Harpsichord News

Comments and news items are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275. E-mail: <[email protected]>.

Harpsichordists in the news

What with the recent multi-million-dollar endowment of the Juilliard School’s early music program, New York City steadily increases its profile as an emerging major center for historically informed performance. And that has meant an unusually high New York Times profile for our favorite instrument. In case some of our readers have not noticed several recent news or review items of special interest to harpsichordists, here are a few favorite citings encountered during the first months of the year.

In the edition of Tuesday, April 3, 2012 (page C7), critic Vivian Schweitzer’s cogent review of Mahan Esfahani’s Sunday afternoon recital at the Frick Collection was illustrated with a dramatic chiaroscuro photograph of the artist about to take his seat at the spotlighted harpsichord. Schweitzer began with a reference to Wanda Landowska, who gave her last public recital on the Frick’s stage in 1954, and then mentioned Esfahani’s currently unique place among today’s solo performers as the first harpsichordist to be appointed a New Generation Artist by the BBC. Mahan’s wide-ranging program included music by William Byrd, Scarlatti, Bach’s “English” Suite in G Minor, and Mel Powell’s rarely heard Recitative and Toccata Percossa (composed in 1951 for Fernando Valenti). Schweitzer particularly lauded Esfahani’s choice of encores: the Gavotte and Variations in A Minor by Rameau and William Croft’s Ground in C Minor. Iranian-born Esfahani studied harpsichord with Elaine Thornburgh at California’s Stanford University and with Peter Watchorn in Boston. 

In an opera review (Friday March 2, 2012, page C3) the Times’ chief music critic Anthony Tommasini praised a sensational production of George Frideric Handel’s Rinaldo at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The following sentence certainly captured my attention: “At Armida’s word a huge harpsichord descends from above: literally her instrument of enchantment . . .” [For a picture of this faux instrument, see the June 2012 issue of Opera News, page 44.] 

Later, in the concluding paragraph of his four-column critique, Tommasini wrote:

As Armida, the bright-voiced, fearless soprano Elza van den Heever stole every scene she was in, especially the end of Act II, in which the thwarted Armida sings a fiery aria of defiance, “Vo’ far guerra.” The music has a virtuosic harpsichord part, played brilliantly by Jory Vinikour. Onstage a dancer pretends to play the gargantuan harpsichord. The real battle is between [the soprano], who sends chilling phrases flying, and Mr. Vinikour, in the pit. He wins. A diva put in her place by a harpsichordist! Chalk one up for the period-instrument movement.

Hooray and hearty congratulations Jory! At last here is a review truly worth quoting in future publicity releases!  

While in Chicago the busy Mr. Vinikour also participated in performances of another rarely heard baroque opera, La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus’s Descent into the Underworld) by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Chicago Tribune classical music critic John von Rhein wrote that the Haymarket Opera’s   “able, nine-piece ensemble of violins, recorders, viols and theorbo included the expert contributions of harpsichordist Jory Vinikour, moonlighting from his Rinaldo duties over at the Lyric.” [February 25, 2012]

North of Chicago, at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, the centerpiece among the new Regional Arts Center spaces for the Music Department is the Frances Bedford Concert Hall, named in honor of the well-known Professor Emerita and author. A naming ceremony and gala reception took place as part of the two sold-out December performances of Handel’s Messiah. On these occasions Bedford played harpsichord continuo, as she has done since 1993 for each of the triennial presentations of this beloved work. Also participating in the orchestra were three additional family members: oboists Monte Bedford and Leslie Outland Michelic, and Matt Michelic, viola.

One of the more memorable declarations from centuries of comments about musical instruments comes from Giovanni Maria Trabaci, who wrote in the Preface to Book II of his pieces “per ogni strumenti, ma ispecialmente per i Cimbali e gli Organi” (1615): “the harpsichord is the lord of all instruments in the world, and on it everything may be played with ease.” [“il Cimbalo è Signor di tutti l’istromenti del mondo, et in lei si possono sonare ogni cosa con facilità.”] While I am not always convinced about the “ease” involved, it does seem quite evident that, despite an ever-increasing overabundance of baroque music played on the piano, the lordly harpsichord continues to garner the attention of writers on music as it provides tonal sustenance and aural enjoyment to its own special audience.

Recital programming: Program notes

Seated one day at the harpsichord, I was weary and ill at ease because the mid-July deadline for this column was approaching too rapidly, and my mind, in its summer mode, seemed frail as a lily, too weak for a thought as I searched for a topic. And then, a miracle: the printed program from my harpsichord recital at the 2012 East Texas Pipe Organ Festival fell out of a score. Rereading it brought not only a wave of nostalgia, but also a sense of continued satisfaction at both the balance and variety of the chosen pieces, selected painstakingly to present contrasting musical styles as well as offering a bit of respite to the ears of the festival participants who heard a number of organ recitals each day.

Some vignettes about the unusual logistics required to present this program at Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview on my 74th birthday may be found in The Diapason’s Harpsichord News column published in February 2013 (page 20). If any readers are curious, I refer them to that issue, which also contains Neal Campbell’s thoughtful commentaries on the entire 2012 festival. What follows in this month’s column has not appeared previously in The Diapason. These are my “notes to the program.” I present them now as examples of brief word pictures intended to aid a listener’s understanding of music that, for many, was probably being heard for the first time. As for the selections, I specifically tried to choose at least some works by composers who might be familiar to organists, while offering a variety of musical styles, durations, and tonalities both major and minor. 

