Organists of Yesteryear in the World’s Largest Village

Oswald G. Ragatz served as professor of organ and chairman of the organ department at the School of Music at Indiana University from 1942–1983. Sadly, Mrs. Ragatz passed away after a long illness in 1998. When the Positive division was added to the organ at First Christian Church, where Mary so lovingly played for so many years, the Reuter organ was dedicated in her memory. Dr. Ragatz can be reached by contacting him at Meadowood Retirement Center in Bloomington, Indiana. David K. Lamb is currently the organist/choir director at First United Methodist Church in Columbus, Indiana. Graduating from IU in 1983, the year Ragatz retired, he completed the Doctor of Music degree at Indiana University in 2000. Dr. Lamb was recently appointed the District Convener for the State of Indiana by the American Guild of Organists.

Introduction by David K. Lamb

For more than 40 years, Oswald Gleason Ragatz served as chairman of the Organ Department of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. On October 30, 2007, “Ozzie” celebrated his 90th birthday. Witnessing many changes through those years at Indiana University, Dr. Ragatz has also seen many changes in the organ world and in church music practices in the years since his retirement from IU in 1983.

I recently enjoyed the chance to visit with Dr. Ragatz in his home at Meadowood in Bloomington. Full of stories and anecdotes, as always, he was ready to recount his years at IU in full detail. What a joy it was listening to those reflections as Dr. Ragatz revisited the events in his early life that led him to his 40-year teaching position at Indiana University. 

“Guardian Angel” is a wonderful exposé by Dr. Ragatz, detailing the sequence of events that made up the path leading him to Indiana University in 1942. In the words of Oswald Ragatz, please prepare to travel with him on this journey to Indiana University.

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During my 25-year employment as organist-choirmaster in Presbyterian churches, I never heard the term predestination mentioned from the pulpit. But I understand that belief in predestination is one of the tenets of the Presbyterian faith. My Unitarian and agnostic friends shake their heads in patronizing dismay, when, instead of attributing some event to predestination or to sheer luck, I refer to my “Guardian Angel.” Probably influenced by all those charming angels in Renaissance paintings and those lovely little winged cherubs in the rococo churches in Europe, I personally would rather attribute the chain of events that greatly determined my life to an angel than to luck or to predestination. Luck never did me any good in those very brief encounters with the slots in the casinos in Las Vegas, and of course no serious angel would look after anyone foolish enough to wager hard-earned cash on those automated bandits. And I’m not a Presbyterian. But let me recount those events that directed my life, and the reader or listener can decide, Guardian Angel, Lady Luck, predestination, or whatever.

I guess I must start way back in the midst of the Great Depression and the Democratic landslide of 1932 that brought Franklin Roosevelt into the presidency, and that cleaned out all of the Republican county office holders in Logan County, Colorado, including my dad. The ensuing years found the Ragatz family trying to make a meager living from a small, 40-acre farm at the edge of my hometown, Sterling, Colorado. Farm labor, dust storms, locust plagues, and fundamentalist, straight-laced parents contributed nothing to the wished-for joie de vivre of high school student Oswald Ragatz. It must have been about then that Guardian Angel was assigned to look out for this puny kid, whose interests were music and architecture, thus contributing to the general scorn of his macho classmates.

High school days

The angel first appeared in the guise of a high school math teacher, Miss Smith. It was she who set me on the path that would lead to my escape from the dead-end existence of life on the dreary eastern plains of Colorado. It was Miss Smith who asked me to stay after algebra class so that she could talk to me, as she had some very exciting information to impart. My grade average was one-half point above that of one Verda Guenzi, and Verda and I had the highest grade average of our class. I probably should at this point give credit to the newly hired empathetic gym teacher, who had taken me in hand and had introduced me to gymnastics. This had had a marvelous effect on me. I was no longer the class wimp with C and D grades in gym. I now got an A in gym, which got me that one-half grade point above Verda Guenzi. (Was possibly Mr. Durfee the gym instructor an assistant Guardian Angel? Whatever.)

At any rate, Miss Smith pointed out that the University of Denver gave a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to the graduating senior valedictorian in the six largest high schools in the state. If I maintained a straight A average for the remaining years in Sterling High School, I would be able to go to college at the prestigious university in Denver, a city where there could also be numerous musical opportunities. That put on hold my interest in architecture; the nearest school offering architecture was Kansas U., which of course was out of the question. And anyway, no one was employing architects during the Depression.

My parents were elated by this news, and my mother, who was your basic taskmistress, went into a full cry. For the next two and half years, I became no longer the class wimp but now the class grind, the resident ant being held in some awe by the grasshoppers, my classmates. Verda Guenzi didn’t have a chance, poor girl.

Off to the University of Denver

Now things were getting under way in this chain of events. My dad’s brother lived in Denver and was married to a professional musician, a singer of some note in the city. They suggested that I live with them while attending the University of Denver. Their four sons were grown and out of college. I could pay for my room by accompanying students in my aunt’s studio and eventually accompanying her on singing engagements. There would be other duties—in-house chore boy, chauffeur for Aunt Ruth on occasions, etc.

Sterling, a town of less than 8,000, had a remarkable music program in the schools; the high school band and orchestra perennially won first place in the state competitions. I had begun playing oboe when just out of the sixth grade, and in six years had become quite proficient. In 1938 a symphony orchestra was formed in Sterling to accommodate the sizable number of graduates of the school’s music program who still lived in town and who wanted an outlet for their talent. Though still in high school, I was playing oboe in this symphony that had been organized during my senior year. 

Guest conductors were brought in for the three concerts that we played. The most important of these guests was Horace Tureman, director of the Denver Symphony. I don’t remember what we played, but there must have been an important oboe part. At any rate, when I enrolled in music theory the first semester at the university, who should be the teacher but Horace Tureman! And wonder of wonders, he recognized me. After class, he asked to talk to me, saying that he remembered me from the orchestra concert he had conducted in Sterling, and would I like to fill the opening in the Denver Civic Symphony for the second chair oboe? The pay was not great, but it enabled me to pay my uncle for my board. Did my Guardian Angel arrange for all this? But I continue.

I had played piano since I was six years old, my mother being a piano teacher. And I had my first organ lessons the summer after the eighth grade, and became the organist at the Methodist church that fall. During my last year in high school, my parents managed to scrape up enough cash to enable me to drive the 140 miles up to Denver once a month for oboe lessons and organ lessons with the organist-choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral. Now, living in Denver, I hoped to be able to continue organ lessons, although payment for same would be a problem. But not to worry, said my teacher. There was an opening for an organist at Broadway Baptist Church. He told me to try out for the job; I did and got the job. Those four years of playing for First Methodist in Sterling for little more than a Christmas remuneration had prepared me for the paying job in Denver.

