Nunc Dimittis

Donald Trowbridge Bryant, age 95, died on April 11. Born in Chesterville, Ohio, he began piano study at age 8, and received bachelor’s degrees in music education and composition at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. After four years of service in the Army during World War II, he entered the Juilliard School of Music in 1946; he earned a master’s degree in piano, studied singing with Mack Harrell, and served as Harrell’s studio accompanist.

During the next 20 years, Donald Bryant served as director/pianist of the Columbus Boychoir, now known as the American Boychoir. The choir toured Japan, Italy, and South America, recorded ten albums for RCA and Columbia, and appeared many times on NBC-TV. The Columbus Boychoir was involved in such performances in New York as the official opening of Lincoln Center, the American premieres of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 (“Kaddish”) and Britten’s War Requiem, and numerous concerts under Arturo Toscanini.  

In 1969, Bryant moved to Michigan to become the music director of the University Musical Society (UMS) Choral Union and director of music at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. At the church, he established the annual Boar’s Head Festival and Festival Sundays, which featured larger choral works.

Bryant’s compositions included anthems and responses, and an opera, The Tower of Babel. Commissions included settings for the poems of Hungarian poet Sandor Weores and Polish-American Nobel Laureate Ciesław Miłosz; a choral work, Death’s Echo, set to poetry of W. H. Auden for performance at the 1984 Ann Arbor Summer Festival; and a Missa Brevis, premiered at First Presbyterian in 1988. In honor of his retirement as director of the Choral Union, the UMS commissioned the three-act oratorio Genesis, given its world premiere in a special tribute concert to Bryant on January 14, 1990. In 1992, the U of M’s Museum of Art commissioned him to compose a choral work on the biblical Esther, which was premiered in conjunction with an exhibit featuring the museum’s painting by Guercino of Esther before Ahasuerus. 

After his retirement from First Presbyterian Church, Bryant continued to compose: A Requiem for Our Mothers (premiered at the Chapel of the Holy Trinity at Concordia University in Ann Arbor on June 5, 1999); a set of piano miniatures, Pictures from Childhood; and several songs based on texts by his ancestor, William Cullen Bryant. He also continued to conduct a small choir that performed several times a year, and to practice piano every day, performing a recital as recently as February 27, 2014, for his friends and new acquaintances at Chelsea Retirement Community. 

Bryant was awarded an honorary doctorate by Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey; an Annie Award by the Washtenaw Council of the Arts in Ann Arbor; and was named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor. 

Donald Trowbridge Bryant was preceded in death by his wife of 62 years, Lela Neoma Cultice Bryant. He is survived by his sister, Doris (Theodore) Bruckner; his son, Milton Travis Bryant of New York City; son and daughter-in-law, Stephen Lee Bryant and Caryl Heaton Bryant of Montclair, New Jersey; grandsons David and Andrew Bryant; and friends and former students.

James K. Hill, age 72, died on April 16 in Bay City, Michigan. He received a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s degree in organ performance from Central Michigan University, and a master’s degree in education from Michigan State University. He was a music and elementary teacher in the Essexville-Hampton Public Schools, and a member of the Saginaw Valley AGO chapter. Hill played organ at several regional churches, sang with the Bay Chorale, and played with the Saginaw Valley State University Collegium. 

James K. Hill is survived by his wife Rosemary, a son, a daughter, a granddaughter, a brother, a sister, a niece, and a nephew. 

Frances Kelly Holland died in Charlotte, North Carolina, on April 3; she was 92. Born in Mount Holly, North Carolina, she received a bachelor of music degree from Greensboro College in 1938. She served as organist and choir director at the First United Methodist Church, and the First Presbyterian Church, both in Mount Holly, for many years, until her retirement in 1984. Holland was an officer of the Charlotte AGO chapter for 22 years, and was certified as an organist by the Presbyterian Association of Musicians. Frances Kelly Holland is survived by her husband of 69 years, Thomas Marshall Holland, two children, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. 

Ronald A. Nelson died April 18 at the age of 86. Born in Rockford, Illinois, he received a B.Mus. from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and an M.Mus. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1955 he became music minister at Westwood Lutheran Church in suburban Minneapolis, serving for 37 years; he directed nine choirs and a resident orchestra and founded a children’s choir school. His compositions were published by Augsburg Fortress, GIA, Santa Barbara, and Selah; he is well known as the composer of Setting 2 of the Communion Service in the Lutheran Book of Worship. Nelson received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from St. Olaf College and the F. Melius Christiansen Award from Minnesota American Choral Directors Association.

Ronald A. Nelson is survived by his wife, Betty Lou, daughter Rachel, sons Peter and Paul, and
a grandson.