The program notes

Introduction to the Program: The Italian composer Giovanni Maria Trabaci wrote in the Preface to Book II of his Pieces ‘per ogni (all) strumenti, ma ispecialmente per i Cimbali e gli Organi’ [1615]: “the harpsichord is the lord of all instruments in the world and on it everything may be played with ease.” [“il Cimbalo è Signor di tutti l’istromenti del mondo, et in lui si possono sonare ogni  cosa con facilità.”]  

While I am not totally convinced of the ease of playing offered by some of these contrasting selections from the contemporary and Baroque repertoires, I do suggest that each one of them has musical interest. The pieces by John Challis and Duke Ellington are probably unique to my repertoire since they remain unpublished.

The program

A Triptych for Harpsichord (1982)—Gerald Near (b. 1942). In addition to writing a wonderful Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings for me to premiere at the American Guild of Organists national convention in the Twin Cities in 1980, Gerald responded to my request for a new work to play at a recital for the Dallas Museum of Art’s major El Greco exhibition in 1983. The three brief contrasting movements suggest bells (“Carillon”), an amorous dance (“Siciliano”), and a homage to the harpsichord works of Domenico Scarlatti and Manuel de Falla (“Final”). 

Sonate pour Claveçin (1958)—Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959). During the final year of his life, in response to a commission from the Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer, Martinů composed this compact, but major, Sonate. Essentially it is a piece in one movement with three sections: the first and last are kaleidoscopic, filled with brief colorful musical ideas; the second is gentle and nostalgic, as the homesick expatriate composer makes short allusions to two beloved iconic Czech works: the Wenceslaus Chorale and Dvorák’s Cello Concerto. While quite “pianistic” in its demands, the Sonate also allows brilliant use of the harpsichord’s two keyboards in realizing both Martinů’s magical sonorities and his occasional use of bitonality.

“Chaconne in D Minor” (Partita for Solo Violin, BWV 1004)—Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), arranged for harpsichord solo by John Challis (1907–1974). One of Bach’s most-often transcribed works, this particular setting for harpsichord by the pioneering American early instrument maker survives only in a manuscript submitted for copyright (on Bach’s birthday in 1944), now preserved in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Challis also was an early advocate of variable tempi in Baroque music, serving as a mentor in that respect to organist E. Power Biggs, who proudly owned one of the builder’s impressive large pedal instruments.¹

A Single Petal of a Rose (1965)—Duke Ellington (1899–1974), edited in 1985 by Igor Kipnis and Dave Brubeck, and by Larry Palmer in 2012. Edward Kennedy Ellington responded to Antoinette Vischer’s request for a piece by sending her a piano transcription of his A Single Petal of a Rose, a work already dedicated to the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II. When American harpsichordist Kipnis asked if I could point him to Ellington’s unique work for harpsichord, I referred him to the facsimile of Ellington’s manuscript published in Ule Troxler’s book Antoinette Vischer, which details the works to be found in the Vischer Collection at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. (See “The A-Team,” The Diapason, February 2017, pp. 12–13.) Years later, Kipnis sent me his one-page transcription for harpsichord, an arrangement made in collaboration with his friend, the jazz great Dave Brubeck. To fit my hands and harpsichord I have made some further adjustments to their arrangement of this lovely, gentle work.²

La D’Héricourt; La Lugeac—Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). These are two of the most idiomatic of French harpsichord works from the eighteenth century, and none is more so than the one honoring M. l’Abbé d’Héricourt, Conseiller de Grand’ Chambre. With the tempo marking “noblement,” this composition stays mostly in the middle range of the harpsichord, a particularly resonant glory of the eighteenth-century French instruments. In contrast, the boisterous, “music-hall” qualities of La Lugeac suggest that it may be named for Charles-Antoine de Guerin, a page to King Louis XV. Known subsequently as the Marquis de Lugeac, the former page became secretary and companion to the Marquis de Valery, the king’s representative to the court of Frederick the Great. The American harpsichordist and conductor Alan Curtis, who edited Balbastre’s keyboard works, noted that “few Italianate jigs—Scarlatti not even excepted—can match the outrageously bumptious and attractive La Lugeac.”

“Lambert’s Fireside,” “De la Mare’s Pavane,” and “Hughes’ Ballet” (from the collection Lambert’s Clavichord, 1926–1928)—Herbert Howells (1892–1983). The composer was the next to youngest person pictured in a 1923 book of Modern British Composers comprising 17 master portraits by the photographer and clavichord maker Herbert Lambert of Bath. As a tangible expression of gratitude for this honor, Howells requested 11 of his fellow sitters each to contribute a short characteristic piece to be presented to the photographer. All acquiesced, but one year later, only Howells had composed anything for the project, so he wrote the additional 11 pieces himself. Issued in 1928 by Oxford University Press, Lambert’s Clavichord was the first new music for clavichord to be published in the twentieth century. Several questions regarding names found in the titles as well as a few printed notes that were suspect led me to schedule a London interview with the composer during a 1974 trip to the UK, a meeting that led ultimately to my commissioning the Dallas Canticles, as well as a respectful, unforgettable friendship with the elderly master.³

Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914—J. S.
Bach. The shortest of the composer’s seven toccatas for harpsichord, the E Minor consists of an introduction (with an organ-pedal-like opening figure insistently repeated six times); a contrapuntal   “poco” Allegro; a dramatic recitative (Adagio); and a driving, perpetual motion three-voice fugue. Musicologist David Schulenberg (in The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach; Schirmer Books, New York, 1992) noted the close similarity of the fugue’s opening and some subsequent passages to an anonymous work from a Naples manuscript ascribed to Benedetto Marcello. While it was not unusual for Baroque composers to borrow from (and improve upon) existing works, the amount of pre-existing material utilized in this particular fugue is greater than normal; however, as Schulenberg concludes, “[Bach] nevertheless made characteristic alterations.” I would add that in no way do these borrowings detract from the visceral excitement of Bach’s propulsive and dramatic conclusion.