So now I had enough monthly income to pay for organ lessons, textbooks, and music. I had been pretty burned out by the tension of making straight A’s during high school, so now I had decided to slack off a bit in college. However, shortly after the first semester had begun, I received a nice letter from the University Chancellor congratulating me on having won the scholarship and indicating that academic excellence would be expected of me. Furthermore, he indicated that since scholarship students were expected to give some services to the university, and in view of my experience as an organist, I would be expected to play the organ for university functions as needed—before lecture in the chapel, for example. 

This was OK by me. It gave me unlimited access to the chapel organ for practice and resulted in my being asked by the Dean of Women to furnish background music on the Hammond electric organ in the posh Renaissance room in the library where teas were the style in those days. For each of these events I was paid $3 and engendered a high profile among the female elite of the student body who were wanting to go to the teas—the girls of the Pan Hellenic Society, the Associated Women’s Students, etc.

So my fingers (on the ivories) were doing the walking—well, the earning, and my parents did not have to fork over that first dollar for my undergraduate training, just an occasional dressed chicken sent by my mother to Aunt Ruth, but that was it. I felt that I was independent, I was living in a sophisticated environment at my uncle’s, and I no longer felt inhibited by my strict parents’ restrictions—and I had a ball! I was pretty naïve and thoughtless though; things had worked out so well for me, so why worry about the future? Incidentally, I did graduate eighth from the top in my class, due to the chancellor’s veiled admonitions four years earlier. But I must continue.

Clarence who?

I am not quite finished with undergraduate years. The next vignette may seem inconsequential, but keep in mind, it turned out to be very significant. The setting: a picnic in the mountains. Who was there? I don’t remember, just a bunch of college students. What? I was sitting on a big rock eating a hot dog when a blonde girl I didn’t know joined me and initiated conversation. She was quite hep, and shortly had me telling her about my interest in organ playing. At that point, she became very excited and said that I must meet her uncle from New York, Clarence Dickinson, who would be in Denver in a couple of weeks. Her enthusiasm caused me to think that Uncle must be a man of some importance. And indeed the name was familiar to me: Dickinson was the author of the organ method text given to me by my cousin, my first organ teacher, that summer after my eighth grade. 

I was only mildly impressed, however, but I did mention this information to my organ teacher at my next lesson. Well, his reaction let me know that Clarence Dickinson was indeed a person of importance, being the head of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. So, a week later, I was playing two of my biggest pieces at St. John’s Cathedral for Dr. Dickinson, my teacher having somehow made contact with him in Denver. Tall, dignified, with white hair and mustache, Dr. Dickinson was cordial, and, I thought, politely complimentary. But I was still only mildly interested; I was probably preoccupied thinking about the impending fall Pan Hellenic formal. By the way, I never encountered the blonde niece on campus again. Was she my Guardian Angel in disguise? If so, she must have been pretty bored by my lackadaisical lack of enthusiasm. But guardian angels must be patient, and fortunately Guardian Angel didn’t forsake me, as will soon become evident. She just became a bit more devious. So I continue.

Aunt Ruth: gateway to Eastman

I have mentioned my Aunt Ruth previously. There is no doubt that she was my mentor if indeed not my Guardian Angel. She introduced me to the facets of the professional musical world, and she and Uncle Arthur took considerable pains to civilize their shy and unhep nephew from Sterling. By my senior year, Aunt Ruth had sensed my lack of a clear picture of what I was going to do the next year after graduation. My Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences had presumably prepared me for getting a job in some small-town high school teaching history or social studies. But it was obvious that my interest and talents lay elsewhere—in music, of course. 

Aunt Ruth had a former voice student who had gone to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and had high praise for the school. It sort of became understood during my senior year that I should go to graduate school the year after graduation from Denver. So I applied to Eastman and was accepted. However, I don’t remember now that I was particularly concerned about the financial requirements this expensive school would entail. I guess that I naïvely assumed that it would work out some way. It always had, hadn’t it? Of course, if there were sounds of fluttering angel wings, I didn’t notice.

I taught some organ students during the summer and played oboe in the Sterling summer band. So I had a little money in my pocket when I started out for New York with my two friends in the model A Ford. We traveled economy class, camping out, cooking our own food, and cheating on entrance fees at places like Mount Vernon. After two weeks of travel and visiting the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, we arrived in Rochester. The semester had not yet started, but I went into the Eastman office to see what a student did about housing. There was no men’s dormitory, but I was given a sizeable list of rooming houses near the school that catered to Eastman students. The person I talked to about this looked at a register of entering students (probably to see if I were indeed a legitimate entrant), and seeing that I was to be an organ student she immediately told me that an organ job was open and would I like to try out for it? 

And OK, yes, a lady had called for an organ student to come to her home and play her pipe organ during tea that she was hosting. It was intimidating that in view of the address this would undoubtedly be in one of the mansions out on East Avenue where the old elite of Rochester held forth. Well, I had brought with me my “tea time” music, thanks to those $3 gigs I’d played for at the University of Denver—I’d “been there, done that.” This gig was indeed in a mansion on East Avenue and was on an Aeolian pipe organ, the instrument of choice in those days for those who could afford such a pipe organ in their home. And needless to say, the pay was considerably more than $3. And, when I had my audition at Emanuel Lutheran Church, I got that job. So I had money to pay for my room and board—board by eating on $1 a day at a cafeteria across the street from the school.

Did Guardian Angel arrange it that I got to Eastman several days before the other students arrived, so I had no competition for these jobs and the opportunities to make some money?

By this time things had improved for my parents. Sterling was having a modest oil boom, and new houses were being built. Three blocks of our farm abutted on a subdivision, and it became possible to sell some of our property for city lots. I felt able to ask for tuition money, since I’d cost my parents nothing for my undergraduate education.

Life at Eastman

I found life at Eastman a far cry from my Denver experience. As an undergraduate in Denver, I had played an organ concerto with the Denver Junior Symphony, the Grieg piano concerto with the University Orchestra, and the organ part to the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony with the Denver Civic Symphony. Big deals!!! Big toad in what I now found out had been a fairly little puddle. My uncle, who was somewhat of a VIP in some circles in the city, reported stiffly one evening at dinner that when he had that day been introduced to someone, he was asked, “By any chance are you related to Oswald Ragatz that young organist?” May I say, that that “made my day.” Country nephew, indeed!

But things now were different in Rochester. I was just a new student in one of the top professional music schools in the country. And believe me, there is no place more competitive than a big music school. Nearly all of my fellow graduate students had undergraduate degrees in music, many from Eastman itself. During my time at Eastman I learned discipline, humility, and respect for what the music profession really was like.

My Guardian Angel was no doubt cheering a bit seeing her/his protégé getting his comeuppance. But I was not being crossed off the list that year. Oh no! So I must continue this saga.