Robert J. Schaffer died on May 20 at the age of 92 in Edgewood, Kentucky. Born in 1921 in St. Bernard, Ohio, he received his early education in Cincinnati. During World War II, he served in England in a U.S. Army band, which played the national anthem for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during the embarkation ceremony for troops heading to fight on Normandy’s beaches. After the war, he returned to Cincinnati, serving as an organist, freelance trombonist, and pianist, while studying Gregorian chant at the Athenaeum of Ohio and earning a bachelor’s degree in music from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He moved to New York and earned a master’s degree in musicology from New York University. 

In 1949 Schaffer was hired as organist by the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky, beginning an association that would endure for more than sixty years. After a short break to conclude his doctoral studies, he returned in 1952, and was named director of music in 1958. In 1953, Schaffer married his wife of 55 years, Rita, former organist at Cincinnati’s Christ Church Cathedral and Church of the Redeemer. She died in 2009. Schaffer composed several Masses and other compositions, which were published by World Library Publications. He taught music in the parish elementary school, in high schools, at Villa Madonna College (later Thomas More College) in Covington, and at St. Pius X Seminary, and served as an organist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In 1975, to celebrate the addition of the Matthias Schwab Organ to what were eventually the three organs of the basilica (the pipes and other parts were dismantled and carried two blocks from Old St. Joseph Church, which had formerly housed the instrument), Schaffer began the Cathedral Concert Series. Robert J. Schaffer is survived by his son Gregory Schaffer, daughter Rebecca Wells, and four grandchildren. 

James Leslie Boeringer, born March 4, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died January 12 of pancreatic cancer. He earned a BA in organ performance from the College of Wooster (Ohio) in 1952, an MA in musicology from Columbia University in 1954, a doctorate in sacred music from the former Union Theological Seminary in New York, New York, in 1964, and completed post-doctoral studies at New York University. Boeringer received associate certification from the American Guild of Organists in 1953. He presented recitals in organ and harpsichord in 20 of the United States, and in England and France.

Beginning with his first church position, as organist of Homewood Baptist Church in Pittsburgh in November 1947, he served churches in Ohio, New Jersey, New York City, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and London, England. He moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1992 and served as organist at Church of the Pilgrims (Presbyterian) Washington, Messiah Lutheran Church in Germantown, and Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist, in Georgetown, playing his last service December 29, 2013, just two weeks before his death.  

Boeringer served as executive director of the Moravian Music Foundation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as university organist and on the faculty at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee; at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, he was a professor and chair of the music department. A Phillips Distinguished Visitor at Haverford College, he founded the Krisheim Church Music Conference in Philadelphia, and directed the Creative Arts Festival at Susquehanna University from 1972 to 1975, and the Moravian Music Festival in 1981 and 1984.  

As a composer Boeringer wrote 23 published original works for chorus and organ, organ solo, chamber ensemble, and other combinations, including a cantata and a song cycle; and about 50 unpublished pieces, including an oratorio with full orchestra. He wrote more than 25 hymn tunes and hymn texts, some of which appear in Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite, Moravian, and ecumenical hymnals. Selected works are available through the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) website (imslp.org).  

He authored the three-volume Organa Britannica: Organs in Great Britain, 1660–1860, as well as other books on hymnody and biographies of organists and composers of church music. His essays were published in periodicals and books. 

A widely published arts critic and scholar, he wrote numerous articles and reviews, which appeared in the Journal of Church Music; Moravian Music Journal; Music, the A.G.O. Magazine; The Organ Yearbook (Netherlands); The Musical Times (London); The New York Times; The American Organist; The Diapason; and The Tracker. He was the editor for the Society for Organ History and Preservation.  

Boeringer published fiction under a pseudonym. A member of Equity, he has a long list of theater credits in a variety of roles including actor, singer, director, music director, composer, narrator, and chorus arranger. He had an abiding interest in historic buildings and moved and restored two log cabins in his lifetime, and was an avid gardener.  

James Leslie Boeringer is survived by his wife of 58 years, Grace, and children Lisa Stocker, Greta, and Daniel, and a brother David.  

Peter Rasmussen Hallock died April 27, 2014, in Fall City, Washington; he was 89. A composer, organist, liturgist, and countertenor, among other activities, he was long associated with St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral of Seattle. Hallock began organ study with Clayton Johnson of Tacoma. He enrolled at the University of Washington, but was drafted into the United States Army, serving from June 1943 until February 1946 as chaplain’s assistant and sharpshooter in the Pacific theater during World War II. Returning to the University of Washington, he studied organ with Walter Eichinger and composition with George McKay, then studied at the College of St. Nicholas at the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) in Canterbury, England, becoming the first American choral scholar at Canterbury Cathedral, under the direction of Gerald Knight. He completed the RSCM program and received a bachelor of arts degree in music from the University of Washington in 1951 and master of arts degree in music from the same institution in 1958.