Heads up: Registration for the 2017 ETPOF

According to the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival website there is still an opportunity to register (at discounted prices) for the star-studded programs planned for this year’s festival. But do not delay: the opportunity for savings expires on September 15. Visit: http://easttexaspipeorganfestival.com.

Recent losses 

Elizabeth Chojnacka (born September 10, 1939, in Warsaw) died in Paris on May 28. Celebrated for her virtuosic keyboard technique, Chojnacka was known primarily as an avid and exciting performer of contemporary harpsichord music. Her renderings of all three of the solo harpsichord works by Ligeti are highly lauded, and the composer honored her by dedicating the third, Hungarian Rock, to her.

Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini (born October 7, 1929, in Bologna) died in that Italian city on July 11. Organist, harpsichordist, scholar, and instrument collector, Luigi was well known to us in Dallas, having been a guest at Southern Methodist University on several occasions. Most memorably, he was part of the so-designated “Haarlem Trio” organized by Robert Anderson as a week-long postscript to the 1972 American Guild of Organists convention in Dallas. The three major European visiting artists for that event—Marie-Claire Alain, Anton Heiller, and Tagliavini—each gave daily masterclasses for the large number of participants who remained in Dallas for a second week of study with these annual leaders of the Haarlem Summer Academies in the Netherlands, resulting in what may be the only time in Southern Methodist University history that the organ department achieved a financial surplus rather than a deficit!

Two vignettes from that stellar week have become an unforgettable part of   Dallas’s musical history: Luigi’s chosen workshop topic was the organ music of Girolamo Frescobaldi, and he had assigned to the prize-winning finalists from the AGO Young Organists’ Competition all of the pieces contained in that composer’s liturgical settings for organ, known as Fiori Musicali. One of the finalists who had not won an AGO prize left Dallas in high dudgeon. Unfortunately, this participant had been assigned the very first piece in this set of “Musical Flowers.” Professor Tagliavini began his afternoon class with a brief overview of the work’s history and importance, and then peered over his glasses as he announced, “And now we will hear the first piece, Frescobaldi’s ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’.”

The total lack of response became embarrassing; there was no respondent. So our guest teacher moved on to the next piece. And thus it was that each afternoon session began with the same question from Luigi: “And who will play the ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’?”—always followed by total silence. A stickler for completeness, on the fifth and final day of the course Luigi made his same query, again to no avail. So with his usual smile and slight lisp he intoned, “Then I shall play the ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’!” And so he did with total mastery and grace. And all was well within the Italian Baroque solar system,  for Frescobaldi’s magnum opus was, at last, complete in Dallas!

The second vignette, equally Luigi-esque, occurred when Dr. Anderson, always volatile and energetic, and I were awaiting Tagliavini’s arrival to play an evening organ recital for the workshop audience. It was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. and by five minutes before that hour Dr. Anderson was pacing the corridor near the door to the Caruth Auditorium stage. With less than two minutes to spare, Luigi ambled down the hallway. Bob called out, “Luigi, hurry!” To which the unflappable Italian stopped walking, carefully placed his leather briefcase on the floor, and, with his characteristically kindly smile, said, “Why, Bob? Has the recital already begun?” ν

Notes

1. For further information see my essay, “John Challis and Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor,” in Music and Its Questions: Essays in Honor of Peter Williams, edited by Thomas Donahue (Organ Historical Society Press, 2007); and my CD recording of the Bach transcription on Hommages for Harpsichord (SoundBoard 2008).

2. Concerning Lambert’s Clavichord, see my chapter on Herbert Howells in Twentieth Century Organ Music, edited by Christopher Anderson (Routledge, 2012).

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

A musical village on the edge of a metropolis

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

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

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

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

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

Home to good churches

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

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

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

Radio is king for the 

King of Instruments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concert Overture in B Minor (Rogers)

“Allegro” from Sonata I (Guilmant)

Danish Song (Sandby)

March of the Gnomes (Stoughton)

Serenade (Rachmaninov)

Rhapsody (Cole)

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

Overture to Der Freischütz (Weber)

Minuet (Zimmerman)

Bells of St. Anne (Russell)

Brook (Dethier)

Concert Overture (Hollins)

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

Music for the masses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Casavant makes their mark 

in Oak Park

George H. Clark, Grace Episcopal Church

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

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

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

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

A dean and director from 

Chicagoland’s best  

Raymond Allyn Smith and Theodore Kratt, First Baptist Church

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

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

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

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

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

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Bach)

Sonata No. 4 in D Minor (Guilmant)

Echoes of Spring (Friml)

Notturno (Mendelssohn)

Am Meer (Schubert)

Au Convent (Borodin)

Toccata from Symphony No. 5 (Widor)¹²

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

Let the organist do it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Value added

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

Buried Treasures: 

The Harpsichord Pages 

in Retrospect (2006–15)

Once upon a time (well, twice actually, in The Diapason issues of January 1974 and February 1979), we offered cumulative indices of harpsichord-related matters in the journal, from Philip Treggor’s first harpsichord column (October 1967), through December 1978. Treggor continued his responsibility for harpsichord news until December 1968. Following his resignation, harpsichord submissions were managed by the magazine’s Chicago staff until September 1969, at which point I took over at the invitation of Editor Frank Cunkle.

