood Diapason, and a high-pressure Tuba at sixteen, eight, and four—the sixteen-foot octave has wood resonators. The college intended to demolish the organ, but people in the music department spoke up, and Nelson Barden and I went to visit. At our suggestion, Williams College provided much of the funding to salvage the organ. This photo shows the Danger Asbestos enclosures in the auditorium, as contractors were deep in the complicated renovation of the building while we were dismantling the organ. It was a ballet among football players, all of us jockeying for space, complying with OSHA regulations, and astonishing the contractors with the bulk of the instrument as it emerged from the organ chamber.

Here’s Martin Pasi, organbuilder near Seattle, Washington, wearing a blue workshop apron and a huge smile. I was working in that area transporting material from Tacoma to storage on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, almost as tough a duty as this summer’s job in Bermuda, and I took time to participate in a Pipe Organ Encounter. This was a great group of teenagers, teachers, and enthusiasts visiting Martin’s shop to see an instrument under construction (if I remember right, it was the humdinger he built for the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Omaha) and a demonstration of organ-pipe-making. Martin is a wonderful pipe-maker, and he dazzled the group by how quickly and beautifully the two-foot-long pipes were formed in his hands. It was like watching him pull rabbits out of a hat.

Goodness, this could go on all night. I’m past the preferred number of words and I still have tens of thousands of photos to look through. As these photos flit past on my desktop, I reflect that this is a rich and exciting adventure. Thanks to all my family, friends, and colleagues who have been part of it.

Jay Zoller is organist at South Parish Congregational Church in Augusta, Maine, where he plays the church’s historic 1866 E. & G.G. Hook organ. He holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the School of Theology at Boston University. A retired designer for the Andover Organ Company, he currently designs for the Organ Clearing House and for David E. Wallace & Co. Pipe Organ Builders of Gorham, Maine. Zoller resides in Newcastle, Maine, with his wife Rachel. In addition to writing several articles about Heinz Wunderlich for The American Organist, Choir and Organ, and The Diapason, he has played in all-Wunderlich recitals in Hamburg, Germany in 1999, 2004, and 2009. His article, “Heinz Wunderlich at 90,” appeared in the April 2009 issue of The Diapason.

I  had never given much thought to organs or the organ culture in South Korea. My interests, along with, I suppose, those of many organists, lay in the direction of European composers. However, a recent trip to South Korea to visit family got me thinking about this subject, about which I knew nothing. The questions swirled around my head: What was the organ culture like in South Korea? Was it anything like our own? What kinds of organs were there in Korea? What did the organists play? Was there a South Korean style of organ composition? Do they play the same repertoire as we do? In this age of instant communication, I imagined that they must play Bach and Mendelssohn, just as we do, but how was I to know for sure?

Our visit was primarily centered in and around Daejeon, a city of about two million people. With my lack of knowledge of the Korean language, I would have gotten nowhere in my quest without the help of Rosalie Bowker, who is Board Chair at the Daejeon Christian International School, an organist herself, and a missionary to South Korea for over forty years. Her help in taking me to see organs, introducing me to Korean organists, and finding resources for me, was invaluable.

I make no claim that this report is complete, since my discoveries center around Daejeon. I hope that someone more knowledgeable will write about the nation as a whole.

A brief history of Korea

Korea is the only nation in the world where Christianity first took root without priests or missionaries, but solely as a result of the written word. Bibles, which had been translated into Chinese by Jesuits, were brought back by a Korean scholar on a diplomatic trip to Beijing in 1621. Korea has had a long friendship with China, which has lasted for centuries. As a big brother to Korea, China has had a profound influence on Koreans. However, Koreans transformed those influences into their own distinctive advances in fields such as literature, art, ceramics, printing, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, and astrology. As an example, Koreans invented metal moveable type in 1230, 200 years before Gutenberg. 

Geography has played an important role in Korean history. This small mountainous country sits in a strategic area surrounded by the larger and more powerful countries of China, Japan, and Russia. During its two thousand years of recorded history, Korea has suffered nine hundred invasions and five periods of foreign occupation. Its relationship with China has seen Korean kings embracing Chinese culture and receiving some protection in return for tribute to the Chinese Emperor.

When Japan was unified in the 16th century, its leader Hideyoshi Toyotomi attacked Korea as a first phase of an invasion of the Chinese mainland. This war, which left the country devastated, resulted in keeping relations acrimonious. Korea attempted to stay isolated until western influences in opening the country to trade during the 19th century left Korea vulnerable. In 1875 Japan forced exclusive trade with Korea and then flooded Japanese advisers and military personnel into the country. 

In 1905, America and Britain felt that Japanese control over Korea would prevent Russian expansion, and so Theodore Roosevelt traded Korea’s independence for U.S. control over the Philippines. The Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War, made Korea a Japanese protectorate. The Japanese then forced, despite protests and student uprisings, a Protectorate Treaty, which was followed in 1910 by a forced Treaty of Annexation, which made Korea a Japanese colony. The Koreans were treated brutally until the Japanese surrender after World War II.

The end of World War II brought about the arbitrary division of the country, by the West, at the 38th parallel. This unfortunate afterthought by the major powers in the post-war period has proven to be the one blunder that has caused inordinate trouble for the North and the South as they have grappled for advantage and supremacy over each other. 

A Korean guerrilla commander, Kim Il Sung, chosen by the Soviet Union to head its regime in the North, chose, with Soviet and Chinese backing, to invade the South and unite the country under communist rule. This conflict, in a fear of communist menace, drew in U.N. and U.S. troops and savage fighting. The Korean War claimed a huge number of casualties and devastated both halves of a country that had only just begun to recover from four decades of Japanese occupation. When the fighting finally stopped in July 1953, the front line was virtually at the 38th parallel, close to where it had all begun. A demilitarized zone was created, which has remained in place to this day. The North became a dictatorship under the thumb of Kim Il Sung and later his son, Kim Jong Il, and the country closed off from the rest of the world.

In the South, anti-communist dictatorships gradually gave way to democratic reform and growing trade with the world. Under President Park Chung Hee, conglomerates were formed, which made South Korea a major economic power. It is in this period of economic growth and democratic reform that our organ story begins.

Organ culture

As one might imagine after the widespread destruction during the Korean War, organs were not a priority and as a result were slow in coming. Gradually, however, South Koreans who had an interest in music began coming to the United States and to Europe for training. Those interested in studying the organ concentrated primarily on the United States and Germany, countries that offered organ curricula and good instruments to play. 

As time went on, students who returned to South Korea wanted similar instruments to play at home and often were able to have their church buy an organ from a builder that they had become acquainted with during their studies. Since there were no Korean organbuilders, they imported organs from the United States and Germany. Seoul, South Korea’s largest city, has the greatest number of pipe organs in the country. Wicks began the Seoul imports, followed by such builders as Brombaugh, Flentrop, Schuke, Rieger-Kloss, Ruffatti, Beckerath, Karl Wilhelm, Jäger & Brommer, Bosch, Pels & Van Leeuwen, Klais, and many others. The large six-manual Klais in the concert hall is a jewel in the collection, with its case designed after the traditional Korean plucked musical instrument, the “Komungo,” giving the effect of several instruments hanging from the wall. It boasts as well 40 French bells and 32 Korean bells in addition to 270 Spanish trumpets. The organ looks very impressive, although I have only seen it in pictures. We mustn’t forget the new Fisk organ installed in 2010 at Incheon, about twenty miles west of Seoul. 

There is an interesting story about the Klais in the concert hall. When it was new, apparently the organist at the time had the mistaken impression that it didn’t need regular attention for maintenance and tuning. The organ became almost unplayable before a new professor took over and had some much-needed maintenance done on it. There are a few German-trained organ technicians in the country who take care of the pipe organs, one of whom is the husband of an organist I will mention later.

Organs in Daejeon

Although churches seem to be located everywhere, Daejeon contains only five pipe organs. Many churches have electronic imitations and most have praise bands to accompany worship. Even churches with pipe organs often have a band as well. The organs include Rieger-Kloss, Oberlinger, Flentrop, Speith, and  Paul Fritts. 