About the Lutheran church: it had an organ the likes of which I had not encountered. At that point, the organ world in the United States was just beginning to become aware of a renaissance in organ tonal design that had begun in the middle of the 20th century. The new instruments that were being built by many European builders and by a few avant garde builders in the United States were referred to as Baroque organs because the builders were attempting to design their organs on the tonal principles of the great old European organs of the 17th and 18th centuries. The organ at my church was a newly built instrument by the Walter Holtkamp Company, one of the first of these avant garde American builders. After a year with this organ at Emanuel Lutheran, I understood how to use it. This experience became very valuable for me, as will be noted later on.

The choir director at church was a talented young man who was the choral person in one of the big Rochester high schools, and his church choir was made up almost entirely of high-school age singers. I was getting some very good experience in choral techniques by observing how Ernie Ahern worked with the choir. I had had no training in choral work up to this point. The second year in Rochester, I actually did some private coaching with Mr. Ahern, and what I learned became the basis of my career as choirmaster through all my life.

One other facet of the Rochester experience must now be mentioned to make clear how the chain of events developed. If one link in the chain had not been there, there would have been no chain. When I obtained the list of rooming houses suitable for an Eastman student, my choice was purely arbitrary (or was Guardian Angel getting into the act again?). The first place I investigated was a big, old, three-story Victorian home, housing a dozen or so men, half of whom were students, the others single professional men. The maiden lady that ran the establishment had a nice vacant room (due, I presume, to the fact that I had gotten there before other students had arrived in the city). It was a congenial bunch of fellows, who all seemed to be on a tight budget, so we frequently ate supper en masse (I could hardly honor the meal as dinner) at the aforementioned cafeteria. 

Wilson College

One of the students, a fine violinist, and I became very good friends. It turned out that John’s father was the head of the music department of Wilson College, an undergraduate woman’s college in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. When John came back from Christmas holidays, he told me that the organ teacher at Wilson College was going on sabbatical the second semester the next year, and his father, Prof. Golz, thought I might want the job as substitute for a semester. Of course I was most interested, and as a matter of fact I went down to Chambersburg with John during spring break to be interviewed. I played for Prof. Golz, and he seemed pleased and offered me the job. A real teaching job with a salary—$850 for the semester as I remember it! But that was 1940, and remember, I was eating on a dollar a day, so that seemed like a gold mine. I was just beginning to cope with the competitive stress of Eastman and the demanding teaching of Harold Gleason, my organ professor, so I was very glad to stay on at Eastman for the summer and fall semesters, which enabled me to get a second major, namely in music theory. Then in January of 1941, I arrived at Wilson College, with its faculty comprising chiefly elderly ladies. Now that was an interesting experience for a 23-year-old kid hardly dry behind the ears. It could furnish material for another different document, but that would have no relevance in this tale, except for two non-Wilson people with whom I made friends.

There was a young lawyer in Chambersburg who was very interested in music, and since there were not many opportunities for social contacts with people in their twenties, he immediately contacted me, and we became lifelong friends. He lived with his mother in Chambersburg, and they were frequently visited by his sister Selma, a music teacher in Baltimore and a graduate of N.Y.U. Selma was about my age, and we became good friends also—we dated in fact.

The semester at Wilson College was all too short, and I was having to face a very uncertain future. World War II was in full cry, and I had registered for the draft while in Rochester. So that dark cloud was hovering over my head. But I had had no word from Uncle Sam, so in the meantime I had to hunt for a job. I registered membership with a teacher’s placement agency in Chicago—Clark Brewer. And in May I went to New York to interview with a couple of agencies there. But they wouldn’t even take my registration. Colleges were retrenching because of the war and were hiring no new faculty. 

That was a very low moment in my life. For the first time I was faced with having no idea what to do next. I was suddenly out in the big world. I started walking aimlessly up town on Fifth Avenue, my mind swirling. I may even have contemplated how near the Hudson River was and how long would it take one to drown oneself. But maybe I wasn’t that far down or that stupid. At any rate, by the time I’d walked from the ’40s where the agencies’ offices were and reached 59th Street and the beginning of Central Park, my befuddled mind began to remember that Selma, who of course had lived in New York City while attending N.Y.U., had at some point asked me why didn’t I look into Union Theological Seminary. That had seemed like a dumb statement. A seminary? I didn’t want to be a preacher! Far from it!

Oh, that Clarence

But now my tiny memory began to function, and by the time I got up to the Metropolitan Museum, I thought of the blonde at that picnic in the mountains years ago, and her uncle, Clarence Dickinson, who was the head of the School of Sacred Music at—yes—Union Seminary in New York City. With a quick visit to a phone booth, where wonder of wonders there was a phone directory, I determined that Union Seminary was at 120th Street and Broadway. The next 50 or so blocks were covered with considerable resolution, and crossing over west to Broadway, past the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Columbia University, I found the Gothic towers of Union Seminary and its quadrangle, which occupied two city blocks. 

Hot, tired, still dispirited and thinking that this was totally mad, I entered the main entrance and located the offices of the Music School. When I made it known to the secretary that I might be interested in becoming a student there, things began to move very rapidly. I was ushered into Dr. Dickinson’s office, where I was warmly greeted by Dr. Dickinson and then was introduced to Mrs. Dickinson, who, it developed, actually seemed to manage the business end of the school. The introductions were barely over when Dr. Dickinson said he remembered my playing for him in Denver, and that I had played very well. Where had I been since then? Eastman? Teaching at Wilson College? Interesting. Well, of course they would be delighted to accept me as a student working on the two-year curriculum leading to the Master of Sacred Music degree.

I had no money? No problem! The dormitory had two-room suites for students at $10 a month, and I could work a shift in the refectory for all my meals. And all of their students were placed in churches in Manhattan and in communities around New York City—on Long Island, in Westchester County, in Connecticut or over in New Jersey. Auditions for a job would be set up for me during the next month.

I could hardly believe all this. An hour earlier I was plodding the streets of New York wondering if I should be heading for the Hudson River. And had I listened, I might have heard Guardian Angel wildly flapping wings and snarling, “Oh ye of little faith, you silly twit. Why do you think I had that blonde girl join you on that rock that afternoon in the Rocky Mountains? And all of that other stuff we went through to get you this far!” Of course I wasn’t listening, but I do hope that I had the good grace to think that too many good coincidences were beginning to occur. My parents once had told me that the German name Oswald meant “Chosen of God.” What’s in a name? Maybe I should have paused to think. But of course, pausing and thinking were two things I’d not yet learned to do.

So I was set for two more years, Uncle Sam willing. I went back to Rochester for the summer to finish my master’s thesis. I had enough money saved up from that great salary at Wilson College to pay for a room at the Y, eat at the cheap cafeteria, and pay train fare to New York City twice for auditions.