As it has been 36 years since we have offered a third cumulative listing of harpsichord-centered writings, it may be time to offer this “backward” look, covering the past ten years. I cannot begin to count the number of instances in which the previous retrospectives have been of use to me: so much so that I keep these indices filed next to my bound copies of the magazine. If this present list proves useful to you, please let me know. I could then plan to complete indexing the years 1979 through 2005. Our January issue includes the journal’s composite index of the previous year; this would be a logical target date for continuing such offerings.

In the following citations, the title or subject appears first, followed by the month and year of publication, page number(s) in parentheses, and author. My contributions are indicated by the letters LP; other, less-frequent contributors, by their full names. I have added a few articles not specifically published under the Harpsichord News rubric. Categories sometimes overlap, particularly those of Personalities
and Obituaries.

Instruments and Builders

William Dowd: An Appreciation, Jan 09 (22), LP; The Earliest Surviving English Spinet by Charles Haward [c.1668], July 09 (12, 14), Charles West Wilson; Harpsichord News: ARTEK Goes German, July 15 (13), LP; Autobiography of a Clavichord (Dolmetsch-Chickering 2006), Dec 15 (12–13), LP.

Repertoire and 

Performance Practice

Mozart and the Harpsichord: An Alternate Ending for Fantasia in D minor, K. 397, Nov 06 (20), LP; “Entartete” Music: Hugo Distler and the Harpsichord, Aug 08 (22–23), LP; Harpsichord News: Chris DeBlasio Dances, Soler, Scarlatti, Lully, the Borrel Manuscript, May 09 (14), LP; Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s English Suite at 100, Dec 09 (36–37), LP; The Chopin Bicentennial at the Harpsichord, Feb 10 (23), LP; Addenda to Chopin, Aug 10 (11), LP; A Harpsichord Piece by Henri Mulet, Aug 10 (11), LP; Mulet Petit Lied—a complete facsimile, Jan 11 (12), LP; Harpsichord Works of Asiko Hirabayashi, Nov 10 (12–13), LP; J. S. Bach’s English and French Suites with emphasis on the Courante, May 11 (24–25), Renate McLaughlin; Gathering Peascods for the Old Gray Mare: Some Unusual Harpsichord Music Before Aliénor, Dec 12 (27–29), LP; Soler’s Fandango: new edition from Ut Orpheus and recording by Diego Ares, Dec 13 (12), LP; Multi-Media Mozart—Words, Notes, and Sounds [Harpsichord News], Feb 14 (12–13), LP; Christmas Music for Harpsichord, Oct 14 (12), LP; Going [J. William] Greene—Music for Harpsichord, June 15 (11), LP; Pedaling the French: A Tour de France of Revival Harpsichordists 1888–1939, Aug 15 (10–11), LP; Harpsichord Plus: The Accompanied Harpsichord Music of Jacques Duphly, Nov 15 (10), LP. 

Personalities in the Harpsichord World

Helmut Walcha, Oct 07 (28–29), Nov 07 (21–23), Dec 07 (21–23), Paul Jacobs; Oscar Peterson, Feb 08 (12), LP; Gustav Leonhardt (anecdote, footnote 3 in AGO National Convention Review), Nov 08 (27), LP; Pavana Lachrimae: A California Tribute to Gustav Leonhardt, Aug 12 (18), Lee Lovallo; Crazy about Organs: Leonhardt interview from 2000, Nov 12 (20–22), Jan-Piet Knijff; Gustav Leonhardt—a Letter to the Editor from Hellmuth Wolff, Jan 13 (3); Mamusia: Paul Wolfe Remembers Wanda Landowska, Oct 12 (23–25), Craig Smith; Janos Sebestyen, May 12 (12–13), Robert Tifft; Harpsichord in the News: Mahan Esfahani, Jory Vinikour, Frances Bedford, and a 1615 quotation from Trabaci about the status of the instrument, July 12 (10, 12), LP; Remembering Irma Rogell (and a review of Martin Elste’s book Die Dame mit dem Cembalo), April 13 (11–12), LP; A Triptych for Rafael [Puyana], May 13 (11–12), Betina M. Santos, Jane Clark, and LP; Virginia Pleasants Turns 100, Feb 12 (11); Harpsichord Playing in America after Landowska, June 11 (19–21), LP; Ralph Kirkpatrick Centennial, June 11 (13–14), Gavin Black; Remembering Wm. Neil Roberts, Sept 11 (12–14), LP; Joseph Stephens—In Memoriam, Sept 14 (15), LP; Remembering Hilda Jonas, Dec 14 (11), Glendon Frank and LP; Remembering George Lucktenberg, Feb 15 (11), LP; Remembering Richard Rephann, Mar 15 (25), Allison Alcorn.

Pedagogy and Technique

Dear Harpsichordists: Why Don’t We Play from Memory?, Sept 11 (24–25), Paul Cienniwa; Continuo (On Teaching), Nov 11 (15–17), Dec 11 (11–13), Jan 12 (16–17); Gavin Black; Recital Programing, Aug 12 (13–14), Gavin Black.

Reports on Harpsichord Events

Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society 2006 Meeting in Rome, Georgia, June 06 (12), LP; Westfield Center 2006 Conference, Victoria, British Columbia (includes mentions of Colin Tilney and Edoardo Bellotti), Dec 06 (29), Herbert Huestis; Boston Early Music Festival 2007, Sept 07 (22–23), LP; East Texas Pipe Organ Festival 2012: A Harpsichordist in Aeolian-Skinner Land, Feb 13 (20), LP; Continuo: the Art of Creative Collaboration—Westfield Center 2013 Conference at Pacific Lutheran University, 2013, July 13 (20–21), Andrew Willis; Historic Keyboard Society of North America 2013 meeting in Williamsburg, VA, April 14 (10–11), LP; HKSNA International Conference in Montréal and Aliénor Competition, Aug 15 (10–11), LP; Broadening a Harpsichordist’s Horizons: Remembering 2014 ETPOF, Sept 15 (11), LP. 

