Nunc dimittis

Nunc Dimittis

Ronald Kent Arnatt, 88, died August 23, 2018. He was born January 16, 1930, in London, England, and was a boy chorister at Westminster Abbey and King’s College, Cambridge. He was educated at Trent College, Derbyshire, Trinity College of Music, London, and Durham University. From the latter, he was granted a Bachelor of Music degree in 1954. In 1970, Arnatt was awarded a Doctor of Music degree from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey.

Over the course of his career he held numerous positions, including instructor, American University, Washington, D.C.; director of music, Mary Institute, St. Louis, Missouri; professor of music and director choral activities, University of Missouri, St. Louis; director of music and organist, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis; founder and conductor, St. Louis Chamber Orchestra and Chorus; conductor and music director, Bach Society of St. Louis; director of music and organist, Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts; president, American Guild of Organists; director of music and organist, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Beverly, Massachusetts; professor of church music and department head, Westminster Choir College; and editor, ECS Publishing, Boston. He was also the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and prizes.

Ronald Arnatt married Carol Freeman Woodward, who died in 2017. They had two daughters who survive, Ronlyn and Sylvia. He is also survived by nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

 

Jon L. Bertschinger, 65, died July 13, 2018, in St. Joseph, Missouri. He was born July 25, 1952, in Burlington, Iowa. Bertschinger began taking piano lessons at an early age, followed by organ lessons on the new M. P. Möller organ at his church, Messiah Lutheran Church, in Burlington, in 1958. He sang in and accompanied one of the five choirs at that church while in junior high school.

Bertschinger began work for the Temple Organ Company when it moved to Burlington in 1966, helping to install the rebuilt organ at First Methodist Church in 1967. He was still working with David Cool, son of the company’s founder, Fred Cool, when the church burned in 2007, and he accomplished the tonal finishing for the new 60-rank organ for the rebuilt church.

Bertschinger was on the volunteer staff for the Auditorium and Temple in Independence, Missouri, performing recitals under the direction of Jan Kraybill, former director of music for the Community of Christ Church. He also had regular church jobs in St. Joseph, sometimes two at a time, playing over the years at Westminster Presbyterian, Trinity Presbyterian, First Christian, and, up until his death, Brookdale Presbyterian.

 

Wesley Coleman Dudley, II, 85, of Williamsburg, Virginia, and Bar Harbor, Maine, died July 25 in Williamsburg. He was born in Buffalo, New York, December 15, 1932. He attended Nichols School and graduated from St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, before receiving his bachelor’s degree from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. After two years in the United States Navy in Hawaii, he returned to Buffalo in 1958 to work at Worthington Pump Company. Six years later he became an entrepreneur, managing Auto Wheel Coaster Company, North Tonawanda, New York, before joining his family’s management office. He began spending winters in Williamsburg, Virginia, and summers in Bar Harbor, Maine, allowing him to explore his two dominant passions: pipe organs and boating.

A quiet philanthropist, he supported many projects anonymously, but there was one exception, the public radio program, Pipedreams. He was also a frequent donor to the Organ Historical Society.

Wesley C. Dudley was preceded in death by his daughter, Katherine Mary Dudley. He is survived by his wife of sixty-two years, Lucinda Nash Dudley, and his children, Nanette (David) Schoeder, Donald M. (Janet) Dudley, three grandchildren, Nicholas Schoeder, Katherine Dudley, and MacLaren Dudley, their mother Meg Dudley, and two step-grandchildren, Grace and Madeleine Waters. Memorial contributions may be made to Minnesota Public Radio, attn. Jamie Ziemann, 480 Cedar St., St. Paul, Minnesota 55101, or to the Dudley Scholarship at the Eastman School of Music, attn. Suzanne Stover, 26 Gibbs St., Rochester, New York 14604.

 

Steven E. Lawson, 63, of New York, New York, died suddenly, August 19, of natural causes. He had completed his usual Saturday evening practice at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, where he had served as assisting organist for 21 years, and failed to show up on Sunday morning.

Lawson was born September 9, 1954, in San Diego, California, attended elementary school in Fullerton, California, and high school in Topeka, Kansas. He earned the Bachelor of Music degree in organ performance at Oklahoma City University, where he studied with Wilma Jensen, and the Master of Music degree in organ performance at Indiana University, also studying with Wilma Jensen. At Indiana University, he minored in carillon performance and accompanied the University Singers, working with conductors Robert Shaw and Margaret Hills. Before his appointment at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Lawson served St. Luke’s Lutheran Church near Times Square in New York City for ten years.

As an active member of the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Lawson served as registrar, webmaster, and editor of the chapter’s concert calendar, but his towering achievement was the New York City Organ Project (NYCOP). Starting with his interest in gathering the histories of various pipe organs in churches he served or played in, the NYCOP grew into a seemingly limitless body of information, published online as part of the website of the New York City AGO Chapter. Thousands of organs are diligently documented with histories, specifications, and photographs. (For example, see the documentation of organs at the Church of the Heavenly Rest: www.nycago.org/organs/nyc/html/HeavenlyRest.html.) Friends and colleagues have joked that no one knew the organs of New York City as well as Lawson, given the countless hours he traveled around the city carrying heavy photographic equipment.

Lawson’s passion for collecting and making available this type of information drew him to the Organ Historical Society’s Pipe Organ Database, where he continued his vast contribution to the art of the organ, expanding his boundaries from New York City to include the entire United States. He worked closely with the OHS Database Committee, contributing and updating countless entries of organs, and behind the scenes with the development of a new, more user-friendly version of the database.

Steven E. Lawson is survived by his parents, George W. Lawson and Doris E. Lawson, and his cousin Linda Driskel.

­—John Bishop

 

Frank G. Rippl, 71, died August 11, in Appleton, Wisconsin. Born in Neenah, Wisconsin, Rippl earned the Bachelor of Music Education degree from Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, Appleton, where he minored in organ, studying with Miriam Clapp Duncan. He received a Master of Music degree in Orff-Schulwerk from the University of Denver. Rippl also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, as well as the Royal School of Church Music in England.

In 1979 he co-founded the Appleton Boychoir, for which he conducted and played organ for 26 years until his retirement from the organization in 2010. He initiated the Boychoir’s popular Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols held each Christmas in Memorial Chapel, Lawrence University. During Rippl’s tenure, the choir performed as choir-in-residence at the Green Lake Festival of Music under Sir David Willcocks and toured nationally and internationally.

Rippl taught elementary vocal music in the Appleton Area School District for 33 years. Upon retirement from school teaching, he pursued additional organ study with Wolfgang Rübsam. In 1996 he founded the Lunchtime Organ Recital Series held each summer in the Appleton area, attracting organists from all over the country.

Rippl began playing the organ at St. Mary Catholic Church, Menasha, later at Saint Bernard Catholic Church, also of Menasha. He was organist and choirmaster of All Saints Episcopal Church, Appleton, for over 46 years (1971–2018), retiring January 7. At his retirement, the parish established a choral scholarship for Lawrence University students to sing in the church’s choir. (For information on Frank Rippl’s retirement celebration, see the April 2018 issue, page 8.)

Rippl served as dean of the Northeastern Wisconsin Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, was active in the Organ Historical Society (OHS) and the Packerland Theatre Organ Society, and performed on Minnesota Public Radio’s Pipedreams. He penned numerous OHS convention reviews for The Diapason. He accompanied silent movies on the organ for over 20 years for the American Theatre Organ Society. He loved teaching and the pipe organ, and combined these two passions by giving organ lessons to many students.

In 2007, Rippl received the Rotary Club Paul Harris Service Award for service to the community; he played for the Appleton chapter’s weekly meetings for many years. While a student at Lawrence he was Vince Lombardi’s favorite pianist at Alex’s Crown Restaurant, as cited in David Moraniss’s When Pride Still Mattered. In 2014 he became director for the new Memory Project choir, “On a Positive Note,” for those suffering from memory loss and their families.

Frank Rippl is survived by his wife of 43 years, Carol Jegen, his brothers Bill Rippl, Rick (Marie) Rippl, and Dan (Becky) Rippl, as well as numerous extended family members. His funeral was held August 21 at All Saints Episcopal Church, Appleton. Memorial donations may be directed to All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Appleton, the Appleton Boychoir, or his family for an organ scholarship.

 

James Ralph Verdin, of Indian Hill, Ohio, died August 8. He was born July 30, 1936, in Cincinnati. He grew up in Mariemont and graduated from Mariemont High School in 1955. After graduation, Verdin served in the United States Army.

Verdin was president and chief executive officer of the Verdin Company of Cincinnati, a family-owned business since 1842 that installs bells, tower and street clocks, electronic carillons, and organs across the United States and abroad. Notable installations include the World Peace Bell, the Ohio Bicentennial Bell Project, and the Verdin Mobile Bell Foundry.

Verdin’s vision to redevelop and transform the Pendleton Neighborhood in Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, led to the founding of the Pendleton Art Center, Pendleton Square Complex, the old Car Barn (Nicola’s Restorante), and the restoration of St. Paul’s Church. The church became the corporate offices of the Verdin Company and is now the Bell Event Centre.

A funeral Mass was celebrated August 16 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Cincinnati. James Ralph Verdin is survived by his wife Carole (nee Conners), daughter Jill (Sam) Crew, and grandchildren Caroline Verdin Crew and Samantha Verdin Crew. Memorials may be made to Summit Country Day School, 2161 Grandin Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208.

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

A French-American organist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster was organist at the American Cathedral in Paris. In 1989, she was appointed titular of the Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at the Trinité Church and founded their weekly concert series. She has performed over 500 concerts in Europe and in the United States. She has also contributed articles to Revue de musicologie, La Flûte Harmonique, L’Orgue, Orgues Nouvelles, The American Organist, and The Diapason. Her recordings have been published by EMA, Ligia Digital, Schott, and Fugue State Films. In 2007, the French Cultural Minister awarded her the distinction of Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters.

On November 12, 2017, the liturgical and international concert organist Michel Chapuis died. Also an eminent professor, historian, and organ reformer impassioned by architecture, acoustics, and organbuilding, he immensely contributed to the renaissance, conservation, and restoration of early French organs. He delighted in supporting artistic beauty: his noble, graceful, and poetic interpretations vibrated with rhythmic pulsation, a natural flowing expression, and a spiritual elevation that was filled with mystery and joy.

 

His inspiration to become an
organist and initial training

Michel Chapuis was born January 15, 1930, in Dole, situated in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region in eastern France. His father was a primary school teacher, and his mother worked as a telephone operator at the post office. In 1938, when his grandmother brought him to a Mass celebrating First Communion in Notre-Dame Collegiate Church,¹ he was overwhelmed by its historic organ by Karl Joseph Riepp (1754)/François Callinet (1788)/Joseph Stiehr (1830, 1855, 1858).² Its grandiose sonorities, which resonate beautifully in such marvelous acoustics, inspired him to become an organist. The organ possesses one of the finest examples of the French Grand Plein-Jeu. This characteristic combination of the Fourniture and Cymbale mixtures with the foundation stops is a full, brilliant, and noble sound that contains all its various inherent harmonics—with up to fifteen pipes that sound on a single note. For Michel Chapuis, this sonority symbolized God, eternity, and the entire color spectrum.

Noting their son was extremely talented, his parents purchased a piano for him at the music shop of Jacques Gardien, an ardent defender of the Dole organ.³ Michel Chapuis acquired a firm and supple piano technique with Miss Palluy, a disciple of Alfred Cortot. For six months, he took lessons with Father Barreau on the harmonium in the Collegiate Church and helped him accompany Masses there. He then began to study organ with Odette Vinard,⁴ who played at the Protestant Church in Dole, and continued with her professor, Émile Poillot,⁵ organist at the Dijon Cathedral.

In 1940, his family left Dole during the German occupation and went to Brive-Charensac, a village in the Haute-Loire, where he accompanied church services on the harmonium.⁶ When he returned to Dole in 1943, he accompanied vespers in the Dole Collegiate Church, even improvising verses between psalms. Delighted to discover a collection of Alexandre Guilmant’s Archives of Organ Masters in the personal library of the Marquis Bernard de Froissard⁷ in Azans, near Dole, he began to play the early French organ repertory, using registrations mentioned in these scores. His grandfather and the church janitor pumped the organ bellows for him! In 1945, he began to study organ with Jeanne Marguillard, organist at Saint-Louis Church in Monrapont, Besançon, where he accompanied two church services each Sunday for two years on a Jacquot-Lavergne organ.⁸

 

Musical training in Paris

After the Second World War, in 1946, Jeanne Marguillard came to Paris with Michel Chapuis, to introduce him to Édouard Souberbielle.⁹ At the age of sixteen, Chapuis began to study organ and improvisation with him at the César Franck School. This “true aristocrat of the organ” possessed a vast culture and an eminent spirituality that deeply influenced all his students. He encouraged them to expand their musical knowledge by listening to great classical works, and Chapuis appreciated his methodical spirit. This master enabled him to maintain a solid yet supple hand position and taught how to “touch” the organ by varying articulations, how to improvise fugues and trio sonatas, and used Marcel Dupré’s improvisation method books to prepare him to study at the Paris Conservatory. Michel Chapuis completed his solid musical formation there by taking piano lessons with Paule Piédelièvre,¹⁰ courses in harmony and counterpoint with Yves Margat,¹¹ and fugue with René Malherbe.¹² His fellow students there included Simone Michaud¹³ and her future husband, Jean-Albert Villard,¹⁴ Father Joseph Gelineau,¹⁵ and Denise Rouquette, who married Michel Chapuis in 1951.¹⁶ They lived on Clotaire Street, near the Panthéon.