The second audition was at Hitchcock Memorial Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, a posh suburb in Westchester County. As it turned out, this was one of the prime jobs the Union students had. I would be replacing Robert Baker, a doctoral candidate at Union, who had just been hired at First Presbyterian in Brooklyn, a real, full-time professional position. I felt the audition went well, but nothing definite was said at the conclusion of my playing and answering questions. I would have a junior choir, a choir of twelve high school girls, and a professional quartet—VERY professional. The soprano had just sung a solo recital at Town Hall and the contralto was singing at the Metropolitan Opera a couple of years later, and several years later I read a rave review of her Carmen sung in Vienna. 

This would not be the first time I was faced with a task for which I was not really prepared. But I will say, without professing any modesty, that I never ducked. I learned how to conduct from the console by doing it—not that that quartet needed as much conducting as I thought I should be doing. At the end of the interview the chairwoman, an elegant middle-aged lady, said she would like to take me to dinner at the Scarsdale Country Club. That didn’t scare me: my aunt and uncle had seen to it that I knew how to behave at dinner, hold the chair for the lady, use the flatware from the outside in, etc. I seemed to pass muster with my hostess, since she informed me at the conclusion of the evening that I was hired. Eureka! Not only was the salary quite sufficient to pay for the organ lessons (which were outrageously high even for those times), tuition, and incidental living expenses, but even for a concert and opera now and then and a few heady evenings taking a date dancing to big name bands on the Astor roof.

Life in New York City

Guardian Angel now left me for a time as I devoured the life in New York. Our church jobs only required our presence at Sunday morning services, so a number of very compatible friends from Union would rush back to Manhattan by 3 o’clock, meeting at one of the big churches that had afternoon vesper services, oratorios, etc. A typical Sunday afternoon would be St. Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue at 3, where the 60-voice choir sang an oratorio every Sunday with a stunning organist on an enormous triple organ—chancel, rear gallery, and dome, playable from a single console in the chancel. Then over to St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue to hear a fine boy’s choir sing the 5 o’clock vesper Evensong. Then after a quick snack at our favorite bar, Tops, it was to St. Mary the Virgin Church on 46th Street, where the young avant garde organist, Ernest White, presided over a high-church late Evensong service. When I heard Mr. White play, I knew that I would have to study with him someday—which I did one summer after I had been at I.U. for a couple of years. These experiences taught me more than all the courses at the School of Sacred Music about what music could be in an enlightened church—with money. I HAD A BALL, needless to say.

It was the summer after the first year in New York, and I had had a very lucrative June playing for eight or more fashionable Scarsdale weddings. I was set indefinitely at the Scarsdale church and at Union, and after the M.S.M. degree I could continue working on a doctoral degree at Union, as had my friend, Robert Baker. I had dreams of eventually also moving on to some big Manhattan church. But this had to wait for a few decades for one of my students, who now is at the First Presbyterian Church in New York and is a big name there. Guardian Angel had other plans.

Hoosier holiday

Mail time was always a time of anxiety. Several of my friends had been drafted, but there was no message from the government for me. BUT, there was a letter from Clark Brewer Teachers’ Agency in Chicago telling me that there was an opening for an organ teacher at Indiana University. INDIANA? That was just a state to quickly get through when one was en route from Colorado to New York (with the exception of that adventure at Spring Mill Park in 1939). But I could get my expenses paid to Bloomington, and—always on the lookout for a deal—I figured I’d go to Indiana and then on to Colorado to visit my parents. I hadn’t been home for two years. I would go by train and stop off in Rochester to take my orals on my master’s thesis. Sneaky. Smart. I wasn’t even remotely interested in a job in Indiana.

So that is what I did, and after a night sitting up on a train from Rochester to Indianapolis, and then a bus to this village in the wilderness, I was even less inclined to take it seriously. After a night in a hot room in the Graham Hotel, I wandered out to the campus, past yellow clay around the old business school and the auditorium, both of which had just been completed. With the help of a kind lady who thought I was a new student (my ears were slow to dry), I found the new music building. First I was interviewed by Dean Sanders, a smooth, formidable, sophisticated young man, and then by the chairman of the theory department. Then I was taken up to a small practice room where the only organ on the campus existed. And guess what? The instrument was a Holtkamp almost identical to the one I’d had in Emanuel Lutheran in Rochester. And of course I knew how to handle it. (Did Guardian Angel snicker smugly?) 

So I played a couple of big pieces, and because I didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the job, I was cool, probably to the point of being arrogant. Consequently, I greatly impressed the interviewers. It was explained to me that there was one organ major who would be a senior. Her organ teacher, who was also a pianist and taught theory, had been drafted. The organ “department” had been set up two years before when one Mary Christena had come over from the main campus wanting to major in organ. An organ curriculum was hastily fabricated, the Holtkamp was promptly purchased, and now they needed a regular organ teacher to get Miss Christena through her senior recital. 

I would teach any other organ students that might show up when it was learned that there was an organ teacher (there were nine of them), I would teach two sections of freshman music theory (after observing the chairman of the department teach another section of the same class each day), a music appreciation class for the general student body (there were about 70 enrolled, it turned out), and I would conduct the Choral Union, the only choral group on campus. This would result in my conducting in the auditorium a performance of Messiah, with orchestra, just before Christmas. I had never conducted an orchestra, to say nothing of an orchestra with a big chorus of 90 or so singers. But as I said earlier, I was not one to duck. I was new at academia and didn’t know that this teaching load was brutal and now would be considered illegal. It was a job, and I intended to be a success at any cost.

But I wasn’t offered the job on the spot, which was of no concern to me. I wanted to go back to New York. As a matter of fact, I called my parents and suggested that they come east instead of my going on to Colorado. They would meet me in Chambersburg, where I would go to visit Rudy and Selma Wertime. Did I tell Dean Sanders about this? NO, of course not. (Guardian Angel almost gave up on me at this point.) Three days later, my family and I were at the Wertimes in Chambersburg, when I got this irate call from Dean Sanders wanting to hire me. I don’t know how he found me. He probably contacted someone at Union who knew I had a girlfriend in Chambersburg and knew the name. I never asked. Maybe Guardian Angel slipped him a note.

So I was being offered a real job, a permanent job, albeit in the hills of Indiana. Well, I stalled a bit. My parents pushed, Guardian Angel was pushing, I am sure. I thought that surely that draft would get me any day, and a job at Indiana University would look good on my résumé some day, so I gave the dean a reluctant “yes.” The Dickinsons called me a day later suggesting that I postpone the appointment for a year, so I could finish the degree, but that was out of the question since Miss Christena would be awaiting her new teacher in September. So after a week in the city with my parents, I was off to Bloomington, Indiana, for an entirely new life, and as it turned out, a wife.