Reviews of Books, 

Music, and Recordings

A Guide to Musical Temperament (Thomas Donahue), reviewed by G. N. Bullat, June 06 (16); Guilty Pleasures: Mark Schweizer’s The Soprano Wore Falsettos, Choices (a novel) by Paul Wolfe, CD of Landowska reissues, DVD: Landowska—Uncommon Visionary [Harpsichord News] Mar 07 (10), LP; Peter Watchorn Plays Bach’s WTC I [Harpsichord News] Aug 07 (12–13), LP; Fernando Valenti’s Scarlatti recordings, Feb 08 (12, 14), LP; Peter Watchorn’s Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna, and the Early Music Revival and a published score for Richard Strauss’ Capriccio Suite, June 08 (12), LP; The Best Medicine—a review of Schweizer’s The Diva Wore Diamonds, Aug 09 (10), LP; New Harpsichord Music, Oct 09 (18–19), John Collins; a new compact disc set of Bach’s Six Partitas, and the publication of A Medici Harpsichord Book from Ut Orpheus, April 12 (12), LP; Joys of Re-Reading: Blue Harpsichord, Early Music mystery series by James Gollin, and more, Aug 14 (11), LP; Harpsichord News: Words and Music—Ralph Kirkpatrick Letters and Frank Ferko Triptych, April 15 (12), LP. 

Obituaries

Daniel Pinkham (d. 2006), Feb 07 (8); A Pinkham Memoir, Mar 07 (20), James McCray; Albert Fuller (d. 2007), Dec 07 (10); Remembering Albert Fuller—Trombones in Dido and Aeneas?, Feb 08 (14), LP; Fenner Douglass (d. 2008), June 08 (8); Thomas Dunn (d. 2008), Mar 09 (10); Virginia Pleasants (d. 2011), Feb 12 (11); Gustav Leonhardt (d. 2012), March 12 (10); Christopher Hogwood (d. 2014), Nov 14 (10); Bruce Prince-Joseph (d. 2015), July 15 (10); Paul Jordan (d. 2015), May 15 (18–19); Roger Goodman (d. 2015), Sept 15 (10); Alan Curtis (d. 2015), Oct 15 (10).

Esoteric Ephemera

Nineteenth-century harpsichord citings: Bizet and a Chopin student [Harpsichord News], Feb 08 (12), information from John Carroll Collins reported by LP; Historic 20th-Century Harpsichordists in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic [Harpsichord News], Feb 08 (12), Robert Tifft; Bytes from the Electronic Mailbag: Fandango, Misspellings of the Word Harpsichord, April 14 (10–11), LP; November Musings: Blessed Cecilia (In Honor of Isolde Ahlgrimm’s 100th Birthday), Nov 14 (12), LP; A mystery, a cautionary tale: Mark Schweizer’s The Maestro Wore Mohair and Simon Menges’ misadventure [Harpsichord News], Oct 15 (12), LP.

And Something New: Mysteries
with Musical References

The American expatriate author Donna Leon (born in New Jersey in 1942) has published 24 books in her series starring Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venetian constabulary. Number one, Death at La Fenice (1992) introduces the soprano Flavia Petrelli who is singing Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata at the venerable opera house. German maestro Helmut Wellauer dies before the final act of the opera, and Brunetti finds that he has a complicated bit of detecting to do before solving this clever crime.

For Acqua Alta, book five in the series, Leon brings back this soprano, a “favorite character because of her voice.” By the novel’s end Flavia is off to sing her first Handel opera, a plot twist chosen so that, should Petrelli return in future books, Leon would be able to write about her best-loved music. In real life the author became closely associated with American conductor Alan Curtis; together they created an opera company, Il Complesso Barocco, to perform rare works by Handel and other baroque composers. References to harpsichord are found on pages 201–2 of Acqua Alta, and again on page 229 when Flavia’s companion Brett chooses Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony for listening rather than harpsichord music, the “plunky sound of which would snap her nerves.”

Volume 24 of the Brunetti stories arrived in 2015: Falling in Love is set in La Fenice again, this time with Petrelli starring as Puccini’s Tosca. Music figures prominently, the plot is gripping, and I particularly enjoyed a comment on page 154, where Brunetti is reminded of a CD shop owner who opined that “the weirdest customers were people who liked organ music. ‘Most of them shop at night,’ his friend said. ‘I think it’s the only time some of them ever leave their houses.’”

Further “baroquery” is to be found in Leon’s standalone novel The Jewels of Paradise (2012) which features a musicologist and a plot driven by the legacy of Italian composer Agostino Steffani (1654–1728). Highly recommended for all fans of mystery novels and baroque music. Finally, dear readers, should you come across references to the harpsichord, please send me the citations! ν

Comments are always welcome. Please submit them to [email protected] or by post to Dr. Larry Palmer, 10125 Cromwell Drive, Dallas, Texas 75229.

David Spicer began as Minister of Music and the Arts at First Church of Christ in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1986. In 1996, he and Dr. Harold Robles founded the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival. Spicer is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Dr. Alexander McCurdy, and is a graduate of the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. We wish to express our deep gratitude to Frederick Hohman, who has been a judge for these past fourteen years. Fred is resigning from this position. We owe him much for his great insight, guidance, and yes, humor! We shall truly miss him. It speaks volumes about him, and about the festival, that he was willing to invest so much of his time, energy and talents to help encourage so many young organists.

