The Liturgical Organist: A Conversation with Juan Paradell-Solé

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason.

While the Sistine Chapel—la Cappella Sistina (which takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who reorganized it in 1471)—is a must-see for many who travel to Rome, it is unlikely they will hear music performed there, as any services and concerts in the chapel are usually not open to the public. The Sistine Chapel Choir is the pope’s personal choir, singing at all the liturgical celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff—in the Sistine Chapel itself, at St. Peter’s Basilica, and at outdoor services.

During a 2014 visit to Rome, I was able to meet with the titular organist of the Sistine Chapel, Juan Paradell-Solé. A native of Spain, he received his early training in Igualada, near Barcelona, with Father Albert Foix, and studied organ with Montserrat Torrent at the conservatory of music in Barcelona.

In 1973 Paradell-Solé moved to Rome for study in organ and composition with Monsignor Valentí Miserachs. He subsequently studied in Germany for three years with Günther Kaunzinger. He served as organist at Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore)for 30 years, and assumed the position as organist of the Sistine Chapel in 2011.

Joyce Johnson Robinson: At what age did you begin studying music?

Juan Paradell-Solé: I was eight years old.

Do you come from a musical family?

Yes. My maternal grandfather was a musician—including in church, because at that time one did a bit of everything. He had a band, played piano, and they made appearances in nearby towns, but he also always played in church.

What about your parents?

My parents, no. I attended a school run by the Scolopi Fathers and one of the priests there, Father Albert Foix, was a musician, and had formed a Pueri Cantores choir. He visited classes and looked for children who wanted to sing . . . And this priest was very good with Gregorian chant. He was quite serious and even though he was dealing with children, he taught music using solfège. I had learned piano and around the age of nine or so I began to accompany the Pueri Cantores on the harmonium, during sung Masses, getting accustomed to sacred music. Thus thanks to my first maestro I was already, as a child, learning Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony.

How is that you came to be in Rome?

After some study with Father Albert Foix, I enrolled at the conservatory in my city, Igualada, which is near Barcelona, for study of solfège and piano. In the late 1960s, a priest musician from a nearby city, who had studied in Rome, started coming during the summer. This was Maestro Monsignor Valentì Miserachs; he played organ in the basilica and gave concerts. So I met him, and he prepared me for the entrance exam for the Barcelona Conservatory, and to study with Montserrat Torrent. In the early 1970s Miserachs became maestro di cappella at the papal basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. Thus I asked him if I could come to Rome to study with him, and there I was on my way to the Eternal City.

What are some of your early memories of learning the organ?

Lessons with Montserrat Torrent took place in the Palau Nacional, in which there was a large Walcker organ, enormous, five manuals, and I began to take lessons on that organ. It had over 100 registers—mamma mia! (laughs) It seemed to me as though I were in the cockpit of an airplane—it almost scared me! This huge machine, these keyboards—it was a very beautiful instrument, mechanical action; its original keyboard was from the 18th century.

At that time, the organ world in Spain almost didn’t exist. There was only Montserrat Torrent, who held courses and gave concerts . . . while here in Rome at that time there were these big names, such as Fernando Germani and Ferruccio Vignanelli.

What music did you study with Montserrat Torrent?

Always music of every period—certainly not only Spanish music. She began with easy Bach pieces, Baroque works, pre-Bach composers such as Böhm, then little by little moved on to French Classic works, and gradually later French works. Montserrat is an organist who plays everything—much early Spanish music, but also Bach, Duruflé, Reubke, Reger. She is “360 degrees,” playing all the repertoire. Today there are organists who play only early music. Montserrat is still active, even in her eighties. In 2013 she played a challenging program in Rome, including even Alain and Duruflé.

You also studied in Germany.

I spent three years in Germany, studying with Günther Kaunzinger.

Can you describe the organ world in Spain after the civil war?

In Spain, gradually things changed after Franco—new organs began to be built. In Spain, during the civil war, many historic organs were destroyed. But some organs were saved—all the organs in the south of Spain, and in the Basque regions, in special cases, some were saved. For example, let me tell you about an eighteenth-century organ in Igualada, my native city.

Someone saw children in the town square who were playing with very small pipes from an organ that was being taken apart. So he called the city’s music teacher: “Maestro, someone wants to destroy the organ—come right away.” And the maestro asked what the person was doing, and was told, “This organ is of no use anymore.” The maestro answered, “What are you doing? This is a musical instrument. It’s not just used in the church; it can also be used for dancing, for tangos . . . ” And he succeeded in convincing him. So they dismantled the organ and stored it in a convent school during the civil war; thanks to this it was saved.

But many others were in ruins, included a beautiful, large Cavaillé-Coll in a cathedral in Catalonia. Starting in the 1980s many organs began to be rebuilt, concert halls constructed, and many organ students, like me, went abroad to study. So now in Spain there are many fine organists, new instruments, and the organ world in Spain has changed a great deal.

You have concertized throughout Europe, South and North America, and even in Syria!

Yes, Syria—in Damascus. There was an organ in the Franciscan church there; I think it was the only organ in Damascus. The concert had been organized through the Cervantes Institute—the institute for Spanish culture. It was very interesting: a concert of Spanish music and poetry, with a Spanish actress. Last year we recorded a CD on that organ, also Spanish poetry and music. This CD, Aquesta divina unión, will be released in late September 2015.

What sort of concert repertoire do you favor?

I perform much Spanish music, to help make it known—although not too much early music, because early Spanish music is familiar. There is a large repertoire from the late nineteenth–early twentieth century up to now, written by composers from the Basque countries.

Do you mean the Euskarien region?

Exactly. The Euskarien region is not very big but has a large collection of Romantic-Symphonic organs that’s unique in the world—many by Cavaillé-Coll, Merklin, Mutin, Stoltz Frères, Puget, and Walcker. And these instruments haven’t been touched—they have not been changed, they are as they were.They’ve been maintained but nothing has been changed. So musicians from the late nineteenth century onwards grew up with these instruments, and many wrote for the organ. It’s a large body of Spanish symphonic literature that is very little known.

You’ve recorded some of this repertoire.

I enjoyed making this CD (Orgues en Duos, by Daniel Pandolfo et Juan Paradell-Solé on the Merklin and Koenig organs, Pamina SPM 1520 393 CD) because some of these pieces are very interesting—for example, Usandizaga, and Jesus Guridi, for instance. It was recorded in Alsace on a Merklin organ. And Daniel Pandolfo (who’s French, though of Italian ancestry) and I recorded some duets, utilizing a second, choir organ.

You’ve also done a lot of concertizing.

However, I am at heart a liturgical organist—I have been a liturgical organist for all my life. For me the church is important. The liturgical organist can seem to some people perhaps of less value, but that’s not true. The liturgical organist must have many more competencies, really a 360-degree skill set: know how to immediately accompany Gregorian chant, accompany a choir, transpose, must know how to improvise. A concert organist studies pieces; if he learns them well, he moves on to the next ones. Of course, a liturgical organist also plays the great literature, but must have an even broader skill set. I remember when I was twenty, I went to St. Peter’s to hear Vespers, and sometimes also the morning Mass, sung by the Cappella Giulia choir. The director, Maestro Armando Renzi, who was very famous in Italy, said to me, “If you don’t know how to do these things you’ll never be a good organist, because beyond playing concerts, an organist must be able to do these things.” And it’s true.

What is a typical week like for you?

Most of my weeks are quite similar. Fortunately, my schedule allows for at least a half day of practice at the organ. I begin in the morning as soon as possible, with a bit of piano technique and then I continue on organ. The afternoon is normally dedicated to study and private lessons. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days at the conservatory [Conservatorio Licinio Refice, Frosinone], where I teach organ, Gregorian chant, modes, and basso continuo.

Normally during the week I don’t have rehearsals with the Sistine Chapel choir. The choir rehearses every day, but reheases with the organ only for something particular, such as a piece in a concertato style with the organ. Otherwise we rehearse together a day or two before an important celebration.

During the weekend there are often celebratory liturgies in the Vatican. Then I am involved both for the Mass that the Pope says on some Sundays, as well as for important feastdays that can occur during the week.

How is your position at the Sistine Chapel different from that at St, Mary Major?

My work as an organist for the choir of the Sistine Chapel—the pope’s choir—is not much different from that at St. Mary Major: namely, that of a liturgical organist. At St. Mary Major, there was a short rehearsal before every Mass. After an improvisation on the Introit, I accompanied the various types of song and also played during and after the motet. I also played the offertory and a final piece from the literature at the end of Mass. And the papal celebration is not very different. Whether a Mass or a Vespers, it is similar, only in St. Peter’s there is much more time for playing the organ, above all before and at the end of the Mass or Vespers—since the basilica is so large, one needs to play until almost all of the assembly has exited the basilica. But it’s essentially the same.

How much of your work is accompanying the Sistine Chapel Choir, versus playing repertoire (for example, during postludes)?

Papal celebrations, with the Sistine Chapel Choir, certainly involve much accompanying of the choir, especially during Mass, meaning all the parts of the Ordinary or the Propers of the Mass, or the various parts of Vespers. But there is also much opportunity for being able to play organ literature, repertoire—above all before Mass. Often I must play even for 30 to 45 minutes before the Mass, or the arrival of the Holy Father, or at the end of a Mass or Vespers, accompanying the papal procession and while the entire assembly leaves. So there is a lot of time in which to play plenty of literature.

During the Mass, often the Offertory is sung first, before the choir sings a motet. But often the organ must continue improvising, in the same style of the motet that was sung. There are other moments when there is a lot of time for the organ—for example, in the baptismal liturgy, during the ordination of a priest, in a penitential service—where the organ must play quietly. And those are times when the organist must play for 45 minutes, or even an hour.

In accompanying chant and Psalms, do you use written-out accompaniments, or do you always improvise?

