Ralph E. Carver, formerly of Boston, longtime resident of Mashpee, Massachusetts, died May 31 at the age of 91. A longtime member of the American Guild of Organists, he helped restore organs in various churches in the Northeast, and was actively involved at the Church of the Advent in Boston. Carver enlisted in the Army during World War II as a surgical technician. He served in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Later he served in the Navy as a nurse orderly on a destroyer during the Korean War and then in the Navy Reserve. His career included 30 years as a registered nurse in the Veterans Administration hospitals in Boston and Jamaica Plain.
Swedish organist and composer of Czech origin Bedrich Janacek died June 1, in Lund, Sweden. Born May 18, 1920 in Prague, Janacek was the last student of professor Bedrich Antonin Wiedermann at the Prague Conservatory. Already in his student years he made a name for himself as a brilliant organ virtuoso. In 1948, due to severe changes in political events, he did not return from a concert trip to Scandinavia and settled in southern Sweden. From there he continued his concert activities, not only in Scandinavian countries, but also in Western Europe (he played several times at the Royal Festival Hall in London) and in the USA. Later he was active as a church organist in several Swedish churches, notably in the cathedral of Lund, from 1965 until 1985. After one of his concerts in Rome, he met Bohuslav Martinu and inspired him to compose his only organ work, Vigilia. Martinu died before finishing the piece and Janacek sensitively completed it, having added a few closing bars.
In the last two decades he dedicated himself to composition and created numerous liturgical and concert works for organ solo, voices and instruments, many of them published in this country by Alliance Publications, Inc., 9171 Spring Road, Fish Creek, WI 54212-9619; <www.apimusic.org>.
Gordon Clark Ramsey died June 21. He was born on May 28, 1941 in Hartford, Connecticut. A graduate of Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, and Yale College class of ’63, Gordon was equally at home in the worlds of academia, history and music. A past president of the Avon Historical Society, he also was historian and director of financial development for the Avon Old Farms School, which named him ’80 Honoree. Prior to his retirement, Gordon served the University of Hartford for 18 years as secretary to the faculty senate and adjunct instructor in English, rhetoric, language and culture, history, and the all-university curriculum. His exceptional skills with language were highly regarded; he was Dame Agatha Christie’s first biographer and the only one to have known her personally.
Gordon showed an early interest in the organ, writing record reviews for The American Organist in the 1960s, and studying organ playing with Ann Gilman, Richard Griffin, and G. Huntington Byles. In 1983 he was appointed organist of the Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Hartford, a position he held for 24 years, where he very much enjoyed playing the beautiful three-manual 1929 Skinner organ, Opus 793. Gordon also recorded organ music and accompanied soloists for the AFKA label on that instrument.
Well known for his facility with the English language, he amused his friends with original and outrageous stories featuring fictitious characters that were just plausible enough to have been taken from real life. Gordon’s sense of humor ranged from the absurd to the mordant. A past president and member of the Jeremiah Wadsworth Branch of the Sons of the American Revolution, he once observed that “conservatives need to adopt a sense of irony, especially about themselves.” One of his favorite poems was written by Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth (1840-1932) and titled “Good and Clever:”
If all the good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.
But somehow ’tis seldom or never
The two hit it off as they should,
The good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever, so rude to the good!
So friends, let it be our endeavour
To make each by each understood;
For few can be good, like the clever,
Or clever, so well as the good.
Gordon managed to be both good and clever; he was a gentleman who appreciated the finest things life has to offer, all the while aware of the value of friendship, integrity and a keenly developed sense of humor. He died on June 21, leaving no immediate survivors; a memorial service will be held in the chapel of Avon Old Farms School at a time to be announced.
—William Nierintz
and Joseph Dzeda
Harriette Slack Richardson died August 8, 2006, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 86. Born on July 3, 1920 in Springfield, Vermont, she began piano lessons before she started school and was playing the organ at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church at age 11. She graduated from the Eastman School of Music in 1941,where she studied with Harold Gleason and Catherine Crozier, and also received the master’s degree and Artist’s Diploma from Eastman.
Dr. Richardson served as organist at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Rochester, New York; Grace Episcopal Church, Hammond, Louisiana; and St. James’ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Louisiana. In October, 1948 she returned to her original position at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Springfield, Vermont, where she remained as organist-choirmaster and director of music until her retirement with 72 years of service in April 2004.
She was assistant professor of music at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire 1970–78. She taught piano and organ at Southeastern Louisiana University in the early 1940s and also taught at Dartmouth, Vassar and the Community College of Vermont. She leaves her husband of 60 years, Hubbard Richardson, two daughters, a cousin, and several nieces and nephews.