We met Eunyoung Kim at the Baptist Church where she is organist. The church contains an organ built by Speith-Orgelbau of Reitberg, Germany. Although a fine tracker instrument, it is situated in an acoustically dry room. Dr. Kim played the last movement of the first Mendelssohn Sonata for me—it was exquisitely played, but the sound was almost sucked into the walls. This led us to a discussion of acoustics in South Korean churches. This is a subject too large to go into here, but suffice it to say that with carpeting all over and acoustical tile even in the rear of the organ there is no resonance at all. Her comment was that the Korean idea of acoustics is figuring out how many speakers a room needs. It is a situation that organists are trying to correct.

After a delicious lunch at a Korean restaurant recommended by Dr. Kim, she took us to see the organs at Southern Baptist University, where she is the organ professor. Unfortunately, a class was meeting in the auditorium, so we were unable to see that organ, but in a smaller, happily much more resonant room is an organ built by Paul Fritts. The lower manual contained a Hohlflöte 8′, Principal 4′, Quint/Cornet, and Octav 2′. The upper manual had Quintadena 8′, Spielflöte 4′, Gemshorn 2′, and Dulcian 8′. A Subbass 16′ and Gedackt 8′ rounded out the pedal division. Couplers were I/Pedal, II/Pedal, and II/I, and there was also a tremulant. I played the first movement of the Mendelssohn A-major Sonata and it had a nice effect. It is a delightful practice organ and often does double duty for concerts.

Eunyoung Kim’s husband is one of South Korea’s German-trained organ technicians, and I was sorry that I did not get to meet him as well. Surprisingly, Eunyoung Kim was working on a recital entitled “The Organ Music of America since 1950,” which she played after our trip was over. It consisted of music of David Arcus (b. 1958), Memorial Festival Overture and Ancient Wonders; John Behnke (b. 1953), Three Global Songs; Derek Bermel (b. 1967), Two Songs from Nandom; and David Conte (b. 1955), Pastorale and Toccata. 

On another day, Rosalie Bowker took my wife Rachel and me to Hyechon University to meet Mrs. Min Jin O, who is the university organist and who, when we met her, was preparing four students for a required recital. I asked if they would mind playing their prepared music for us and they gave us a remarkable program all played from memory. One girl played the Langlais Epilogue for Pedal Solo. A young man, who was autistic, had none of his usual symptoms when he was playing. We were impressed by every one of them. Their playing had confidence and vigor even without music in front of them.

The organ was built by Oberlinger and was located in a large room that looked as though it served for concerts as well as for worship. The acoustics here were much better than what we had heard previously. 

Organ miscellanies

Several universities in South Korea offer doctoral degrees in organ, so that an organ student need not travel to a different country to study. However, many do decide to work on degrees beyond their own borders. I got the impression that the two favorite places were Germany and the United States, although not limited to those. Dr. Kim remarked that you could often tell where they studied by the kind of repertoire they played. Of those students who choose to return to South Korea, there is a desire to have the kinds of organs they were exposed to where they studied and a desire for improved acoustics. As more organs are imported, it is a great opportunity to spread the gospel of better acoustics. The Koreans want the best of what the world has to offer and I don’t believe it will be long before churches begin to hear the difference that good acoustics can make.

There is a Korean Association of Organists that is active in South Korea. It sponsors seminars, festivals, and masterclasses as well as hosting visiting organists from other countries, much like the AGO does in the U.S. Their journal, which contains the usual news about organs and meetings, also publishes new music written by Korean composers. I was able to discover several new pieces, many centered around hymn tunes, but one composer in particular, Ju-Hwan Yu, had written a Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H in 2005, which I found fascinating and which I played in two recitals earlier this year. As in any other country these days, Korean organ recitalists play music of many countries and different time periods.

Postscript

I very much enjoyed my visit to South Korea and only wish that it could have been much longer. I am attempting this small article in hopes that someone with much more knowledge of Korea and its organ music might take up where I have left off and fill in many more details. It is an organ culture that is growing and trying hard to catch up with the West. 

I want to thank Dr. Rosalie Bowker, organist, musician, missionary, and Board Chair of the Daejeon Christian International School, without whose help none of this would have been possible. I also want to thank Dr. Eunyoung Kim and Mrs. Min Jin O, who provided information and visits to notable Daejeon organs. n

Bibliography

Breen, Michael. The Koreans—Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies. Orion Business Books, 1998. 

Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas, A Contemporary History. Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2001. 

Becker, Jasper. Rogue Regime—Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford University Press, 2005. 

Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. Hyperion Books, 2007.

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. Alan Knight has been music director of Ss. Simon and Jude Church in Westland, Michigan, for the past 11 years, during which time he earned the D.M.A. in organ performance at the University of Michigan under James Kibbie. There, he did research into Renaissance methods of organ improvisation and performed contemporary works of Rorem, Messiaen, Schroeder, and Kenton Coe. He has served as sub-dean of the Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, organized new music festivals, and contributed to this year’s successful POE. He coaches and writes reviews freelance and has recently written a memorial acclamation for the new English liturgical texts. Photo credit: Marijim Thoene, unless indicated otherwise.

With unflagging dedication, enthusiasm, and vision, Marilyn Mason planned and organized the 51st Organ Conference at the University of Michigan. European guest artists included Jaroslav Tůma, interpreter of Czech music; Almut Rössler, artist, scholar, and teacher of Olivier Messiaen; and Helga Schauerte, interpreter and scholar of Jehan Alain. It was exhilarating to hear these three artists perform, as well to hear them instruct students and lecture. Many other outstanding performers and scholars participated in the conference, which featured the music of Franz Liszt, Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Alan Hovhaness, and others. The overarching theme of the conference was celebration—of the bicentennial anniversary of Liszt’s birth and the centennial anniversary of the births of Jehan Alain and Alan Hovhaness.  

Sunday, October 2, Hill Auditorium

The opening concerts were played in Hill Auditorium on the Frieze Memorial Organ. Joseph Balistreri, student of James Kibbie, opened the conference, with a memorized master’s degree recital that featured Bach’s Fantasia et Fuga in g-moll, BWV 542, Alain’s Aria, Duruflé’s Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain, and Widor’s Symphonie Romane. His playing reflected an impressive technique and a bristling enthusiasm for each work, especially the Symphonie Romane, which he introduced by singing the chant, Haec dies (after the first reading on Easter Sunday), upon which the work is based. 

The evening recital was played by Timothy Tikker, a doctoral student of Marilyn Mason. His all-Liszt program included Präludium und Fuge über
B-A-C-H, S. 260 (1885/1870), two meditative pieces from Consolations, S. 172 (Adagio IV, transcribed by Liszt, and Adagio V, transcribed by A.W. Gottschlag), Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, S. 180, and Fantasie und Fuge über den Choral ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’, S. 259 (1850), Liszt’s first organ piece. Tikker’s careful preparation of these pieces was apparent, as was his emotional investment. His thoughtful comments described Liszt’s stages of grief in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, S. 180, his anger and final resignation and acceptance of God’s will expressed in the Bach chorale, Whatever God Ordains Is Right. Tikker noted that the breakdown in western tonality began with Liszt’s Weinen, Klagen.

Monday, October 3,

Blanche Anderson Moore Hall

The day began with Czech organist Jaroslav Tůma, who presented a predominantly Czech program, along with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, and O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde gross, BWV 622. It was a special gift to be introduced to the repertoire of Bohuslav Matej Cernohorsky, Josef Ferdinand Norbert Seger, Jan Křtitel Kuchař, Jan Vojtech Maxant, and Anonymous from Moravia by such an exuberant artist who made us want to dance. Tůma exploited every possible color on the Fisk organ. His pungent registrations and light touch were especially enjoyed in the eleven movements of Suite of Dances from the Region of Haná by an eighteenth-century anonymous Moravian composer. The reeds, cornet, and flutes shimmered in excited dialogues. Tůma ended his recital with Suite for Clavier (Organ, Harpsichord or Clavichord) by Maxant—a piece of irrepressible circus joy, filled with foot-tapping waltzes and calliopes. 

1:30 pm First Congregational Church

German musicologist and organist Susanne Diederich, who has examined over 150 French Classical organs in situ, lectured on “The Classical French Organ and its Music 1660–1719.” Her handout included a succinct summary of the specifications of an R. and J. Clicquot organ dated 1690/1794 as well as a cabinet organ dated 1671 by Etienne Enocq; tables listing the composition of mixtures for a small and large instrument; a table listing families of stops, the combination of ranks involved, and corresponding French title of the composition; and D’Anglebert’s table of ornaments, which J. S. Bach copied. 