To launch a career as an organist in France, it was indispensable to obtain a first prize organ in Marcel Dupré’s class at the Paris Conservatory. After auditioning with Dupré in 1950, playing J. S. Bach’s Sixth Trio Sonata and Louis Vierne’s Impromptu, thanks to his solid technique, Michel Chapuis enrolled in the Paris Conservatory the next October. Nine months later, in June 1951, he obtained his first prizes in organ and improvisation, as well as the Albert
Périlhou and Alexandre Guilmant prizes, awarded to the best student in the class.¹⁷ Gifted with mechanical ingenuity, he followed Gaston Litaize’s advice and apprenticed with the organbuilder Erwin Muller from 1952 to 1953, in Croisy, just west of Paris.¹⁸

 

First three church positions in Paris

From his youth, Michel Chapuis loved the ritual aspects of liturgical music. During his studies in Paris, he substituted for many organists. Highly respected for his fine accompaniments of congregational singing, his vast liturgical knowledge, and his repertory, he was appointed titular organist in several Parisian churches. From 1951 to 1953, he accompanied the liturgy on the Gutschenritter choir organ at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. From 1953 to 1954, he played the 1771 Clicquot/1864 Merklin organ at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois Church, following in the footsteps of Alexandre Boëly.

In 1954, he succeeded Line Zilgien¹⁹  as titular of the 1777 Clicquot/1839 Daublaine & Callinet/1842 Ducroquet/1927 Gonzalez organ at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs and kept his title there until 1970. Nicolas Gigault played there from 1652 to 1707 and Louis Braille, the inventor of the language for the blind, served at the church from 1834 to 1839. This church, located near Arts and Métiers, was reconstructed in a flamboyant Gothic style in the twelfth century and attained its present form in the seventeenth century. Its historic Clicquot organ was the key that opened the doors to Michel Chapuis’ comprehension of the early French organ. He also learned a great deal there from two organbuilders, Claude Hermelin²⁰ and Gabriel d’Alençon.²¹

In 1954, Michel Chapuis succeeded Jean Dattas as titular of the two-manual, seventeen-stop Merklin choir organ in Notre-Dame Cathedral, in the heart of Paris. There, he accompanied the
Maîtrise choir, directed by the quick-tempered Canon Louis Merret until 1959; then by a marvelous musician, Abbot Jean Revert, who allowed the congregation to sing during alternated verses at vespers. Michel Chapuis accompanied all the daily Masses and nearly all the canonical offices in Gregorian chant: prime (on feast days), tierce, the grand Mass, sext, none, vespers, and compline. One day, a priest sang too high and reproached Michel Chapuis for playing a pitch that was too high, when, in fact, he had mistaken a tourist boat whistle on the Seine for an organ note! In spite of the hordes of tourists that invaded this church, this position brought great joy to Chapuis for nine years: it enabled him to unite his capacities to resonate universal beauty in such a breath-taking setting, with its traditional liturgy and its fantastic acoustics that enhance any musical note. Michel Chapuis strongly believed that music ought to pacify, console, and comfort humanity. Above all, he hoped that his musical offerings would illuminate other people’s lives.²²

Michel Chapuis collaborated closely with the two titulars of the grand organ: Pierre Cochereau²³ and Pierre Moreau.²⁴ Each Sunday the two organs dialogued, continuing a tradition established in 1402, when Frédéric Schaubantz installed the grand organ in its present location. This dialogue, issued from the Gallican ritual, had remained intact, except during the Revolution, from 1790 to 1798. A 1963 Philips record documented Pierre Cochereau playing his own Paraphrase de la Dédicace and Louis Vierne’s Triumphant March, with Michel Chapuis accompanying Jean Revert’s choir singing works by André Campra and Pierre Desvignes. In September 1984, when Pierre Cochereau decorated Michel Chapuis with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, he recalled his improvisations at Notre-Dame and had wondered if J. S. Bach had composed a seventh trio sonata!

 

A pioneer in early French music
interpretation

Impassioned by early French Classical music, Michel Chapuis realized that most of the Parisian organs by such builders as Cavaillé-Coll, Merklin, and Gutschenritter were symphonic or neo-Classical in style, thus unsuitable for the early French repertory. While organists did regularly play the repertoire, however, they did not use notes inégales in their playing. For example, in 1956, when Michel Chapuis went to Marmoutier to meet the American Melville Smith, during his rehearsals for the first complete recording of Nicolas de Grigny’s Livre d’Orgue by Valois, he was surprised that he did not dare to use notes inégales there, even though he had been playing them for over thirty years, simply because he did not want to appear to be original (“Je ne veux pas paraître original”).²⁵ Chapuis concluded that he was a bit timid, probably since the great master organists in Paris at that time had not used them. Nonetheless, Melville Smith’s landmark recording highlighted Muhleisen and Alfred Kern’s 1955 restoration of this historic 1710 Silbermann and received the Grand Prix du Disque.

Curious by nature, Michel Chapuis carried out extensive research to understand the performance practice of notes inégales. His departure point was Eugène Borrel’s book on the interpretation of French music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [The Interpretation of French Music (from Lully to the Revolution)].²⁶ This book, well in advance of its time, remained the continual reference point that guided Chapuis’ interpretations. It emphasizes that to enchant auditors, one must play like a singer, with clear pronunciation, an appropriate emotion, expression, and character: serious, sad, happy, or
pleasant.

An organist in the seventeenth century knew how to bring out the main themes, such as plainchants, and could boldly improvise counterpoint on them. Like harpsichordists, they “touched” keyboards by holding their fingers as close to the keys as possible. They played vividly on the Positive Plein Jeu, interpreted Récits tenderly, and played Tierces en tailles with emotional melancholy. Their fingerings enabled them to play notes inégales naturally.

During his nine years at Notre-Dame, Michel Chapuis did not need much time to prepare his work there: this gave him lots of time to consult hundreds of early French organ and singing treatises and prefaces from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, beginning with Loys Bourgeois (1530), who had indicated that eighth notes should be sung in groups of two to render them more graceful. Thanks to his musical intuition, his solid supple technique, and his courageous spirit, he then incorporated notes inégales, appropriate ornaments, and registrations into his interpretations of early French music. Michel Chapuis acknowledged Jules Écorcheville’s research.²⁷ In 1958, Chapuis gave a conference with Antoine Geoffroy-Dechaume²⁸ at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs Church, presenting musical illustrations of the application of notes inégales and dotted rhythms. The interpretation of the French national hymn, La Marseillaise, is an excellent example of the natural application of notes inégales: although notated with eighth notes, it is sung with dotted notes. Of course, when one uses early fingerings, one plays naturally with notes inégales. This landmark conference inspired organists such as Marie-Claire Alain²⁹ and marked the beginning of a new era in early French music interpretation.

Michel Chapuis brought early French repertory to life, expressing past rhetoric naturally, with nobleness, simplicity, and good taste. Guided continually by Eugène Borrel, his playing was “elegant, distinguished, and animated without excessiveness” [“élégant, distingué, chaleureux sans outrances”].³⁰ In fact, when he gave a concert on the Gonzalez organ at Saint-Merry Church in May 1963, interpreting works by Titelouze, D’Aquin, and Dandrieu Noëls, no one even noticed that he had played with notes inégales.³¹ Nicole Gravet’s book on registrations in French music from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries was a guide to him.³² His numerous recordings of early French music in the 1960s testify to his natural assimilation of notes inégales: Dandrieu, Guilain, and Raison on the Clicquot in Poitiers (by Lumen) and others by Harmonia Mundi: François Roberday at Manosque and Isle-sur-Sorgue, François Couperin’s two organ Masses on the Isnard at Saint-Maximin, François Couperin at Le Petit-Andely, Louis Marchand and Gaspard Corette on the Clicquot in Souvigny (Grand Prix), Nicolas Clérambault on the 1765 Bénigne Boillot at Saint-Jean de Losne, Gaspard Corette and D’Aquin in Marmoutier (the only restored organ),³³ and his improvisations on the 1746 J. A. Silbermann at Saint-Quirin Lettenbach.

 

Installation near Dole

During his military service at Mont-Valérien (near Paris) from 1954 to 1955, Michel Chapuis met many of his lifelong acquaintances, notably Jacques Béraza (the future organist at Dole, 1955–1998), Jean Saint-Arroman³⁴ (with whom he collaborated in future organ academies and publications of early French music), and the orchestra conductor Jean-Claude Malgloire. Shortly thereafter, he also met the ingenious organ visionary and voicer, Philippe Hartmann.³⁵ From 1955 to 1958, Hartmann lived with Pierre Cochereau’s family, on Boulevard Berthier in Paris. He babysat for his children, Jean-Marc and Marie-Pierre, and enlarged his house organ to seventy stops.³⁶ A few years later, when Michel Chapuis and Francis Chapelet came to visit Pierre Cochereau, they joyfully improvised a trio sonata on his organ, his Steinway piano, and his harpsichord, before savoring some champagne!³⁷

During this period, Chapuis visited Dole regularly. His appointment as organ professor at the Strasburg Conservatory in 1956 assured him a solid income. At Jacques Béraza’s advice, in 1958, he purchased a historic seventeenth-century home in Jouhe, a village near Dole, where he installed his pianos, harmoniums, and his personal library. During this same period, Philippe Hartmann moved to Rainans, a nearby village. Together, their overflowing energy, encyclopedic knowledge, and extraordinary imagination influenced an entire generation of organbuilders who apprenticed there from 1958 to 1969, notably Alain Anselm, Bernard Aubertin, Louis Benoist, Jean Bougarel, Didier Chanon, Jean Deloye, Barthélémy Formentelli, Gérald Guillemin, Claude Jaccard, Dominique Lalmand, Denis Londe, Marie Londe-Réveillac, Jean-François Muno, Pascal Quoirin, Alain Sals, and Pierre Sarelot.³⁸

 

From Saint-SОverin to the Royal Chapel in Versailles

In 1963, at the suggestion of Father Lucien Aumont,³⁹ Michel Chapuis crossed the Seine River to the Latin Quarter to succeed Michel Lambert-Mouchague as titular of the grand organ at Saint-Séverin Church.⁴⁰ Among some of the past organists who maintained a great classical tradition there were: Michel Forqueray (1681–1757), Nicolas Séjan (1783–1791), Albert Périlhou, composer and director of the Niedermeyer School (1889–1914), Camille Saint-Saëns, honorary organist (1897–1921), and Marcel-Samuel Rousseau (1919–1921).⁴¹ After his arrival, Michel Chapuis reinstated the classical system of rotating organists that existed before the Revolution in Parisian churches. Over the years, he shared this post with Jacques Marichal (1963–c. 1972)⁴² and Francis Chapelet (1964–1984),⁴³ then with André Isoir (1967–1973), Jean Boyer (1975–1988), Michel Bouvard (1984–1994), François Espinasse (1988), Michel Alabau (1986–2016), Christophe Mantoux (1994); and two substitute organists: Jean-Louis Vieille-Girardet (1973–1994), and François-Henri Houbart (1974–1979). In 2002, Chapuis was named honorary organist and Nicolas Bucher succeeded him as titular until 2013, when he in turn was succeded by Véronique Le Guen.⁴⁴

In 1963, the 1748 Claude Ferrard/1825 Pierre-François Dallery/1889 John Abbey⁴⁵ organ was in poor shape. In 1963 and 1964, the Alsatian builder Alfred Kern reconstructed the organ according to the plans of Michel Chapuis and Philippe Hartmann,⁴⁶ who decided upon the use of mechanical action. This exemplary reconstruction as a four-manual neo-Classical German-French organ with fifty-nine stops marked a turning point in French organ construction. It used all of the Abbey windchests and existing pipes, including Claude Ferrard’s Positif Cromorne, the Récit Hautbois, and several mutation stops, along with twenty-two new stops. The disposition of its newly constructed Plein-Jeu stops, with its Cymbale-Tierce stop, allowed the interpretation of both early French and German literature for the first time in Paris and enabled Michel Chapuis to accompany the congregational singing with vitality and variety. The third keyboard, Récit-Resonance, enabled him to couple the other two keyboards to it. The natural keys were made of ebony, and the sharps of white cow bone. The Positif de dos was placed mid-height in the church, enabling the organ to resonate fully. Chapuis inaugurated the instrument on March 8, 1964, with two different programs: the first consisting of works by Couperin, Buxtehude, and Bach; and the second, works by de Grigny, Marchand, Sweelinck, Böhm, and Bach.⁴⁷ After initial work by Daniel Kern in 1982 and Dominique Lalmand in 1988, the organ was restored again in 2011 by Dominique Thomas, Quentin Blumenroeder, and Jean-Michel Tricoteaux, respecting Alfred Kern’s work.