For Gregorian chant, normally I improvise the accompaniments. I’ve spent many years studying the accompaniment of Gregorian chant, and I also teach this in the conservatory. I like to improvise chant accompaniment, so that it is not always the same. Sometimes I use accompaniments that I wrote, which were published in various musical journals. For psalmody, normally the psalm is composed by the Sistine Chapel choirmaster—at present, Maestro Palombella—and he also writes the accompaniment. But this doesn’t mean that I cannot change accompaniments during the verses and create my own on occasion.

What is involved when you must play for a Mass outdoors in Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter’s Square?)

During Masses that are said outdoors in St. Peter’s Square—from Palm Sunday through the summer—the situation varies greatly, and for the choir there is the difficulty of singing outdoors. Another difficulty is the loudspeakers that transmit sound through the piazza, and that transmit for radio and television.

Regarding the organ, a movable radio-controlled console is used, which controls the organ in the basilica. I must say that the sound of the organ is very good; even though the organ is inside the basilica, the organist can hear it immediately. Logically this requires speakers; this system, however, has had some problems lately. Until a better solution is found—and this is just a temporary solution—when we are in St. Peter’s Square, I play an electronic organ. Another problem, when we are all outside in the piazza, is that of weather. Sometimes we are out in the rain, other times with strong sun in our eyes; there is wind (many times the wind has blown my score away!). I have had to take shelter and improvise. So to work around these problems—weather as well as the difficulty for the choir of singing outdoors—in the last couple years the choir has been standing in the atrium of the basilica, covered, so this is much more comfortable. The choir and organ can mutually be heard well, and we can coordinate everything much better, almost as if we were within St. Peter’s Basilica.

Who plans the music for Masses?

The music for papal celebrations is chosen by the office of papal celebrations, headed by Monsignor Guido Marini, together with the director of the Cappella Musicale Ponteficio Sistina, Maestro Don Massimo Palombella, of course under the guidance and approval of the Holy Father. It’s not unusual on occasion for the pope himself to choose particular music that he would like to have performed. For example, for Mass last Christmas, Pope Francis himself personally asked that the “Et incarnatus est “ from Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, be sung during the Credo—and certainly it was. Thus, the staff together with others decide on the music for each occasion.

As for the music that the organist must perform, I must say that no one forced me to play anything—they allow the organist to choose, based on his good sense and liturgical understanding. Of course, the organist must always know how to choose, from the liturgical point of view, which works from the literature are most suitable; certainly the Christmas season is not the same as Lent, or Easter, or a penance service. So the organist chooses from the repertoire.

You have played for historic events, such as the ceremony starting the conclave that elected the new Pope, and for Pope Francis’s first Mass.

[When the conclave began] I went to the gathering of the cardinals in the Sala Nervi . . . The Office of Terce was sung at the beginning. I went every morning to play; each day cardinals from all over the world were arriving. Then there was the ceremony to open the conclave. Before the conclave began, there were other people inside the Sistine Chapel, and all the cardinals must swear an oath. I had to play during the swearing-in, and then once the master of ceremonies declared “Extra Omnes” (“everybody out”), I had to quickly grab my scores and run out. I was the last to exit the Sistine Chapel.

After the election of the new pope, the next day there was his first Mass in the Sistine Chapel, for the cardinals only, and then there was the first Mass, in St. Peter’s Square, for the whole world.

Deutsche Gramophon has recorded some of this (Habemus Papam, includes the Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff, Entrance into the Conclave, Mass with the Cardinal electors, and Mass for the beginning of the Petrine Ministry; DG B0022404-02).

Yes. It was recorded live and includes music from the conclave, the Mass in the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals, the Mass in St. Peter’s, and the Mass for all the world. I presented a copy to the pope.

What are your future plans and goals?

Goals: I hope to continue to play for papal celebrations for many years!

As for projects, in summer 2015 I have many concerts throughout Europe (Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Italy), and on August 28, I play in St. James Catholic Cathedral in Orlando, Florida. In 2016 there will be much to do at the Vatican, marking the Holy Year, the Jubilee of Mercy, with celebrations, concerts, and other events. Then in summer 2016 there will be many concerts—in Japan and South America—and recording a new CD.

Thank you very much, Maestro Paradell-Solé—grazie mille! ν

An Interview with Montserrat Torrent, Queen of Iberian organ music

Mark J. Merrill interviews well-known Spanish organist and reigning Queen of Iberian organ music, Montserrat Torrent

Mark J. Merrill

Mark J. Merrill holds a B.M. in church music and an M.A.T. in Spanish from Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He has studied organ with Montserrat Torrent for nearly 30 years, earning his Maestría in Organ from the Conservatory of Music in Barcelona, Spain, as well as his Título de Doctorado from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Spain. He has dedicated the past 30 years to documenting, recording, and analyzing nearly 168 historical instruments in Spain. His dissertation, “The Effects and Implications on the Performance Practices of Early Iberian Keyboard Music,” earned him a special citation of merit from the Spanish Department of Culture.

I first became acquainted with the well-known Spanish organist and reigning Queen of Iberian organ music, Montserrat Torrent, in 1985. I owe a debt of gratitude to Guy Bovet for making arrangements for me to study with this remarkable woman, over the course of nearly thirty years!

I still remember my arrival in Barcelona, Spain in 1985 and soon discovered that Dr. Torrent did not speak any English; luckily I had a degree in Spanish Studies, so the language barriers where easily overcome.

I have been traveling to Spain yearly over a period of 30 years. The interview was conducted in Catalan, her native tongue, on November 5, 2011.

Some basic background and highlights on Dr. Torrent’s life are as follows. At the age of 5 years she began piano study under the direction of her mother, Angela Serra, who was a disciple of Enrique Granados. It is evident that Torrent came from a very musical family; her father, a physician, was an accomplished violinist, her sister a viola player, her brother a cellist. Evenings were spent playing and discovering chamber music, as well as each member of the family performing solo works. Montserrat Torrent was the head of the organ department at the Conservatorio Municipal Superior in Barcelona from 1959 until 1991. Her teachers have included Santiago Kastner, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Nöelie Pierront, Fernando Germani, and Helmuth Rilling. Dr. Torrent has over 50 recordings to her credit, in addition to having performed numerous concerts worldwide. She has been an advocate for the restoration of many early period instruments in Spain, as well as promoting the study of Iberian organ literature.

Q: Where were your initial musical studies?

A: Originally, I studied the piano with my mother. Later I attended the Conservatory of Music in Barcelona, focusing on the piano for my degree. At the end of my studies, the Civil War began just prior to my graduation recital, and my career, like many others, was put on hold.

Q: How did the Spanish Civil War affect your career?

A: I had just completed my final recital when the war began. It made an impact upon my life, as everything normal came to an end. There were no concerts or special events. I basically played the piano at home during the entire war, practicing for the day when I might begin my career.

Q: When were you first introduced to the organ?

A: I first encountered the pipe organ after the Civil War ended. I had an opportunity to play an organ and was moved by the variety of tonal capabilities of the instrument. I immediately began organ studies.

Q: Who was your first organ instructor?

A: My first instructor at the organ was Dr. Kastner, who taught at the conservatory. He was very demanding as an instructor. If you weren’t prepared, he wouldn’t even take time to listen to you.

Q: Was the transition from the piano to the organ an easy one?

A: No! At first it was horrific. My teacher had to completely transform and re-educate me on technique and my approach to sound production. It was very difficult at the onset.

Q: Did being a woman have any impact upon your career?

A: Of course it did! My goodness . . .
there were many who felt that women simply did not have the strength or ability to play the organ. I had a terrible time breaking into the concert scene . . . women simply did not fit the mold—especially in a male-dominated field. Women of today do not realize how different things are now.

Q: How does organ technique vary from piano technique?

A: On the piano, you utilize finger, wrist, and shoulder movement to exact sound in combination with the three pedals; however, in organ playing, the finger is the only element that has to be considered. The attack and release produce the desired effect . . . this alone makes for a completely different technique. Many people who have had years of piano never truly master organ technique fully, as they still attempt to utilize wrist, arm, and shoulder gestures to create sound. The only aspect that elicits sound is the digit (finger) . . . so making use of other gestures is merely wasted or unnecessary movement.

Q: You often state that technique leads to stylistics; what do you mean by this?

A: If you study the music of Bach, you obviously take into consideration the fingerings and pedalings used by Baroque organists, which in turn you apply to the music of Baroque composers. For example, a scale might be fingered 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4, which when played as such produces a distinctly different effect as compared to a modern fingering such as 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5. The intention is not to effect the musical selection, but rather subtle nuances occur as a result. The same would apply for each period of music. When playing classical music you apply classical technique, when playing Romantic works you would apply appropriate Romantic fingerings and pedal technique. As a result, the music takes on new subtleties that result in stylistics as an end result.

Q: Some would say that your approach is that of a “purist.” Would you agree?

A: Well, not to the point that such early fingerings or pedal techniques would be effective, but rather that the music is rather enhanced by the application of early fingerings and techniques, which renders a more authentic performance, not one hindered by a mere attempt to affect a particular style. Stylistics result from the application of historical approaches, not vice versa.

Q: Many would say that early fingerings produce uneven or jerky results.

A: Not at all. I can play a scale utilizing early fingerings such as 1-2-3-4-3-4-3-4 just as smoothly as 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5. One has to commit and practice intensely to master early fingerings just as one does modern fingerings—time, patience, and attention to detail. Period performance practices should be smooth and not sound affected or contrived.

Q: In Europe, Spanish repertoire seems to be very common on concerts, whereas in the United States, it is seldom heard. Why do you believe this is the case?

A: I’ve performed many times in the United States. I believe that many teachers of organ are simply unfamiliar with this particular repertoire; that being the case, it seems to seldom be covered, if at all even explored. I’ve noticed that even anthologies have very limited portions dedicated to Iberian music in comparison to other genres. A shame.

Q: You have made many recordings; which are your favorites or were the most enjoyable to record?