Registration and ornamentation of the French Classical School were demonstrated on the Karl Wilhelm organ by Kipp Cortez, a first-year organ student of Marilyn Mason, and Christopher Urbiel, D.M.A., former Mason student and music minister at St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Both performers played with conviction and energy. Cortez played Plein jeu Continu du 7e ton by Jacques Boyvin, Kyrie from Messe du 2me Ton by G.G. Nivers, and Récit tendre from Messe du 8me ton by Gaspard Corrette. Urbiel played Fugue from Veni Creator by de Grigny, Tierce en Taille by Boyvin, and Dialogue in D Minor by Marchand.

3:15 pm Hill Auditorium

Jaroslav Tůma, with Karel Paukert acting as translator and general bon vivant, offered a masterclass in improvisation. Performers included Marcia Heirman (former student of Marilyn Mason), Joseph Balistreri, and Colin Knapp (students of James Kibbie). Tůma suggested experimenting with these techniques in developing a theme: repetition, retrograde, interval expansion, keeping the direction the same; strong rhythmic underpinning; meter change; ABA form; pedal ostinato; skeletal harmony for accompaniment or a regular scale; drone. 

4:15 pm Hill Auditorium

A recital of the music of Jehan Alain was played masterfully by students of James Kibbie. Professor Kibbie made this music especially poignant by prefacing each piece with an explanation of the piece, or reading from Alain’s diary. Each student clearly felt great empathy with Alain’s music. The recitalists and works included: Andrew Lang, Première Fantaisie; John Woolsey, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin; Benjamin Woolsey, Fantasmagorie; Joseph Balistreri, Aria; Colin Knapp, Deux danses à Agni Yavishta; Monte Thomas, Choral dorien; Matthew Kim, Variations sur Lucis Creator; Richard Newman, Deuils from Trois danses; Daniel Mikat (organist) and Sara B. Mikat (soprano), Vocalise dorienne/Ave Maria. A recording of Alain’s music by Prof. Kibbie’s students is available on the U of M website, .

8 pm Hill Auditorium

It is a great privilege to hear Almut Rössler play an all-Messiaen recital. Her connection to Ann Arbor began in 1974, when both she and Marilyn Mason met as judges at the Chartres Organ Competition. In a very quiet voice, Prof. Rössler spoke about the evolution of Messiaen’s style, saying that he considered the Ascension Suite to be in his “old style” and that his true style did not begin until his Nativity Suite. He began his Easter cycle, Les Corps Glorieux, immediately before World War II. In it is the enigmatic vision of what Prof. Rössler calls “the resurrection of the successors of Christ.” She gave a brief analysis of each of the seven movements. Her assistant, Nancy Poland, a D.M.A. graduate of Michigan and former student of Marilyn Mason, read the text accompanying each work. Included here is the text that accompanies the seven movements of Les Corps Glorieux (1939), and a brief synopsis of Prof. Rössler’s analysis:

1. The Subtlety of Glorified Bodies. “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44). “For they are as angels of God in heaven” (Matt. 22:30).

A.R.: “The music is totally unaccompanied monody. It is played in alternation on three different cornet stops of varying volume.” 

2. The Waters of Grace. “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water” (Rev. 7:17).

A.R.: “The strangely ‘fluid’ character of the music is achieved in two ways—by polymodality and registration.”

3. The Angel of Incense. “And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand” (Rev. 8:4). 

A.R.: “A monodic main theme in the style of certain Hindu ragas played on clarinet and nazard.”

4. The Battle between Death and Life. “Death and life have been engaged in one stultifying battle; the Author of life after being dead lives and reigns. He has said: ‘My Father, I am revived, and I am again with you’” (Missal, Sequence and Introit of Easter).  

A.R.: “Two armies clash in battle, represented by big chords, the theme of death begins . . . ”   

5. The Power and Agility of Glorified Bodies. “It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power” (I Cor. 15: 43).

A.R.: “The ability to pass through walls and traverse space with the speed of lightning is conveyed in music of powerful vitality. Vehement and robust are the resurrected, agile and strong. This section is monodic.” 

6. The Joy and Radiance of Glorified Bodies. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43).

A.R.: “Radiance or splendor is the first attribute of glorified bodies, each of which is the source of its own light and its own individual luster, which St. Paul explains in a symbolical way when he says: ‘For one star differeth from another star in glory.’ These differences in degrees of radiance are mirrored in the shifting tone-colors.”

7. The Mystery of the Holy Trinity. “Almighty God, who with the only-begotten Son and with the Holy Ghost art one God not in the unity of one person but in three persons of one substance” (Preface for Trinity Sunday).

A.R.: “This entire section is devoted to the number 3. It is three-voiced, its form is tripartite, each of the three main subdivisions being in itself in three parts. The middle voice (the Son) has the straightforward tonal color of the 8′ flute; the other two (the Father and the Holy Ghost) mix the 16′ and 32′ with the 2′, in other words the very lowest with the very highest. The whole piece is in a remote, blurred pp, against which the middle voice stands out: by his incarnation the Son alone came visibly close to us.”

Also included in the program were Chants d’Oiseaux (IV, Livre d’orgue, 1951), and VI from Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité (1969), the Offertory for Epiphany, based on the text, “In the word was life and the life was the light” (John 1:4). It was a rare privilege to hear Almut Rössler, who has devoted her life to this music, present a profound expression of Messiaen’s sacred beliefs.

Tuesday, October 4, Hill Auditorium

At 9:30 am, Helga Schauerte’s lecture, “Jehan Alain: A Life in Three Dances,” reflected her life’s commitment to the study of Alain’s organ music. She was drawn to his music the first time she heard it—she had never heard anything so free. In 1983 Ms. Schauerte wrote the first English and German biographies of Alain. In 1990 Motette released her 1989 recordings of Alain’s complete organ works. The 1990 CDs were reissued in 2004 and include the addition of newly discovered recordings of Jehan Alain playing at the Temple in the Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth in Paris. Schauerte’s years of research, which led her to discover unknown manuscripts, and rugged determination culminated this year in Bärenreiter’s publication of her edition of Alain’s organ work in three volumes.

Schauerte observed that Alain’s life was mirrored in his masterwork, Trois Danses—Joies (Joy), Deuils (Mourning), and Luttes (Struggles). His youth was reflected in Joies; his grief on the death of his 23-year-old sister, Odile, who died in a mountain-climbing accident while protecting her younger brother Olivier, in Deuils; and his life in World War II as a soldier volunteering for risky missions in Luttes. Schauerte said Alain had a premonition of his tragic death, this “coincidencia” he expressed in his music, drawing, and poetry, and he, like Mozart and Schubert, crystallized his whole life’s work within a short period of time. She illustrated biographical details of his life with photographs of Alain’s parents; his childhood home; himself as a child, music student, mountain climber, and soldier; his siblings; his wife and three children; and the place where he was killed in action in Saumur. These were powerful images, filled with the beauty and exuberance of a life ended too soon. Schauerte also showed some of Alain’s whimsical drawings and read from his poetry and diary, offering intimate glimpses into his personality. She said he could be lively and wild one minute and contemplative the next. 

Schauerte stated that among her discoveries are findings from 14 autographed copies of Alain’s work owned  by Lola Bluhm and Alain’s daughter, and they are included in the new edition.  She noted that the only pieces with Alain’s own metronome markings are the Intermezzo and Suite. 

11:00 am Hill Auditorium

In Almut Rössler’s masterclass, Joshua Boyd, a freshman student of Marilyn Mason, played The Celestial Banquet. Prof. Rössler pointed out that these were early sounds for Messiaen—drops of the blood of Christ. In abbreviated form, I include her comments, which are invaluable to anyone playing Messiaen: 

The sound of water drops is achieved not by legato playing, but by movement of the leg straight down into the pedal with a sharp release. In the second edition he uses in the pedal registration 4, 22⁄3, 2, 13⁄5, a kind of cornet without a fundamental. Messiaen can be played on a North German Baroque organ, English and American organs; one must know what is adequate, what is the character, atmosphere, and emotional expression of the work. One must know the inner idea and how to achieve it. The second edition, 1960, is the most important one. Pay attention to slurs; some end at the end of the line, others go to the next line.  Always follow the slurs. Also pay attention to thumb glissandos.  