Michel Chapuis had arrived at Saint-Séverin during the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). This parish’s ecumenical approach mirrored that of the Community in Taizé. With that in mind, Michel Chapuis adapted Bach chorales to the Catholic liturgy with French texts. The organists collaborated with priests to prepare the liturgy in accordance with the texts and the different colors of the liturgical year. Instead of beginning the Mass with Asperges me and an appropriate Gregorian Introit, the chorale “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland” served as the opening hymn during the four Sundays in Advent. Before each Mass, Michel Chapuis softly accompanied a rehearsal of the liturgy. After improvising a prelude to the opening hymn on the Positif Plein-Jeu, he accompanied the congregation on the Grand Orgue Plein-Jeu. Father Alain Ponsard requested Michel Chapuis to compose a Sanctus, known as the Saint-Séverin Sanctus, sung throughout France. Later, his former student and substitute organist, François-Henri Houbart, composed a partita based on this Sanctus.⁴⁸

Two recordings by Cantoral⁴⁹ attest to Michel Chapuis’ fine accompaniments. Harmonia Mundi recorded his interpretations of Jehan Titelouze’s hymns and Magnificat at Saint-Séverin. His other recordings in the 1960s and 1970s echoed the repertory he played there: works by Louis Couperin (Deutsche Grammophon), Nicolas de Grigny (Astrée), French Noëls by Balbastre, Dandrieu, and D’Aquin, and the complete works of Nicolas Bruhns, Vincent Lübeck, J. S. Bach, and Dieterich Buxtehude (Valois).⁵⁰ Recording the complete organ works of Bach was extremely difficult: after learning all the scores, he recorded alone at night, set up the magnetic tapes, pushed the “record” button, and went up to the organ loft to play; if there was a noise or the slightest error, he started all over, until it was perfect.

In 1966, Édouard Souberbielle gave a concert at Saint-Séverin. In 1968 and 1969, Chapuis organized a concert series entitled “Renaissance of the Organ,” for the Association for the Protection of Early Organs, on the first Wednesday of each month at 9:00 p.m.: on October 9, Michel Chapuis opened this series with a Bach concert; on November 6, Marie-Claire Alain played Bach and early German masters; on December 4, Pierre Cochereau performed Bach, Mozart, Liszt, and improvised; on January 8, 1969, André Isoir gave an eclectic concert for the Christmas season; on February 5, Francis Chapelet played selections of Art of the Fugue and the Toccata in C Major by Bach; on March 5, Helmuth Walcha was scheduled to play Bach’s Clavierübung III, but, unable to perform, was replaced by Marie-Claire Alain; on May 7, Xavier Darasse performed Messiaen, Bach, and Ligeti; and on June 6, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini performed Frescobaldi, Muffat, and Bach. In the fall of 1969, concerts were given by Michel Chapuis, Heinz Wunderlich, Anton Heiller, and Helmut Walcha. From October 1970 to June 1971, Michel Chapuis performed the complete works of J. S. Bach there.

In 1995, Michel Chapuis was appointed titular of the prestigious historic Robert Clicquot organ,⁵¹ rebuilt by Jean-Loup Boisseau and Bertrand Cattiaux, at the Royal Chapel in Versailles. On November 18 and 19, 1995, he inaugurated this organ and was named honorary organist there in 2010. This position was the crowning summit of his concert career.⁵² At this exquisite historic royal palace, he was truly an ambassador for French culture, receiving artists from the entire world.

 

A. F. S. O. A.: The Association for the Protection of Early Organs

On December 21, 1967, a group of organists, organ historians, and builders, as well as amateur organ admirers, joined forces to protest against abusive transformations of historic French organs and founded the Association for the Protection of Early Organs
[A. F. S. O. A., Association pour la sauvegarde de l’orgue ancien]. Their first general meeting took place on March 1, 1968. Jean Fonteneau, a substitute organist at Saint-Séverin, was president for the first year; the organ historian Pierre Hardouin, its primary editor; Michel Bernstein, editorial secretary; and Michel Chapuis, artistic advisor. Among its honorary members were Jean-Albert Villard and Helmut Winter. Other members included Father Lucien Aumont, Michel Bernstein, Bernard Baërd, Dominique Chailley, Jacques Chailley, Francis Chapelet, Pierre Chéron, Pierre Cochereau, René Delosme, Christian Dutheuil, Robert Gronier (a future president), André Isoir, Henri Legros, Émile Leipp, the architect Alain Lequeux, the astronomer James Lequeux, Charles-Walter Lindow, Pierre-Paul Lacas, Dominique Proust, Jean Saint-Arroman, Gino Sandri, Marc Schaefer, Jean-Christophe Tosi (a future president), and Jean Ver Hasselt. They struggled to renew interest in the unforgotten historic early French organ and its music. In 1969,
A. F. S. O. A. organized an international François Couperin competition for organ and harpsichord at Saint-Séverin and on the François-Henri Clicquot organ (1772), restored by Alfred Kern, at the Royal Chapel in Fontainebleau. It also organized visits to organs, such as the Clicquot at the Poitiers Cathedral, and organs in Alsace.

A. F. S. O. A. ardently defended a respectable restoration of the 1748 Dom Bédos organ in Bordeaux and protested against Gonzalez’s restoration of the historic Couperin organ at Saint-Gervais Church in Paris.⁵⁴ In 1954, this firm, under Norbert Dufourcq’s direction, had already considerably transformed Jean de Joyeuse’s 1694 Baroque 16′ organ in Auch Cathedral: out of the 3,060 pipes there, 620 were considerably altered and 2,240 had disappeared, notably the Grand Plein-Jeu.⁵⁵ Michel Chapuis felt that Victor Gonzalez’s neo-classical Plein-Jeu, although pitched too high, was remarkably well-voiced and suitable for a small instrument installed in a studio or a home, but not for a large organ in a church. When Norbert Dufourcq went to visit the historic eighteenth century Jean-Baptiste Micot organ in Saint-Pons-des-Thomières (in the Hérault), the organist, Jean Ribot, hid the keys so that he could not enter the organ loft to look at the organ.⁵⁶

Michel Chapuis strongly supported research on the French Classical organ Plein-Jeu, notably by his friends Jean Fellot⁵⁷ and Léon Souberbielle.⁵⁸ Thankfully, in 1954, Pierre Chéron and Rochas saved the splendid Grand Plein-Jeu in the 1774 Isnard organ at Sainte Marie-Madeleine Basilica in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.⁵⁹ In 1957, Robert Boisseau voiced a Roethinger organ in the French Classic style that included a Plein-Jeu as described by Dom Bédos, in Saint Louis du Temple Benedictine Abbey in Limon-Vauhallan (in the Essonne south of Paris). It was designed by Édouard and Léon Souberbielle. On November 7, 1959, Claude Philbée made a private recording of Michel Chapuis improvising to demonstrate the organ’s stops.⁶⁰

In 1967, Michel Chapuis pleaded with André Malraux, the minister for cultural affairs since 1959, for new policies concerning the restoration of early organs. He explained that past massacres of historic organs had given a bad name to organbuilding in France. He estimated that around seventy historic organs remained intact in France: thirty large instruments and forty smaller instruments. He suggested that, as in Austria or the Netherlands, a group of experts be appointed to form a new national commission of historic organs in addition to regional commissions. Before dismantling each organ for restoration, it should be completely evaluated and inventoried, with precise measurements, photos, and recordings. However, advocating for drastic changes in the French administration was not an easy task!

As A. F. S. O. A. encouraged, restorations were carried out that respected the past. As a member of the Commission for Historical Monuments, Michel Chapuis travelled in his Citroën van to visit organs and photographed them with his Rolleflex box camera. Here are some of the organs beautifully restored between 1968 and 1998: Perthuis, Malaucène, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Saint-Lizier, Forcalquier, and Sète by Alain Sals; Houdan by Robert and Jean-Loup Boisseau; three cuneiform bellows to activate the wind in the Clicquot in Souvigny by Philippe Hartmann;
Ebersmunster by Alfred Kern; Albi and Carcassonne by Barthélemy Formentelli;
Villiers-le-Bel, Juvigny, and the Dom Bédos in Bordeaux by Pascal Quoirin; Semur-en-Auxois by Jean Deloye with Philippe Hartmann; Seurre in Bourgogne, Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville in Normandy, and Saint-Antoine-L’Abbaye by Bernard Aubertin; the 1790
Clicquot in Poitiers by Boisseau-Cattiaux Society;⁶¹ Bolbec by Bertrand Cattiaux; and the reconstruction of the Jean de Joyeuse in Auch by Jean-François Muno. Between 1994 and 1997, the builders Claude Jaccard and Reinalt Klein built a replica of the Houdan organ (except the case) in the Kreuzekirche Church in Stapelmoor, Germany (in the North of Ostfriesland): Organeum Records recorded Michel Chapuis playing works by Böhm, Boyvin, Dandrieu, and Jullien on this organ on September 17, 1998.⁶²

In the 1980s, Michel Chapuis supported the Cavaillé-Coll Association, which advocated for quality restorations of Romantic organs. He kindly advised this author’s research on Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s secular organs. Among the Cavaillé-Coll organs restored between 1985 and 1997: the grand organs in Sacré-Coeur Basilica and in Saint-Sulpice in Paris, by Jean Renaud; Charles-Marie Widor’s 1893 house organ in Selongey, Côte d’Or (1986), and Édouard André’s 1874 house organ in Decize, by Claude Jaccard; the grand organ in Poligny, by Dominique Lalmand and Claude Jaccard, the grand organ in Saint-Sernin Basilica in Toulouse, by Boisseau-Cattiaux.

 

Organ professor

An eminent professor, Michel Chapuis acknowledged that the best way to learn music is to teach it. He loved to transmit his musical heritage and his practical knowledge. His intuition and his astute sense of observation and analysis enabled him to transmit elements of interpretation that cannot always be explained. He taught organ at the Strasburg Conservatory from 1956 to 1979, at the Schola Cantorum in Paris from 1977 to 1979, at the Besançon Conservatory from 1979 to 1986, and then succeeded Rolande Falcinelli at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Paris, from 1986 to 1995. He also gave masterclasses in numerous academies in France: early French music on the historic Isnard organ at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume Academy, founded in 1962; German and French early music on the 1752 Riepp/1833 Callinet organ in Semur-en-Auxois (in the Côte-d’Or) in the mid-1970s;⁶³ in the Pierrefonds Academy (in the Oise) with Jean Saint-Arroman in the 1980s; and in Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges⁶⁴ (in the Haute-Garonne) from 1976 to 2008, notably with André Stricker and Jean Saint-Arroman. He also gave masterclasses in Stapelmoor, Germany (with André Stricker and Pierre Vidal), as well as in the United States and Japan.

At the Strasbourg Conservatory, Michel Chapuis taught in the Catholic organ class, alongside André Stricker,⁶⁵ who was in charge of the Protestant organ class. As the organ department grew, two more professors were added to balance the department: in 1962, Marc Schaefer,⁶⁶ a Protestant, and, in 1963, Pierre Vidal,⁶⁷  a Catholic. In June 1964, Helmut Walcha inaugurated the Kurt Schwenkedel organ (III/64) in the conservatory concert hall. Michel Chapuis helped to determine its stoplist, which he described as being both “classical and personal.”⁶⁸ Of note, the organ case included horizontal Montre pipes.

In 1986, when Michel Chapuis began to teach at the Paris Conservatory, it was still located on Madrid Street, before its transfer to la Villette in 1991. Instead of giving lessons on the dusty 1951 Jacquot-Lavergne organ there, he preferred to teach on beautiful church organs: at Saint-Séverin, in Dole, and in Poligny. Open-minded, he never imposed any particular interpretation on his students⁶⁹ but used his immense knowledge, his fantastic imagination, his humanistic approach, and his witty humor to guide them from the visible text to the invisible spirit of the music. He emphasized the importance of a calm, supple body, notably in hands and wrists, to give great lightness and liberty to fingers, which remain in contact with the keys. With his soft, sweet voice, he calmly encouraged students to go beyond the notes, to recreate the composer’s musical conception in a harmonious and sober manner. He abhorred inadequate and superficial ornaments and inappropriate expression. He enabled his students to understand the inherent marvels in each score, its underlying harmonies, rhythmic structures, and melodic expression, and helped them to incorporate these elements into their interpretations with an appropriate style, with spontaneity, good taste, and excellent registrations.

How fortunate I was to study with Michel Chapuis and Jean Saint-Arroman at the Academy in Pierrefonds in 1983 and 1984. Eugène Borrel’s book on the interpretation of early French music was truly indispensable to interpreting early French music expression in a well-balanced harmonious manner, with natural fluidity and ease. We accompanied singers to understand the underlying nature of a musical text, its pronunciation, its appropriate expression and style, its inherent harmonies. We studied the early French organ and its music: figured basses, dance rhythms, registrations, tempi, temperaments, ornamentations, and learned how to appropriately express and embellish the musical line. Its sweet, gentle expression⁷⁰ finds its summit in the Tierce taille and numerous Récits.