A: I have never listened to any of my recordings. I believe musicians grow if they are healthy, and how I played a work ten years ago will have matured as I have matured. Musicians should evolve and constantly be in a state of development or they become stagnant. Learning our craft is a continuous process, never ending.

Q: For nearly 54 years you have been teaching at the International Organ Course Música en Compostela. How did this famous course develop?

A: Several musicians including Pablo Casals, Andrés Segovia, Montserrat Caballé, Alicia de Larrocha, and I decided we needed an international course that emphasized Iberian composers, so we organized the course and it’s been running ever since those early years. We spend one month working with young people who compete for scholarships, who come with the sole purpose of mastering the works of Iberian composers representing various time periods. It is an intense institute; six days per week from 8 am until 10 pm, with a concert performance nearly every evening by students and faculty. It is one of the oldest running courses in Europe. We draw students from around the world.

Q: What advice do you have for young organists?

A: Study the piano to master technique, but remember that in transferring to the organ you have to master a new technique. What worked on the piano no longer applies to the organ. Study a varied repertoire and master techniques as they apply to those various periods of music. For example, a good player should be able to play smooth scales with fingers and pedals according to the period: Baroque pedal technique should produce a smooth scale on the pedal with all toes, just as a modern scale on the pedals using toe/heels. Mastering techniques means being able to adjust that technique to the repertoire/period one is playing, and do so flawlessly.

Q: What projects are you currently working on at this point in your career?

A: Currently I’m undertaking to record all the organ works of Correa de Arauxo. He represents the highest point in early Iberian Baroque composition. I’ve already completed five recordings and still have four to finish. Among other projects, I’m recording some of my favorite works for organ, which are varied—Baroque, Romantic as well as modern. I also continue to teach privately and conduct masterclasses and perform. I intend to remain active as long as I have breath and the bellows on the organ continues to provide air to make music!

I thanked Montserrat Torrent for her time and praised her for having made introducing and promoting the Iberian organ and repertoire her lifelong goal. She has always been the greatest of advocates for this particular genre and we hope her journey continues for many years to come.

Church Music Studies in Germany: Reflections on a Semester Abroad

Hannah Koby

Hannah Koby is an organ/church music major and German minor at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana, where she is also a member of Christ College (Interdisciplinary Honors College), the University Chorale, and the student chapter of the American Guild of Organists. At the university’s Chapel of the Resurrection, she serves on the Morning Prayer planning staff, is organist for the weekly Matins service, and serves as pianist and on the planning team for the weekly Candlelight service. Koby is also organist and choir director at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Chesterton, Indiana. After her studies at Valparaiso, she plans to pursue graduate work in sacred music and to maintain German connections.

We have probably all heard that studying in a foreign culture is life changing, that one will learn a lot and grow as a person. After spending spring and summer of my sophomore year of college in Germany in 2016, I can say that those are all true. Yet as musicians, we seek musical as well as personal growth. My time abroad left me with stronger musicianship, broader understanding of German organs and their history, greater appreciation for and knowledge of liturgical worship, and a network of colleagues, friends, and mentors on the other side of the world. I believe that studying in Europe and experiencing the instruments, churches, history, and culture for oneself is an unparalleled opportunity for organists. As I played Schnitger, Silbermann, and Sauer organs last spring (to name a few), I knew I was learning for myself the aural ideals of each builder, place, and era.

A unique partnership between Valparaiso University, where I study, and the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik (Church Music Conservatory) in Rottenburg am Neckar, Germany, provides church music students with an opportunity to study abroad while continuing music studies and gaining a new perspective on sacred music and the church. This program was part of what led me to study at Valparaiso University. I believe studying abroad is an opportunity that student organists should seek out, because the benefits of seeing, hearing, and playing historic and modern European organs in their context cannot be overestimated.

Rottenburg am Neckar

Most of my time in Germany was spent in Rottenburg am Neckar, in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg. There is not much to set Rottenburg apart from any other small Swabian town, except that it is the seat of the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Because of this, Rottenburg is home to a Catholic church music conservatory and to St. Martin’s Cathedral—the smallest cathedral in Germany. The conservatory, or Hochschule für Kirchenmusik, is on the edge of town, providing an idyllic setting for study. It is housed in one building, with residential floors above the classrooms/practice rooms, which means no excuse for not practicing in bad weather! The size of the school—about 35 students, including bachelor’s, master’s, and one-year certificate students—lent a very personal dimension to my experience. I got to know all the students and could learn from nearly all the professors, even those I didn’t officially study under. Since all the classes and lessons are taught in German, I appreciated that small class sizes also allowed for language-related clarification when necessary!

One aspect I value most from my semester in Rottenburg was the different perspectives I got from each teacher. I studied organ literature with Herr Heinrich Walther, a concert organist and professor. While it was difficult for me to get used to a teacher very different from others I previously had, he imparted much musical and life wisdom to me in the short semester we worked together. One focus of my work was playing with more nuanced articulation. Herr Walther helped me bring out much more detail than I previously had, which was possible since we were working only with tracker-action organs, as is the norm in Germany. The lessons from that semester still impact how I think about articulation and the shape of individual notes and phrases, even though I don’t often perform on tracker instruments now that I am back in the United States.

In addition to the seven small pipe organs housed at the Hochschule, students have occasional access to organs in local churches. I had the privilege of performing in one of the weekly “Music for the Market” concerts on the four-manual 1979 Hubert Sandtner organ in Rottenburg’s St. Martin Cathedral. I also heard this instrument often, with the masterful improvisation of cathedral organist Ruben Sturm during Sunday Mass. The other Catholic church in town, St. Moriz, has a three-manual instrument built in 1976 by Winfried Albiez, which provided many registration options for an improvisation lesson there! Both of these churches regularly hosted the conservatory’s guest artist and faculty recitals, giving me a chance to hear the breadth of color and texture on each instrument.

Difference in curriculum

One surprise for me in Rottenburg was that organ improvisation is a main subject in the German church music curriculum, taken every semester. I encountered many surprised looks when I shared that it is not required in many American programs. I think that for the first couple of weeks, even my teacher was not quite sure what to do with me! While I struggled to understand my lessons, my teacher, Herr Peter Schleicher, was a patient instructor. He worked with me on the basics of improvisation, a skill that has already proven very helpful for service playing upon my return.

The most striking difference in church music studies at Rottenburg is the choral and conducting curriculum. In the United States, church music studies largely focus on organ, and choral conducting training is often minimal. In Rottenburg, organ is a primary component of studies, but the church musician’s role as choral director is taken very seriously. Each student at Rottenburg has private or small-group lessons in choral conducting every semester, and the whole school takes part in a weekly praxis seminar. In addition, there are classes in choral/vocal pedagogy, and orchestral, chant, and children’s choir conducting. I think I had as much education in choral leadership in one semester in Rottenburg as many American church music students receive in four years!

Prior to my time in Germany, I had only taken one semester of basic conducting, in a class of about a dozen people. What a difference it was to work one-on-one with a professor! I worked with Herr Peter Lorenz, cantor of St. Martin’s Cathedral. I learned so much from him about physical preparation for conductors, score study, and rehearsal preparation, as well as the conducting itself. Because we had half an hour every week just to focus on my conducting, rather than dividing the time between students in a class, Herr Lorenz was able to correct much more than I had previously experienced. My conducting has become significantly more fluent because of these lessons.

Every Tuesday morning at the Rottenburg conservatory is devoted to the choral conducting practicum. Students work with their professors in lessons to prepare a choral work, and on their assigned Tuesday, lead a rehearsal of the piece. The professors will assist the student when something is not going well, and always provide feedback at the end. In addition to rehearsal leadership experience, the practicum also serves as weekly sight-singing practice for all the students.

Usually in the first year, students must also take a set of choral pedagogy classes. This set consists of studies of body and breath, choral warm-up practicum, and choral voice building. Studies of body and breath focuses on physical exercises both for the students as musicians and performers and for choirs. We learned everything from relaxation exercises for musicians to activities to physically prepare choral singers. Each new technique or exercise was practiced as well as discussed.

This class led directly into the warm-up practicum, a half hour in which a student leads a 20-minute choral warm-up, both physical and vocal, followed by 10 minutes of debriefing. This gives each student a chance to try out new vocalises and learn about their particular issues in leadership. In Germany, it is considered unprofessional to lead warm-ups from the piano, so each student has a tuning fork and vocally gives pitches. Working in that system was one of my challenges. For example, I tended to have my singers vocalize higher than necessary or comfortable because my own vocal range is high.

Following the practical courses, we had choral voice-building class, which is essentially the theory behind what we were practicing in the other courses. We focused on individual sounds—for example, learning which vowels best reinforce different vocal qualities or what sorts of exercises can be used to bring out certain consonant sounds in singing. We also learned about vocal register and experienced an introduction to the physiology of the voice. The theory was always demonstrated through vocalises (and sometimes tricky German tongue twisters!), and was reinforced through paired themes for the warm-up practicum. All these classes operated as a set, providing a holistic education for future choral leaders.

Organ to organ:

Traveling Europe

Supplementing all my studies in Rottenburg, I took advantage of the vast organ riches within traveling distance. A highlight for me was traveling to Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Lübeck over Pentecost break. Particularly impressive was the number of organ concerts and other events in Hamburg in the half week I was there (prompting my Hamburg grandmother to suggest I continue my studies there; but that is another story). One of the many opportunities was a demonstration of the famous Arp Schnitger organ in Hamburg’s St. Jacobi Church. Upon learning that I was an organist, the intern leading it invited me to play while he demonstrated some registrations. Afterward, he asked if I would like to come back the next day, leading to a glorious hour and a half with the church to myself, exploring the grand sounds of this historic instrument. Now, I try to remember these sounds as a standard for North German Baroque registration for my work here in the United States.

Another memorable instance was in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the St. Petri Church, home to a German-speaking congregation. I was studying what I could see in the façade when the organist arrived. I asked to see the console, and he offered that I could play for a few minutes. When he saw me pull out my organ shoes and music from the bag I always carried, he realized I was a serious student and invited me to come back once he was finished with his rehearsal. I was allowed to explore this late Sauer organ from the 1930s until the church closed for the day. While it is not as old or distinguished as many I saw, playing this instrument gave me a taste of the aural ideas from that era in northern Europe.