The fourteenth Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival took place September 9–11 at the First Church of Christ in Wethersfield, Connecticut. The schedule included a competition, concert, worship services, and masterclass. Charles Callahan served as the screening judge for a portion of the applications. Judges for the festival were Michael Barone, Gregory D’Agostino, and Frederick Hohman.

On Friday evening, September 9, the traditional opening concert was held. The service/choral portions were played by the writer:

Andante Espressivo (Sonata in G Major, op. 28), Elgar

Psalm 150, Franck

Hymn: Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation (Christ Church, Dirksen)

Kyrie (Messe Solennelle, op. 16), Vierne

He Comes to Us (with text by Albert Schweitzer), Jane Marshall

Go Ye into All the World, Wetzler

Hymn: Let Heaven Rejoice (Rock Harbor), text by Hal M. Helms, tune by Alan MacMillan.

Each of the judges played selections at the Friday evening opening concert: Frederick Hohman, Finlandia, Sibelius; Michael Barone, Souvenir, John Cage, Adagio (Symphony No. 2 in D), Widor; Gregory D’Agostino, Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, Liszt. Saturday morning, from 10 am to noon, the high school division finalists played the required repertoire. At 2 pm the young professional division finalists were heard. 

High school finalists 

Mary Pan: Bach, Trio Sonata No. 4 in E Minor, BWV 528; Widor, Andante Sostenuto (Symphonie Gothique); Vierne, Toccata (Pièces de Fantaisie); hymn, St. Thomas (Williams); hymn, Hamburg.

Jacob Reed: Bach, Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-flat, BWV 525; Widor, Andante Sostenuto (Symphonie Gothique); Messiaen, Joie et Clarté des Corps Glorieux (Les Corps Glorieux); hymn, St. Thomas (Williams); hymn, Ein’ Feste Burg.

Young professional finalists 

Justin Maxey: Bach, Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542; Franck, Choral No. 2 in B Minor; Eben, Moto ostinato (Sunday Music); hymn, St. Thomas (Williams); hymn, Diademata.

Ian Tomesch; Bach, Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542; Franck, Choral No. 1 in E Major; Karg-Elert, Jesu, Meine Freude (Drei Symphonische Choräle, op 87/2, I. Inferno); hymn, St. Thomas (Williams); hymn, Slane.

Christopher Ganza: Bach, Prelude and Fugue in D Major, BWV 532; Franck, Choral No. 1 in E Major; Duruflé, Choral Varié sur le theme du “Veni Creator”; hymn, St. Thomas (Williams); hymn, Eventide.

Immediately afterwards, all finalists and judges had a chance for interaction and discussion over a delicious meal provided by Dana Spicer at the Parish Hall of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Wethersfield. On Sunday, September 11, all finalists played portions of the 8, 9:15, and 11 am worship services, and Frederick Hohman played his version of the Air (from Suite No. 3) by Bach at the 8 am service. At 1:30 pm, a masterclass with the three judges was held. 

The judges’ decisions

High school division: first place, Mary Pan from Burlington, Connecticut, student of Patricia Snyder; second place, Jacob Reed from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, student of Wylie S. Quinn III.

Young professional division: first place, Christopher Ganza from Norman, Oklahoma, student of John Schwandt; second place, Ian Tomesch from New Haven, Connecticut, student of Thomas Murray; third place, Justin Maxey from Rochester, New York, student of William Porter.

Leigh and Betty Standish provided the $2,000 award for first prize in the high school division. The young professional division first prize of $3,500 was given by Robert Bausmith and Jill Peters-Gee, M.D. John Gorton and Richard Pilch provided $750 for the David Spicer Hymn Playing Award, which was given to young professional division finalist Justin Maxey. Other prizes and gifts toward the festival—including the high school division second prize of $1,000 and the young professional division second prize of $1,500—came from Marilyn Austin and the Austin family and several individuals in the First Church family.

Bon Smith of Austin Organ Service Company of Avon, Connecticut, was on hand throughout the Saturday competition to offer assistance, should the organ need it, and provided a gracious gift of tuning and maintenance for the festival. Austin Organ Service Company is the regular curator of this instrument, serviced by Alex Belair and Michael Tanguay.

Thanks go to Linda Henderson, festival coordinator and associate, for so ably performing the organizational work that made the festival run smoothly and efficiently. Churches that allowed their instruments to be used for additional practice were Trinity Episcopal Church, Wethersfield, the Reverend Scott Lee, rector; and First Church of Christ, Glastonbury, Angela Salcedo, director of music ministries. 

The 2012 Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival will have the following judges for the competition: Faythe Freese, Cherry Rhodes, and Gordon Turk. Plans are underway to feature these organists in the opening concert of the festival on Friday evening, September 7, at 7:30 pm. Information about the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival and current requirements for the competition are available by telephone at 860/529-1575 x209, by e-mail at [email protected], or by viewing the ASOF website.

The 2011 first-place winners, Mary Pan and Christopher Ganza, will perform in recital on Sunday, June 10, 2012, 7 pm, at the First Church of Christ, Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Photos by David Gilbert

Examples of programs from the last several years—one harpsichord and one organ—and some of the thinking behind the programming choices in each one

Recitals--Examples

Last month I laid out some ideas about recital planning, especially how teachers can help students think about recital planning. This month, in a column with a somewhat unusual and more personal format, I will give two examples of programs of my own from the last several years—one harpsichord and one organ—and discuss some of the thinking behind the programming choices in each one. Along the way I will add a few more general ideas to the discussion as well. Nothing that I write here is meant to serve as an exact template, of course, for what anyone else—student or experienced performer—will or should do. But I hope that it will be interesting as a set of examples to think about.