Peter Hallock became organist/choirmaster of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle, on October 28, 1951, a position he held until retirement in 1991. At St. Mark’s, he founded a chant study group in the mid 1950s that became known as the Compline Choir, which remains in the forefront of the resurgence of interest in the Office of Compline. He was instrumental in the cathedral’s acquisition of a four-manual Flentrop mechanical-action organ in 1965. At the cathedral, Hallock also introduced Advent and Good Friday processions as well as liturgical drama. He was named Canon Precentor, the first lay person in the Episcopal Church to hold this title, named an associate of the RSCM, and was honored with an honorary doctor of music degree by the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. In 1992, he became organist at St. Clement of Rome Episcopal Church, Seattle, remaining until March 2013. Hallock was also well known and respected for his countertenor concerts, with performances throughout the United States. As a composer, Peter Hallock created more than 250 works, from occasional church music to extended anthems, dramatic works (sacred and secular) to music specifically written for the Compline Choir. Among his many publications was The Ionian Psalter.

Peter Rasmussen Hallock is survived by his sisters, Matilda Ann Milbank of Los Altos, California, and Barbara Hallock of Kent, Washington, as well as several nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews. Memorial gifts may be made to the Compline Choir of St. Mark’s Cathedral or to the Cathedral Foundation of the Diocese of Olympia, Seattle.

Robert Burgess Lynn, 83 years old, passed away February 11 in Houston, Texas. A native of Colorado Springs, he studied organ and piano with Roy Harris, Frederick Boothroyd, and Joanna Harris while in high school. In 1952, he earned a BA at Colorado College (where he studied with Frederick Boothroyd and Max Lanner, and was chapel organist), and a master’s in organ from the Juilliard School of Music, received Honorable Mention in the AGO Young Artists’ Contest in Organ Playing in San Francisco, and married Elaine Steele, also a musician. In 1956, Lynn received a Fulbright Scholarship to study organ playing and construction with Finn Viderø under the auspices of the University of Copenhagen. His studies were briefly delayed when the family’s ship, the Stockholm, collided with the Andrea Doria, which subsequently sank. During his time in Copenhagen, he saw and played several great organs, including the organ at Sweden’s Malmö Museum, built in 1520, and at the Royal Chapel in Copenhagen, built in 1827. Lynn became a Fellow of the AGO in 1964, receiving the highest marks of any candidate in Section I of the FAGO examinations. 

Robert Lynn taught from 1954 to 1971 at Allegheny College as an assistant professor of music. In 1973, he received his PhD in musicology from Indiana University; his dissertation was entitled “Renaissance Organ Music for the Proper of the Mass in Continental Sources.” From 1971 to 1997, he served as professor of musicology at the University of Houston where he also directed the Collegium Musicum and the graduate studies program. His monograph, Valentin Haussmann (1565/70–Ca. 1614): A Thematic-Documentary Catalogue of His Works, was published by Pendragon Press. In 1997, he was named professor emeritus. 

Lynn also enjoyed visiting professorships at Rice University, Indiana University, and the University of Siegen. While a resident of Houston, Lynn was well known for his organ recitals in addition to his role as harpsichord soloist, playing in many concerts associated with the Houston Harpsichord Society (now Houston Early Music). From 1982 to 2004, he was the founding director of the Houston Bach Choir and Orchestra at Christ the King Lutheran Church. Lynn served as director of music and organist at St. Francis Episcopal Church for 25 years, and also as long-term interim organist at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. Memorial contributions may be made to the Bach Society Houston, 2353 Rice Blvd, Houston, TX 77005, or to the Christ Church Cathedral Music Program, 1117 Texas Ave., Houston, TX 77002.

Fred S. Mauk died on April 7, two weeks before his 83rd birthday, after a short illness. Mauk did his undergraduate study at Stetson University and Rollins College, where he earned a degree in music, and received his master’s degree in 1958 from the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He held church music positions in Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida, his last position being director of music for 33 years at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Altamonte Springs, Florida, where he retired in 2011; at St. Mark’s he installed a pipe organ (purchased from a church in North Carolina) in the sanctuary.

An active member of the Central Florida AGO chapter, Mauk served in many chapter positions, including dean, and was instrumental in coordinating the 1993 regional AGO convention in Orlando. He was also known for his encouragement of young musicians, his sense of humor, his organizational skills, his many interests, including old cars and antique car shows, and his ability to work well with everyone. 