Professional connections

Along with the experience of playing historical organs, the examples above illustrate a few of the invaluable connections I made with church musicians in Europe. I am considering graduate studies in Germany, and the connections I already have may lead to mentorships or other opportunities then. Some of my best friends are students from Rottenburg who are involved with the Valparaiso exchange. Knowing a few people made the transition to Rottenburg so much easier than it could have been. In the future, these friends will also be my colleagues. There is no telling how the friendships might lead to international opportunities for our research or future choirs or students.

Personal connections with German church musicians have already led to an amazing opportunity for me. While I was abroad, I learned through a Valparaiso connection about a potential internship at the Castle Church in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther is said to have posted his 95 theses. Having been identified as a bilingual church music student, I was put in contact with the cantors there, Thomas and Sarah Herzer. Since I was in Germany at the time, it was possible for me to travel to Wittenberg to interview for the position. In the summer of 2017, I served as church music intern at the Castle Church, playing for and helping host some of the many worship services and concerts taking place as part of the 500th anniversary celebration of the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation. I don’t know if this would have happened without the personal contact I was able to make while in Germany for a semester.

Learning from difference

As a Lutheran student from a Lutheran university, I was well aware of the fact that I was going to study at a Catholic conservatory. However, I learned that I did not need to be so concerned about it, because Catholics and Lutherans truly have much in common. The pattern of the liturgy meant that I was rarely lost in worship, even when I could not figure out all the responses. For me, this underscores the value of a universal liturgy practiced by Christians all over the world. While the language may be different, we know we are singing the Kyrie or professing our faith through the creed. Interestingly, in Rottenburg I actually felt more at home at High Mass in the cathedral than in Protestant worship. Because the Protestant state church in Baden-Württemberg is “Unified,” which was explained to me as a cross between Lutheran and Reformed traditions, the local Protestant church did not follow a strictly liturgical pattern of worship. This made it more difficult for me to follow and drove home how much I rely on the liturgy to shape my experience of worship.

Another difference for me in Rottenburg was the strong focus on the chant repertory. I participated in the conservatory’s Schola in which all second-year to graduate students sing—but for which I was completely unprepared. Prior to that semester, I had sung some chant, but always in modern notation. At Rottenburg, we sang from medieval square notation with neumes—neither of which I knew how to read. Realizing my deficiency in this area, I chose to take their intro-level chant course.

This class, Gregorian Chant and German Liturgical Music, was an incredible mix of subjects. We learned the basics of understanding, singing, and leading chant, and got a crash course in Latin and German musical resources for the seasons and festivals of the church. I am glad to say I now have a basic understanding of neumes and can read historical chant notation. Beyond that, the course also drove home the deep connection that German Catholics have to their musical tradition. They regularly sing Medieval chant without a second thought, which I have not encountered in American Lutheran circles. While acknowledging the importance of vernacular hymnody, they nonetheless keep strong the Latin song tradition as well. It was impressed upon the students in this class that as church musicians, it is our responsibility to respect these traditions.

Closing thoughts

Perhaps for organists more than other musicians, the benefit of experience cannot be overestimated. Actually being in European churches and playing historical instruments gives an incomparable context for the work that we do as organists. Many times since my semester in Germany, I have worked on registration or encountered a new organ and noted that it sounds like a certain instrument I played in Europe. From that relationship, I know I have found an authentic sound for works of that time and place. When working on registration, there is no substitute for knowing firsthand the sounds that composers had at their disposal.

The traditions I studied and participated in while in Rottenburg showed me the importance of both the historical and universal planes in which we as musicians work. I hope that my experiences encourage others to seek opportunities to be challenged as musicians by other cultures and traditions.

Bach and the Art of Improvisation: A Conversation with Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra

David Wagner

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

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

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

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

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

Were your parents musicians?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was not the time for improvisation, was it?

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

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

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

It was that profound of an impact?

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

So, what happened next?

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

How interesting! You were a “secret improviser.”

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

So what changed?

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

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

Why do you think that is so?

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

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

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

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

[She laughs] Wholeheartedly!

What did your teachers think of your revelation?

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

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

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

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

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

Did you find your improvisation teacher?

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

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

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

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

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

How many years were you involved in this project?

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

Goodness! You really immersed yourself in this project!

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

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

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

So you improvise from a mental outline?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This really is very humbling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In your pedagogy, what is the first step?

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

Where do you then proceed from there?

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

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

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

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

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

What is partimento?

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

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

So you can use partimento for fugues?

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

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

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

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

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

A Conversation with Gabriel Kney: the Organbuilder turns 86

Andrew Keegan Mckriell

Renowned organbuilder GabrielKney, who celebrates his 86th birthday in November, is well known across North America for the many instruments, large and small, which he has lovingly built for universities, homes, concert halls, and churches. His career spans more than 60 years in Canada (and several before that in his German homeland).

Gabriel Kney immigrated to Canada in 1951 to work as an organbuilder and voicer with the Keates Organ Company, based in Lucan, Ontario (which had just taken over the assets of the Woodstock Organ Co., formerly Karn-Warren). Kney went on to found his own company with John Bright in 1955, with the vision of building tracker-action organs. At first they worked out of John Bright’s basement with John generally doing the electrical work and dealing with correspondence and Gabriel building the organs.

To quote Uwe Pape from his book The Tracker Organ Revival in America (Berlin, Pape Verlag, 1977): “Gabriel Kney was the first organ builder who built mechanical organs in the course of the tracker organ revival in Canada.” But as Gabriel himself says, he was somewhat ahead of his time, so he reverted to building electro-pneumatic and electric action instruments for a number of years before the mechanical action trend took off in the United States. Opus 1 (1955) and some unnumbered positivs were all mechanical action, and then from Opus 55 (1971) onward all of the Gabriel Kney organs have been mechanical action.

The idea of mechanical-action organs came to life again in the United States, more so than in Canada, which explains why most Gabriel Kney organs are located in the United States. In the 1960s, the late George Black made a recording on Opus 1, which was put on a small, hand-cut 7-inch vinyl record. Gabriel advertised this for sale in The Diapason. A reply came from the late Harald Rohlig at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, saying he wanted one of these recordings. Once Rohlig had listened to it, he told Gabriel that this was exactly the sound he was looking for, and so a contract was made to build four instruments for the college.

The first two of the four organs, Opus 23 (1962) and Opus 28 (1965), were electric action, but the next two were essentially Kney’s earliest trackers (Opus 41a and 41b). Opus 41a and 41b went to Huntingdon College in 1968, but it was not until the 1970s that Kney felt financially comfortable enough to build trackers exclusively. So that is how the story starts.

In 1967, Gabriel founded Gabriel Kney & Co. He and his own trained craftsmen, along with organbuilders from as far away as Hungary, Switzerland, England, and Germany (there were eventually seven), built more than 128 instruments. Gabriel Kney & Co. lasted until Gabriel’s “semi-retirement,” as he refers to it, in 1996. Kney’s last two instruments, Opus 129 and Opus 130 (completed in 2014), were built by Gabriel alone and are house organs for his London, Ontario, home and for the Michigan home of his wife, Dr. Mary Lou Nowicki.

In late 2013, Gabriel Kney sat down with Andrew Keegan Mackriell, director of music and cathedral organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Ontario, to talk about his life and work and the meaning music has to him. The conversation was continued in May 2015.

Andrew Keegan Mackriell: Gabriel, I think many know that you were born in Germany; could you tell me something about your family and how you arrived at a life in music?

Gabriel Kney: Yes. I was born in Speyer-am-Rhein on November 21, 1929. I was the oldest of seven children. Four sisters were born after me and then twin brothers. At about the time I was born, the worldwide Great Depression was afflicting Germany, and jobs were scarce. My father was a master cabinet maker, but he had difficulty finding work. He was fortunate to find employment as manager at a kind of hostel, rather like a YMCA, where my mother helped him and where we also lived. At the time I was born, he was a member of a political party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei) that opposed Hitler. As the National Socialist movemen t spread throughout Germany, members of this party were considered enemies, and the Brown Shirts came early one morning to the hostel and arrested him. He was incarcerated for a short period of time. After he was released from jail it was difficult for him to find work because he was blacklisted, and employers, afraid of the German authorities, would not hire him.

As work became scarce during World War II, he was hired at an aircraft factory where Messerschmitts were repaired. Eventually he became head of the woodworking department there. As you can imagine, life during this period was difficult for our whole family. My father was professionally a cabinet maker, but he was also an amateur musician and played the bassoon. My mother was not musically educated, but she had a fine voice, and I often heard her sing as she went about her daily tasks. After the war my father and some of his friends would occasionally meet at our home to play chamber music such as Telemann, etc. So I grew up with both woodworking and music as an important part of my life.

Could you tell us something about your childhood, and what it was like growing up there?

Well, post-war the question arose as to what I was going to do. By the time World War II was over, there was no school system. I had to decide whether I was going to learn a trade or wait until school restarted. I kind of fell into organbuilding because, as it happened, my family lived next to the workshop of a master organ- builder. His name was Paul Sattel. Before the war Sattel had started building an organ for the Dom [cathedral] in Speyer. Naturally his work was interrupted by the war, but afterwards he continued his work there, and I became an apprentice to him at the time he completed the Dom organ. At the same time, I had the great opportunity to become an assistant to Franz Nagel, a very famous organ voicer for Steinmeyer Organs before the war, who had joined the Sattel firm. Franz had been injured in the war, lamed, and as a result he could not use the right side of his body. I literally became his “right-hand man.” At the time of my apprenticeship with Sattel, the Catholic Diocese of Speyer supported a diocesan school of church music, founded by an influential church musician named Erhard Quack. It met on weekends, and I was thrilled to be able to attend because I was so interested in music. We studied harmony, Gregorian chant, counterpoint, and composition. I also sang in the Dom choir so I had a very condensed education in the field of church music.