The first program that I want to look at is a harpsichord recital that I gave in the exact same form about a dozen times during the 2011–2012 season: 

Toccata in D Minor, BWV 913, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

Suite in E Minor, Johann Jacob Froberger (1616–1667): Allemande–Gigue–Courante–Sarabande

Biblical Sonata No. 6–“The Death and Burial of Jacob,” Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722): 

I. The sadness of the sons of Jacob, assisting at the bed of their dying father, relieved a little bit by the paternal benediction

II. Thinking about the consequences of this death

III. The voyage from Egypt to the land of Canaan

IV. The burial of Israel, and the bitter lament of those assembled

V. The consoled spirits of the survivors

Intermission

Sonata in G Major, George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)

Thirty-two variations on “La Capricciosa,” Dieterich Buxtehude (c.1637–1707)

Double-manual harpsichord in the German style, Keith Hill, 1978

The first thing to notice about this program is the last thing listed, that is, the instrument. In planning performances that season, I wanted to use this particular harpsichord. It happens to be my own first harpsichord, acquired in June 1978. I hadn’t used it for recitals since about the late 1990s, and I wanted to renew my own awareness of its possibilities. Also, it is a magnificent-sounding instrument, and I felt that audiences would get a lot out of hearing it—and that it had been too long. 

In this case, the instrument then determined at least some of the boundaries of the programming choices. Especially since I was in part showcasing the instrument, I wanted all the repertoire to fit the style of the sound closely. It is probably true that any harpsichord piece from the earliest beginnings in the fifteenth century through Haydn could be played on this harpsichord and sound good. However, Germanic music from the mid-to-late-seventeenth century through roughly the end of the time of Bach is the music that fits it the very best. 

The pieces that I started with in planning the specifics of the program were those by Kuhnau and Buxtehude. These are both fairly long works, and each is of great intensity: similar in artistic stature, and indeed in mood and style, to the great late works of Beethoven. Both are pieces that I have been playing for a long time, but have not included in recitals for a decade or so. Each of them is also a piece after which it is difficult—for a while—to focus on listening to anything else. (This is in a sense a goal rather than a fact, since in order for it to apply, the pieces must, of course, be played effectively.) This is the beauty of the intermission: it allows two such pieces to be included in a program without compromising the audience’s ability to listen to the rest of what is on offer. 

I chose to put the Buxtehude at the very end and the Kuhnau at the end of the first half for two reasons: first, the Buxtehude is longer; second, the particular kind of intensity that is projected by the Kuhnau is—as the subject matter suggests—somewhat “down” in mood. The Kuhnau certainly could be an ending piece, but the Buxtehude seemed like a more exhilarating one.

To be honest, the specific reason that I decided to open the program with this particular Bach toccata was that I like the very opening—the first few measures of the piece, a one-voice cello or gamba-like flourish—as the beginning of a concert. It grabs the attention well and exposes the sound of the instrument in a lucid and appealing way. Of course, this would not be enough if the rest of the piece were not also suitable. It is quite a charismatic piece, though not as tightly constructed as some (later) Bach pieces. Its multi-sectional toccata form was old-fashioned at the time when it was written, and therefore it actually fits especially well with a program based mostly on older German music. This older music is, of course, the music that Bach studied in his youth. 

The Froberger E-minor suite is a piece with a lot of out-and-out beauty to it, especially on a really beautiful-sounding harpsichord, and probably most of all in the outer (slow) movements. Like a lot of Froberger it is harmonically driven, and the lush harmonies of the outer movements are quite seductive on the harpsichord. Since three of the other four pieces on the program (Bach, Kuhnau, Buxtehude) are one-movement sectional works (that is, works in which the sections clearly lead into one another and form one whole rather than separate movements), I wanted to include a piece that is in several separate movements. (The difference is of course essentially one of emphasis. The separate movements of the Froberger fit one another well, and the piece works as a bigger unit, but the movements could be played individually without seeming like fragments. This is not true, or less true, of the individual variations or sections of the other three works.) This is not just for variety on paper. It is because the demands made on listeners by a work in several movements are different—and less challenging—than the demands made by a long work in indissoluble sections. So in effect this piece is, while just as beautiful and as moving as the rest, rather relaxing to experience in this context.

The same goal—a bit of relaxation—was present in the choice of the Handel piece to start the second half. More specifically, it serves to bring the audience out of the intermission in a friendly way and let them settle down to the long and (one hopes) intense experience of the Buxtehude. The Handel is a through-composed one-movement piece: fairly short, quite exuberant, very much harmonically driven in a more-or-less Vivaldian manner. It is “officially” a two-manual piece, in that it has manual-change indications from the composer himself. (This, by the way, gives a bit of an opening for discussion, in program notes or informally with audience members after the concert, of the whole business of different manuals—why we do or don’t make changes within a piece, and who decides.)

For the first few times that I played this program, I added an encore—a piece in the spirit of the rest of the program, but adding something a bit different: in a couple of cases a rather meditative Froberger Fantasia, and in a couple of other instances a Handel Allemande. However, I got feedback from several audience members that—in keeping, in fact, with what I wrote above—they actually did not want to hear anything after the Buxtehude. They wanted to remain in the mood of that piece for as long as they could. I decided to omit the encore after a certain number of performances. 

There is one point that I have not mentioned yet in regard to recital programming: the role of key relationships in the process of choosing pieces. In fact, my honest thought about this is that it does not really make any difference. The main reason that it does not is the phenomenon of applause. When a piece ends—usually, if we are talking about pieces that are in a key at all, with some sort of cadence—the dying out of the sound is followed by unmusical, and specifically non-tonal, noise. (I don’t mean that to be disparaging. I think that the role of applause is a positive one, defining the space between pieces, allowing audience members to express feelings and re-group between pieces, creating a bond between audience and player.) I believe that there are very few listeners indeed, even among experienced concert-goers or trained musicians, who can then vividly experience the tonal opening of the next piece as being either particularly satisfying or particularly jarring. Some people can tell what that relationship is, many people cannot. But I doubt that even those who can tell are spontaneously affected by it, as they would be by a key relationship between movements or sections of an uninterrupted piece.