Mary Christena turned out to be a fine organist, and again I was faced with a situation I wasn’t quite ready for. But I didn’t duck, and she got a performer’s certificate with distinction for her senior recital. It was not until after Mary’s graduation that the student-teacher relationship segued into a more personal one. After a summer of dating, Mary went to New York to Union Seminary on my recommendation. I wanted her to experience the school, and especially the milieu of New York City and the great church music. However, she spent only one semester at Union, terminated by my going to New York to propose at Christmas. And that event can be subject for another paper—shorter than this one, I assure the reader. We were married June 4, 1944. (I never had trouble remembering that date. The assault on Normandy was to take place that week.)

There is one loose end that must be taken care of in closing: THE DRAFT. During my first Christmas vacation at I.U., I had three recitals scheduled in the East—for the American Guild of Organists Chapter of Baltimore, before the New Year’s midnight service at First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and in Chambersburg. Of course I had as yet not learned how to cope with the stress of this sort of behavior, and I took sick on the B. & O. train returning from Washington to Indiana. A few days later, my landlords called a doctor, and I was promptly swished off to the hospital in an ambulance with a severe case of pneumonia. (Guardian Angel was taking severe measures!) 

I was very ill, and had not the sulfa drugs just come on the market, I might have died. But after three weeks, I was released, only to go back to my room to find THE letter from Uncle Sam telling me to report for induction in Indianapolis. Why had it taken them so long to find me? I had registered in Rochester, giving my address as Sterling, Colorado, but I found out later that my registration had been sent to Sterling, Pennsylvania, wherever that is.  And when they finally found me, it was discovered that I had registered as a conscious objector—and that is another story—so interviews had to be made with all sorts of people in Colorado to see what sort of a jerk I was. (Was Guardian Angel back of all this? Surely not . . . ) But now I was going through induction in Indianapolis, then, pale, and suspect. The late January quota for draftees was unusually low that month, and after the examining doctors took a good look at me and they took a look at my 1-A-O classification, I was told that I probably wouldn’t do much good for the U.S. Army and to go back to I.U. “and teach them how to sing the Star-Spangled Banner.”  

So that’s how I met my wife. Do I believe in a Guardian Angel? Sometimes I almost think that I do. Maybe everyone has a similar chain of events that direct them through life. They just don’t spill the whole tale in a writer’s club. I leave it up to you, with apologies for being too forthcoming. n

What a pleasure it has been to prepare this essay for publication in The Diapason to honor and celebrate the 90th birthday of Dr. Oswald G. Ragatz. This inspirational tale provides a glimpse of the organ and church music scene in New York in the early forties, as well as the documentation of the beginning of the I.U. Organ Department at that same time. When Dr. Ragatz retired in 1983, that organ department that he found in Bloomington in 1942 with the Holtkamp organ in the practice room had grown to a department with a notable historic concert organ in the I.U. Auditorium, two respectable studio organs, and eleven pipe organs in practice rooms for student use. Ragatz built the department to a level where it could take its place along with the other large university organ departments in the United States. Currently, the organ department of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University is one of the largest institutions offering degrees in organ in the United States.  

With approximately 400 living IU alumni organists, the former students of Oswald Ragatz can be found all over the U.S. and in several foreign countries. Teaching and playing in both churches and universities, these Indiana University organists carry the Ragatz legacy with them in all of their endeavors. We salute you, Dr. Ragatz. Happy birthday and many happy returns.

—David K. Lamb

Donald Fellows is Director of Music/Organist of St. Paul Cathedral, Pittsburgh. He has been a member of CRCCM since 1984, and has served Roman Catholic cathedral churches in Buffalo, Chicago, Ogdensburg, and now Pittsburgh since 1999.

Monday, January 9

The 29th Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians took place January 9–12 at St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio. The conference began with the traditional greeting and introduction of members, which took place in the undercroft of the cathedral. A warm and gracious welcome was extended by host Paul Thornock, Bishop Frederick Campbell, and the Very Reverend G. Michael Gribble, rector of the cathedral. CRCCM Chair Peter Latona introduced the week’s agenda. The reception included the usual conviviality in addition to champagne and hors d’oeuvres. The evening concluded with Solemn Compline sung by the Men of the Cathedral Choir. 

Tuesday, January 10

The first full day began with Morning Prayer in the cathedral apse, which was preceded by an elegant prelude of music of Frescobaldi, Couperin, and Bach performed on the cathedral’s harpsichord (on loan from Columbus’s First Congregational Church) by Marie Rubis Bauer of St. Cecilia Cathedral, Omaha. Morning Prayer for Tuesday of the first week in Ordinary Time followed. 

Matthew Peattie of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music presented “The Sight and Sound of the Gregorian Propers: Medieval Chant in Nuance-Rich Manuscripts.” This fascinating presentation traced the origins and development of historical notational methods, which helped propel that which began as oral transmission. The Catholic Foundation served as the location for Peattie’s presentation (and others throughout the week). 

Lunch in the cathedral undercroft followed, sponsored by Peter’s Way Tours. Peter Bahou presented a sneak-preview of the possibilities for CRCCM XXX, which will take place in Rome, Italy. 

Organbuilder Paul Fritts presented “Building a Cathedral Organ,” in which he detailed the history of his own organ-building principles and experience, and how they contributed to the design and development of the St. Joseph Cathedral organ.  

Kevin Vogt presented “Striking the Tonic Chord: Mission, Vision and Practice in Church Music Ministry.” His interactive session detailed a model and structure for long-term prioritization for music ministers, as well as suggested steps for achieving those goals.

The week’s first business meeting was then held. Business agenda items included the nomination/election of steering committee members, a description of the newly restored CRCCM website, and discussion on the 30th anniversary conference to be held in Rome in 2013.

Participants found dinner on their own, which preceded the day’s concluding event, a stunning concert sung by the St. Joseph Cathedral Choir. The exciting and demanding performance included music of Wood, Tallis, Guerrero, Cornysh, Pärt, Mendelssohn, Briggs, Wisniewski, Howells, and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir. 

Wednesday, January 11

Morning Prayer was preceded by the prelude, performed by member Ricardo Ramirez of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral. Movements I and II of Suite for Organ, op. 5 by Maurice Duruflé were followed by Morning Prayer for Wednesday of the first week in Ordinary Time.

The Most Reverend Frederick F. Campbell, Bishop of Columbus, addressed the conference at the Catholic Foundation. His insightful presentation gave members a glimpse of worship through the eyes of a bishop. He spoke of the challenges of managing the liturgical life of an entire diocese, while detailing the essential role of the cathedral and its impact on the community. 