1:30 pm Hill Auditorium 

With her characteristic light touch Marilyn Mason, “the maker of organists” for over a half a century, shared her good luck “secret” with us. She said after one of her recitals at Riverside a woman congratulated her, saying that she was envious of her being so lucky to play so well. Prof. Mason replied, “Yes, and the more I practice, the luckier I get.” She continued, saying, “I always tell my students when they feel like giving up, that’s the time they need to really practice. Never give up.” She then introduced four of her former students who had received the D.M.A. and who proceeded to demonstrate that she’s right! Each of them played with dazzling technique, assurance, and passion. The performers, dates of their degrees, and their pieces follow: Shin-Ae Chun (2006), Prelude and Fugue on the name of A.L.A.I.N., Duruflé; Joseph Galema (1982), Allegro deciso from Evocation, op. 37, Dupré; Seth Nelson (2006), Troisième Choral en la mineur, Franck; and Andrew Meagher (2010), Prelude and Fugue, Jerry Bilik (b. 1933). This was the premiere performance of Bilik’s work, which was commissioned by and dedicated to Marilyn Mason. It features the Michigan fight song, Hail to the Victors (!)—the composer’s grin was as big as ours. 

3 pm Hill Auditorium

Peggy Kelley Reinburg, recitalist and Alain scholar, presented an informative lecture, “The Liturgical Potential in Selected Organ and Piano Compositions of Jehan Ariste Alain.” She demonstrated how Alain was influenced by the colors of the French Classical School by playing Clérambault’s Suite du Deuxième Ton. Her description of her visit to the Abbey where Alain played and composed his Postlude pour les Complies allowed us to absorb its stillness and peace. She quoted from his letter, “The abbey organ (Abbaye de Valloires) was beautiful especially after 9 pm,” and commented that this was his first composition written for organ. She suggested that the following pieces be used in a liturgical setting: (organ) Postlude pour les Complies, Choral Dorien, Ballade en mode Phrygien, Berceuse sur deux notes qui cornent, Le jardin suspendu; (piano) Choral—Seigneur, donne-nous la paix eternelle, Romance, Nocturne, Suite Façile—Comme une barcarolle, and Suite Monodique. Reinburg’s elegant performance of these meditative and serene pieces offered convincing support for her argument.

8 pm Hill Auditorium

Helga Schauerte’s years of researching Alain’s life and music were abundantly apparent in her recital. Not only was she at one with his music, breathing into it a deeply personal interpretation, but by playing two of Langlais’ pieces—one written in his memory and one dedicated to him—presented Alain the man, the self-sacrificing citizen. Included in her recital was Langlais’ Chant héröique, op. 40, no. 4, inscribed, “To the memory of Jehan Alain, fallen for France as a hero in the Defense of Saumur, June 1940,” and his Resurrection, op. 250, no. 4, inscribed, “dedicated to Jehan Alain.” Of all the Alain repertoire in the recital, which included Fantaisies nos. 1 and 2, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin, Deux Danses à Agni Yavishta, Fantasmagorie, Litanies, and Trois Danses, for me it was in the Trois Danses that Alain’s spirit seemed to dance and leap. One of Alain’s daughters has thanked Schauerte for bringing his music to life, saying that her father lived on because of her. We all say thank you, Helga Schauerte!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

9:30 am Hill Auditorium Mezzanine

Damin Spritzer shared her extensive research on René Louis Becker, a compilation of many published works as well as original manuscripts. As an Alsatian-born and educated musician and organist, Becker seems to have fit well into the early 20th-century American scene, first joining the faculty of his brothers’ music conservatory in St. Louis, Missouri, and then in a series of church positions in Illinois and Michigan, including his appointment as first organist of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit, Michigan. Spritzer is interested in studying the various organs of Becker’s experience, both in America and in Alsace, as a factor in shaping his organ compositions. It is not always possible to acquire information on these organs. Spritzer suggests his three organ sonatas, which are extended works, as a starting point to appreciate René Becker’s music. 

There are several choral works of Becker’s as well. Well-respected by his contemporaries such as Alexander Schreiner, Albert Riemenschneider, and others, Becker was one of the major organ figures of his day in America, though now largely forgotten and left to the past, even in the churches where he had ministered. However, renewed interest is beginning to flower with new recordings and publications. Becker’s works are not completely catalogued, partly due to discrepancies in opus numbers of works published in his lifetime and those in original manuscripts. Spritzer related that the selection of René Becker for research was suggested by Michael Barone. In this mammoth research task, the descendants of René Becker have lent their assistance. They were present for the lecture. 

10:30 am Hill Auditorium

Almut Rössler resumed the masterclass begun the day before on the stage of Hill Auditorium. With Nancy Deacon (Les Bergers) and Kipp Cortez (Le Verbe), she stressed counting the subdivisions of the beat to make the longer notes precise and the rhythmic texture secure as written. “‘Espresif’ does not mean ‘free’” was one of her comments. Also noteworthy was not breathing and lifting between phrases if there are no phrase marks (slurs) indicated. Always play a perfect legato with “old-fashioned” finger substitutions (from the methods of Dupré and Gleason) as well as the thumb glissando. All-important is locating the musical symbols and depictions and playing them according to their own nature, both by the manner of playing and in the registration. One must understand the titles and subtitles to execute the meaning and color of the piece, which is almost always objective. 

No matter who is on the bench in a Rössler masterclass, it is always a rewarding experience to receive her teaching, benefit from her inspiring musicianship, and to upgrade one’s awareness of Olivier Messiaen’s music, owing to her 20 years of close association and study with him. 

12:15 pm School of Public Health, Community Lounge

Brandon D. Spence performed for the audience of the Community Lounge, where those on Central Campus can enjoy an organ recital in the “Brown Bag” lunch recital series at the School of Public Health on the Létourneau organ. Included on his memorized program were Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731, Bach; Two Meditations, Ulysses Kay; Fuga C-Dur, BuxWV 174, and Praeludium und Fuga g-moll, BuxWV 149, Buxtehude. Spence gave helpful comments on each piece before playing.

1:30 pm Hill Auditorium

Marijim Thoene presented an in-depth and authoritative lecture/recital of Alan Hovhaness’s eight organ works, indicating which are unpublished, as well as the published works (C. F. Peters and Fujihara Music Co., Seattle, Washington). Hovhaness is perhaps known more for his orchestral (Mysterious Mountain) and choral (Magnificat) music more than for his organ works. Discouraged by the criticisms of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland of his Symphony in 1943, Hovhaness took the advice of the Greek psychic and mystic painter Hermon
di Giovanno, who persuaded him to study the music of his Armenian ancestors. Hovhaness then became organist for St. James Armenian Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. There he studied his Armenian musical heritage, which was not passed down to him through his family. Thoene noted his “turn toward the East” in musical language and played a recording of the beginning of the Divine (Armenian) Liturgy as well as a few notes on the sho instrument, a handheld, Japanese pipe organ of ancient Chinese origin. Hovhaness strove to incorporate the musical idiom of Eastern peoples into his compositional style and make their modalities his own. 

Thoene performed Organ Sonata No. 2, Invisible Sun, op. 385, Ms.; three pieces from Sanahin Partita for Organ, op. 69: 2. Estampie, 4. First Whirling, and 7. Apparition in the Sky; Hermit Thrush (Sonata No. 3, op. 424); and her own commission, Habakkuk, op. 434 (1995), which is Hovhaness’s last organ work (1995). In this piece, Hovhaness was asked to reflect on Habakkuk 3:17–19: 

Even though the fig trees are all destroyed, and there is neither blossom left nor fruit; and though the olive crops all fail, and the fields lie barren; even if the flocks die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will be happy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He will give me the speed of a deer and bring me safely over the mountains. 

Thoene performed this stirring work in an exultant manner. Hovhaness created a new harmonic language in this last organ piece to express both the despair of the prophet and of the triumph of his enduring faith. Thanks to Thoene, this piece exists.

2:30 pm Hill Auditorium Mezzanine

Michael Barone celebrated other composers with anniversaries aside from those featured on the conference. Playing recordings of at least two examples each as well as some other discs of interest, Barone offered a very humorous journey from names such as Georg Boehm, Louis Couperin, William Boyer, Jan Koetsier, Nino Rota, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, Enrico Bossi, Gustav Mahler, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Carrie Jacobs-Bond. In addition, the radio exponent of the pipe organ made a case for Franz Liszt’s influence on music in general and organ music being more extensive than commonly thought. Liszt envisioned the organ beyond a church instrument, giving an influential “push” for the organ in the music world. As inventor of the tone poem, he took the organ (as well as the piano) into the expression of emotional extremes. Several examples of Liszt’s smaller, meditative works intended for private reflection were played, showing that his output of organ music goes well beyond the “big pieces.”