Did you think about a career as a church musician?

It came to the point when I had to decide whether or not I was going to be a church musician. At the diocesan school I also studied organ. The school had acquired two organs, one built by Paul Ott, who later on became quite well-known in Germany. I had piano lessons as a child so I already had some keyboard skills. Well, I then had to decide whether to continue on and be a church musician or become an organbuilder. It was on the advice of my father, who was more practical in nature, that I decided to stay in organbuilding.

A practical suggestion to stay where there might be an income?

Exactly. So this is why I continued and finished my apprenticeship with master organbuilder Paul Sattel. My apprenticeship coincided with what we call the time of the Orgelbewegung [Organ Reform/Revival Movement], the movement of going back to building mechanical organs after the period of building Romantic-type organs. I was fortunate to encounter both Romantic and 18th-century instruments.

This was the time when the Werkprinzip was coming back into fashion, championed by Albert Schweitzer and looking to the Baroque organs of Silbermann and Schnitger?

At that time, yes, it came back into fashion, although in retrospect I think the pendulum had swung too far. Some of the organs we built at that time—which we considered wonderful, based on the Werkprinzip—sounded sometimes more like bacon frying! So it had to settle down from one extreme to the other. By the time I finished my apprenticeship, after four years, things had sort of found a middle point. My experience of old instruments in Southern Germany included such organs as those built by the firm of Stumm, considered the Silbermanns of the South. I had exposure to maintaining and rebuilding and restoring old instruments of the Stumm period.

I suspect people might not know much about Stumm. Can you say more?

The difference between Stumm and Silbermann—in North Germany where you find Silbermanns, the façade pipes are, for example, 80% tin, whereas in the South the façade pipes consist of a much higher lead content, which was a lot cheaper. Of course, they didn’t last as long and certainly began to deteriorate after many decades. The reason for the difference in the metal content was more a matter of the economy than of the sound. People in the South were poorer than the people in the North.

This is really interesting because it puts a clear distinction between North and South—between the bright-sounding and kind of glitzy Silbermann, and the slightly more rather job-oriented, cheaper, less flashy Stumm. Did this affect the music do you think?

Yes, exactly. And it also reflected on the personality of the musicians, too. I didn’t realize that until later, after I had expanded my knowledge in organ-building design and studied pipe scales and how all this translates into real music. For example, as I studied more organ literature, it became apparent that the melodic movement of the voices requires changes in the sound colors of certain organ stops between treble and bass. Some may need more brightness in the bass and more weight in the treble, and this would be achieved by variable-ratio pipe scales.

So that brings us to aspects of the design process in an instrument. I noticed that on your website [gabrielkney.com] you have a diagram of a pipe scale; it shows an unusual curve as opposed to a steady, straight line. Do you have a particular repertoire in mind when you are working on the tonal design of an instrument?

The diagram shown depicts the variable scales of the Principal chorus of the Great on the organ in Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Kansas City, Missouri. Different countries use different methods of pipe scaling. In my case, you know, I am very familiar with the music for which I am building instruments. This is what is important; it helps me envision how a sound should be. Naturally this changes from one organbuilder to another. Each has different ideas about the music. And this is what distinguishes one organ- builder’s sound from another. It is not a question of being better or worse; it is just different. But one has to live with the music in order to create a certain kind of instrument, and without knowing the music I would find it very difficult to do this.

Do you listen to a lot of music? Is it central to everything you do and are?

Yes, of course; it really forms my whole being.

The interest in the organ has never really been consistent, certainly in my experience, and, as a client of an organbuilder, one is talking in terms of quite a large financial commitment for an instrument in a church, or school, or house. And it’s not a steady flow of interest. So when there were difficult times what was the motivation to keep going as a builder?

It’s really all about the music. It certainly wasn’t the financial thing because I don’t know any organbuilders who became rich. I know some rich organbuilders, but they didn’t become rich from building organs. I found it a constant effort to build sounds that would accommodate the music, which, in a way, I found mind-boggling. And to do justice to that, this is what kept me going.

I’m just fascinated with the concept that music is your life and in the context of building an instrument, do you put an instrument into a church, or a university, or a home with a particular hope that it’s going to achieve something?

Well, yes, not that it necessarily does. But I hope it will do justice to the music played on it or the way in which it will be used. It’s not always the case, I must say, but there are some good examples I know of where this has indeed taken place. Some churches use their organ well, and it is used in the way I hoped it would be. I know that especially some of my smaller church instruments have contributed to raising higher standards of music and have been influential in not just attracting but requiring good musicians to play them.

Do you ask a client, when you’re building for them, what they want to use it for?

No. Well, I will know what kind of music they probably want to use it for, but in my mind I will envision the kind of music in which it will likely be used. You have to have a picture in your mind when you voice an organ. It may be a small instrument, maybe 12 or 15 stops, and right from the outset I envision that instrument will be especially suitable in a certain style, whether it’s Classic French or North European, or Spanish for that matter.

So this is tonal design.

You set out to design a distinct picture of what you hope to achieve, for example, the design of the pipe scales, as mentioned earlier. But you have to have a musical picture in your mind first. And then, of course, once that is established, my pipe makers can build exactly to my specifications. I send all the information to them: variable ratio scales, constant ratio scales; here are the Cs, and here are other points. It takes years to establish this kind of cooperation and understanding between pipe maker and builder. Over time it worked well for me, and I must say I was always happy when it worked as planned. So this is how it goes, and if it works out that the organ indeed will be used in the way I had envisioned, of course it is very satisfying. It’s not always the case, of course, but . . .

Is there a particular difference in approach between the house instrument, the school instrument, the church instrument, and the concert hall? Or is it the same, the same general approach?

Well, in the concert hall, of course, you have to consider that it will be used in many, many different ways. And so you have to make an effort to build an instrument that will do the best it can. With a smaller instrument you can be more specific.

How do you feel about your earlier instruments? Do you still enjoy the ones from earlier in your career?

As one gets older, as the years go by, you have a different vision. For example, if I go back to organs that I built, say, in the 1960s and I listen to recordings I still have, I have to say to myself, gosh, you know, I wouldn’t do this anymore like that, but at the time I thought this was ideal. So as one changes and hears things differently and you learn more about the music, you say, well, it was good at the time, but I wouldn’t do it again like that. It’s sort of an always-developing system. Life is not stationary. One does change.

I think our soundscape changes as well. And as your soundscape changes and the environment you live in changes, what one might need for and from an instrument changes. We haven’t talked about the Roy Thomson Hall instrument and acoustic design.

Of course acoustics have been a lifelong concern. In my case, the most vivid example probably would be Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Right before even the first spade dug a hole in the ground, we talked about acoustics. The discussions weren’t always fruitful, but acoustics were always a concern. Working with acousticians can be challenging. The results can be disappointing as well as wonderful.

Yes. Your favorite instrument?

Picking favorites is a bit like picking your favorite child. Nevertheless, one of my favorites is certainly at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota. I worked with Robert Mahoney, an acoustician located in Boulder, Colorado. We had a wonderful cooperation, and that is why the acoustics at St. Thomas turned out so well. And not just for the organ. The choir sounds wonderful, and congregational singing—well, it’s just great! I think part of this is due to the fact that the acoustician is himself a musician, a horn player and a graduate of Juilliard. That is so helpful. An acoustician with a music background is different from one who knows how to install loudspeakers. The instrument at St. Thomas is the one I keep going back to because everything gels. If the acoustics are not part of the instrument it is very difficult to bring it off well.

If you could have done anything else, what would that have been?

I don’t know; I never thought about it. I know for sure I would make a lousy teacher. More than anything else it was my teachers who influenced me most. Apart from Erhard Quack there were other influential persons, one of whom was a composer who taught at the diocesan school. His name was Wilhelm Waldbroel. He wrote wonderful music. His compositions were by and large in polyphonic style for choir, sometimes choir and brass. In my mind these people were giants, not just as musicians, but as teachers and human beings and people who really influenced my life and music. They provided energy, and this is why I decided on organbuilding. These people provided the information and connections. I consider them my mentors.

Of course, I think back to my father, too, and those Sunday afternoons when he and his friends—and I was included too, along with a few of my friends who played instruments—would get together and play chamber music. We didn’t have the distraction of TV, you know, and this was one thing we could do as a family and as a group. We enjoyed doing it.

One last comment. I see over the door to your music room a little sign that says “Schreinermeister—Gabriel Kney.”

That is my father. His name was Gabriel Heinrich Kney. Schreinermeister means master cabinet maker. He carved this sign, and it hung on the wall by the front gate of our home for many years. If you look carefully at the picture of my family taken by that front gate you will see this little sign to the right. My father sent it to me for my 40th birthday. And with it he sent a letter, the only letter I ever received from him. I have attached it to the back of the sign.

Gabriel, this has been a fascinating conversation, and I feel privileged to have been able to play and enjoy a number of your organs. Thank you so much for your time, and for giving the world these 130 wonderful instruments—I’m sure, wherever they are, that they are loved and cherished and have many stories to tell!

Special thanks to Katharine Kney Timmins for transcribing the original interview and to John Allen, Mark MacBain, and Roland Schubert for photographic assistance.

An interview with Stephen Cleobury

Lorraine Brugh

Lorraine Brugh is currently resident director of Valparaiso University’s Study Centre in Cambridge, England. She is professor of music and the Frederick J. Kruse Organ Fellow at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana.

The interview took place in Mr. Cleobury’s office in Gibbs Hall at King’s College, Thursday, October 31, 2017. At 5:30 that afternoon he led the choir in an Evensong for the Vigil of All Saints, with music by Byrd, Palestrina, and Tomkins.

Since the time of the interview, King’s College has announced that Stephen Cleobury will retire from King’s at the end of the 2018–2019 academic year.