The afternoon session began with a “Liturgical Improvisation Workshop” led by David Briggs. Briggs related many stories of his own study of the art of improvisation, particularly those surrounding his time with Jean Langlais and Pierre Cochereau. Many agreed that the art can take as long as fifteen years of study before one can consider oneself a master of improvisation. Briggs concluded with an elaborate and dazzling improvisation on Pange Lingua Gloriosi.

Following a break sponsored by Peebles-Herzog Organ Builders, the conference continued with Richard Sparks presenting “Erik Ericson and the Swedish Choral Sound: What Can a North American Choir Learn from That Tradition?” Sparks provided examples of how to adjust choral tone and vowel placement. Consideration of this technique offered a greater variety of vocal tone for the participants. The second half of Sparks’s presentation included a rehearsal with members of the St. Joseph Cathedral Choir, by which his technique of vowel modification was demonstrated within their performance of choral literature. The excellent singers worked hard to adjust their technique in order to show the possibility of tonal variety. Repertoire included O Thou, the Central Orb and the Frank Martin Mass for Double Choir.

The concluding event of the day was a solo organ recital by David Briggs. Briggs was a featured performer in the dedication of the Fritts organ and was back by popular demand. His program included works by Bach, Haydn, Franck, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Duruflé, and a multi-movement improvisation on submitted themes. Briggs demonstrated the versatility and the tonal variety of the cathedral organ, and was very well received by the appreciative audience.

Thursday, January 12 

The day began with the Morning Prayer prelude, performed by Phillip Brisson of the Cathedral of the Assumption, Louisville, Kentucky. Bach’s Sonata in C Minor, BWV 526, was right at home in the hands (and feet) of Brisson and on the cathedral’s organ. Morning Prayer for Thursday of the first week in Ordinary Time followed. In addition to the elegant nature of the manner of prayer was the presence of Fr. James Moore, O.P. of the Western Province of the Dominican Order. Each Morning Prayer celebration of the week included a homily by Fr. Moore. A musician himself, he expertly offered timely reflections for the unique assembly.

The annual CRCCM Composers Reading Session was held in the cathedral choir room. Facilitated by Brian Luckner of St. Joseph Cathedral, La Crosse, Wisconsin, the session included new compositions of Ordinary texts of the Revised Roman Missal, in addition to several Christmas carol arrangements. The reading session provided many high-caliber compositions that will undoubtedly make their way to the repertoire lists of many member cathedrals. 

The afternoon was devoted to a tour of several important institutions and their facilities. Visits were made to the beautifully preserved Church of St. Mary, German Village, and its historic 1902 Wm. Schuelke/J. W. Muller (2001) organ. The instrument was demonstrated by Scott Gregory Hayes. Columbus’s First Congregational Church is the home of two historic instruments: the 1972 Beckerath and the 1931 Kimball. Resident organist James Bobb performed the demonstrations on these two unique and vastly different examples of organbuilding. St. Agatha Church houses the Opus 75 Bedient organ, 2006, built in Cavaillé-Coll style. Cathedral organist Robert Wisniewski performed works by Messiaen, Guilain, and Saint-Saëns. The final stop of the tour was at the Pontifical College Josephinum. Resident organist Jason Keefer performed music of Reger to demonstrate the recently relocated 2003 Beckerath organ in the seminary’s St. Turibius Chapel.

Solemn Eucharist was celebrated in the cathedral with Bishop Frederick Campbell presiding, the cathedral choir under the direction of Paul Thornock, organist Robert Wisniewski at the Gober organ, and improvisations by David Briggs at the Fritts organ. Music included Propers from the Roman Missal, Kyrie & Agnus from Mass for Five Voices by William Byrd, Psalm 44 by Robert Wisniewski, Gospel Acclamation by Kevin Vogt, Eucharistic Acclamations from the Mass in Honor of St. Cecilia (commissioned by St. Cecilia Cathedral, Omaha) by David Hurd, A Fair and Delectable Place by Richard Webster, and Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence by Edward Bairstow. Following Eucharist, the conference concluded with the closing banquet at the Sheraton. Fitting gratitude was expressed to CRCCM Chair Peter Latona; conference host Paul Thornock; the Very Rev. Frederick Campbell, Bishop of Columbus; and the Very Reverend G. Michael Gribble, rector of the cathedral.

Jonathan B. Hall is music director of Central Presbyterian Church in Montclair, New Jersey. His first book, Calvin Hampton: A Musician Without Borders, is available from Wayne Leupold Editions. He is past dean of the Brooklyn AGO Chapter.

While a junior or senior in high school, I found a newish LP in the local public library: Fugues, Fantasia and Variations—Nineteenth-Century American Concert Organ Music (New World Records, NW280). Dated 1976, it was no doubt intended as part of the vast tribute to the Bicentennial that many of us remember. Richard Morris was the organist, and he played the 1876 Hook & Hastings instrument in St. Joseph’s Old Cathedral, Buffalo, New York.

Dubbed the Centennial Organ because it had stood in the eastern end of the huge Main Building of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the four-manual instrument has been in Buffalo since 1877. It underwent change when it was electrified in 1925, but is substantially in conformity with its original design. Most recently, in 2001, it was restored by Andover and rededicated by Thomas Murray.

The Hook was the perfect organ for the repertoire, and the performance brought out the character of the instrument convincingly. But I was instantly captivated by the first piece. Taking up the whole of Side A was the Grand Sonata in E-flat, opus 22, by Dudley Buck. I was already a devotee of Bach, and to my ears the opening strains of the Buck were improbably sweet, heavy with a Victorian lyricism, very like a forbidden fruit. I was hooked.

Since then, I have treasured my own copy of this LP, and often re-read Barbara Owen’s comprehensive accompanying essay, which expanded the record jacket from single to double format. But my appreciation of the Grand Sonata has matured from a slightly guilty Victorian pleasure to serious musical appreciation. The work, in fact, bears hallmarks of advanced compositional techniques, and, indeed, points a way forward in American musical composition.

Cyclical structure

In 1982, Jerome Butera (editor of this journal) successfully defended a thesis at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago for his DMA degree. This thesis was devoted, in large part, to the Grand Sonata. He gives a clear, detailed account of the piece, situating it in nineteenth-century European practice. The thesis remains the most complete account of the work written to date.

But I am not aware of any study that points out the cyclical nature of this sonata. That is to say, each of its four movements begins with some reference to a particular shared musical idea. It is a simple idea, to be sure; but its presence adds luster to the first major organ sonata composed in America. It links the Buck piece, on a technical level, to the symphonies of Vierne, albeit on a more modest scale. At the same time, it places it on a more elevated architectonic plane than the early Widor symphonies.