Mary Lou McCarthy-Artz, age 78, died at her home in Plymouth, Indiana, on May 7. Born November 18, 1935, Mary Lou Smith graduated from high school in 1953, marrying her first husband, Joseph L. Merkel, two years later. She studied piano at the Jordan Conservatory of Music, Butler University, in Indianapolis. After her husband’s death, she married Rodney Evans and moved to Covington, Indiana, where they lived for more than twenty years. It was there, while holding down a full-time job as an executive secretary, that she began working part-time as organist at nearby Catholic parishes: St. Joseph, Covington; St. Bernard, Crawfordsville; and Holy Family, Danville, Illinois. In 1993, she began full-time ministry as organist and choir director for the motherhouse of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, Ancilla Domini, in Donaldson, Indiana. A long-time member of the American Guild of Organists, she had served as chapter dean and had recently earned her CAGO certificate. Mary Lou McCarthy-Artz is survived by her husband, Donald Artz, two daughters, Nancy Merkel Starkey of Jacksonville, Florida, and Janet Evans Snyder of Georgetown, Illinois, as well as two grandchildren. ν

David Arthur Sansome Gell, 70 years old, died March 2, 2014, in Santa Barbara, California. Born in Alberta, Canada, his musical journey began at age 8 as a boy chorister in an Edmonton, Alberta, church. After immigrating to Alhambra, California, he began organ lessons at age 13.

Gell attended California State University at Los Angeles, majoring in history and music; he graduated in 1966 from Azusa Pacific University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music, studying organ and theory with Gerald Faber. He did graduate study at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, the University of Hawaii (Manoa), and with Emma Lou Diemer at the University of California at Santa Barbara. During the Viet Nam conflict, he served on board the USS Klondike, and as organist and assistant to the Pacific Fleet Chaplain in Pearl Harbor. 

David Gell served as organist and choirmaster at churches in Monrovia, California, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, First Congregational Church, and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Santa Barbara. His greatest distinction was as Minister of Music, Organist and Composer-in-Residence of Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara. During his 30-year tenure, he helped create several community concert series, including an Advent Series, Old Spanish Days Fiesta with La Música Antigua de España, Young Artists Concerts, and music and organ demonstrations to school children. He served as organist-in-residence at major cathedrals in Britain during five concert tours with the Santa Barbara Boys Choir. 

Active in the American Guild of Organists, he had served as dean, sub-dean, and treasurer of chapters in Hawaii and Santa Barbara. He performed in Canada, Louisiana, Hawaii, and California, including at Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles and AGO regional conventions. He established the local chapter of the Choral Conductors Guild and served as founder, first conductor, and president of the board of the Santa Barbara Master Chorale.

David Gell composed works for orchestra, vocal solo, choral anthems and cantatas, concertos for instruments, fanfares, an organ sonata, string quartet, chorale preludes, and hymn introductions and intonations for the Episcopal Church’s 1982 Hymnal. Gell generously shared his scores, interpretation ideas, and ingenious methods of registration and of managing multiple pages of scores. His memorial service included music by his favorite composers—Buxtehude, Stanley, Handel, and Emma Lou Diemer. Two of his own organ compositions were included: “Meditation on Picardy” and “Toccata on ‘Only begotten, Word of God.’” In honor of his service in the Navy, Taps was played. 

David Arthur Sansome Gell is survived by his wife of 45 years, Carolyn Gell. Memorial contributions may be made to the Azusa Pacific University School of Music, Organ Scholarship Advancement, P.O. Box 7000, Azusa, CA 91702-7000.

—Charles Talmadge

Perry G. Parrigin, 88, passed away December 26, 2013, in Columbia, Missouri. Born in Paintsville, Kentucky, he received his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Kentucky in 1947 and his master’s degree in organ from Indiana University in 1949. Following his military service at Fort Knox, Kentucky, as a chaplain’s assistant, he studied under Robert Baker at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and at the University of Colorado. Parrigin moved to Columbia in 1953 to teach music theory and organ at the University of Missouri; he retired from the university in 1989 as Professor Emeritus, and became organist and choirmaster at the Missouri United Methodist Church, serving in that role from 1953–1963 and from 1980–1997 as organist. During his tenure he oversaw the renovation and expansion of the church’s Skinner organ. He was named Organist Emeritus in 2000. Parrigin was a longtime member of the Kiwanis Club and the American Guild of Organists. Perry G. Parrigin was preceded in death by his wife of 32 years, Elizabeth, and is survived by several nieces and nephews. 