The second program of mine that I want to discuss is an organ recital from the summer of 2004. I chose it because the relationship between the programming and the instrument was different from the first example, and because there were also different considerations about the prospective audience. It went as follows:

Praeludium in F Major, BuxWV 156, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707)

Inno della Domenica, Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643)

Canzona Quarta in F Major, Frescobaldi

Magnificat Primi Toni, Frescobaldi

Fugue in C Major, Buxtehude

Psalmus: Warum betrubst du dich mein Herz? (chorale with twelve variations), Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654)

Intermission

Partita: Was Gott tut das ist wohlgetan, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706)

O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, J. S. Bach (1685–1750)

Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 548, Bach

The organ was a late-twentieth-century American (electro-pneumatic) instrument, eclectic in design, but with a bit of a Baroque “accent,” so to speak—fairly low wind pressure, stop names that could by and large have been found on an eighteenth-century German or French instrument, and mostly rather clear and crisp voicing. When they invited me to play this concert, the church in question had known of me as someone who specialized, as a recitalist, in Baroque music. They wanted me to exploit the Baroque side of the instrument, and in doing so to show off a reasonable amount of variety. They expected that most of the people coming to the event would be enthusiastic organ-music listeners, but not necessarily themselves focused, as listeners, on the Baroque. The program, even if its composers’ dates all fell within no more than a century and a half, would have to seem not narrow.

The imperative to achieve variety of sound-color in a program tends to lead to playing pieces that have many sections or movements, or a fairly large number of short pieces. This is what suggested the Frescobaldi set, the
Scheidt, and the Pachelbel to me. These three parts of the program provided nearly thirty different segments, each of which could be (should be?) played on a different sound. Furthermore, the Scheidt and to an extent the Pachelbel can be flexibly played with more or less pedal. Any flexibility of this sort increases the ability of the performer to exploit different sounds, and is particularly useful in coming to a new instrument. As best I remember, I ended up using double-pedal in the last movement of the Scheidt, pedal for the chorale melody in the bass in one or more movements, and in the tenor voice in one, pedal for an “ordinary” bass line in a movement or two, and also played several movements without pedal. In the Pachelbel, in one movement in which the chorale in the tenor could in theory be soloed out on the pedal, I didn’t do so, finding instead a manuals-only sound (one manual) that brought out the tenor range nicely and separated all three voices from one another in such a way that a listener might have thought that it was indeed a trio registration. (I should say that these are pieces that I know very well indeed, and they are not, just at the “note learning” level, extremely hard. In pieces above a certain threshold of difficulty I would not dare to show up at a recital venue uncertain of which notes I would play in the pedal and which in the manuals.)

I wanted to find fairly imposing pieces with which to open and close the program, partly just for the excitement generated by great pieces that sustain their greatness over a long period of time, and partly to counterbalance the set of short or sectional pieces that made up most of the rest of the program. The Buxtehude F-major is—like the Bach harpsichord toccata discussed above—a piece that begins with a flourish, and that makes an effective start to a listening experience. It is also just a great piece: complex, sectional (but in a way that, through various motivic and other compositional devices, adds up to a coherent whole), dramatic. 

The Bach E-minor Prelude and Fugue BWV 548—the one sometimes called “The Wedge”—is of course one of the long and imposing Bach pieces. I have less of a sense with this piece than I do with the Kuhnau and Buxtehude pieces discussed above that a listener would necessarily find it impossible to focus on something else after hearing it, but I think that it is more natural not to do so. This work increases the overall level of variety in the program in part by not being sectional. Each of the two long movements is quite unified, with the balance between unity and change being addressed in part by rondo or da capo devices: something not seen elsewhere on this program. I did not change sounds within each half (I did between the prelude and the fugue), so, after three-quarters of a concert in which the audience only heard any given registration for a minute or so, this piece provided them with a chance to settle in to listening to each of the two sounds for much longer: increased overall variety provided by an experience of less variety.

The two works that I have not mentioned yet—the short Buxtehude fugue and the Bach O Lamm Gottes—serve in part a function similar to that of the Handel in the harpsichord program. They are not bringing the audience back from intermission, but by being shorter and less imposing—not less interesting or beautiful—they provide a moment of relaxation before the challenge to the focus and attention span represented by the longer works that follow. Also, in particular, I thought that it would be good to have an additional piece specifically by each of the composers who were otherwise represented only by long imposing works.

All of the pieces on this program are “comfort food” for me: they are pieces that I know inside and out, that I have played for years—decades, really—and that I come as close as I do with any music to being able to play standing on my head. This is true even of the Bach E-minor. It is often listed as one of the most difficult Bach organ pieces, but I happen to have learned it extremely thoroughly, and I find it easier to execute than I do many simpler pieces that I have practiced and learned but not delved into as deeply as I have that one. (That is not to say, just for the record, that I never lose focus for a second or two and make a wrong note in this piece, as I might in any piece. Also, I am by no means a specialist in blockbuster virtuoso pieces: I just happen to have a very good relationship with that one.) I think that it is not a bad idea to emphasize music with which you have this kind of relationship in going to a new instrument. It is also not a bad idea to get as much practice time on a new instrument as you can, but of course schedules being what they are, this is not always as much as it should be.