The piece’s stated key is E-flat major. Buck begins with a rising E-flat major scale (Example 1). Then he colors the scale with the lowered chromatic neighbors of scale degrees 3, 5, and 6 (Example 2).

These color-tones are commonplace in Romantic music, simply ornamenting the third of the tonic and subdominant harmonies, and hinting at the V/V. With these extra notes, we can form these typical gestures of Victorian parlor music, both of which are common in the Grand Sonata (Example 3).

Nor does this scale, of itself, form a motif that is exactly repeated through the piece. However, as we shall see, its presence is subtly pervasive. The rising chromatic scale is basic to every movement of the Grand Sonata and contributes to the listener’s conviction that the piece hangs together, and thence to the work’s enduring popularity.

First movement

The motif is heard at the very outset of the work, in the first movement, marked allegro con brio. Here, one must respectfully disagree with the liner notes in the Morris album: the movement is neither especially a “virtuoso” one nor, most definitely, “in free form.” It is a textbook example of sonata-allegro form, and (in my opinion) at the high end of moderately difficult¹ (Example 4).

Note that the scalar material is in the tenor. This motif is echoed throughout the movement (Examples 5 and 6). Meanwhile, as mentioned, the movement hews closely to classical sonata-allegro form. The opening theme modulates to the dominant key of B-flat, whereupon we hear a second theme in a contrasting, lyrical style. (Here, we do not hear the cyclical material.) Energetic closing material rounds out the exposition. The development bandies the subsidiary ideas around in more or less remote keys, eventually leading us to the expected retransition and recapitulation in the tonic key. Note, as we end, the reappearance of motivic pitches in the pedal (Example 7).

Second movement

The second movement, an andante espressivo in the subdominant key of A-flat, prominently features the cyclical scalar material in both hands (Example 8). Cast in a spacious ABA song form, this movement not only calls to mind one of Beethoven’s “hymnic adagios,” but also the songs of Stephen Foster (who died in 1864) as well. It also reminds us of what made Buck so popular in his day. 

The secret of his success lies in his feeling for the voice, for he is a vocal writer par excellence. This is a gift. One may study the range of the voice and try to master its capacities, but without the intuitive sensitiveness to that which is vocal, the results are but poor; the music may be good but it does not fit the voice. This intuition is his in the highest degree, and his songs are rich, varied, picturesque, and stirring . . . [H]e does this so simply that we are unconscious of the mechanism, but feel the beauty and fitness of the whole.²

I agree in particular with the last sentence; to this day, we are likely to be “unconscious of the mechanism”! But we are not likely to miss Buck’s rich lyricism; and the theme of this movement is the very quintessence of nineteenth-century American song, at least of a certain popular variety.

Third movement

The third movement of the Grand Sonata, marked vivace non troppo, is a well-known scherzo and trio, which is reprinted (minus its trio) in the second volume of A Century of American Organ Music, edited by Barbara Owen. It is in the relative-minor key of C minor; the trio is in the parallel key of C major. Here, the cyclical theme is visible in the rising scale with sharp fourth (Example 9), and elsewhere.

Last movement

The final movement, aptly described as a “rollicking fugue” in the Morris liner notes, begins with a strong evocation of the cyclical theme. I have always very much enjoyed these measures, but never understood why Buck chose to begin the way he did. I suggest that the notion of the cyclical theme solves this problem neatly (Example 10).

And of course, the “rollicking” fugue subject repeats the very same pitches of that long-ago tenor line in the first movement (Example 11). This theme is an elaboration of the patriotic song “Hail Columbia” (Example 12). 

And we do not end this wonderful fugue—and sonata—without a final farewell to the motif in the last measures (Example 13). Note that this grand Victorian coda uses both of the little musical gestures shown at Example 2.

As mentioned earlier, this basic cyclical motive is not especially exciting. A rising major scale, wherein 3, 5, and 6 are colored by their lower neighbors, is not an innovation by any means; certainly it is not as historically important as the Tristan chord! But I think the evidence in the musical text is convincing. Dudley Buck consciously built his Grand Sonata with reference to that motif.

European influences

In retrospect, it is hardly a surprise. Buck went to Europe in 1858; he studied in Leipzig, Dresden, and Paris; his teachers included Beethoven’s protégé Ignaz Moscheles, as well as the then-current Thomaskantor, Ernst Richter, and others. This kind of motivic composition was hardly new at that time; there had been Beethoven, for a start, with his Pathétique sonata and Fifth Symphony; there had been Berlioz, Liszt, Reubke. (Speaking of Tristan, Wagner completed that opera in 1859, having laid aside his work on the Ring cycle in 1857.) Buck returned to the States in 1862, and accepted a job in Hartford. He composed the Grand Sonata in 1865. So, although he would not have been in Europe for the premieres of the Ring operas, there is no doubt that motivic composition was au courant and made an impression.

In his doctoral thesis, Butera points to the Grand Sonata as combining formal procedures of German Romanticism with “sentimental Victorian” parlor music.³ These turn out to be two sides of the same coin: the “parlor” idea of a chromatically inflected scale pervasively influences the entire work in a decidedly Germanic fashion.

It is thus most worthwhile to point out the modest, but effective, use Buck made of this principle. He would continue to do so: in 1880, he composed Scenes from Longfellow’s “Golden Legend”: A Symphonic Cantata, where the Leitmotiv system is very much in evidence.⁴

In 1877, Dwight’s Journal of Music published a favorable review of Buck’s Second Sonata, opus 77, premiered by Clarence Eddy in Chicago in November 1877. It praised the work in part by drawing favorable parallels to the Grand Sonata, which the reviewer found “ . . . somewhat too American in tone, uneven, and almost crude in places.” He also questions whether the classical sonata form is necessary, especially in light of Beethoven’s opus 111 and the six Mendelssohn organ sonatas.⁵ I do not question the youthful ebullience of the piece, its extroversion, cheeriness, and, in places, obvious lightness. However, such evaluations as “too American . . . uneven, and almost crude” should not daunt us. Further study of this composer—this cosmopolitan, lyrically gifted, all-American classic—is very much in order.

Conclusion: looking forward

Whatever its faults, Buck’s Grand Sonata has staying power. Very popular in its day, it has enjoyed high visibility wherever there is interest in Victorian or 19th-century American organ music—this, despite the frequent reaction that the piece is “too American,” mere “parlor music,” or, in a word, corny.