Robert L. Town, professor of organ emeritus at Wichita State University, died on December 10, 2013. He was a master teacher, recitalist, and consultant during his long and productive career. (See Lorenz Maycher, “A Conversation with Robert Town,” The Diapason, May 2008.) Born October 31, 1937, in Waterman, Wisconsin, his interest in the pipe organ began at age three, when he attended church for the first time. At age 12, he headed a successful campaign to purchase a Hammond organ for his church, and at 15, he was appointed organist at First Baptist Church in Weedsport, New York. Town received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1960 from the Eastman School of Music, studying with Catharine Crozier. He entered Syracuse University as a master’s student of Arthur Poister, graduating in 1962 and continuing his studies there while filling a one-year vacancy in the department. Later, he continued his doctoral work with Marilyn Mason at the University of Michigan. At age 25, Town won the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition, over two finalists ten years his senior; this led to his national debut as a recitalist in a career playing in the United States, Canada, and Europe, including at the Kennedy Center, St. Thomas Church for the New York World’s Fair, and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. 

Town became chairman of the Wichita State University organ department in 1965 and taught until he retired in 2006. His students were successful in prestigious competitions over a 20-year period, including two winners at Fort Wayne in addition to nine finalists at the Ruth and Clarence Mader competition (Pasadena), the Gruenstein competition (Chicago), and the national undergraduate competition in Ottumwa (Iowa). Two students won international competitions and three were selected as Fulbright Scholars. Perhaps his greatest achievement was in securing the four-manual, 63-stop, 85-rank Marcussen tracker pipe organ at Wichita State University in 1987. Marcussen and Son had never produced an instrument in the United States but were persuaded when told that Wiedemann Recital Hall (named for the organ’s benefactor, Gladys Wiedemann) would be erected specifically to house the organ. In 1994, the Rie Bloomfield Recital Series was endowed on the campus.

Professor Town’s estate provided a bequest to establish the Robert L. Town Distinguished Professorship in organ, a position currently held by Professor Lynne Davis, and provided for the ongoing maintenance of the Marcussen. Ten years before his death, Town made an endowed gift to keep all of the practice organs on the campus well maintained. Memorials may be sent to Harry Hynes Memorial Hospice, 313 S. Market, Wichita, KS 67202 or the Marcussen Organ Maintenance Fund, c/o WSU Foundation, 1845 N. Fairmount, Wichita, KS 67260. 

Clyde Holloway died December 18, 2013, in Houston, Texas. He was 77 years old. The Herbert S. Autrey Professor Emeritus of Organ at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston, Holloway earned B.Mus. (1957) and M.Mus. (1959) degrees from the University of Oklahoma, studying with Mildred Andrews, and the S.M.D. degree in 1974 from Union Theological Seminary, studying with Robert Baker.

Holloway’s concert career began in 1964 when he won the National Young Artists Competition of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) in Philadelphia. He performed under the auspices of Karen McFarlane Artists, and was a featured artist at numerous AGO conventions, also appearing in recital in Mexico City, the West Indies, and Europe.

His doctoral dissertation, The Organ Works of Olivier Messiaen and Their Importance in His Total Oeuvre, remains an important monograph concerning this music. Holloway worked with the composer on several occasions, examined his works at the organ of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Paris, and performed under his supervision. As a Fulbright Scholar at the Amsterdam Conservatory, he worked with Gustav Leonhardt in the study of organ, harpsichord, and chamber music.

Clyde Holloway began his teaching career in 1965 as the youngest member of the Indiana University School of Music faculty. In 1977, he joined the faculty of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he established the organ program and served as Chairman of the Keyboard Department and Director of Graduate Studies. The school’s widely acclaimed Fisk-Rosales organ embodies his unique understanding of how numerous organ-building traditions and tonal designs are manifested in organ literature and will be considered his most profound contribution to Rice University, Houston, and the larger musical world. He also served as organist and choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral in Houston for many years; in 1993, he was named Honorary Lay Canon and Organist and Choirmaster Emeritus.

Renowned as a gifted pedagogue, Dr. Holloway served on the AGO’s Committee for Professional Education, addressed two conferences of the National Conference on Organ Pedagogy, led workshops and masterclasses, and served as a member of the jury for numerous competitions, including the Concours de Europe, the Fort Wayne Competition, the Music Teachers National Association Competition, the National Young Artists Competition of the American Guild of Organists, and the Grand Prix de Chartres. In 1994 he was invited to perform for the Bicentennial Festival of the celebrated Clicquot organ in the Cathedral of Poitiers, France, and served as a member of the jury for the international competition held at the end of the ten-day festival. 

Sylvie Poirier, 65 years old, passed away December 21, 2013 in Montréal of cancer. Born in Montréal on February 15, 1948 into a family of artists, her father was a goldsmith jeweller, and her mother, a painter and sculptor, was a pupil of the renowned painter Paul-Emile Borduas. Influenced by her parents, she began drawing and painting, and studied piano from an early age and later studied organ at l’Ecole de Musique Vincent d’Indy, Montréal. In 1970 she gained her baccalaureat in the class of Françoise Aubut and went on to study at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal with Bernard Lagacé, with whom she obtained her Premier Prix in 1975. In 1976 Poirier studied at l’Université de Montréal with the blind French organist Antoine Reboulot. From 1977–1983 she was professeur affilié at l’Ecole de Musique Vincent d’Indy, presenting private music and drawing courses around Montréal.