8:00 pm Hill Auditorium

Gregory Hand completed the conference, sharing his project of recording the entire corpus of William Bolcom’s Gospel Preludes. He performed Preludes 1–6 (Books I and II) with intermission, followed by Preludes 7–12 (Books III and IV) in Hill Auditorium. Adding to the delight of this performance was the presence of the composer.

This conference was a mind-stretcher in organ literature. Each of the composers—Liszt, Alain, and Hovhaness—created a special musical language of their own. Additionally, their spirituality was wedded with their musicality, often taking on a very personal expression. Thus, a huge panorama of literature, much of it from our time, was offered to the conference participants for possible exploration. At the same time, the conference was a huge dose of spiritual music of a theological bent, from the Gospel Preludes of William Bolcom to the piano pieces of Jehan Alain to Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux to Langlais’ Resurrection to Hovhaness’s Habbakuk and many others—attendees took in much inspiration and food for thought. Thanks to Marilyn Mason, the presenters, and the attendees for another dynamic educational event for organ music at the University of Michigan.

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

A world unto itself

In July 2010, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal was working on a story in Washington, D.C., when she noticed a large group of people milling about on the front lawn of a church. Had it been a Sunday, it might not have attracted her attention, but this was a weekday morning, and the group was wearing nametags and sporting tote bags, a scene she recognized from countless conventions and trade shows. Her curiosity was piqued and she walked up to the group to ask what they were about.

You guessed it—it was the national convention of the American Guild of Organists, and the conventioneers were hanging about, waiting for the buses that would whisk them off to the next venue. The reporter was fascinated by having run into a group of devoted enthusiastic people involved in a world she had never thought about. Of course, there are pipe organs lurking in the balconies of thousands of churches, but who would have thought about the people who would have put them there, who would play them, let alone study or celebrate them.  

The reporter was Jennifer Levitz, who works from the WSJ offices in Boston. She called me in mid-August, telling me of her encounter with “our crowd” in Washington, saying that someone in that group had given her my name, and that she planned to write an article for the paper about current trends in church music as they relate to the pipe organ.

I was flattered by her interest and we talked on the phone for quite a while, ending the conversation by making plans to meet so she could interview me. We met in a coffee shop in Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace (that grand example of 1970s Urban Renewal, celebrated at the time as the revitalization of a derelict neighborhood, where today unwitting tourists are privileged by the opportunity to buy t-shirts and baseball caps festooned with lobsters—colloquially misspelled as lobstahs—and the logo from Cheers) and talked about the pipe organ for an hour-and-a-half. During the conversation, I mentioned that I was going that afternoon to visit a closed church building in neighboring Cambridge, where we were working on the sale of an Aeolian-Skinner organ. She asked if she could come along.

Is renewal another word 

for destruction?

The Organ Clearing House was founded in 1961—like our neighbor C.B. Fisk, Inc., this is our fiftieth year—the time at which urban renewal was gaining momentum, and the construction of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System was in full swing. There’s no question that those highways were a stupendous improvement to the country’s transportation system (inspired by the German Autobahn, which so impressed General Eisenhower as a strategic military asset), but the clearing of the huge swaths necessary for highway rights-of-way caused the destruction of hundreds of neighborhoods, including homes, businesses, schools, and churches, along with their pipe organs. I’ve referred to the Organ Clearing House as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Pipe Organ Rescue Movement (DDEMPORM). OCH founder Alan Laufman was among the founders of the Organ Historical Society (which was established in 1956—the year of my birth and the death of
G. Donald Harrison, fifty-nine days apart) and an early leader in the renewed appreciation of America’s nineteenth- and early twentieth-century heritage of organbuilding. The rapid and rampant destruction of venerable church buildings and their contents alarmed Laufman and his peers, leading to the inception of the work we now continue.

It’s easy to bewail the destruction of any great building. Candidly now, can New York’s Madison Square Garden be considered a cultural improvement over McKim, Mead, & White’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece that was Pennsylvania Station? And while anyone who’s visited New York City can appreciate the value and necessity of parking garages, that which replaced St. Alphonsus Church (310 West Broadway near Canal Street, the original home of E. & G.G. Hook’s Opus 576, built in 1871 and now located in St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut) can hardly be considered an improvement.

But here’s where the issue gets complicated. I am not in the thrall of professional hockey and basketball, I am not interested in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show (though I loved the movie Best in Show), and it’s a long time since I’ve been to the circus, so at the risk of offending those who feel differently, I freely state my opinion that the construction of Madison Square Garden was not a worthy reason for the destruction of Penn Station. 

St. Alphonsus Church is another story. It’s a terrible shame for such a beautiful edifice to be razed, whatever the reason, and it must have been heartbreaking for the parishioners, clergy, and musicians who worshipped there and loved the place. But the hard fact is that hundreds, dare I say thousands, of church buildings have become redundant—not only in the United States but throughout Europe as well. When such a building is no longer useful, no amount of sentiment or nostalgia will refund its value or usefulness.

When the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston (home to a large organ by Hook & Hastings, which is one of America’s finest instruments) was closing, a group of local organists and organ-lovers gathered around, and one friend suggested it should be made into a concert hall. A lovely thought, but if the church is being closed because two million dollars of deferred maintenance was coming due and the frightful cost of heating the place was the death knell, how would we ever fund its transformation into a concert hall? Thankfully, the organ has been dismantled and stored, but this is especially poignant for us—I’ll not forget singing “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended” at Alan Laufman’s funeral in that building in early 2001.

§

My work with the Organ Clearing House makes me something of a grim reaper of the pipe organ (remember the scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life with the robed reaper and the tinned salmon?). More than once people have said to me, partly in jest, “What are you doing here, we love our organ?” But the reality of redundant church buildings is part of my daily work. Organbuilders are used to working with a church’s Organ Committee (often called Organ Task Force)—a committee that by definition, if not by actuality, is formed for the inception of a creative process. I’ve had dozens of associations with De-Accession Committees, sometimes called Disbursement Committee—that group of faithful worshippers charged with emptying their church building before Repurposing. These folks are filling dumpsters with church-school supplies, choir robes, and pageant costumes (I love the white Oxford shirt with cotton-balls glued all over to make a sheep-suit for Christmas Eve). They are packing hymnals and octavo scores to be given to neighboring churches, and they are ferreting off little mementos while (they think) no one is looking.  

They show me family photos of weddings, baptisms, funerals, and First Communions in which the organ is prominent in the background. Their eyes are moist, and sometimes they’re openly weeping.

One church I visited recently was simply abandoned. It was an 1,800-seat building with an 80-rank organ. The congregation, down to just a few dozen, had soldiered on until the last of the money was gone and simply walked away after the last worship service. The Sunday bulletins were still on the ushers’ station, the unfinished glass of water was still on the pulpit, and there was a melted unwrapped cough drop on the organ console. (Organists must have terrible health if the collective consumption of cough drops is any indication!) There was unopened mail on the secretary’s desk. It was like the scene in the movie where tumbleweeds blow down the street and the saloon doors are still swinging.

§

Jennifer Levitz’s article, “Trafficking in Organs, Mr. Bishop Pipes Up to Preserve a Bit of History,” appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, September 16, 2011. Here’s a link that will take you to it on the WSJ website: . I’ve received a lot of winks and barbs from friends about the word trafficking.

Any company loves exposure like that. We were flattered and pleased to have Ms. Levitz’s attention, and there have been several inquiries in the past week directly attributable to the article. But here’s the problem. She did great reporting on all the reasons why pipe organs become redundant. We discussed “Contemporary Worship” and closing and merging parishes, but while I talked about the exciting sides of the organ business like the restoration of venerable organs and the construction of new ones, the general tone of the story was glum.

Ted Alan Worth, student and friend of Virgil Fox and a successful touring organist, has been quoted as saying, “The organ world is the worst world in the world.” I’m pretty sure he was referring to the gossipy, introverted, and sometimes nasty interchange between colleagues. Perhaps the most famous example was the decades-long squabble between Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs, both important and brilliant performers from two divergent artistic points of view, whose disdain for each other was well documented. But that same artistic divide was extended to the devotees of organs with tracker action versus electric and pneumatic actions. I use the word “versus” with intent. When I was a young pup of an organist, reveling in the Renaissance of classic principles of pipe organ building in Boston in the sixties and seventies, I was aware and no doubt made use of terms like tracker-backer and pneumatic-nut. Those who preferred symphonic organs were decadent, as if the exploration of artistic expression were a character flaw; those who preferred tracker organs were zealots, anti-musicians, anti-expression.