We presented recitals at Saint-Séverin and Saint-Gervais churches. While studying on early historic instruments does not guarantee a beautiful performance, it enables an interpreter to play ornaments, registrations, phrasing, etc., with greater ease. As Jean Saint-Arroman pointed out, it is impossible for early music to be heard as in former centuries because “life and sensibility have changed too much, and, at least for the listeners, the music which was ‘modern’ has become ‘ancient’” [“la vie et la sensibilité ont trop chargé, et, au moins pour les auditeurs, la musique qui était ‘moderne’ est devenue ‘ancienne’”].⁷¹

Michel Chapuis inspired an entire generation of organists, among them: Scott Ross (at Saint-Maximin); Robert Pfrimmer, Étienne Baillot, Antoine Bender, Lucien Braun, Henri Delorme, Alain Langré, François-Henri Houbart, Jean-Louis Vieille-Girardet, Hélène Hébrard, Chieko Mayazaki and Henri Paget (at Strasbourg Conservatory); Régis Allard, Michel Bouvard,⁷² Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, Makiko Hayashima, Hisaé Hosokawa (at the Schola Cantorum); Marc Baumann, Sylvain Ciaravolo, Pierre Gerthoffer, Luc Bocquet, Éric Brottier, Bernard Coudurier, Roland Servais, Véronique Rougier, Vinciane Rouvroy, Marie-Christine Vermorel (at the Besançon Conservatory); Valéry Aubertin, Valérie Aujard-Catot, Franck Barbut, Philippe Brandeis, Yves
Castagnet, Slava Chevliakov, Denis Comtet, Françoise Dornier, Thierry Escaich, Pierre Farago, Jean-François Frémont, Mathieu Freyburger, Christophe Henry, Emmanuel Hocdé, Jean-Marc Leblanc, Marie-Ange Laurent-Lebrun, Éric Lebrun, Véronique Le Guen, Erwan Le Prado, Gabriel Marghieri, Pierre Mea, Nicolas Reboul-Salze, Marina Tchébourkina,⁷³ Vincent Warnier (at the National Superior Conservatory of Music), and Frédéric Munoz (in numerous academies).

 

International concert artist

Michel Chapuis was a great artist who consecrated his entire life to enriching other people’s lives with beautiful music. Although he often said that he never took vacations, in all truth, he worked too much, giving generously to others: as a teacher, as a member of the national organ commission for cultural affairs, as a church musician, and as a concert artist. He delighted in sharing his passions with others: photography, tramways, historic books, and architecture, among others. Fascinated with movement, he often invited visitors to his home to take a ride in his old train wagons, which he pushed on the train tracks he had installed in his yard: an unexpected experience! His listeners sensed such sparkling joy when listening to his captivating interpretations, from its kindling intense, fiery warmth to its gentle gracious sweetness. Conscious of the acoustical resonance of each room, he knew how to let silences speak fully, thus clarifying the musical narration and providing it with spiritual depth and elevation.

When I met Michel Chapuis in Saint-Séverin in 1984, I admired his noble yet gentle manner of playing. Although his hands were robust and gnarled, as if he had labored as an eighteenth-century tanner along the canals in Dole, once he began to play, they floated just above the keyboards, but his fingers were deeply enrooted in the keys,⁷⁴ like those of J. S. Bach! His vivid imagination and fantasy excelled in the interpretation of
Dieterich Buxtehude’s works. I remember the numerous interesting discussions in the church reception hall after Mass with artists from all over the world.

Michel Chapuis considered himself to be Catholic in the universal sense of the term.⁷⁵ On May 7–8, 1979, during the inauguration of Alfred Kern’s restoration of the 1741 Jean-André Silbermann organ at Saint-Thomas Lutheran Church in Strasburg, he illustrated the mission of the organ in the church by improvising in the French Classical style on themes from the old Parisian Ritual. Like the great humanist Albert Schweitzer, who had preached in this church, he believed that when music is felt deeply, either sacred or secular, it resonates in spiritual spheres where art and religion may meet.

Michel Chapuis played concerts in Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan. He came to the United States at least on three occasions. On November 26 and 27, 1968, he gave a recital and masterclass at Northwestern University School of Music, Evanston, Illinois, and returned to play at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, University of Chicago, in 1978. During this same year, he inaugurated the Yves Koenig organ at Saint-Sulpice Church in Pierrefonds, performing Nicolas de Grigny’s entire Organ Mass. In Japan, he gave his first organ recital in the NKH Hall in Tokyo in 1976. He inaugurated three Aubertin organs there: his opus 48 (III/48), in the French Classical style at Shirane-Cho/Minami-Alps in 1993, where he returned at least ten times to give academies, concerts, and masterclasses, recorded by Plenum Vox in 1999; opus 13 (II/13) in the Lutheran Church in Tokyo in 1999; and opus 22 (II/22) in a home in Karuizawa in 2003. He gave concerts and masterclasses many times in Russia, notably on the Charles Mutin organ at the Tchaikovky Conservatory in Moscow beginning in 1993.

Throughout his entire career, Michel Chapuis collaborated with singers, choirs, and orchestras, as illustrated in several recordings: the 1967 Harmonia Mundi record of François Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres with Alfred
Deller, countertenor; Philip Todd, tenor; and Raphael Perulli, viola da gamba, at Augustins Chapel in Brignolles
(Var); in 1997: Quantin CD of four Handel concertos, opus 4, with the Marais Chamber Orchestra directed by Pascal Vigneron; and an Astrée CD of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Port Royal Mass in Houdan, directed by Emmanuel Mandrin; a 1998 CD of his inauguration of Laurent Plet’s restoration of the 1847 Callinet organ at Saint-Pierre Church in Liverdun captured his accompaniments of three local choirs, with works by Scheidt, Rinck, Boëly, Mendelssohn, Ritter, Herbeck, and Berthier.⁷⁶ In 1999, Glossa Records recorded his improvised verses in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Monsieur de Mauroy at Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache with Hervé Niquet’s Le Concert spirituel. In 2000, Plenum Vox recorded his inauguration of Bernard Hurvy’s twenty-six-stop early nineteenth century transitional-style organ in Charbonnières-les-Bains (near Lyon), with the Saint-Roch Choir directed by J. M. Blanchon, with works by Bach, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Guilmant, Bruckner, and improvisations on Salve Regina. Ekaterina Fedorova, soprano, the founder of Plenum Vox Records, gave many concerts and recorded with him: Magnificats by Guilain, Dandrieu, Beauvarlet-Charpentier, and improvisations on the Dom Bédos organ at Saint-Croix Abbey Church in Bordeaux in 2002, and Burgundian Christmas carols, vocal works by Clérambault, and improvisations on the 1768 Bénigne Boillot organ in Saint-Jean-de-Losne in 2003.

At the end of each concert, Michel Chapuis improvised in a style that valorized the organ with a wide variety of registrations. In 2004, when he improvised at the end of his concert on Jean-François Muno’s exemplary reconstruction (1992–1998) of the 1694 Jean de Joyeuse organ at Auch Cathedral, he received a standing ovation that lasted for over ten minutes! During the last ten years of his life, even as his vision deteriorated, his luminous and graceful improvisations continued to enlighten his audiences. Many of them were recorded live by Plenum Vox: a 2003 DVD in the Royal Chapel in Versailles and in Souvigny, a 2004 CD in the Romantic style on the Cavaillé-Coll organs at Saint-Ouen and Poligny, and a 2005 DVD in the German Baroque style on Bernard Aubertin’s organ at Saint-Louis-en-l’Île Church in Paris. He had assimilated the early French repertory so well that he was capable of improvising in the style of each composer and each period. He knew how to discern the tonalities that resonated well on each organ: for example, C Major and D Major in Dole, and G Major at Saint-Séverin.

Michel Chapuis’ 2001 Plenum Vox recordings in Dole remind us that this organ remained the star that inspired him throughout his entire career. These three CDs illustrate his eclectic repertory on this versatile instrument with three faces: the German face (Buxtehude, Kellner, Rinck, with improvisations), the French face (Boyvin, Tapray, d’Aquin, Balbastre and improvisations on Ave Maris Stella), and the Romantic face (Mendelssohn, Czerny, Guilmant, Brosig, Boëllmann, and Franck).

In addition to being a pioneer who revolutionized the French organ world in the second half of the twentieth century, this great concert and liturgical organist and professor generously shared his time, knowledge, and documents with his colleagues, students, and friends. His conception of French good taste goes beyond time and space: it encourages us to memorialize the past, far beyond an idea of comfort and superficial rapidity, by embracing beauty with simplicity, constant research, meditation, and spiritual depth. In addition to his beautiful music, his humanistic and fraternal approach to life, his conviviality, his humble simplicity, as well as his liberty of spirit, will continue to inspire us.

 

A French-American organist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster was organist at the American Cathedral in Paris. In 1989, she was appointed titular of the Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at the Trinité Church and founded their weekly concert series. She has performed over 500 concerts in Europe and in the United States. She has also contributed articles to Revue de musicologie, La Flûte Harmonique, L’Orgue, Orgues Nouvelles, The American Organist, and The Diapason. Her recordings have been published by EMA, Ligia Digital, Schott, and Fugue State Films. In 2007, the French Cultural Minister awarded her the distinction of Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters. 

 

Notes

1. Cf. Marc Baumann, “Interview with Michel Chapuis in Marienthal,” transcribed by Hubert Heller, February, 2003, and in www.union-sainte-cecile.org.

2. Cf. Pierre M. Guéritey, Karl Joseph
Riepp et l’Orgue de Dole, 2 vol. (Lyon, FERREOL, 1985).

3. Cf. Jacques Gardien, “Les Grandes Orgues de la Collégiale de Dole,” L’Orgue, no. 25, March 1936, pp. 6–14.

4. Odette Goulon, her married name, was appointed organist at Temple du Luxembourg in Paris in 1991. The dates of organists in this article are mostly those found in Pierre Guillot, Dictionnaire des organistes français des XIX^e et XX^e siècles, Sprimont, Belgium, 2003.

5. Émile Poillot (1886–1948) was organist of Saint-Bénigne Cathedral, Dijon, 1912–1948.

6. Cf. Claude Duchesneau, Plein Jeu, Interviews with Michel Chapuis (Vendôme: Le Centurion, 1979), p. 34. The Germans occupied Dole from June 17, 1940, to September 9, 1944.

7. Marquis Bernard de Froissard (1884–1962) was an administrator of Société Cavaillé-Coll, Mutin, Convers, & Cie. 

8. Jeanne Marguillard was organist at Sainte-Madeleine Church, Besançon, 1947–1993.

9. Édouard Souberbielle (1899–1989) also taught at Schola Cantorum and at Institut Grégorien.

10. Paule Piédelièvre (1902–1964) studied piano with Blanche Selva and was organist at Étrangers Church.

11. Yves Margat contributed articles to Guide du Concert. 

12. René Malherbe (1898–1969) was organist and choir director at Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou Church.

13. Simone Villard (b. 1927) was appointed organist at Sainte-Radegonde Church in Poitiers in 1952.

14. Jean-Albert Villard (1920–2000) was organist at Poitiers Cathedral, 1949–2000.

15. Joseph Gélineau, SJ (1920–2000), was a Jesuit priest, composer, and French liturgist. 

16. Denise Chapuis (b. 1928). They had seven children: Jean-Marie (†), Claude (†), Bruno, Laurent (who worked with the harpsichord builder Anselm and the organbuilder Alain Sals), François, Claire (†) Christophe, ten grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

17. Cf. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., p. 58.

18. Jean-Marc Cicchero, Hommage à une Passion, Éd. O. V., 2018, p. 126. Erwin Muller had apprenticed with Schwenkedel, then as a voicer with Gonzalez. His shop was active in Croissy from 1950–1986.

19. Line Zilgien (1906–1954), organist there from 1940–1954, was close to Claire Delbos, Olivier Messiaen’s wife.

20. Claude Hermelin (1901–1986), began to study voicing in 1923 with Charles Mutin (cf. J.-M. Cicchero, op. cit., p. 64) and wrote articles under the alias Jean Mas.

21. Gabriel d’Alençon (1881–1956) restored the 17th-century organ in Rozay-en-Brie and was interested in temperaments. From 1936 to 1939, Claude Hermelin collaborated with him in Sotteville-lès-Rouen, and they gave courses in organbuilding at Schola Cantorum, Paris.

22. Cf. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., pp. 212–213.

23. Pierre Cochereau (1924–1984) was titular of the grand organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral, 1955–1984.

24. Pierre Moreau (1907–1991) played there, 1946–1986. Michel Chapuis wrote the preface to his Livre d’Orgue (Europart Music, 1990).

25. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., p. 96.

26. Eugène Borrel (1876–1962), violinist and musicologist, L’Interprétation de la musique française (de Lully à la Révolution), Paris, Librairie Félix Alcan, 1934, p. 150.

27. Jules Écorcheville (1872–1915), musicologist, wrote De Lulli à Rameau—L’esthétique musicale (Paris, 1906). 

28. Antoine Geoffroy-Dechaume (1905–2000), Les secrets de la musique ancienne, recherches sur l’interprétation (Fasquelle, 1964).

29. Cf. Jesse Eschbach, “Marie-Claire Alain, pédagogue internationale,” Marie-Claire Alain, L’Orgue, Cahiers et Mémoires, no. 56, 1996—II, p. 59. She mentions that this concert took place in 1958, but this date needs to be verified.

30. Eugène Borrel, op cit., p. 150. 

31. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., p. 98.