In 1983 she became the Founding President of “Unimusica Inc.” whose objective was to bring together the art forms of music, painting, enamels, as well as poetry and photography. At the invitation of the oncologist founder of “Vie nouvelle” at Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Montréal, Poirier taught a course specifically designed for cancer patients entitled “Psychology of Life through Drawing” in the 1980s. 

She gave recitals in North America and Europe and broadcast many times for Radio Canada. Her organ duet career with her husband Philip Crozier spanned eighteen years, with eight commissioned and premièred works, numerous concerts in many countries, several broadcasts at home and abroad, and three CDs of original organ duets.

Sylvie Poirier also recorded Jean Langlais’ Première Symphonie, and Petr Eben’s Job and The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart; she gave the latter work’s North American première of the published version in Montréal in 2005. Poirier was also an accomplished painter and portraitist; examples of her work can be found at sylviepoirier.com.

She was predeceased by her only son Frédéric (30) in 2007. Sylvie Poirier is survived by her husband, Philip Crozier.

Phares L. Steiner died in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 14, 2013 at age 85. Born in Lima, Ohio, Steiner earned a bachelor’s degree in organ at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and a master’s degree in organ performance at the University of Michigan in 1952, where he studied with Robert Noehren and where he began his career as an organ builder, at first working with Noehren. In 1953 with Noehren as consultant, Steiner designed the prototype of an electric-action slider chest. After service in the Army he worked with Fouser Associates in Birmingham, Michigan from 1955 to 1957. He established Steiner Organs Inc. in 1959 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in 1962 relocated to Louisville, where he was joined in 1966 by Gottfried Reck from Kleuker in Germany. They incorporated in 1968 as Steiner Reck Inc.; Steiner was responsible for tonal matters of more than 90 organs, many of which were mechanical action. 

After retiring from Steiner Reck in 1988, he continued pipe organ work on a freelance basis, including working at Webber & Borne Organ Builders, and R.A. Daffer in the Washington, D.C. area while living in Columbia, Maryland. Phares Steiner returned to Louisville in 2003 with his family, where they became members of the Cathedral of the Assumption, home to one of his largest instruments.  

A charter member of the American Institute of Organbuilders, Steiner was also an active member of APOBA at Steiner Reck and a member of Phi Mu Alpha music fraternity. He also served as organist at several churches, including St. Louis Catholic Church in Clarkesville, Maryland, and Trinity Catholic Church, Louisville. 

Phares L. Steiner is survived by his wife Ellen Heineman Steiner, daughter Adrienne, son Paul, and brother, Donald F. Steiner M.D.

Marianne Webb, 77, of Carbondale, Illinois, died December 7, 2013, at Parkway Manor in Marion, Illinois, from metastatic breast cancer, which she had for the past 20 years. She enjoyed a lengthy and distinguished career as a recitalist and professor of music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC).

Miss Webb was born on October 4, 1936, in Topeka, Kansas where she exhibited an early passion for organ music. While in Topeka, she began her studies with Richard M. Gayhart and continued with Jerald Hamilton at Washburn University, where she earned her Bachelor of Music degree, summa cum laude, in 1958. She obtained the Master of Music degree, with highest distinction, from the University of Michigan (1959), as a scholarship student of Marilyn Mason. Further study was with Max Miller of Boston University and Robert Noehren at the University of Michigan.

After teaching organ and piano at Iowa State University for two years, she continued her studies in Paris as a Fulbright scholar with André Marchal. Further graduate study was with Arthur Poister at Syracuse University and Russell Saunders at the Eastman School of Music.

Marianne Webb taught organ and music theory and served as university organist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1965 until her retirement in 2001 as professor emerita of music. She continued to serve as visiting professor and distinguished university organist for an additional 11 years. During her tenure, she built a thriving organ department and established, organized, and directed the nationally acclaimed SIUC Organ Festivals (1966–1980), the first of their kind in the country. The school’s 58-rank Reuter pipe organ she sought funding for and designed was named in her honor.

Miss Webb married David N. Bateman on October 3, 1970, in Carbondale. Together they gave the endowment that established in perpetuity the Marianne Webb and David N. Bateman Distinguished Organ Recital Series that presents each year outstanding, well-established concert organists in recital for the residents of southern Illinois.