In 1979 my mentor and I assisted a team from Flentrop Orgelbouw installing the grand new organ at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s a classic design—werkprinzip mahogany case with carved pipe shades, rückpositiv, and a spiral staircase to the tiny balcony. But as we unloaded the container on the sidewalk of Euclid Avenue (the organ had been shipped from the Netherlands directly to the port of Cleveland through the St. Lawrence Seaway—the name of the ship was Kalliope) I realized I was carrying a box of pipes marked Celeste. A bundle of Swell shutters followed. Humph! I didn’t know Flentrop built Swell boxes?

What I know now is that what’s important to us is good organs. Simple. I love good organs of any description. And there are just as many bad, even decadent tracker organs as there are bad electro-pneumatic or electric-action organs. The Renaissance Revival that has been so celebrated and ballyhooed certainly was cause for the destruction or displacement of many wonderful electro-pneumatic organs. My hometown of Winchester, Massachusetts has two churches in which organs by Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner were replaced with organs by Fisk. The Skinner was a very early organ (Opus 128, 1905!). My father was rector of the church, so I had easy access to it for practicing when I first took organ lessons, but I quickly moved to the neighboring First Congregational Church (where my teacher John Skelton was organist), whose Fisk organ was installed in 1972.  

I didn’t know much about Skinner organs then, and I celebrated its replacement by Fisk in 1974. I don’t think that particular Skinner was a very good instrument—but I’d sure love to get a look at it today to see what Mr. Skinner was up to in 1905.

§

The 1995 movie Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, et al.) was a gripping telling of the nearly disastrous explosion on that mission to the moon, launched in April 1970. Two days after the launch, an oxygen tank explodes and astronauts and NASA officials scramble to devise a way to abort the mission safely. In the chaos of the first moments of the emergency, NASA flight director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris) holds up his hand, calls for silence, and asks, “What have we got on this spacecraft that’s good?”

My thanks to Ms. Levitz for noticing the organ world lurking on that lawn in Washington, and for giving her considerable energy and talent to creating the story. But she told only half the story. The rest is up to us. And we’re at a great moment to do it, to tell it, to live it.

We are an energetic group of devotees to a high expression of the arts and humanities. The pipe organ stands for so much that’s good about the human condition. For centuries it was among the most complex of all human contrivances, for centuries it was the source of some of the loudest sounds anyone heard. Today, too many people see the organ as the realm of dead white men. That’s not the fault of the organ, it’s the fault, the oversight, the result of its professional practitioners getting wrapped up in scholarship—the understanding of this special niche, its complex history, the relationships between the instruments’ builders and the artists who created and played the music.  

Too often we present programs to the public based on our interest and devotion to obscure styles and periods of composition. This afternoon I was talking with a colleague on the lawn outside her church building. We talked about the levels of public interest in the music of the pipe organ. I said something like, “You don’t attract Joe Public into a church to hear an all-Buxtehude recital.” She said, “I love Buxtehude.” I said, “So do I (and I do!), but if we don’t give them something else, something that excites and inspires them, something they can sing to themselves in the car on the way home from the recital, they’re not going to come back.” And for decades now, they haven’t been coming back.

I celebrate the long list of young performers who are lighting new fires under the pews—those players whose impeccable musicianship comes first, who understand the art of performing, which is different from the art of playing, whose sense of programming inspires the simple and necessary act of attendance, and whose public carriage brings dignity and respect to a profession that has for so long been marked by flamboyant but shallow behavior and performance.

The organ world need not be the worst world in the world. It’s a world full of brilliant young talent. It’s a world full of talented organbuilders. It’s a world full of exciting new instruments. And it’s our responsibility to project the best of all of it to the public, especially those who are still unaware of the delights and majesty of the pipe organ.  

That revival, that renaissance has given us dozens of organbuilding firms who produce some of the best instruments ever made—both mechanical and electric actions. Compare an instrument built by Paul Fritts with one by Schoenstein. Compare an instrument built by C. B. Fisk with one by Quimby. Compare an instrument by Dobson with one by Nichols & Simpson. What’s not to like? Ours is a small world with space for everyone. 

I’m not suggesting we abandon Buxtehude, Scheidt, Scheidemann, de Grigny, and the countless masters whose efforts have collected to form what we know as the world of the pipe organ. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t celebrate the heritage of the organ. I am suggesting that a public that’s offered myriad opportunities for entertainment and enrichment ranging from professional sports to video games, to symphony concerts, and to organ recitals, is going to choose an option that’s exciting, stimulating, enriching, and at some level, just plain fun. You or I might think it’s fun to rattle through a half-dozen Buxtehude Preludes and Fugues, but would your next-door neighbor agree? n

Billy J. Christian died June 6 in Athens, Georgia. He was 86. A U.S. Navy veteran, he was a graduate of the University of Georgia and the School of Sacred Music at Union Seminary in New York City. He served as organist-choirmaster at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis from 1959–82 and at Germantown Presbyterian Church from 1984–93, and was a lifelong and active AGO member. Billy J. Christian is survived by a brother, a sister, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandnephews, and grandnieces. 

Elaine Sawyer Dykstra, age 65, died at her home on June 19. At age 15 she became the organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Iowa Park, Texas, where she met her future husband, Jerry Dykstra. She majored in organ performance at Midwestern State University of Wichita Falls, studying with Nita Akin, and earned MMus and DMA degrees in organ performance at the University of Texas, studying with E.W. Doty and Frank Speller. During her more than 40 years in Austin, she was organist at St. David’s Episcopal Church, University Presbyterian Church, and Tarrytown United Methodist Church; she also served as an accompanist, played with orchestral and chamber music groups, and played solo concerts as well. 

Dykstra’s publications include the book Deducing the Original Sounds of Bach’s Organ Works: An Historical Account of the Musical Capabilities of the Organs That Bach Knew, and Gabriel’s Message: Carols for the Season, a collection of ten Advent and Christmas organ chorales. Active in the Anglican Association of Musicians, Austin’s Committee for the Advocacy of the Pipe Organ, and the Southeast Historical Keyboard Society, Dykstra served as district convener for the AGO’s Region VII. Elaine Sawyer Dykstra is survived by her husband of nearly 46 years, her son, two sisters, a brother, two grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter. 

Albert Edward Kerr died February 17 in Plano, Texas at age 95. Born in England, he received his first music instruction at age 10 from William Broome, and by age 14 was traveling to St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Aldingham, by bus on Friday night, playing weddings and services on Saturday and Sunday, and returning home on Sunday evening. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and married Mary Whalley Kerr in 1941. 

During World War II, Kerr served in the Royal Air Force and was sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and served as organist at Christ Episcopal Church. After returning to England in 1944, the family immigrated to the U.S. in 1947, and Kerr again assumed the position of organist and choirmaster at Christ Episcopal in Dayton, where he oversaw the installation of a new 58-rank Tellers organ in 1967. In retirement, he served as organist at the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, in Dayton, later moving to Texas, where he worked at the First United Methodist Church in Frisco, a suburb of Dallas. 

Kerr composed in many genres including organ, choral, instrumental, and piano, and his later works were largely published by H.W. Gray. He was active in the Dayton AGO chapter, serving as dean (1961–63) and treasurer (1971–74). Albert Edward Kerr’s wife Mary followed him in death in April 2011; he is survived by daughter Maureen Norvell, three grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

Rosalind MacEnulty, 93 years old, died June 18. She earned a degree from the Yale School of Music in 1940, and became a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists in 1956. From 1956–88 she served as organist and musical director at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Jacksonville, Florida, and was also music director for several Jacksonville community theaters. From 1988 to 2004, MacEnulty was music director for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Edenton, North Carolina. She composed works for church choirs, community choruses, and theatrical groups; her best-known work is An American Requiem. Rosalind MacEnulty is survived by three children.

Robert Mahaffey died February 6 in Delray Beach, Florida. He was 80. A Brooklyn native, he was educated at the High School of Music and Art in New York City, earned an MMus degree at Yale University, and the DMA from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago in 1997. He also earned the Licentiate and Fellowship of Trinity College of Music and the Diploma of Licentiate in organ performance from the Royal Schools of Music, both in London, and the Church Music and Fellowship certifications from the AGO, which he served as a national examiner. 