32. Nicole Gravet, L’orgue et l’art de la registration en France du XVI^e siècle au début du XIX^e siècle, originally published in 1960, it was reedited with a preface by Michel Chapuis, Chatenay Malabry, Ars Musicae, 1996.

33. In 1996, the European Organ Center in Marmoutier reedited Michel Chapuis’ interpretations of Böhm, Buxtehude, J. S. Bach, de Grigny, and Dandrieu on this organ.

34. Cf. his publications on French Classical music, 1661–1789: Dictionnaire d’interprétation (Initiation), (Honoré Champion, 1983) and L’Interprétation de la musique pour orgue (Honoré Champion, 1988); his early music facsimiles are edited by Anne Fuzeau. He teaches in the early music department at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Paris.

35. Philippe Hartmann (1928–2014) had apprenticed with Gutschenritter, worked three months for Gonzalez, for Émile Bourdon in Dijon, eight years for Pierre Chéron, collaborated with Georges Lhôte, with Jean Deloye from 1969–1975, worked independently at Le Havre in 1982, and as a voicer for Haerpfer.

36. In 1993, Daniel Birouste incorporated it into the organ at the Saint-Vincent Church in Roquevaire (Bouches-du-Rhône).

37. Cf. Yvette Carbou, Pierre Cochereau Témoignages (Zurfluh, 1999), p. 38.

38. Cf. Jean-Marc Cicchero, op. cit., pp. 104–105.

39. Father Lucien Aumont (1920–2014) lived in a tower of Saint-Séverin Church. From 1947 until 1987, he recorded concerts there and broadcast them in programs at Radio-France-INA.

40. He had been organist there from 1921 until 1960.

41. Cf. Félix Raugel, Les Grandes Orgues des Églises de Paris et du Département de la Seine, Paris, Fischbacher, pp. 100–102.

42. Jacques Marichal (1934–1987) was also choir organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral from 1964 to 1987.

43. Francis Chapelet (1934), a well-known specialist in Spanish organ music, is honorary organist at Saint-Séverin. 

44. The three actual titulars at Saint-Séverin are François Espinasse, Christophe Mantoux, and Véronique Le Guen.

45. John Abbey II (1843–1930).

46. In 1966, Philippe Hartmann built a choir organ (I/7) for Saint-Séverin. Roger Chapelet, Francis Chapelet’s father, painted its organ case.

47. L’Orgue, no. 112, Oct.–Dec.1964, p. 110.

48. François-Henri Houbart, Partita sur un choral dit Sanctus de Saint-Séverin (Delatour France, 2010).

49. Cantoral: UD 30 1299 and 5, UD 30 1385.

50. For a complete list of Michel Chapuis’ recordings, cf. Alain Cartayrade, www.france-orgue.fr/disque.

51. Cf. M. Tchebourkina. L’orgue de la Chapelle royale de Versailles: À la recherche d’une composition perdue // L’Orgue. Lyon, 2007. 2007–IV no. 280. She was organist at the Royal Chapel in Versailles 1996–2010.

52. Plenum Vox (PV 004) recorded a CD of Nivers, Lebègue, Couperin, Dandrieu, Marchand, and Lully there in 1999 and a DVD in 2003.

53. Bärenreiter published the first eight issues of their periodical, Renaissance de L’Orgue, from 1968 to 1970, followed by Connoissance de l’orgue, until 2000. At the end of the 1960s, Jean Fonteneau taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in the Boston area, he promoted A. F. S. O. A. by organizing concerts and lectures at Saint Thomas in New York City and at Harvard University.

54. In May and June 1967, several articles appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde and L’Art Sacré. This restoration by Gonzalez was highly supervised by the A. F. S. O. A.
55. Cf. Michel Chapuis, notes in the Plenum Vox CD of the complete works of Jacques Boyvin in Auch, PV 011, 2004.

56. XCP Montpellier, recorded Michel Chapuis’ concert there on September 5, 1993: cf. www.france-orgue.fr/disque.

57. Jean Fellot (1905–1967) wrote À la recherche de l’orgue classique (reedited by Édisud in 1993).

58. This book was written by hand and printed by the author at Montoire-sur-le-Loir in 1977.

59. Cf. Pierre Chéron’s inventory in L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard à la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, 1774, prefaced by Michel Chapuis (Réalisation Art et Culture des Alpes-Maritimes, Nice, 1991).

60. According to Sister Marie-Emmanuelle, this organ had 31 manual stops and its pedal stops were borrowed. Curiously, its action was electro-pneumatic. One can hear Michel Chapuis’ improvisations on https://youtu.be/5u-0eR3BYko. This organ was integrated into a new 42-stop neo-classical organ by Olivier Chevron, inaugurated in the Abbey at Celles-sur-Belle (Charente-Maritime) on May 5, 2018.

61. Cf. Cathédral de Poitiers, 1787 à 1790, L’Orgue de François-Henri Clicquot (Direction of Cultural Affaires in Poitou-Charentes, 1994).

62. This CD also includes Harald Vogel in the Georgskirche.

63. He taught in Semur-en-Auxois with Odile Bayeux (organ), Blandine Verlet (harpsichord), Alain Anselm (harpsichord building), Philippe Hartmann (organbuilding) and Jean Saint-Arroman (French performance practice).

64. This festival was founded by Pierre Lacroix in 1974 under the musical direction of Jean-Patrice Brosse.

65. André Stricker (1931–2003) taught there, 1954–1996. He had studied with Helmut Walcha.

66. Marc Schaefer (b. 1934), a former André Stricker student, taught there until 2000.

67. Pierre Vidal (1927–2010), composer and musicographer, remained there until 1991.

68. Cf. Jean-Louis Coignet, “L’Orgue du Conservatoire de Strasbourg,” L’Orgue, no. 117, January–March 1966, p. 39.

69. Cf. Éric Lebrun article blog SNAPE: www.snape.fr/index.php/2017/11/13.

70. Cf. Eugène Borrel, op. cit., p. 148. 

71. Jean Saint-Arroman, “Authenticity,” in Dictionnaire d’interprétation (Initiation), Paris, Honoré Champion, 1983, p. 13.

72. Michel Bouvard was an auditor and studied with Chapuis at Saint-Séverin.

73. In 1999, Natives recorded the organ works of Claude Balbastre interpreted by Michel Chapuis and his student Marina Tchebourkina on the historic grand organ at Saint-Roch Church, Paris.

74. Cf. Roland Servais, “Ses mains étaient comme des racines,” Chronique des Moniales, Abbaye Notre-Dame du Pesquié, March 2018, pp. 25–27.

75. Cf. Pastor Claude Rémy Muess, “L’église luthérienne Saint-Thomas de Strasbourg retrouve son orgue Silbermann,” L’Orgue, no. 173, January–March 1980, pp. 5–11. 

76. Available at: Association Amis de l’orgue de Liverdun, 1, place des Armes, 54460 Liverdun, France.

John Bishop

The Kotzschmar Organ

At 2:23 a.m. on January 24, 1908, a fire started, ironically, in the wiring of a new-fangled fire alarm system that was housed in the office of the city electrician on the third floor of City Hall in Portland, Maine. Public alarm was quickly raised, but freezing temperatures hampered the operation of the primitive fire fighting equipment, and the building was completely destroyed.

City leaders lost no time recovering from the disaster. The New York architectural firm of Carrère & Hastings, newly famous for their design of the New York Public Library completed in 1908, was engaged to design the new building, which was built, decorated, and furnished in just a few years and was ready for dedication in the summer of 1912.

Less than four months after the City Hall fire, on April 15, 1908, Portland’s most highly revered musician, Hermann Kotzschmar, passed away. A German immigrant, he had been encouraged to move to Portland by Cyrus Curtis, an interior decorator, prominent citizen, and music lover, who had heard Kotzschmar perform in Boston. When Kotzschmar and his wife moved to Portland, they lived in the Curtis home until they were established and could find a home for themselves.

Hermann Kotzschmar became organist at First Parish Church in Portland, formed an orchestra and choral society, and was the beloved teacher of scores of young musicians. The friendship that developed between Curtis and Kotzschmar was so close that Cyrus Curtis named his son Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis (1850–1933). Cyrus H. K. Curtis made quite a success of himself, founding the wildly popular The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies’ Home Journal, and later acquiring The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Evening Post, and The New York Evening Post. He amassed a vast fortune and was a prolific philanthropist.

After learning of Hermann Kotzsch-mar’s death, Cyrus H. K. Curtis approached his lifelong friend, Adam Leighton, former mayor of Portland and chair of the City Hall building commission, offering to purchase a huge pipe organ to be installed in the auditorium of the new City Hall as a gift to the people of the city of Portland. He commissioned the Austin Organ Company of Hartford, Connecticut, to build the organ, and wrote to Mr. Leighton, 

 

I have given them carte blanche to build [the] organ, unhampered by any organist or music committee, and without any prejudice or pre-conceived notions of my own, knowing that they are better qualified to build the right kind of instruments than I could be or any committee whose member might differ in their views as to what was best.

 

He continued, 

 

As this organ is to be a memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, I have asked [Austin] to provide some sort of place in the organ front for a bust of Mr. Kotzschmar and I am writing Mrs. Kotzschmar for photographs of her late husband with the idea of putting them into the hands of the best sculptor I know.

 

The cost of the organ was not to exceed $30,000, and Curtis’s gift made necessary alterations in the plans for the building, at a cost totaling $23,244.75, which was quickly authorized by the City Council.

On July 1, 1912, Mayor Oakley Curtis and the Portland City Council approved the formation of a music commission of three persons who would serve three-year terms. The commission would be responsible for the maintenance of the organ and the selection and hiring of the municipal organist. The virtuoso Will C. MacFarlane was appointed the city’s first organist; he was on the bench on Thursday, August 22, 1912, for the dedication of City Hall and the Kotzschmar Organ. The program opened with Léon Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, followed by a prayer and Owen Brainard of Carrère & Hastings presenting the mayor with the keys to the building.

Chairman Leighton gave a report to the assembly that included the announcement that the cost of the building was $930,934.34. His report concluded, 

 

And now, Your Honor, Mayor Curtis, please accept from the fellow members of the building commission their hearty good-will, along with the formal relinquishment of stewardship of this beautiful structure, which is destined, we believe, to enhance Portland’s title to the compliment it so often receives of being the most beautiful city of the New World.

 

Cyrus H. K. Curtis then took the stage:

 

Mr. Mayor: 

I present to the City of Portland through you, this memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, who for more than fifty years was pre-eminent in this city as organist, composer, and teacher, a man who was loved by all classes for his kindly spirit, his high ideals, and his devotion to music.  

He cared little or nothing for material things or for fame­—he never sought them, but here is his monument—a monument to one who did something to make us better men and women and appreciate that indefinable something that is an expression of the soul.

 

Cyrus H. K. Curtis purchased three different Aeolian organs for his home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and in 1926 he purchased the immense Austin organ (146 ranks!) for Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia as a gift to the University of Pennsylvania. The depth of his devotion to the art of music is seen in the heritage left by his daughter, Marie Louise Curtis Bok, who worked at South Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School, teaching underprivileged children.¹ She realized the need for a high-quality school of music that would be available to anyone, and in 1924, founded the tuition-free Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in honor of her father, so the influence of Hermann Kotzschmar is actively alive in Philadelphia as well as in Portland.

 

The Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ

The Kotzschmar organ had a wonderful career as a cultural icon in the center of the city’s artistic life. A succession of brilliant musicians served as municipal organist through the first half of the twentieth century. But by the 1970s, the organ had fallen onto hard times. The city’s budget was strained, and its leaders found it difficult to preserve the budget for the care and use of the organ ahead of essential services.

In 1980, Berj Zamkochian, organist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, brought a group of friends to see the Kotzschmar Organ. Among them was Maurice Prendergast, late of Kennebunk, Maine, who was impressed by the organ but dismayed by its condition. A few days later, he visited the offices of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and presented executive director Russ Burleigh with a check for $10,000 to be used for repairing the organ. As the organ was owned by the city, Burleigh felt that it would be inappropriate to accept the gift on behalf of the orchestra, and conferred with PSO president Peter Plumb. The idea of forming a non-profit group devoted to the care of the organ emerged, interested parties negotiated with the city to assume the responsibility for the care of the organ, and in 1981, the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (FOKO) was founded, with Peter Plumb as founding president.

A board of directors was established, fund raising began, and FOKO presided over critical repairs to get the organ back on its feet. Concert programming was renewed, and the organ regained its active presence. When the City Hall auditorium was renovated in the 1990s, the organ was removed from the hall for safe keeping, and the stage was significantly enlarged. Through heroic efforts by FOKO and the herculean devotion of organ curator David Wallace, in 1997 it made its triumphant return to the newly renamed Merrill Auditorium.

 

Transition and growth

Ray Cornils was appointed Portland’s tenth municipal organist in 1990.² Ray’s tenure of 27 years in that position is the longest in the history of the position. His consummate musicianship, his gracious and welcoming personality, his affinity for working with young people in FOKO’s vast educational efforts, and his skill at nurturing the complex relationships between FOKO and the City of Portland have been essential to the growth and success of FOKO. Ray was patient with the failing and recalcitrant organ, coaxing it through its dying breath on numerous occasions and helping scores of visiting organists navigate its treacheries. Ray’s ability to show the organ in its best light, no matter the circumstances, was central to its continued prominence.