Lorraine Brugh: I want our time to include what you’d like to talk about. I’ve thought of four areas I’d like you to comment on and you can add whatever you would like. Those areas are the recent Howells conference, the choir, worship trends, and personal notes.

Just last weekend, the Herbert Howells Society met here in Cambridge, at St. John’s and at King’s College. You are its current president. What is its mission and current activity?

Stephen Cleobury: There are two organizations, the Herbert Howells Trust and the Herbert Howells Society. Both are, of course, dedicated to preserving the memory of this great man, and the Society is a collection of people who meet together for events such as we’ve just had this past weekend. The Trust is a particular body that allows us to make grants which help to support recording and performance of Howells’s works. These are funded from the royalties from Howells’s estate.

LB: Would you commend particular organ works to American organists? Some play the Psalm Preludes but most of us don’t go much further.

SC: I think the Psalm Preludes are wonderful. There is a tantalizing aspect to those in my mind. Herbert Howells was acting organist at St. John’s College here in Cambridge during the Second World War. If I understand correctly, he used to come up at weekends and preside over the Sunday services. I imagine he might have improvised on the organ at that time. There may be lots and lots of psalm preludes up in the ether somewhere, but that’s just an idle speculation.

I can only speak of the pieces I know. There are the rhapsodies, of which the best known is the C-sharp minor, which I played at the end of Evensong. That’s a very forthright piece with a quiet middle section, which is actually the opposite of almost all the psalm preludes that start quietly, rise to a climax and go down again.

The first rhapsody does more what the psalm preludes do: starts quietly and rises to a climax and subsides again, and I think it’s a very beautiful piece, completely different from the third. They are the two better known ones, the first and the third.

Then there is the Paean which is in the same volume as Master Tallis’s Testament. They are the two pieces I know best from the collection Six Pieces for Organ. The Paean is the nearest thing Howells got to writing a toccata. It is very fast moving, with a lot of sixteenth-note movement. The metronome mark is quite fast. I once asked him if he really expected us to play it that fast and he said he did. I don’t know many people who can. And then Master Tallis’s Testamant, which I think is an outstandingly beautiful piece, in a modal G minor, and again rising, but ending with that little epilogue, that little envoi.

Everything to do with Howells is about organ management. Organ management, while I wouldn’t say it’s a lost art, is now not always understood. We had a wonderful example of organ management by Nathan Laube who came to play here last year. I don’t think I’ve heard the organ managed better than that very often. By that I mean the ability to grade crescendos and diminuendos perfectly and to treat the organ really orchestrally.

I think that one of the things that has happened is that people have become a lot more interested in authentic performance style for Baroque and Classical music. And that’s absolutely fine; I’m completely signed up for that and do my best to keep up with trends in that regard. But I don’t see that it need also lead to an inability to manage the organ orchestrally.

I think a versatile organist should be able to do both of those things. The challenge for playing Howells is precisely that of managing the sound.

The Partita, which was the big piece I played on Saturday, does have some quite technically demanding writing. However, none of it (Howells’s music) is virtuoso writing in the sense that you’re playing something from the great nineteenth-century French repertoire, or later, Messiaen. It’s not technically that difficult.

It requires one to hold in one’s head the right sort of sound world. Because organ registration, certainly in late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century English usage, was approached rather differently from the way people naturally approach it now. This can be seen in the organ in the Albert Hall as it used to be. Today we have general combinations and sequencers (steppers), so we can be far too fancy with our registrations, too fussy, because it’s so easy to do, whereas in the old days mostly the pistons were pre-set so that you couldn’t easily change them. If you look at the way they were set, you would find that the crescendo was made by drawing the 8′ stops one by one, then the 4′ stops one by one, whereas now people would add a 4′ to a single 8′, then a 2′, and so on. That would have worked well at the Royal Albert Hall.

The nineteenth-century orchestra sounds different from a classical orchestra playing on period instruments; the duty of the organist is to reflect different sound worlds as best as can be done on any given instrument. So that’s why I say you need to hold in your head the sound world as best as you can that Howells had in his head. Listen to recordings of the old Gloucester organ made by Herbert Sumison.

LB: Do you think that the German and the north German organ tradition, which builds the sound vertically, has influenced organists today?

SC: Yes, I do. I think you can hear Howells’s music played with too many mixtures. I was talking to Jonathan Clinch about this on Saturday,¹ and the very interesting views he has on this. He quotes Howells on that subject:

a. Players were not using sufficient amount of foundation tone, and

b. People were too busy fiddling around with the registration that they lost a sense of musical pulse.

Pulse was very important to Howells. When I worked at Westminster Abbey, long ago now, in the second half of the 1970s (1974–1978), Howells used to come to services sometimes when we were performing his music. I recorded some of it on the Abbey organ. Before that I arranged for him to come and hear me play his pieces. Everyone tends to think that Howells’s music is smooth and broad and redolent of English pastoral scenes. In fact, he was rather a dynamic and passionate man, and was certainly very keen on rhythmic pulse and clarity of texture. Those are two things that people don’t think of in connection with Howells but he really did want them. This might be interesting for American organists. One of the big differences a British organist finds when he/she goes to the United States to play is that you don’t have the stop called “Great and Pedal Combinations Coupled.” You have an independent pedal and you have to register the pedal separately, which is a really good discipline. Here we can get lazy because we have Great and Pedal Combinations Coupled. Here you can push Great Piston 3 and you get an appropriate pedal registration as well. In American organs you have to deal with the pedal separately. I think in Howells that is really important, since his pedal lines are often independent and care is needed to make them clear.

I remember one thing he pointed out to me is that when he writes a pedal point, he doesn’t just put down bottom D for two pages. It is always repeated, rhythmicized, or jumps the octave. He always wanted the pedal to be very alive. I take care when I play to register the pedal so that you can hear it clearly.

LB: Would you like to comment on the organ’s restoration?

SC: We are all thrilled with it. It is still recognizably the King’s organ, but it speaks with a renewed vigor and clarity. I’m particularly pleased about two new ranks, or actually two ranks that were replaced with different ranks. One is a 4′ flute on the Great, which you heard in the second movement of the Partita. It is very beautiful. We also introduced a proper Principal 8′ in the Pedal, which we didn’t have before. That’s given a whole lot more clarity to the Pedal. Now you can play Bach with a proper principal chorus. Formerly we had a Violoncello, a Geigen, a stringy stop. It wasn’t very good in Bach.

LB: The English organ was slow to develop the independent pedal. Is this a carry-over from that?

SC: Yes, I think it is. But David Willcocks in the 1960s had a lot of new upperwork put in the Pedal. We have had flutes at 16′, 8′, 4′, and 2′ and a 4′ Principal and mixture in the Pedal for quite a while now.

I arranged shortly after I came to have the Swell double trumpet (16′) made available on the Pedal, which is very useful for playing Bach. You can have the Great and Swell choruses coupled together, but you can access the 16′ reed in the Pedal independently.

Although classical Baroque organ music on an instrument like this is a compromise, there are lots of things you can do to make it have integrity.

LB: Both of these things would help with this integrity.

SC: Yes, indeed.

LB: You were also organ scholar at St. John’s. Did you overlap with Howells at all?

SC: No, well not at St. John’s. His service there was in the War, when Robin Orr was away on wartime service, just in the way Harold Darke was here at King’s when Boris Ord was away in the Air Force.

LB: And George Guest was there when you were there?

SC: Yes.

LB: This collaboration with St. John’s each year—is that a result your being an organ scholar there?

SC: No, you’re talking about the annual Evensong service sung by both choirs. This had been started before I came here as organ scholar at St. John’s, and has probably been going since the early 60s. Originally it was connected with the Cambridge Music Festival, which took place in the summer.

It used to be described as “Evensong sung by the choirs of King’s and St. John’s to mark the opening of the Cambridge Summer Festival.” That has come and gone so we’ve lost that connection, but we have carried on doing the annual service.

LB: I think it’s nice to show that collaboration.

SC: Yes. We choose the repertoire carefully. Each choir is obviously slightly different in its style. We find that if you choose big repertoire like we did this year, like Blest Pair of Sirens by Parry, that sort of piece sounds better with more singers. Some repertoire sounds better sung by one choir or the other.

LB: I was here when you sang a Lassus Mass a couple weeks ago. That sounds best with a small choir.

SC: I quite agree.

LB: Americans are fascinated with the King’s College men and boys’ choir, and how they get trained. What do you see for their future?

SC: I used a phrase the other day. I gave a speech at a charity dinner, a fundraiser for the Friends of Cathedral Music. In fact, it wasn’t my phrase, but it was actually given to me in the briefing notes. “We are not dealing with some kind of elite group. We are dealing with ordinary children doing extraordinary things.” And it is extraordinary what they do. They are ordinary kids, and they need to play around and be children. I suppose, if anything, what I try to do is to treat them as if they are ordinary people, not as superstars or anything, because they aren’t. But at the same time, you have to manage what they do here. They wear their Eton suits and walk through the college to the chapel. Visitors are coming in here, photographing them, for example, and we have to deal with and manage the issues that arise from that.

As far as the training of them is concerned, we do our best to offer them as broad a musical spectrum as we can. So each boy plays the piano and an orchestral instrument. We teach them theory, they have aural training and sight-reading. We also have a professional vocal coach who teaches them about singing. With children, I think that’s best done on a relatively straightforward and simple level.

Here I’m slouching in this chair, but I’m basically telling them to stand up straight, get their body alignment and balance in good shape, and then thinking about breathing and the easy production of sound, not forcing, just good basic habits.

LB: The older boys model the sound for the younger boys?

SC: Yes, that’s a good point. There are two aspects to the training they get. You would have seen in the chapel boys in Years 6, 7, and 8. We also have boys in Years 4 and 5 back over the river at King’s College School. They don’t sing in the public services. Some of the Year 5s do. They get one-to-one training, small group training, but they’re also singing along with the older ones. It’s a mixture of specifically targeted instruction on the one hand and modeling, or I call it osmosis, seeping down from one generation to another. One of the things you have to remind the older boys is that they are role models for the younger ones, necessarily.