Mahaffey served Christ Church in Manhasset, New York and St. John’s in Pompano Beach, Florida, and in 1992 was appointed choir director and organist at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Lighthouse Point, Florida, where he designed its pipe organ in 1994.

Walter W. Umla, age 70, died in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania on May 12. A 1962 graduate of Wilkes College with a degree in music education, he taught vocal music for 34 years in the Wilkes-Barre school district, retiring in 1996. Umla served Westmoor Church of Christ and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, both in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and Westminster Presbyterian and later at the Episcopal Church of St. Clement and St. Peter, both in Wilkes-Barre. A member of the AGO, he was also an accompanist for the Choral Society of Northeast Pennsylvania. Walter W. Umla is survived by his wife, three children, and four grandsons.

Sarah Mahler Kraaz, DMA, is Professor of Music and Chair of the Department at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where she teaches organ, piano, and music history, and directs the Collegium Musicum. She is an active composer and has performed recitals in the U.S.A., Scotland, and Italy. She is a frequent contributor of reviews and articles to The Diapason. Dr. Kraaz spent several weeks this spring researching and playing historic organs in Italy and Spain during a sabbatical leave.

  In a perfect world, we organists would always be able to play music on the instruments for which it was written. Putting music and organs from the same time and place together produces a beautiful synchronicity, the closest thing to time travel we can experience. Happily, this was recently my fate. What follows is a description of some music and instruments that have expanded my understanding of a particular musical tradition. They will continue to inform my performances.

On March 6, I played a recital of Italian music on the Vespers Series of the Giuseppe Gherardeschi Organ Academy in Pistoia (www.accademiagherardeschi.info). Pistoia is a small city in Tuscany approximately 30 miles northwest of Florence. The remains of a medieval wall circumscribe the old town whose Cathedral of San Zeno houses a silver altar dedicated to San Jacopo, thereby putting it on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The cathedral, the former Bishop’s Palace, the Baptistry, and the Town Hall, all dating from the 13th–15th centuries, surround a central piazza that even today dominates the center of Pistoia. An open-air fruit and vegetable market, shops, restaurants, and cafes spread out from there in a web of narrow cobblestone streets. Wednesday and Saturday mornings are market days, when stalls appear in the centro selling everything from clothing to kitchenware. Bells from the many churches in the city mark the passage of time. Pistoia is off the beaten track for tourists. It’s a great place to visit if you want to mingle with Italians who live comfortably in the present while surrounded by the past. The city and neighboring towns are also home to a number of historic organs, most of them from the 18th and early 19th centuries.¹

Giuseppe Gherardeschi

A brief biography in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians² states that Gherardeschi was an organist, composer, and eventually maestro di cappella at the cathedral; except for a brief period of study in Naples, he spent his entire life in Pistoia. He began his musical studies with his father, Domenico (1733–1800), who was maestro di cappella at the cathedral, and continued with his uncle, Filippo Maria (1738–1808). The latter, also a Pistoia native, had been a pupil of Giovanni Battista (a.k.a. ‘Padre’) Martini³ in Bologna from 1756 to about 1761, when Filippo was admitted to the elite Accademia Filarmonica. Giuseppe completed his formal studies with Nicola Sala at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria della Pietà dei Turchini, one of three music conservatories in Naples. Upon returning to Pistoia, he married, fathered seven children, and became organist at the church of Santa Maria dell’Umiltà. When Domenico Gherardeschi died in 1800, Giuseppe inherited his position as maestro di cappella at the cathedral, a post he held until his death. In the tradition of the Bachs and Couperins and other families of musicians at the time, Giuseppe’s son, Luigi (1791–1871), and grandson, Gherardo (1835–1905), succeeded him. The Gherardeschi men all composed sacred vocal and instrumental music, much of which survives in the cathedral archives. Giuseppe did not confine himself to music for the church, however; five symphonies, all in the three-movement fast-slow-fast pattern favored by Giovanni Battista Sammartini and other 18th-century Italian composers, survive, as do numerous arias, chamber music, and oratorios.⁴

Umberto Pineschi’s edition of 

Gherardeschi’s organ works

That we know anything at all about the life and music of Giuseppe
Gherardeschi—and consequently, about the contemporary Tuscan organ—is due to the almost single-handed efforts of Umberto Pineschi. Organist, teacher, scholar, founder of the Gherardeschi Organ Academy, and now in “retirement” Director of the Scuola Comunale di Musica e Danza “Teodulo Mabellini” in Pistoia, Pineschi has worked tirelessly to locate, preserve, and restore organs in and around Pistoia. He edited the organ works of Gherardeschi for publication beginning in 1978. The first collection was followed by a second, third, and fourth, but as he confesses in the foreword to the newest edition (in Musiche Pistoiesi per Organo, published by the Fondazione Accademia di Musica Italiana per Organo in 2009), there was “no organized plan, since every time only the pieces considered interesting at the moment were selected.” Further, he adds, “Their context, often crucial for their understanding, was not taken in[to] account. Such a fragmented presentation of the Gherardeschi organ works did not allow one to fully appreciate both their lesson on the Pistoiese organ and the artistic relevance of the composer.”⁵ Pineschi here refers to the symbiotic relationship between organ music and the instruments for which it was written, in this case Pistoiese organs of the 18th and early 19th centuries. These deficiencies are addressed in the new edition, which is the basis for the discussion that follows.  

The present volume brings together all of Gherardeschi’s known compositions for organ, including some that have never been published. The pieces appear in the same order as in the manuscripts. Pineschi identifies several groupings by genre: 1. Sonatas; 2. Masses in C and D (Offertorio, Elevazione, and Postcommunio) and a Mass in E-flat that has versets for alternatim performance with the Ordinary; 3. Collections of versets; 4. Miscellaneous short pieces, including a colorful Sonata per organo a guisa di banda militare che suona una Marcia, two pastorales, and a fugue in G minor. Each piece has been assigned an opus number (a P followed by a number). Strict classification according to this scheme is impossible, however, since two of the sonatas (P.IV [1787]) are rondos and a number of the Mass movements (the Elevazione in D, P.I,5; the Offertorio in C, P.I,7) are sonatas. Elements of secular genres, including the concerto, aria, and symphony, also define and shape these pieces in a manner surely intended to entertain as well as sanctify the listeners.

Since the purpose of this article is to present an overview, rather than a comprehensive discussion, of Gherardeschi’s works, representative examples from each of the categories above will highlight important stylistic features of the music and the organs for which they were written, beginning with the sonatas. These all conform to the binary form and tonal design of the 18th-century keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and others.

Offertorio, Mass in C: 

a representative work

The Offertory in an organ Mass is generally longer and more elaborate than other movements because it provides music during the preparation of the Eucharist. Gherardeschi takes advantage of these large dimensions by writing the Offertorio from the Mass in C as a sonata. The movement begins assertively with strong tonic chords in the left hand against clearly articulated right-hand rhythms in a 4-bar phrase. This antecedent phrase is answered by a consequent phrase in a reduced texture and registration, much like a dialogue between the tutti and solo parts of a concerto (Example 1). Indeed, Gherardeschi’s registration directions support this impression: initially, he calls for ‘[ri-]pieno con Trombe (trumpet)’ and ‘Timp[ano]’ in the pedal, which would be the equivalent of a full orchestra. The second phrase is labeled ‘p[ieno] senza ripieno [i.e., without the Trombe] e senza ped[ale]’. Without the trumpet (soloist) and pedal + timpani, the effect is of an echo. This alternation continues throughout both sections of the Offertorio. The texture is open, treble-dominated, and non-contrapuntal; occasional octaves in the manuals add a bit of dramatic emphasis at times. Harmonically, the music is predictable, with the first (A) section ending in the dominant key of G major. The B section opens in G minor, however, and moves to d, a, and F before returning via the dominant G to C.  

The energy, rhythmic drive, clear tonal design, and concerted style of the Offertorio reveal how steeped
Gherardeschi was in the music of Corelli, Vivaldi, and Sammartini. Written at the end of the 18th century, as Vienna and Paris were eclipsing Italy in the development of instrumental music, these pieces remind the listener of the connections among the various schools.