Ray was equally essential to the lengthy task of the renovation of the organ, working with the organ committee through dozens of complex meetings, assisting in raising funds, and continuing as the ambassador for the Kotzschmar Organ. He helped play the organ out of the hall as the renovation began and played it back into Portland as a renewed instrument. In many ways, Ray Cornils has been “Mister Music” for the city of Portland and the state of Maine.

David Wallace first met the Kotzschmar Organ at the age of six, the beginning of his devotion to the instrument, and the formation of his career as an organbuilder. David’s zeal was essential to the organ’s survival through budget cuts, near abandonment, and the immense chore of bringing it back to life after the renovation of the hall. Although news reports heralded the return of the “restored” Kotzschmar Organ, David knew as well as anyone that its days were still numbered.

In 2007, the reality of the organ’s condition was made clear to the board of directors, and plans for a serious and comprehensive renovation of the organ were formed. You can read in depth of the history of that process, from startled realization, to the thrill of the organ’s second triumphant return to the hall in 2014 on FOKO’s website at www.foko.org/2012-renovation/.

During the 2016 annual meeting of FOKO’s board of directors, Ray Cornils announced his retirement, to be effective after the traditional holiday concerts, “Christmas with Cornils,” in December 2017. A search committee³ was formed in October 2016, whose work started with the realization that the newly renovated organ could serve as a vehicle for a new life for the organization. Purposefully intending to remain open to structuring a new position around the talents of the next municipal organist, the committee solicited applications, reviewed recorded submissions, and selected six finalists who would travel to Portland for live interviews and auditions in May and June of 2017. After the auditions, the committee quickly reached a unanimous decision.

 

The Eleventh Municipal Organist

On Monday, September 18, 2017, the board of directors of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ voted unanimously to accept the recommendation of the search committee to appoint James Kennerley as Portland’s eleventh municipal organist. That evening, at its regular bi-monthly meeting, the Portland City Council welcomed an ensemble named Burundi Drummers Batimbo United in a colorful thunderous performance in City Council chambers. They took special action to change residency requirements for Class C board members of the non-profit Portland Fish Exchange, made several special proclamations brought forward by Mayor Ethan Strimling, and acted on the order to appoint James Kennerley as municipal organist, effective January 1, 2018.

James Kennerley began his formal musical education as a chorister at Chelmsford Cathedral, where proximity to the organ inspired his interest in the instrument. He holds degrees from Cambridge University and The Juilliard School, and the prestigious diploma as a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. After holding positions at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut, and St. Mary the Virgin (Times Square) in New York City, he presently serves as organist and choirmaster at the Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch in New York City, where he directs a professional choir of 18 voices.

James won first place in the 2008 Albert Schweitzer National Organ Playing Competition and was winner of the 2013 composition competition of the Association of Anglican Musicians. He is active in New York and abroad as an organist, harpsichordist, singer, and conductor.

Recently, James and I sat together in my apartment in New York City to chat about the start of his work in Portland. He spoke eloquently about the role of the performer, bringing thought-provoking expression, musical and artistic statements both old and new, and outright entertainment to sacred congregations and secular audiences alike. But while serving a church is to be organist to the people of the church, serving as a municipal organist is to be an ambassador, a host, and a musician all at once.  

He expressed his excitement about getting to know the people of Portland and to drawing audiences to the city from afar. James and his wife, Emily, had gotten to know Portland earlier through visits with friends who live there—friends who consider Portland to be a hip and up and coming place to live, “the Brooklyn of the East Coast!” It is a city of about 65,000 residents (the size of a usual neighborhood in New York City), in a metropolitan area of about 250,000, and is home to a fleet of flourishing arts organizations including the Portland Art Museum and the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

The recent renovation of the Kotzschmar Organ is testament to the population’s commitment to the arts. It’s hard to believe that $2,400,000 could be raised for such a purpose in a city that size. By contrast, with all its cultural wealth, there is no public secular pipe organ in New York City.

James spoke of the newly renovated organ in the beautiful auditorium as a fresh canvas on which to paint a new musical picture. His vision as host is to welcome the city’s residents and visitors into City Hall, into a world of the arts including offerings from all disciplines.

By comparison, he spoke of the chef and owner of a fine restaurant, welcoming patrons into comfortable surroundings where an exciting world of things both familiar and unexpected is waiting.  Perhaps one weekend, we’ll depart from the usual menu and venture into an interesting world of exotic cuisine. Perhaps one week, we’ll invite a guest chef to approach the home stove and present something new to the neighborhood.

And as we talked, he took the restaurant metaphor further. He and Emily had just returned from a vacation in Europe, where they traveled off the beaten touristy path to remote villages in Spain where no one spoke English and where restaurants didn’t offer English menus. With little or no command of Spanish, and by cobbling together some understanding of Latin, and wisps of other languages, they ordered meals and were sometimes surprised by what turned up.

James compared that experience to the average citizen who shows up for a concert, is handed a menu in a foreign language, and takes his chances from limited knowledge as to what’s coming. The maître d’hôtel escorts the diner to his seat, unfolds the napkin, offers a glass of water, and explains the intricacies, the ingredients, and philosophies of each dish. The performer as host, as maître d’hôtel, can introduce a composer, place the music in the appropriate geographic and political context, and draw the average listener into an enlightened experience that is otherwise unattainable. The more you know about something, the easier it is to order and enjoy something unfamiliar.

 

The hot seat

The search committee established a tough audition process. Merrill Auditorium is a very busy place where time is at a premium, and the committee balanced the desire to hear the largest possible number of live auditions with the need to provide candidates with time to prepare at the organ. Candidates were given two hours of practice time to prepare one hour of audition performance. Just look at all those knobs. It was a daunting task.

James Kennerley had never played the Kotzschmar Organ before his audition, and in those two precious hours, he mined the tonal ore of the instrument to the deepest depths, and produced a program that included sophisticated serious music, glimpses into whimsy and fantasy, and a virtuosic romp of his own creation on the Brazilian smash hit, Tico-Tico no Fubá.  

Portland audiences, you have no idea how much you’re going to love welcoming James Kennerley as your eleventh municipal organist. Come early, come often. Bring your friends, lots of friends. We’ll be happy to recommend restaurants. It’s a big hall. There are plenty of seats. It’s going to be a blast.

 

Notes

1. Marie Louise Curtis’s first husband was Edward Bok, editor of her father’s magazine, The Ladies’ Home Journal. Their son, Curtis Bok, was Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Their grandson, Derek Bok, was president of Harvard University. Marie Louise Curtis’s second husband was the violinist Effrem Zimbalist, director of the Curtis School of Music. His son, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., was an actor, renowned for his starring roles in 77 Sunset Strip, and The F.B.I. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr’s., daughter, Stephanie, played Laura Holt in the NBC detective series, Remington Steele.

2. Will C. MacFarlane served two tenures, from 1912–1918, and 1932–1934.

3. Members of the search committee included John Bishop, Tom Cattell (president of the FOKO board of directors), Andy Downs (director of public facilities for the city), Elsa Geskus, Tracy Hawkins, Brooke Hubner (executive director of FOKO), Peter Plumb, Larry Rubinstein (chair), Harold Stover, and Mark Terison.

Matthew M. Bellocchio

Matthew M. Bellocchio, a Project Manager and designer at Andover Organ since 2003, is a Fellow and past President of the American Institute of Organbuilders.

Andover Organ Company marks seventy years

by Matthew M. Bellocchio

Anniversaries invite us to reflect upon our past and contemplate how far we have come. As 2018 marks Andover Organ Company’s seventieth anniversary, this article will highlight its long and rich history, from its humble beginnings to its recent achievements.

Andover was founded in 1948 as a result of an Organ Institute organized by Arthur Howes, head of the organ department at the Peabody Conservatory, and held each summer on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Howes had traveled extensively in Europe and observed the developing Organ Reform Movement there. Originating in Germany in the 1930s from Albert Schweitzer’s writings, the movement sparked an interest in early music and performance practices, as well as the building of new organs that could authentically render early music, especially that of Bach. Howes started the Organ Institute to help spread the Organ Reform Movement in America. The faculty included such notable organists as Carl Weinrich (Princeton University), Ernest White (St. Mary the Virgin, New York City), and E. Power Biggs.

Tom Byers, a former Henry Pilcher’s Sons Organ Company employee who lived in nearby Lawrence, Massachusetts, attended the annual institute with his wife. He was inspired to start an organ company that would follow the institute’s philosophy. He chose the name “Andover” for its prestigious association with the Organ Institute and because of the advantages, in the pre-internet days of telephone directories, of appearing near the top of the alphabetical company listings. 

Byers chose the opening line of Psalm 98, “Cantate Domino Canticum Novum” (Sing to the Lord a New Song), as the company motto, which still appears on Andover’s letterhead. This underscored his philosophy of creating a new style of organ, one that looked and sounded differently from what most American organ companies were producing.

Despite its name, the company has never been located in Andover! It started out in the home of Tom Byers in Lawrence, just north of Andover, and later moved to a two-story wooden building in nearby Methuen. In 1979 the company purchased a three-story brick building in a former mill complex at 560 Broadway in Lawrence, where it has been ever since.

 

Leadership and people

Rather than having a single leader dictate the company’s course, Andover’s many talented employees have each contributed to the company’s development. The company has always been owned and run by its principal employees who, serving as its shareholders and board of directors, make decisions collegially.

Charles Fisk joined the company in 1955 as Tom Byers’s junior partner. Robert J. Reich, a Yale-trained electrical engineer, was hired in 1956, and Leo Constantineau, a woodworking teacher and professional draftsman, in 1957. In 1958, Byers left the company, and Fisk became the owner. Walter Hawkes, who had worked for Holtkamp, was hired as shop foreman. Later that year, Andover signed a new organ contract with Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The contract did not specify the type of action. But the result, premiered on Palm Sunday 1959, was the first new mechanical-action organ built by an American firm in the postwar era. That instrument, Opus 28, is still in use.

The following year, Opus 35, a 33-stop tracker designed by Leo Constantineau and voiced by Charles Fisk, was built for Mount Calvary Episcopal Church in Baltimore, where Arthur Howes was organist. Fisk left Andover in 1961 to start his own company,
C. B. Fisk, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Andover was reincorporated with Robert J. Reich and Leo Constantineau as the new owners. Reich, who became the Tonal Director, revised Andover’s pipe scales to provide more foundation tone. Constantineau’s case designs gave the company’s new instruments a distinctive visual flair. 

Andover has been blessed with several dedicated individuals who each worked over fifty years at the company. Reich, who joined Andover in 1956, served as President and Tonal Director 1961–1997; he then worked part-time until retiring in 2009. Donald Olson joined the company in 1962 and became Andover’s general manager and visual designer in 1968. His elegant case designs were the hallmark of Andover’s new instruments for nearly four decades. He succeeded Robert Reich as President in 1997, stepped down in 2012 and then worked part-time until fully retiring in 2015. Robert C. Newton, who started at Andover in 1963 and headed the Old Organ Department for many years, retired in 2016.

Andover’s current President, Benjamin Mague, joined Andover in 1975. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Colby College and a Master of Music degree in organ from the University of Wisconsin. He served as Andover’s mechanical designer and later as shop foreman before becoming President in 2012. 

John Morlock, Andover’s Tonal Director since 1999, joined the company in 1976, working principally in the Old Organ Department. Don Glover, Andover’s in-house reed voicer, came to Andover in 2004 from the Reuter Organ Company.

Michael Eaton, Andover’s visual designer, joined the company in 1991. He also heads a maintenance team and serves as Treasurer and Clerk for Andover’s board of directors.

Andover’s present team of dedicated and talented people collectively possess over 350 years of organbuilding experience. Other current employees are Ryan Bartosiewicz, Matthew Bellocchio, Eric Dolch, Anne Doré, Andrew Hagberg, Lisa Lucius, Kevin Mathieu, Fay Morlock, Jonathan Ross, Craig Seaman, and David Zarges. Appropriately, more than half of Andover’s employees are church musicians or organists.

Andover has been the parent for many other New England tracker organ companies, having employed over its seventy years many talented individuals who later founded their own companies. These include Philip Beaudry, Timothy Fink, Charles Fisk, Timothy Hawkes, Richard Hedgebeth, Fritz Noack, Bradley Rule, J. C. Taylor, and David Wallace.  

 

Tonal style

Tonally, the early Andover organs were inspired by the Organ Reform Movement. At the time of Andover’s founding, few American companies were repairing old tracker organs; most just electrified or replaced them. Andover was the first to deliberately retain and renovate nineteenth-century trackers. But, adhering to the Organ Reform philosophy, Byers and his early successors often “improved” those organs tonally. It was not unusual for them to evict the string stops and replace them with mixtures and mutations. Andover’s new instruments came to be characterized by strong Principal choruses with bright mixtures, colorful neo-Baroque style flutes and mutations, and reeds that emphasized chorus over color. 

In the 1980s, as Andover began more frequently to work on significant nineteenth-century American organs, a gradual transition occurred. This was solidified in 1999 when John Morlock, who had started in Andover’s Old Organ Department, succeeded Robert Reich as Tonal Director.