LB: I saw one of the younger boys relying on another older boy for cues during the Evensong last Saturday, I believe.

SC: I try to place them so there is an older boy next to a younger boy through the ranks.

LB: Could you speak about what goes into the preparation for Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols?

SC: I remember David Willcocks being asked this question. I heard him on a radio interview when I was very young. He gave a typically clever answer that “in a sense you are preparing all the time because every day you’re trying to make the choir sing as well as possible.” I’m not somebody who believes in suddenly trying to up the ante a week before. I try to do it on the basis that it’s what we’re doing every day. That’s not to say we don’t make obviously very special effort for the big occasions.

I personally feel that unless you’re trying to make it really good every day, you can’t suddenly click your fingers and expect singers to move into another gear for this or that occasion. Because children, especially young children, thrive on consistent expectation, they like to have the ground rules, whatever they are. It’s best to have ground rules, consistency.

Then from my point of view, the preparation is about planning the repertoire, and in a sense I am thinking about that all the time. I’m looking out for publishers catalogues. I get a lot of material sent to me (looking around the office, “a lot of this stuff has been sent to me”), and I do try my best to look properly at everything, because you just never know when a little gem will turn up. And so I have to get all of that organized and sorted out. And then toward the end of November we start in earnest preparing the actual music. We have a carol service for schools here where we air some of the repertoire. We are often asked to sing Christmas carols for a concert. This enables us to prepare gradually through the month of December.

LB: Is it your innovation to commission a new work each year?

SC: Yes, it is. I started that in 1983. When I first started doing it, I got some quite abusive letters from people asking what was I doing degrading this great tradition by introducing horrible, dissonant modern music.

Now I tend to get the same reaction you are describing. People are keen to hear what it will be. I feel that’s a small achievement.

LB: No small achievement! I wonder how you keep the quality of men and boys from one year to the next.

SC: I remember a comment made by one of the choral scholars when he graduated some years ago, ten or twenty years ago, who said, “I really admire how you peg away every day at it.” And I think that’s what I do, I peg away at it.

LB: Do you see the boys every day?

SC: Almost every day.

We didn’t talk very much about the choral scholars who, of course, are an essential part of the Choir. They sometimes feel a bit neglected. We go on the concert platform, and everyone will applaud the little boys, and then the volume of the applause dies down when the men walk on.

I occasionally do it the other way around and send the men on first. It’s quite interesting to see what the audience does. It is not a question of a front row sixteen trebles with a backing group. All the men are an absolutely vital part of the whole.

We do services with the men only once a week, and more than that in half-term. I really enjoy those occasions because it gives me a chance to work in detail, in depth, with the choral scholars in a way one actually can’t do when the children are there. They occupy a higher proportion of one’s attention, naturally.

LB: How many of the boys and scholars go on to study music professionally?

SC: Quite a few. It is difficult to put a percentage on it, but a significant number do. Just to mention a few of the organ scholars, there is Sir Andrew Davis in Chicago, Simon Preston, who is, sadly, no longer playing, and Thomas Trotter. That’s just three and there are a lot more.

LB: Churches in the United States have increasing problems supporting church musicians. How does the Friends of Cathedral Music support church music?

SC: Friends of Cathedral Music exists to help with funding. I think that funding is an issue for everyone. Everyone thinks the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) colleges are rich, but they aren’t infinitely rich. We have to make our case for the chapel and the choir within the college as a whole over against educational imperatives, just as you might expect.

In a cathedral, the greatest call on funds is maintenance of the fabric. You can’t have a cathedral choir if the building is falling apart.

It becomes a matter of priorities. In the big London choirs where they are paying a dozen professional singers, it becomes expensive. So there is going to be a continuing need for financial support.

We get no support from central government. The money a cathedral has comes from its endowments if it has any, its lands and assets, if it has any, together with income from visitors.

For instance at Ely, those shops along the High Street, a lot of them belong to the cathedral, and the cathedral derives a rent from them. That’s part of what enables the cathedral to keep going.

Many of them now charge, as we do. I remember in Ely fifteen to twenty years ago, when they introduced charging, there was a lot of heart-searching, shaking of heads. People said it’s awful to charge people to go into a religious building.

One of the clergymen said to me it’s not really about that. It’s a choice. We either charge or we have to close down.

Here, King’s College Chapel is a private college chapel; there is no compulsion upon us to open it to the public. We choose to do so. To make it safe for people to be in there, to heat it, that costs us money.

I don’t subscribe to the argument that it’s a bad thing to charge.

LB: I think you do a good job of separating the worship times and the times the visitors can view the chapel.

SC: That’s got to be done.

LB: In the United States, each parish has to fund its own musicians, and they don’t have land and other support. There are increasingly fewer full-time musician positions. It’s a big issue in the United States, and our system is different than yours. Do you have any comment about our situation?

SC: I don’t have a solution to the problem. I just note what I see. Sometimes I look rather enviously at the level of funding that some of the churches have in the United States. Of course there is a difference. A given parish in the United States, whatever the denomination, has its parish role. Those loyal parishoners see it as a responsibility to see that it is properly funded.

The Church of England is a very different animal, partly because of the established link with the state. I think that, personally, one of the great things about it is that it’s theoretically there for everyone, of all faiths, or no faith. You can be baptized there, married there, and you could be buried there in the parish in which you live.

But there isn’t quite the same degree of community and of financial responsibility. It’s a rather subtle difference but it does makes a difference.

So I go to some churches in the United States that are fabulously well-funded. They have offices, and the director of music has quite a large staff.

I do understand what you describe because I read about it. If there are fewer people attending church, you have less money coming in.

It’s different here; it’s different again if you go to Scandinavia or Germany where they have had the church tax, which is gradually being abolished in some of these countries. The church had it rather easy when it had the compulsory tax.

If the church loses this revenue, they’ll have to make it the responsibility of people voluntarily to support it.

LB: What you are looking forward to in future projects? How do you nourish your own spiritual life? Does this daily life nourish you?

SC: Goodness . . . . Well, forthcoming events: that’s relatively easy. We have our next United States tour in the spring of 2019, a short tour. I don’t know if we’re allowed to announce yet where we are going. We’re going to Australia in the summer of 2019. We have plans for the UK and Ireland in 2018, and this December we go to Athens.

We have exciting recording plans for a Bruckner Mass, and possibly some more Rutter. And we’ve got a recording coming out of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

There’s lots of that going on.

I think as far as a personal spiritual journey is concerned, as with probably the majority of people, that barometer goes up and down.

I know that Cardinal Hume used to say at Westminster Cathedral, even someone like him, “it’s hard to believe all of this sometimes. Some days it’s harder than others.” That’s something I share with a lot of people.

As to how I perform my job here, I see it as an enabling thing. I want to enable particularly the young people in the choir to experience this wonderful music through liturgy well-conducted.

I don’t seek to influence them in what they should believe about it. I’m simply laying before them the opportunities, and they take from them what they want.

It’s really the same in terms of the congregation. So I’m saying, here I am. I’m trying to do this music as well as I can today, and you’re coming to our service. You’ll meet lots of different people, from the college, the university, the town, or visitors from Australia, or Papua New Guinea, and, of course, America. Some will be what one might call card-carrying Christians, some will be lapsed Christians, some will have no particular religious belief or knowledge at all. That’s what makes us very different from a community church in America as we’ve been talking about. Some people think that would devalue the experience for me. I actually think the complete opposite of that.

One of the particular problems the church has today is that it’s easily perceived as being exclusive. If you don’t fit a particular pattern . . . we don’t need to go into the question of gender and sexuality, but we know about all that.

Whereas I think, it’s a cliché, of course, that everyone should be made welcome, whatever their religious standpoint or lifestyle. So if someone comes to the service and hears “Like as the Hart” by Howells, for example, and is moved by that and spiritually nourished by that, that’s great.

It’s not my concern whether they’re going to go to the altar and receive communion the next day or not. Those are separate issues. I’m not intending to sound detached about that, but I genuinely feel that.

There’s another thing I believe in strongly. There’s another side of that coin. I say to the choral scholars (since it’s not necessary for the children at that stage, as they haven’t developed their views), “well look, if you don’t believe this, or don’t agree with it, you still have to behave in a professional way. There are people in the chapel every day for genuine religious reasons to say their prayers, and they don’t want to see you behaving in a way that distracts from that.”

I do insist on what I call a proper professional decorum. It’s important to me that the choir conducts itself properly.

LB: I think that clearly shows. Who have been your own greatest influences?

SC: I was a boy chorister at Worcester. The organist there was Douglas Guest, who’d been an organ scholar here in the late 1930s. The first experience of anything is very formative. Then Christopher Robinson came to be organist there and taught me to play the organ. Harry Bramma was there, a great teacher. Then in Cambridge there was George Guest, of course, whom I worked closely with at St. John’s. I also had good contact with David Willcocks during those years; I played for his rehearsals with the Cambridge University Musical Society. Within the field of church music I would say those are the people.

LB: What about your own composition?

SC: I’m not really a composer. I think I can turn in some fairly decent arrangements. I don’t see myself as a composer of original music. I have composed some pieces and people have been nice about them.

One of the privileges I had when I worked with the BBC singers as chief conductor for ten years was to do a lot of contemporary music, a lot of premières. I found it fascinating to be in close contact with composers. I could tell you a lot about composers from that angle.

One thing that is true of the best composers I’ve met is that they are absolutely consumed with a need, almost a physical need, a mental need certainly, to compose music. It’s something they absolutely have to do.

I don’t feel that kind of an urge to compose. I teach students here to do harmony and counterpoint, so I know how to put the notes on the page in order to do an arrangement. I know how not to write parallel fifths.

It’s the same with going into the musical profession. I remember Herbert Sumison at Gloucester used to advise young people, “If you are thinking about entering the music profession, is it something your innermost feelings make an imperative? If not, you’re much better going off and doing something else and keeping music for your leisure and enjoyment.”