The concerto and symphony are not the only models for this music, however. Pineschi observes that the influence of opera and the theatre is clear in the Masses: “Indeed, the Offertori show the influence of the overture, the Elevazioni and the Benedizioni that of the romanza, while the Postcommunio echoes the always attractive spirit of the cabaletta; all, however, display whimsy, balanced proportions, and, above all, good taste.”⁶  

In fact, two of the three Masses in the collection, those in D and C, consist of exactly these movements, that is, Offertorio-Elevazione-Postcomunio. In modern usage, these may stand alone or be played in concert as a group of fast-slow-fast movements. The remaining Mass, in E-flat, is more complex because of versetti that alternate with chant. The Table of Mass movements summarizes the shape and content of the Messa in Elafá. One observes immediately the variety of tempos, meters, and registrations Gherardeschi uses in the versetti. The last aspect is the most important, for it tells us a great deal about the late 18th-century and early 19th-century Tuscan organ in general and the Pistoiese organ in particular. In this regard, the Mass resembles the other sets of versetti in the collection, all of which specify different stops as solos or in combinations.  

Registration

Gherardeschi frequently calls for “organo aperto” in his music. This means the complete Ripieno (Principale 8′, Ottava 4′, Decimaquinta 2′, Decimanona 11⁄3′, and two or three high-pitched ranks combined, the Vigesima seconda e sesta [1′, 2⁄3′] or seconda, sesta e nona [1′, 2⁄3′, ½′]), plus the Trombe (trumpet) 8′ and Cornetto.⁷ This combination, the equivalent of a full organ without flute stops, produces a clear and brilliant but not overpoweringly loud sound. “Pieno” refers to the complete or partial (i.e., 8′, 4′, 2′) Ripieno (Gherardeschi does not specify which). All the other combinations in the Messa call for specific principal and ‘da concerto’, i.e., solo, stops, including some divided stops (Musetto treble 8′; Clarone bass 4′; Trombe bass 8′). Stops divided between bass and treble registers have been a feature of Italian organs since at least 1664, when the Flemish Jesuit, Willem Hermans, built an organ for the church of Sant’Ignazio di Loyola (known in later times as “Spirito Santo” and since 1 February 2011, again as Sant’Ignazio) in Pistoia.⁸ They are advantageous on a small organ. In Pineschi’s words, “Gherardeschi’s clever use of the divided stops allows one to casually move from the bass section of the keyboard to the treble section and the other way round in such a way that the listener has no time to realize that.”⁹ He might have added that Gherardeschi must have possessed uncommon dexterity, given the lack of mechanical aids for registration changes and the fact that many of these occur in the middle of a piece. Perhaps he employed an assistant, maybe his son Luigi as organist-in-training. Pineschi suggests that these directions to change or add divided stops (which always occur at cadence points) reflect spontaneous changes made by Gherardeschi when he was improvising, as experienced organists did; the written version is for organists who were not as skilled or experienced in the art of improvisation.¹⁰

Of course, Gherardeschi’s registrations reflect and reinforce the character of individual versetti in the Messa; rhythms, tempos, and styles complete the picture. The first and last Gloria verses are of particular interest because they are cast as marches in duple meter with an abundance of dotted rhythms, repeated chords, triadic openings, trumpet-like solo lines, and liberal use of a “special effect” Timpano stop (from two to six wooden pipes, out of tune in such a way as to give a kettle-drum effect, operated by a pedal played by the right foot). The first Gloria verse begins with a fanfare in the manual accompanied by pedal and Timpano. In measure 5, another special effect (also played with the right foot), the Usignoli (Nightingale) stop, appears alternately with the timpani to simulate the trills of a clarinet¹¹ (Example 2a). Marches, whether for military bands or in concert music, were a common and popular musical genre in the 18th century.¹² As such, they connoted heroism, vigor, cheerfulness, and manliness.¹³ Gherardeschi was not the first composer to set the “Et in terra pax” couplet to a march; François Couperin had done that 100 years earlier in his Messe pour les couvents.¹⁴ Undoubtedly, the triumphal, affirmative nature of the text is a determining factor in the choice of musical style, but in the Messa there is more to the matter. Napoleon invaded Italy in 1790, defeating the Austrian army. The next 15 years were tumultuous ones in all the regions of the Italian peninsula, when French-initiated political and social reforms met with strenuous opposition from many Italians and the Church. The return of Austrian rule in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, repressive as it was, was hailed as a return to order and normality.¹⁵ Gherardeschi composed his music against this backdrop of political turbulence amid constant reminders of a military presence. The Sonata . . . a guisa di banda militare even includes the “Janissary style” derived from Turkish military bands, a type of march in which cymbals, bass drum, and triangle are implied in the instrumentation (Example 2b, see page 28). Marches figured prominently in operas, symphonies,¹⁶ and secular keyboard music in the late 18th century, so it is not surprising to find them in organ music as well.

Versetti

In the preface of this volume, Pineschi lists the versetti as a third group after the sonatas and Masses. These works, though individually brief, are the most numerous and perhaps the most important for what they tell us about the Pistoiese organ of the time. There are two types of versetti, distinguished by their registrations. Versetti a pieno require the
[ri-]pieno, or full, sound, with only a tempo indicated at the beginning (the registration is implied) (Example 3a); versetti concertati require use of the ‘da concerto’ stops and have specific registrations provided at the beginning of each piece (Example 3b). From these, we learn the tonal design of the organs for which
Gherardeschi wrote his music.¹⁷ The ‘da concerto’ versetti are also labeled ‘solenni’, referring to their intended liturgical use in the Mass or other services, especially the Office of Vespers (e.g., the Magnificat). Versetti are written in all eight psalm tones, as one would expect. Interestingly, the versetti a pieno, P.II, are only figured basses; the organist must realize them in performance. Obviously this Baroque musical shorthand was still proving useful at the beginning of the 19th century.

Organs

Specifications for four organs that
Gherardeschi would have known appear in the preface to the Opere per organo. The first, by Hermans, was the prototype for the rest, which were built in the 1780s and ’90s by Antonio and Filippo Tronci and Pietro Agati. These instruments have been preserved and restored in Pistoia and Lucca. A similar organ built by Luigi and Benedetto Tronci in 1793 has been in the Cathedral in Pistoia since Pineschi rescued it from the chapel of the Rucellai villa, Campi Bisenzio (a small town between Prato and Florence), in 1998.  This is the instrument I played every day for five days in preparation for the Vespers performance. It is, amazingly, in its original condition. The specifications are as follows (For photos and audio clips of the Hermans and Tronci organs, visit The Diapason website,
Diapason.com>.):

Ripieno stops

Principale 8′ (first eight pipes are wood and play without drawing a stop because they are placed on a separate chest; the remaining pipes are tin, with C2 the major pipe of the façade)¹⁸

Ottava 4′

Decimaquinta 2′

Decimanona 11⁄3′

Vigesima seconda e sesta (1′, 2⁄3′)

‘Da concerto’ stops

Flauto 4′ (from C2)

Cornetto I (soprano 4′, 13⁄5′)

Cornetto II (soprano 22⁄3′)

Voce languente (the same as the Voce umana, soprano 8′)

Special effects: Timpano, Usignoli

Manual compass: 47 notes, C1–D5 with short octave at the bottom)

Pedals: eight notes (C–G), short octave, always coupled to manual

Divided registers between E3 and F3

As other writers have observed, having the ranks of the ripieno available as single stops (rather than as a multi-rank mixture stop) presents a multitude of registrational choices, many of which are subtly different. I enjoyed getting to know the sounds of all the stops individually and in various combinations. The Tronci keyboard has a uniform and light touch perfectly suited to the lively, graceful lines of 18th-century music. Using the short octave on both manual and pedal requires re-patterning of both cognitive and muscle memory. (What usually feels like a fifth is now a second, for example.) The short pedals are also quite different; one hardly needs organ shoes to play them, since only toes are used—heels remain on the floor. To sum up, playing an instrument like this, so different from a modern organ, requires total concentration, since all the senses—visual, auditory, kinesthetic—are involved in sometimes unfamiliar ways.

I hope this brief introduction—to the music of a composer who, in his own lifetime, was well known and highly respected in Tuscany, and to one of the organs he could have known—will encourage interest in both topics. This delightful, lively, and lovely music deserves to be better known on this side of the Atlantic. At present, the Opere per organo is only available from the editor, Umberto Pineschi, at . It is well worth the effort to obtain the book.