Today, Andover’s tonal style may best be described as “American” and is grounded primarily in the best practices of the nineteenth-century New England builders, in particular the Boston firm of E. & G. G. Hook. Their organs, especially those from the firm’s “golden period” (1850s to 1870s), are admired for their remarkably successful blend of warmth and brilliance. Their pipe scales and voicing techniques worked extremely well in the dry acoustics of many American churches. 

When designing a new organ or reworking an existing instrument, we basically use the same scaling proportions between the various stops of the chorus that the Hooks used. We have found that doing so results in a principal chorus that is nicely balanced between fundamental weight and harmonic development.

Within this framework, adjustments are made to reflect or, in some cases, compensate for the acoustical properties found in each room. Each instrument needs to work and sound well in its “home” and be able to perform its tasks capably and effectively. Andover organs are designed to lead and support congregational hymn singing, as well as interpret a wide range of organ literature.

 

Maintenance

From the very beginning, organ maintenance was an important part of the company’s work. It created name recognition, established relationships with churches and organists, and provided a consistent revenue stream. Today, Andover maintains over 300 organs annually throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast—from northern Maine to South Carolina, from western New York to the islands off eastern Massachusetts. These instruments range in size from small one-manual trackers in country churches to the world-famous Great Organ (IV/116) in the Methuen Memorial Music Hall; and range in age from a few years to a historic 1762 Snetzler organ. 

We service all types of organ mechanisms—from traditional tracker action to modern solid-state relays and combination actions. Each spring and fall, we schedule extended maintenance tours to visit multiple instruments in a geographical area. This enables our customers to share the travel expenses. 

Many customers treat us like old friends. Occasionally, a church secretary or organist will call us and merely say, “This is so-and-so at First Parish Church,” not realizing that we have over three dozen tuning customers with that name!

 

Andover Organ firsts

As the leader in the mid-twentieth century tracker organ revival in America, Andover pioneered many innovations that are now standard in the industry. Opus 25, a two-manual built in 1958 for the Rice Institute (now University) in Houston, was an electro-pneumatic instrument utilizing slider chests with pneumatic pallets, one of the first examples of this pallet type. This was decades before the adoption of the “Blackinton-style” pneumatic pallet.

In 1961, Andover carried out the first historically sympathetic restoration of a nineteenth-century American organ: the 1-manual, 1865 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 358 at the Congregational Church in Orwell, Vermont (Andover Opus R-1.)  

Other significant Andover (AOC) restorations include: 

• First Presbyterian Church, Newburyport, Massachusetts (1866 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1974); 

• First Parish Church, Bridgewater, Massachusetts (1852 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1977); 

• South Parish Congregational Church, Augusta, Maine (1866 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1982); 

• Church on the Hill, Lenox, Massachusetts (1869 William A. Johnson/AOC 2001); 

• Old Whaling Church, Edgartown, Massachusetts (1850 Simmons & Fisher/AOC 2004); 

• Centre Street Methodist Church, Nantucket, Massachusetts (1831 Thomas Appleton/AOC 2008); 

• St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Haverstraw, New York (1898 Geo. Jardine & Son/AOC 2011); 

• St. Anna’s Chapel, Newburyport, Massachusetts (1863 William Stevens/AOC 2013).

Utilizing its expertise gained from restoring old tracker organs and building new ones, in 1963 Andover was the first company in the world to re-trackerize an old tracker organ that had been electrified. The instrument was the 1898 James Treat Opus 3 at St. George’s Primitive Methodist Church (now Bethesda Missionary Church) in Methuen, Massachusetts.

Other notable re-trackerizations: 

• First Presbyterian Church, Waynesboro, Virginia (1893 Woodberry & Harris/AOC 1986); 

• St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, Providence, Rhode Island (1851 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1989); 

• Westminster Preservation Trust, Baltimore, Maryland (1882 Johnson & Son/AOC 1991); 

• Sage Chapel, Northfield, Massachusetts (1898 Hook & Hastings/AOC 1996); 

• Unitarian Society, Peterboro, New Hampshire (1867 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 2003); 

• Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, Virginia (1869 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 2012).  

The slider and pallet windchests used in most nineteenth-century organs were generally trouble free for many years. However, when heating systems were introduced into churches in the early twentieth century, problems developed. The solid wood chest tops (tables), just below the sliders, were made from a thin, wide plank of air-dried lumber. With constant heating the wooden tables dried out and cracked, allowing air to leak from one pipe hole to the next, resulting in “runs.” 

Andover was the first American company to replace a cracked, solid-wood table with a marine-grade plywood one. The routed bleed channels between the table’s wind holes were then carefully replicated and the entire table graphited, like the original. This type of table replacement is now standard in the industry. The first organ to receive this treatment, in 1965, was the 1897 George W. Reed, at the Baptist Church in Winchendon, Massachusetts. Sadly, the organ burned with the building in 1985. 

One of Andover’s most significant recent projects was the 2016 restoration of the wind system and key action in the 1892 Woodberry & Harris Opus 100 at St. Mary–St. Catherine of Sienna Parish in Charlestown, Massachusetts. With three manuals, 36 stops, and 41 ranks, it is the largest and most significant nineteenth-century organ remaining in original unaltered condition in the greater Boston area. 

The instrument’s action is entirely mechanical and incredibly complex. The three-manual, reversed detached console sits in the center of the gallery, while the pipes and windchests are in cases at either side of a large stained-glass window. Four levels of trackers descend from the keys to squares beneath the floor, then under the console towards the rear window, then turn off at right angles towards the sides, then turn off again at right angles towards the rear, then to squares which send them up to the rollerboards below the chests. The organ’s four divisions have a total of 17 sets of wooden trackers, totaling nearly a mile in length! A Barker machine lightens the touch of the Great and the manuals coupled to it.

The two large reservoirs were stripped and releathered in place. All four layers of trackers were disassembled, labeled, and brought to the shop for replication. Because of the organ’s historic significance, all the new trackers were made of the same materials as the originals but using modern machinery. Andover customized a miniature CNC router to notch the cloth-wrapped tracker ends and built a spinning machine to whip the threaded wire ends with red linen thread, just like the originals. The Barker machine was carefully releathered. “Now she runs like a Bentley,” said one of the instrument’s many admirers.

 

Rebuilding for reliability

A conservative restoration is the logical decision for an exemplary work by an important builder or a small organ in a rural church with modest musical requirements. But sometimes it is necessary to strike a balance between preserving the original fabric and updating it to suit modern needs. An organ that has already endured several unsympathetic rebuilds, or an aging instrument with unreliable mechanisms and limited tonal resources, in an active church or institution with an ambitious music program might be better served by a sympathetic rebuilding. This was the case with two of Andover’s most significant rebuilds.

The 1876 E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings Opus 828 at St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo, New York, was built as a showpiece for the 1876 “Centennial Exposition” in Philadelphia and purchased afterwards by the cathedral. Major changes were made to the organ by Tellers-Kent Organ Company in 1925 and by Schlicker Organ Company in 1976. By 1996, the organ was virtually unplayable during the winter months and a decision of whether to replace it or rebuild it was imminent. In 1998, the cathedral decided that “the organ need not be replaced, but rather completely rehabilitated.” At the same time, the organ’s tonal palette needed expanding to better serve the musical needs of the cathedral and to enable it for use in concerts and recitals.

A team from Andover dismantled the organ in July 1999, loaded it into two moving vans, and transported it back to Lawrence, where eighteen employees labored for more than a year to clean, repair, and expand the instrument. In undertaking this immense job, Andover sought to retain and restore as much of the original as possible. The entire organ was cleaned, and the black walnut case stripped of coats of dark varnish and restored to its original finish. The façade pipes were stripped and repainted in their original designs with colors that harmonized with the cathedral’s interior.

All the original chests and pipework were rebuilt and repaired. The manuals were expanded to 61 notes and the pedals to 32. The two original reservoirs were releathered and two new ones constructed. The Choir is now unenclosed, as it originally was, the Swell box is back to its original size, and the Solo is restored to its original position.

Many of the missing original pipes were replaced with pipes salvaged from the Hook 1877 Cincinnati Music Hall organ, Opus 869. Other compatible Hook organs were visited to develop pipe scales appropriate for the additions to the cathedral organ, which were voiced in the Hook style. The organ is now far closer to its original sound than it has been since the 1923 electrification and rebuilding.

A new floating Celestial Division on a slider windchest was added. This division was based on contemporary E. & G. G. Hook solo divisions, as typified by the organs in the Cincinnati Music Hall and Mechanics Hall, Worcester. There is an 8′ Philomela copied from the 1863 Hook at Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, an original Hook 4′ Hohlpfeife, a 2′ Harmonic Piccolo, a Cor Anglais, and a few more modern stops stops such as a French Horn, Dolcan Gamba with Gamba Céleste, Spitzflöte and Spitzflöte Céleste. 

Thomas Murray played the rededicatory recital on June 11, 2001. The St. Joseph Cathedral organ will be featured in a recital by Nathan Laube during the American Guild of Organists Northeast Regional Convention, July 1–4, 2019.

In contrast to the Buffalo cathedral organ, the 1902 Hook & Hastings Opus 1833 at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, was a modest two-manual, 18-rank instrument. After nearly a century of use and constant winter heating, the windchests and actions developed serious problems. The original console was replaced in 1946. When the replacement console failed in 2004, a one-manual tracker was put in its place to serve as a temporary instrument until the chapel organ could be rebuilt. 

Our lengthy experience with Hook & Hastings organs taught us that their early electro-pneumatic actions were cumbersome, slow, and difficult to repair. Therefore, in our 2014–2015 rebuilding of the organ, we reused the pipes, windchests, and most of the original parts as the basis of an expanded instrument with a new electric action.

We built a new, solid white oak console in the style of the Hook & Hastings original, with a lyre music rack and elliptically curved stop terraces. To meet the demands of a twenty-first century music program, this reproduction console has state-of-the-art components, including a record/playback module. The façade pipes were stripped and repainted with a new decorative treatment that harmonizes with the Italian Renaissance-style case and chapel. As a crowning flourish, the cross surmounting the case was painted in faux lapis lazuli.

Most of the organ was crammed within the small case, with Swell above Great and the wooden Pedal 16′ Open Diapason pipes at each side. Behind the Swell, in an unfinished gallery, were the organ’s large reservoir and Pedal 16′ Bourdon. We moved the Pedal Open Diapason pipes to the rear gallery and added a Pedal 32′-16′-8′ Trombone and 8′-4′ Principal there. Judicious additions to the Swell expanded its resources. There was sufficient space inside the case behind the Great chest to add a seven-stop unenclosed Choir division.

The end result of these tonal changes and additions is an instrument of 40 stops, 34 ranks, and 1,994 pipes that is more versatile and appropriate for its expanded role. It still sounds very much like a Hook & Hastings organ, but one from an earlier and better period of the firm’s output.

 

Façade firsts

The company’s work with historic organs gradually led to pipe façade restorations as well. In 1967, Andover was the first American company to make restorative paint repairs to a painted and stenciled pipe façade, at the First Congregational Church in Georgetown, Massachusetts (1874 Joel Butler). Thirteen years later, in 1979, during its rebuilding of the 1884 Geo. S. Hutchings Opus 135 at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vermont, Andover carefully stripped a coating of green paint from all the façade pipes, documented the original designs and colors underneath, and repainted the pipes in their original colors and stenciling—another first.

Andover’s Opus 102 (1992) at Trinity United Church of Christ in York, Pennsylvania, was the first new American organ in the modern era to feature painted façade pipes with nineteenth-century style colored bandings. The upper façade flats of this organ contained another first: “frosted tin” pipes, which feature the natural, unplaned finish of the cast tin sheets. This gives them the light color of tin, but with a dull, non-reflective finish.

In recent years, Andover has worked with historic painted decoration conservator Marylou Davis to create new painted-pipe decorations in historically inspired styles. The most notable example of this collaboration is the 82-rank Andover Opus 114 (2007) at Christ Lutheran Church in Baltimore. This was the first twenty-first century American organ façade to combine polychromed and monochrome texture-stenciled pipes, frosted tin pipes, and numerous hand-carved pipe shades, grilles, finials, and skirtings in the casework. 

Opus 114 is also Andover’s first dual-action, double organ. The 13-rank, electric-action gallery organ can be played from its own console or from the front organ’s three-manual mechanical-action console. Likewise, the entire front organ can be played from the two-manual gallery console through couplers and general pistons. The organ’s four matching cases (two in chancel, two in gallery) perfectly suit the church’s Gothic architecture and fool many people into thinking that they were reused from a 19th-century organ. 

Andover has never been afraid to fit an organ around a prominent window. This reflects our design philosophy that an organ should look as if it has always been part of its environment. And in most churches, the window was there long before the organ. Fighting the window can sometimes be a losing battle. Opus 115 (2007) at Church of the Nativity in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Opus 118 (2014) at First Parish Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, illustrate Andover’s creative approach in dealing with windows.

In Raleigh, the modern clear glass window was front and center, at the top of the space where the organ would go. We designed the organ case to frame the window’s central orb and cross. The polished tin façade pipes match the brightness from the window. The organ also serves as a reredos for the altar, which stands in front of it. Looking from top to bottom, one sees the window, the organ, and the altar—light, music, action. The church was very pleased with the result, as were we.