LB: Thank you for your time this afternoon.

SC: I look forward to seeing you again in the chapel.

Notes

1. Dr. Clinch presented a lecture on Howells’s piano music at the Howells Society gathering, October 28, 2017.

The Organ Works of Pamela Decker

Edie Johnson

From saucy tangos to chant-based works, expertly fashioned counterpoint, and everything in between, the organ works of Pamela Decker run the gamut of style and variety. Her compositions and recordings have received high and well-deserved acclaim in recent years. Decker has had a variety of experiences that shape her compositions—from theater organist to Fulbright Scholar. She has been commissioned by regional and national American Guild of Organists conventions, and her works have been performed around the world.

Background

I first became acquainted with Decker’s works as a graduate student at Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. My professor, Larry Smith, suggested that I learn her three-movement work, Río abajo río (1999, Wayne Leupold Editions, WL610004). I became enamored with the excitement and fire in the music, as well as her colorful, yet accessible harmonic language. Since then, I have learned several other Decker works, for both church and concert use. In addition, I had the privilege of premiering her first organ concerto, El Tigre, at the Region IV AGO convention in 2011.

Music and movement have always had a close connection to Decker. While she did not grow up in a family of musicians, her earliest memories are of a home in which music frequently came from the record player, and she danced and performed living-room gymnastics whenever it was on. As a child, Decker and her family lived in Falls Church, Virginia, where her father was a naval research contractor. They attended a Methodist church there, and Pamela recounts this story:

I recall a Sunday morning when my parents were taking me to church, and we were about to enter the narthex. Someone at that moment opened the big double doors to the sanctuary, and I remember an expanse of white wood and columns and a torrent of organ music pouring down the center aisle. I was entranced, and I thought that I would very much like to play the grand instrument that could produce those sounds.

Her parents thought she might have a specific talent for dance, but when at nine she was given the choice among dance, ice skating, or music, she quickly and without hesitation chose music lessons. She has had formal lessons in piano, organ, and harpsichord. Her first organ teacher was Jean Morgan, a concert organist with a large studio in Alexandria, Virginia.

When Decker was thirteen, her father received a promotion that required the family to move to the San Francisco Bay Area. This move was significant to her development as a composer, as it introduced her to the world of the theater organ. Her first teacher in the Bay Area, Galen Piepenburg, was trained as both a classical and theater organist. The Avenue Theater in the Bay Area hired organists to play half-hour recitals before movies began. By the time she was fifteen, Decker was showcased as one of these performers. She both made her own arrangements of “twenties-style” music and used reputable versions by other performers. The theater also hosted concerts by renowned organists from around the world. One of the recitals she considered memorable was by Korla Pandit, a theater organist from India. Decker’s experience with the theater organ scene greatly influenced her desire to create and “re-create.”

Decker moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Stanford University, where she studied with Herbert Nanney, an experienced concert organist and a published composer. While an undergraduate at Stanford, she had a church position and made the decision to focus on classical training. As she developed, she concentrated equally on both composition and performance practice. Her desire to study performance practice led to a Fulbright scholarship to study in Lübeck, Germany, at the Musikhochschule Lübeck. This experience gave her the opportunity to learn from and perform on many historic instruments. In addition, she was able to travel to Paris and even spent a day with Jean Langlais and Marie Louise Jaquet-Langlais.

Decker recounts this fond memory of her day with Langlais:

In the early evening, Mr. Langlais had to go to Ste-Clotilde to play for a funeral. He took me with him. On the streetcar, he kept pointing to landmarks and telling me to look at them. Even though he was blind, he knew exactly where everything was and how to tell me important bits of information in connection with what he was pointing out. I realized that I was on a “sightseeing” tour with Jean Langlais! At the church, there was some time before the service, so he allowed me to play several pieces. I recall that I played the Bach 9/8 Prelude and Fugue in C Major, and some of my own music. It is a treasured memory for me that he said very positive things about my work in both areas and encouraged me to continue composing as well as performing.

Harmonic style

The music of French organ composers has had a tremendous influence on Decker’s compositional output and her tonal language. She is particularly fond of Olivier Messiaen’s music. His modes of limited transposition have influenced the development of her own individually designed synthetic modes. The most influential of Messiaen’s works for Decker has been La Nativité du Seigneur. In learning and studying this work, she was struck by the lush harmonies and rich chromaticism that the modes yield. This, in turn, inspired Decker to explore and discover her own unique harmonic language.

Study of Messiaen’s modes has led Decker to transform church modes, adding one or two pitches to the collection of a specific mode. She frequently incorporates a transformed Dorian that adds F-sharp and B-flat to the basic Dorian mode. (See Example 1.) One of her other favorite modes to employ is a Phrygian mode that adds F-sharp and C-sharp. These are just two examples of the synthetic modes that Decker works with, and she believes that each one has its own “pitch-class personality.” She works with the modes both individually and in combination and finds it interesting to use this “modal material within the context of designing original forms.”

Example 2 shows an example of the synthetic Dorian, used in mm. 64–70 of Albarda, the first movement of Flores del Desierto (1998, Wayne Leupold Editions, WL610006). Decker’s synthetic Phrygian mode, which adds F-sharp and C-sharp to the basic Phrygian mode, is shown in Example 3. Decker uses this mode in Jesu, dulcis memoria (2011, Wayne Leupold Editions, WL710010), mm. 64–69, as shown in Example 4.

Decker has also worked with scale types in flamenco patterns (see Example 5). The intervallic patterns of the flamenco modes play a prominent role in her new work, Fanueil Hall (2013, Wayne Leupold Editions, WL610014), which was premiered at the 2014 AGO national convention, held in Boston.

Rhythmic influences

Messiaen’s creative rhythmic structures also have inspired Decker’s compositions. Decker states, “Messiaen also choreographs expressive nuance through additive rhythms and multi-metrical constructions. I have also found this element to be influential; I have used meter changes and shifting accents to place emphasis in my music.” For example, this passage in 2/4 from the final movement of Río abajo río, shown in Example 6, illustrates these shifting accents, which provide a strong syncopated effect.

The captivating rhythms that Decker employs are also largely influenced by Latin American dances. She first became interested in Spanish and South American music after hearing Alicia de Larrocha perform Iberia by Isaac Albéniz. After this discovery, she began to immerse herself in Spanish and South American literature. She has done much reading and research into Latin American dance forms. She has incorporated many dance rhythms into her works, including the samba, charrada, rondena, tarantella, boliviana, and many others. Example 7 shows an example of a tango rhythm from the third movement of Río abajo río.

Other South American Influences

Another influence on Decker has been Ástor Piazzolla, a composer from Argentina who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger encouraged Piazzolla to compose works that would reflect his native Argentinian culture. Piazzolla was a virtuosic performer on the bandonéon, the main instrument of the South American tangueros (students of tango). Decker states:

This instrument was invented in Germany in 1854 by Heinrich Band, as a substitute for a pipe organ for churches without the financial resources to purchase and install a pipe organ. The instrument gradually made its way to South America, as musicians emigrated from Europe, and after the passage of time, it was adopted by the tangueros and the street musicians. Thus, there is a connection between Piazzolla’s primary instrument (he was a virtuoso-level performer on the bandonéon) and my own primary instrument. I love the fact that there is precedent for performing tango music at the organ.

Registrations

While Decker’s harmonic language and rhythmic energy are progressive, she tends to stay with traditional use of the organ in terms of registration. She uses registrational changes as both a “color and form-defining factor.” Her scores are very clear in calling for specific registrations that are adaptable to most instruments. As a performer, she understands the need to make registration changes work on both electro-pneumatic and mechanical-action instruments, and as a composer takes into account that sometimes a combination action may not be available and that the performer must pull stops by hand. Her registrations might call for combinations such as a voix celeste accompanying a solo reed, a clear plenum, or combinations up to full organ.

Traditional forms

Decker also employs more traditional forms, such as the prelude and fugue. She composes counterpoint as a “procedural basis” and expands the form with contemporary harmonic and formal structures. She also frequently integrates Gregorian chant into her works. Her collection entitled Retablos incorporates the chants Pange lingua, Ubi caritas, and Victimae paschali laudes. Jesu, Dulcis Memoria is a prelude and fugue based on the chant for which it is titled; Example 8 shows a passage from the prelude, and Example 9 a passage from the fugue.

German chorale and Protestant hymn tunes also play a major role in Decker’s works. She has written a chorale prelude on Herzlich tut mich verlangen, and her collection On This Day (2009, Wayne Leupold Editions, WL610005) features popular Advent and Christmas tunes such as Personent Hodie, Antioch, and Cranham. On This Day would be an excellent collection with which to begin studying Decker’s works; Example 10 shows a passage from her setting of Antioch.

Many of Decker’s works can serve both a concert and a liturgical purpose. Her compositions are both engaging and accessible to a wide audience, especially when the audience is educated about the construction and program behind the piece. Decker states:

I believe that music should have intellectual substance, pure emotion, and undeniable communicative ability in equal measure. Even if a passage or section sounds improvisatory, I think that upon analysis, a performer or theorist should be able to discern evidence of substance and “intelligent design,” if I may borrow a phrase from another discipline. I also think that while program notes are fascinating, they should not be necessary for the composition to achieve its goal of making a visceral impact on the listener.

For those who have never explored Decker’s works, I encourage you to investigate her compositions. Pamela Decker has recorded her own works on the following Loft recordings: Decker Plays Decker: Sacred to Secular (Volume 1), LRCD 1053, Decker Plays Decker: Desert Wildflowers (Volume 2), LRCD 1076, and Decker Plays Decker: Suite Dreams and Fantasies (Volume 3), LRCD 1130 (www.gothic-records.com). A complete list of her works may be found at her website, pamela-decker.com.

Edie Johnson is music associate and organist at Church Street United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. She also teaches private organ and courses in organ literature and church music at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.