As a concert artist, Marianne Webb toured extensively throughout the United States, performing for American Guild of Organists (AGO) chapters, churches, colleges and universities. In addition, she maintained an active schedule of workshops, master classes, and seminars for church music conferences. A member of the AGO, she served the guild as a member of the national committees on Educational Resources, Chapter Development, and Membership Development and Chapter Support. Locally, she re-established the Southern Illinois Chapter of the AGO in 1983 and served as its dean for six years. She performed recitals and presented workshops at numerous AGO national and regional conventions. For many years she concertized under the auspices of the Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists. She recorded on the ProOrgano and Pleiades labels and was featured on the nationally syndicated American Public Media program “Pipedreams.” 

Miss Webb maintained a balanced career as both performer and teacher. Her students have distinguished themselves by winning local, area, and national competitions. A sought-after adjudicator, Miss Webb was a member of the jury for many of the country’s most prestigious competitions. She also served as an organ consultant to numerous churches in the Midwest.

A special collection, which bears her name, is housed in the University Archives of Morris Library on the SIUC campus. Upon completion, this collection will include all of her professional books, music, recordings, and papers. Her “Collection of Sacred Music” has been appraised as “one of the largest private gatherings of sacred music in the world with a particular emphasis on the pipe organ.”

Among numerous honors during her long and distinguished career, Miss Webb has received the Distinguished Service Award from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, life membership in the Fulbright Association, the AGO’s Edward A. Hansen Leadership Award recognizing her outstanding leadership in the Guild, and the St. Louis AGO Chapter’s Avis Blewett Award, given for outstanding contributions to the field of organ and/or sacred music. From the Theta Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota at Washburn University she received the Sword of Honor and the Honor Certificate.

Miss Webb is survived by her twin sister, Peggy Westlund; a niece, Allison Langford; a nephew, Todd Westlund; a godson, R. Kurt Barnhardt, PhD; and her former husband, Dr. David N. Bateman.

Throughout her lifetime Miss Webb was confronted with great adversities, which she overcame to become a nationally recognized organ teacher and recitalist. She leaves an impressive legacy of students holding positions of prominence in colleges and churches throughout the United States. She will be remembered not only for her musical artistry and excellence in teaching, but as a woman of quiet strength, courage, and abiding faith. In gratitude to God for her lifelong career, she established the St. Cecilia Recital Endowment in 2007 to present world-renowned concert organists in recital during the biennial national conventions of the American Guild of Organists.

At a later date, a memorial organ recital played by Paul Jacobs will take place in Shryock Auditorium, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Memorials may be sent to SIU Foundation to benefit the Distinguished Organ Recital Series Endowment. 

—Dennis C. Wendell

Charles Dodsley Walker, 94, died in New York City on January 17. At the time of his death he was the conductor of the Canterbury Choral Society, organist and choirmaster emeritus of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City, and the artist-in-residence of St. Luke’s Parish, Darien, Connecticut. 

For most of the 20th century—continuing into the 21st—Charles Dodsley Walker was active and prominent in New York City cultural life, directing musical activities for churches, schools, and secular organizations. He was also a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists and was president of the AGO from 1971–75.

Born on March 16, 1920, in New York City, his family soon moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey. There, at Christ Church of Bloomfield and Glen Ridge, he first sang in a choir and played the organ. In 1930 he was admitted to the Choir School of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where he sang in the cathedral choir directed first by Miles Farrow, and shortly after by Norman Coke-Jephcott who was young Charles’ first teacher, with whom he studied organ, harmony, and counterpoint in weekly lessons. Upon graduation Charles went to Trinity School in New York, while continuing his study with Coke-Jephcott. He soon assumed the duties of school organist at Trinity, playing for daily chapel services. As he told The Diapason in a 90th birthday interview in the March 2010 issue, “They then brought in a French teacher to play the organ who simply couldn’t play, so I went up to the headmaster and said ‘I can play’ and so I became the school organist.”

Upon the advice of Channing Lefebvre, organist of Trinity Church Wall Street, CDW went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. It was his desire to receive a liberal arts degree while still studying music seriously, as his goal was to have a classroom teaching career in addition to being a church musician and organist. So it was that he pursued a major in modern languages with concentration in French, while also studying organ with the college’s organist and music professor, who just happened to be the leading proponent of the French school of organ playing in America at that time: Clarence Watters, a protégé and friend of Marcel Dupré. While at Trinity College, CDW held his first church appointment at Stafford Springs Congregational Church in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, about halfway between Hartford and Worcester, Massachusetts.

After graduating from Trinity College, he enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University, studying musicology, choral conducting, theory, and composition with Walter Piston, Archibald T. Davison, and Tillman Merritt. While at Harvard he was assistant organist of Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working under W. Judson Rand. 