In the 1820 Federal Period meetinghouse in Wayland, there was an elegant Palladian window in the center of the back wall of the rear gallery. Because of the semi-elliptical curve of the gallery’s rear wall, the only apparent organ placement with such a floor plan was in the center. Thus, all the previous organs had blocked the window. Andover’s design put the detached console in the center, by the railing, and divided the organ into two cases that frame, rather than cover, the Palladian window. The choir members sit in the space between the console and cases and benefit from the natural backlighting provided by the window. Again, everyone was pleased with the results.

Seventy years after its humble beginnings, Andover has much to celebrate: 118 new organs and 533 rebuilds/restorations. Andover’s wide-ranging work in building, rebuilding, restoring, and maintaining pipe organs is well-recognized, and best summarized by its mission statement: “Preserving the Past; Enhancing the Present; Inspiring the Future.”

www.andoverorgan.com

Brian F. Gurley

Brian F. Gurley is director of music and organist at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, New York. He currently serves as membership chair of the Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians.

The Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians (CRCCM) met in Kalamazoo, Michigan, January 8–11 for its thirty-fifth annual gathering. Thomas Fielding, director of liturgy and music at Saint Augustine Cathedral, designed and directed the gathering with help from Francis Zajac, director of liturgy and music emeritus at the cathedral; the support staff of the cathedral; and the CRCCM steering committee: Michael Batcho, director of music, Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Teri Larson, director of music and arts, Basilica of Saint Mary, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Ezequiel Menendez, director of music and organist, Cathedral of Saint Joseph, Hartford, Connecticut; Joseph Balistreri, coordinator of music ministries, Archdiocese of Detroit, and director of music, Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Detroit, Michigan; Crista Miller, director of music and organist, Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Houston, Texas; and Christoph Tietze, director of music and organist, Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, San Francisco, California; with Gerald Muller, Leo Nestor, and James Savage, advising.

 

Monday, January 8

Conference participants gathered at Saint Augustine Cathedral for Vespers.  Reverend Thomas McNally, Vice Rector of the Cathedral, celebrated Vespers, and liturgical music was provided by Thomas Fielding and the Cathedral Choir. Choral music included Unto Us is Born a Son, arranged by David Willcocks; Christmas Lullaby by John Rutter; Tollite hostias by Camille Saint-Saëns; Awake and Arise and Hail the New Morn by Fielding; O Virgin Theotokos, Rejoice by Roman Hurko; Transeamus usque Bethlehem by Josef Ignatz Schnabel; Gesu Bambino by Pietro Yon; and Magnificat by Giuseppe Pitoni. Francis Zajac welcomed all conference participants and gave a thorough history of the cathedral, including its various renovation projects.

Saint Augustine Cathedral was dedicated in 1951. It was designed in the Gothic Revival style by Ralph Adams Cram of Boston and originally served as a parish church in the Diocese of Lansing. In 1970, Pope Paul VI created the Diocese of Kalamazoo from portions of the Dioceses of Lansing and Grand Rapids, at which time Saint Augustine Church was consecrated the diocesan cathedral of Kalamazoo. The cathedral is home to a three-manual, forty-two-rank Nichols and Simpson organ of 2002.

Following dinner in the cathedral hall, all of the participants introduced themselves. New members and first-time conference participants for 2018 included: Adam Brakel, director of music, Saint James Cathedral, Orlando, Florida; Bruce Croteau, director of liturgy, Saint James Cathedral, Orlando; Felipe Delsart, director of the polyphonic choir and adjunct organist, Metropolitan Cathedral, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Terri Dunn, conductor at Saint Michael’s Choir School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; James Grzadzinski, director of music and organist, Cathedral of Saint Raymond Nonnatus, Joliet, Illinois; Mark Loria, principal organist, Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Bruce Ludwick, director of music and organist, Cathedral of Saint Paul, Birmingham, Alabama; Matthew Meloche, director of sacred music, Cathedral of Saints Simon and Jude, Phoenix, Arizona; Andrew Motyka, director of archdiocesan and cathedral liturgical music, Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Indiana; Charles Nolen, director of music and liturgy, Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Richard Siegel, assistant organist, Cathedral of Saint Raymond Nonnatus, Joliet, Illinois; and Richard Skirpan, Cathedral of Saint Patrick, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

 

Tuesday, January 9

On Tuesday morning, conference participants gathered for Morning Prayer at the cathedral. Prelude music was performed by David Jonies, associate director of music, Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago, Illinois. Jonies played Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, opus 60, movements 2 and 3, by Max Reger. Thomas Fielding played all service music for Morning Prayer, as well as Procession by William Mathias for postlude.

Following Morning Prayer, Reverend Bradley A. Zamora, director of liturgy and instructor in the Department of Liturgy and Music, Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois, delivered a keynote address on the spirituality of the cathedral musician. Fr. Zamora exhorted conference participants to maintain active prayer lives, since cathedral musicians are to be disciples. He also reminded his audience of the distinction between “working for Mass” and “attending Mass” and described his own spiritual enrichment whenever he attends Mass “as a parishioner” in the assembly.

Prior to his appointment at Mendelein Seminary, Fr. Zamora served as associate pastor and director of liturgy at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. Formerly a parish music director, he maintains active membership in the National Associations of Pastoral Musicians, the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, and the Patron of the Arts in Vatican Museums.

Following the keynote address, conference participants turned to the first of two CRCCM business meetings. Christoph Tietze, chair of the steering committee, led the business meeting and described the nomination and election processes for new members of the steering committee. Scott Eakins, treasurer, presented the financial status of the organization. Brian Gurley, membership chair, discussed the ongoing efforts to involve new cathedral musicians in CRCCM, and Marc Cerisier proposed technological options for much needed modernization and automation of membership initiations and renewals.

After lunch, conference participants then gathered at the Waldo Library Rare Book Room of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Elizabeth C. Teviotdale, assistant director of the WMU Medieval Institute, delivered a lecture, “The Illustration of the Music of Christian Worship in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” Teviotdale presented a fascinating array of illuminated chant manuscripts and offered possible theological, liturgical, and musical interpretations of the illuminations as paired with their antiphons and feasts. She also called attention to a trend in manuscript illuminations, in which they became less detailed and less obviously religious in nature. This trend probably resulted from an increase in the number of illuminations carried out by lay tradesmen and women rather than religious monks and nuns. Following the lecture, conference participants were able to view selected illuminated manuscripts in the Medieval Institute Library.

Elizabeth Teviotdale received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her main research interests are early medieval Christian liturgical manuscripts and their illumination, as well as the history of collecting.

Conference participants returned to the Radisson Hotel for a composers reading session. The reading session is a forum in which conference participants have the opportunity to sing through new compositions from their colleagues.

Conference participants then moved to Saint Augustine Cathedral in the evening for a choral concert performed by the choir, Audivi. Works included Advent Responsory by Richard Marlow; Steh Auf by Christoph Demantius; The Holly and the Ivy, arranged by Reginald Jacques; Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming, arranged by Michael Praetorius; Ave Maria by Robert Parsons; Tota pulchra es à 12 by Heironymous Praetorius; Gloria and Sanctus from Mass for Double Choir by Frank Martin; Once in Royal David’s City, arranged by Arthur Henry Mann; Sanctus from Missa Et ecce terræ motus by Antoine Brumel; Away in a manger, arranged by David Willcocks; A Spotless Rose by Herbert Howells; In the Bleak Midwinter by Gustav Holst; Magnificat by Arvo Pärt; Good Christian friends, rejoice, arranged by Charles Winifred Douglas; Hymne à la Vierge by Pierre Villette; and Silent Night, arranged by Malcolm Sargent. Audivi is a professional vocal ensemble founded in 2013 and based in Detroit. The ensemble specializes in lesser-known Renaissance choral music, but also performs choral music from all eras (www.audivi.net). For this performance, Audivi was under the direction of guest conductor Kimberly Dunn Adams, assistant professor of music and director of choral activities at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. The concert was presented as part of the Sacred Music at the Cathedral concert series of Saint Augustine Cathedral.

 

Wednesday, January 10

On Wednesday morning, conference participants traveled to South Bend, Indiana, for a day trip to the University of Notre Dame. Once on campus, Paul Thornock conducted an open choral rehearsal in the Gail L. Walton Rehearsal Room of the Coleman-Morse Building. The rehearsal repertoire included Sicut cervus and Sitivit anima mea by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; Come, let’s rejoice by John Amner; and Abendlied by Josef Rheinberger.

Following the open rehearsal and lunch on campus, conference participants gathered in the newly constructed O’Neill Hall for a lecture given by Peter Jeffery, who discussed chant and psalmody in the reformed [post-Conciliar Roman Rite] liturgy. Jeffery spoke about the relationship between Gregorian psalm tones and various vernacular adaptations (e.g., Anglican chant, Gelineau and Guimont psalm tones, and Meinrad psalm tones). He proposed the increased usage of psalmody in Christian sacramental preparation. For example, psalm refrains—set to music and relevant to any of the Sacraments—could be taught to children and adults. Upon completion of their formation, the candidates and assembly together could sing the psalm refrains as acclamations within the celebration of the particular sacrament.

Peter Jeffery holds the Michael P. Grace Chair in Medieval Studies and is professor of musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Notre Dame.  He earned his Ph.D. in music history from Princeton University and received a “Genius Award” Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1987–1992).

O’Neill Hall is the new home of the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Music, the Sacred Music Program, the Music Library, and new recital and rehearsal spaces. It is part of Notre Dame’s Campus Crossroads Project.

Following the lecture, conference participants enjoyed free time to explore Notre Dame’s campus, as well as open bench time on two of the university’s three Paul Fritts organs (Opus 24 of 2004, a two-manual, thirty-four-stop instrument in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, and Opus 37 of 2016, a four-manual, seventy-stop instrument in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart).

Following dinner, participants returned to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for an organ concert given by Craig J. Cramer. Repertoire included Toccata in D minor, BuxWV 155, by Dieterich Buxtehude; Partita sopre diverse: Sei gegrüßet Jesu gütig, BWV 768, by Johann Sebastian Bach; Batalha de 6. Tom by Anonymous (seventeenth century); three Noëls by Jean-François Dandrieu; and Le Mystère de Noël by August Fauchard.

Craig Cramer is professor of organ at the University of Notre Dame. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree and the Performer’s Certificate from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. The concert was given in memory of Gail L. Walton, director of music and organist emeritus of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and initiator of the Basilica organ project.

 

Thursday, January 11

Conference participants gathered for Morning Prayer at the cathedral. Prelude music was performed by Chris Stroh, principal organist at the Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Stroh played the Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 547, by Bach. Thomas Fielding played all service music, as well as Dialogue sur les grands jeux by Louis Clérambault for postlude.

After Morning Prayer, conference participants returned to the hotel for an update from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) given by Reverend Andrew V. Menke, executive director of the USCCB Secretariat for Divine Worship. Fr. Menke described the work of the Secretariat, which includes primarily the preparation of liturgical books and the review of publications containing excerpts from liturgical books. He also elaborated on current projects, namely an updated Rite of Exorcism, excerpts of the Roman Missal (also referred to as the Book of the Chair, as it contains collects and Mass texts not prayed from the altar), the nearly completed edition of a Spanish-language Roman Missal for the United States, a new translation of the Rite of Dedication of a Church and an Altar, a new translation of the Rite of Blessing and Consecration of the Oils and Chrism, a Formulary for Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, a Spanish-language Book of Blessings, a new translation of the Rite of Baptism of Children (with an option for celebration during Mass), the new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours, a review of hymnody from the International Committee for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), a new translation of the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA), and a new translation of the Rites of Ordination.

The morning sessions continued with the second business meeting, during which nominations to the steering committee were submitted for the upcoming election.

After lunch, Marc Cerisier delivered a presentation, “Technology for the Modern Cathedral Musician.” He highlighted the value of consistent music engraving and attractive service leaflets as visual aids to liturgical prayer. Cerisier then discussed types of software available for desktop publishing and music notation, and he demonstrated ways to prepare scores for display on tablet screens, as well as MIDI functionality for capturing organ registrations, recording, and playback.

Following the presentation, conference participants enjoyed free time to explore Kalamazoo and later gathered at Saint Augustine Cathedral for Mass. Most Reverend Paul J. Bradley, Bishop of Kalamazoo, was the celebrant and homilist. Choral music was provided by the Cathedral Choir, and repertoire included Kyrie from Missa L’hora passa by Lodovico da Viadana; Soul of Christ by Lance A. Massey (director of music at Saint Augustine Cathedral from 1984 to 1988); and Cantate Domino by Giuseppe Pitoni. Thomas Fielding played all the service music, as well as Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 552, by Bach, for the prelude; and Sonata Eroïca, opus 94, by Joseph Jongen, for the postlude.

After Mass, conference participants enjoyed an elegant closing banquet at which time appreciation was extended to Thomas Fielding, Francis Zajac, the Cathedral’s administrative staff, sponsors, and the CRCCM steering committee for organizing such a successful and enjoyable gathering.

The 2019 meeting of the CRCCM will take place in Seattle, Washington, in conjunction with the Cathedral Ministries Conference. It will be hosted by Saint James Cathedral.