His studies were interrupted by service in the Navy, where he served in a number of non-combat capacities. Following military service he completed his master’s degree at Harvard in 1947 and was appointed simultaneously to his first two New York City jobs: organist and choirmaster of St. Thomas Chapel (a chapel of St. Thomas Church, now All Saints Church) and director of music at Trinity School, his alma mater. He was all set to embark upon a secure career as a church musician and teacher in New York when a thoroughly unplanned and felicitous (his word) event occurred: he learned of the opening for organist and choirmaster of the American Cathedral in Paris. The dean of the cathedral was a New Yorker who just happened to be in town, so Charlie called on him and was offered the job on the spot! He took a modest cut in salary to move to Paris, but did so gladly to immerse himself in the French culture and music he had grown to appreciate during his undergraduate study. At the cathedral he succeeded Robert Owen, who was in France studying on the GI Bill. While in Paris he made the acquaintance of and collaborated with the leading French organists and musicians of the day, including Pierre Duvauchelle, Nadia Boulanger, Francis Poulenc, a young Ned Rorem, Maurice Duruflé, Andre Marchal, Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen, and Jean Langlais, with whom he and his family remained particularly close. In Paris he also met Janet Hayes, an American soprano studying with Boulanger in France and performing throughout Europe. After a brief courtship they were married in the American Cathedral. 

While in Paris CDW was also the director of the American Students’ and Artists’ Center, a comprehensive educational and social organization with nearly a thousand members, which was administered under the auspices of the cathedral and its dean. He held this full-time, non-musical job concurrently with his position at the American Cathedral, and it provided a secure living including an apartment. But the demands of this entirely administrative job soon left him looking for a change and, when he heard of the vacancy, he applied for the opening at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue and 90th Street in New York. Armed with letters of recommendation from Canon Edward West from St. John the Divine, the Rev. C. Leslie Glenn, and the Rev. Francis Bowes Sayre (later dean of Washington Cathedral), his clergy colleagues from Christ Church in Cambridge, he was offered the position. One of the unsuccessful candidates, from whom CDW unknowingly had asked a reference, was his old teacher, Clarence Watters! Donald Wilkins succeeded CDW at the American Cathedral.

CDW began his duties at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in January 1951, and he founded the Canterbury Choral Society in Advent of the following year. Initially conceived as an adjunct Evensong choir for the church’s music program, the choral society soon adopted the pattern of inviting members of the community to join the church choir by audition for presentations of oratorios with full orchestra at three concerts each year in the Church of the Heavenly Rest. The group continued to operate under the aegis of the church until 1988 when CDW left the church, at which time the choral society became an independent organization, even though they maintain a close relationship with the church and still present most of their concerts there. On special occasions the Canterbury Choral Society did present concerts in other venues such as the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Avery Fisher Hall, and Carnegie Hall, including several performances of the Mahler Eighth Symphony assisted by various choirs of children from area schools and churches.

Concurrent with his position at Heavenly Rest and Canterbury, CDW at various times taught at Kew Forest School, Chapin School—where he was head of the music department for twenty-four years—New York University, Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music, Manhattan School of Music, and SUNY Queens College. In 1969 he co-founded, with his wife Janet Hayes Walker, the York Theatre Company. He directed the Blue Hill Troupe, performing all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in fully staged productions several times during his thirty-five-year tenure. He was a founder of the Berkshire Choral Festival in 1982 and was the organist of Lake Delaware Boys Camp for fifty years in the summers from 1940–1990. Given the number of organizations he led and the length of his tenures, it is not an exaggeration to say that Charlie Walker’s sphere of influence reached thousands of persons, young and old.

In what others would call their retirement years, Charlie Walker never lessened his professional activity. From 1988 until 2007, he was the organist and choirmaster of Trinity Church, Southport, Connecticut, directing the church choir and a community chorale, sometimes in joint concerts with the Canterbury Choral Society in New York and Southport. From 2007 until his death, he was artist-in-residence at St. Luke’s Parish in Darien, Connecticut, where he assisted in playing and directing weekly rehearsals and services and taught young choristers in the RSCM Voice for Life curriculum. During all this time he continued his vigorous leadership of the Canterbury Choral Society, never missing a concert until close to the end of his life. 

Janet Hayes Walker died in 1997, and in 2001 Charles Dodsley Walker married Elizabeth Phillips, who survives him, as do his children Susan Starr Walker and Peter Hayes Walker, and three grandchildren.

A memorial service for CDW took place Saturday, March 21, in the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City, with  interment in the family plot in Niles, Michigan.

In a follow-up to his 90th birthday interview in the June 2010 issue of The Diapason, when asked how he would like to be remembered, CDW said: 

“Well, I feel that to be a good church musician, doing your job from Sunday to Sunday, is a very worthy thing to be doing, and if you have the good fortune to be able to develop more elaborate musical programs—that’s good, too. But our job as church musicians is to provide, with the resources available, the best possible music for our church, week by week. I like that.”