But what do we have, at the end of the day? Do we have a monument to a departed esthetic—a period piece—a curious and lovely heirloom? Do we have something like an amiable and slightly eccentric uncle? I think not—definitely not. The Grand Sonata is altogether more important than that. I am indebted to an old friend and colleague for expressing this insight so clearly. Joshua Banks Mailman, who recently completed a Ph.D. in music theory at Eastman, listened to me play the opening bars of the piece over the phone during a wide-ranging conversation. His reaction was swift. “My gosh,” he said. “Did Scott Joplin ever hear that piece?”⁶

Ragtime. Of course! It is so far to the foreground that it has gone unmentioned. The spirited, syncopated, mildly chromatic opening fits the style admirably. It is important to remember that ragtime and jazz both have roots, in part, in the idioms of 19th-century parlor music and popular song—idioms also very much in evidence in the Grand Sonata. And, as for the chromatically inflected scale on which the piece is based, the blues scale is easily extracted from it.

Granted, there are features of ragtime, blues, and jazz that are not present: what Joplin calls the “weird and intoxicating effect”⁷ is absent, among many other things. The piece is an ancestor, nothing more; it represents one of the streams of influence of these later styles. It seems to me that we organists have tended to overlook this.

Butera’s thesis accurately points out many salient features of this work, including both “conservative” and “progressive” elements. Among the former, he points out the use of sonata-allegro form; the four-movement plan of fast-slow-scherzo-fast; the employment of ternary forms; and a learned fugue to conclude. On the progressive side, he notes (inter alia) chromaticism in harmony and melody; tertian key relationships; dramatic exploitation of virtuosity (à la Reubke or Liszt); freedom of fugal treatment (ditto); and so on.⁸

To this good list we can add the choice of a style that would prove the ancestor of some of America’s most distinctive music; music that—like the war that ended in the year the Grand Sonata was composed—would fight to unite the “varied carols” of America’s singing. The result was to be a convincing, and world-transforming, musical idiom. This is surely quite a feather in the cap of a twenty-six-year-old composer. I say we should let him be as American as he likes. 

Joseph E. Robinson received his B.A. from California State University at Long Beach and his M.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He studied piano with Charles Shepherd, and organ with Clarence Mader, Paul Stroud, and Robert Prichard. He studied choral conducting with Frank Pooler and Howard Swan. During 1970–71 he was an organbuilding apprentice with the Schlicker Organ Co. under the direction of Herman Schlicker. He was organist at the University United Methodist Church in Buffalo, New York, and later St. James’ United Methodist Church in Pasadena, California. Now a retired business systems analyst, he is currently organist for the Mission Lake Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His interest in pipe organs and their music was sparked years ago when, as a sixth grade student, his class was taken on a field trip to a recital on the Mormon Tabernacle Organ. He has been married 35 years to his wife Pat, who has given her support for the large pipe organ in their home. One day during construction Pat said, “You need help, and I have found just the help you need—G. Donald Harrison.” She had found a golden retriever named Harrison on a rescue site. Harrison is now a happy member of the family.

I meet Herman Schlicker  

After completing a master’s degree, I talked over options with my teacher, Robert Prichard. Since I was very interested in all things related to pipe organs, a career in organbuilding looked promising. Mr. Prichard was well acquainted with Herman Schlicker, and broached the subject of my joining his firm as an apprentice. Schlicker was not interested. He said that the best apprentices come right out of high school and he had bad luck with those who had master’s degrees.   

Herr Schlicker flew to Southern California on business, and so it was arranged that while he was here I would be his chauffeur. One stop that I remember was at what is now the Crystal Cathedral. Their first building contained a small Wicks organ, which was to be replaced with a substantial instrument. Schlicker was among the contenders. At another stop, I was disgusted with the way they treated Mr. Schlicker—didn’t they realize they were talking with a great man?

After our final stop, Schlicker said to come on to Buffalo, and I would be their newest apprentice. I drove my red Corvair across the country and rented a room from Mrs. Herbst, who had rented to many a Schlicker apprentice. She asked us to keep our stereo playing of organ music down—it reminded her of her husband’s funeral. 

The factory

The factory is described in sales literature from the late 1960s:

From a modest beginning, the company has expanded to include 65 persons at the Buffalo factory-office, as well as sales and service representatives throughout the United States. The construction of the present modern factory was begun in 1947, and since that time six additions have been made to the building, giving a total working area of over 36,000 square feet, and including a spacious erecting room. 

That there was no master plan for this expansion from the beginning was obvious. For example, there was a large room devoted to lumber, that in most respects functioned well. However, there was no loading dock, or even a door to the outside. When a lumber truck came, Herr Friedrich (foreman) would announce “LUMBER!” and we would all drop what we were doing and rush to the truck to unload the lumber piece by piece and feed them through a window in the lumber room. On a cold winter day, that was a very unpleasant task.

Factory tours

Occasionally music committees or groups of organists would tour the factory. I was among those selected to conduct the tours. At first I would meet visitors at the door and then physically take them through the building, saying this is where we do this, and this is where we do that. Then I witnessed a tour led by Manuel Rosales, who was then at Schlicker Organ Co. He started at the melting pot in the pipe shop, went step by step in the construction of an organ, ending in the erecting room. Even though there was some crisscrossing in that method, it explained the organbuilding process better, and I changed my approach accordingly.  

Organization chart

When Schlicker described the apprentice position to me, he said that I would work in all aspects of organbuilding and eventually be able to do any task. In fact, his factory was full of workers that could do any task. He was proud of that. So, organization was simple: Herman Schlicker, President; Ken List, Vice President; Herr Friedrich, Foreman; organ builders, and apprentice, with a few exceptions such as the accountant. In practice, however, people would tend to gravitate to that which they did best. Take Don Bohall, for example. In many organizations, he would be referred to as Service Manager. He could quickly diagnose and fix problems, clearly the best man to call if an organ under the ten-year warranty experienced an unexpected malfunction. I asked Don how he managed to be exempt from the lumber calls. He told me that after I had been there a few years and made myself valuable in a particular operation I could announce that I was no longer going to do lumber. But I would have to be sure I was valuable enough. Some who tried that too soon were no longer doing lumber or anything else at the firm.  

Apprentice duties

The apprentice program at Schlicker’s was more typical of the German apprentice system than what we are used to in the USA. The view at the Schlicker Organ Company was: we pay you for this time and so you do whatever we ask of you, be it sweeping, cleaning messes, painting walls, or shoveling snow! So this, I thought, is why people who have worked so hard for a master’s degree don’t like it here. I was told a story of one such, who after driving from California worked one day, got in his car and drove back home. One unhappy apprentice had given the place a nickname “Stalag 15-30” [the address was 1530 Military Road]. Stories of this nature were a kind of unofficial initiation exam. 

Information on a need-to-know basis

At graduate school, you are filled with information and encouraged to ask questions and find answers. There were many things I wanted to know. For example, on most three-manual Schlicker organs, the pedal contains a unit 16–8 principal rank, but the 16 and 8-foot stopped flutes are always separate ranks. How come? I learned that awhile before my arrival, some former employees had stolen plans, records, scalings, and materials—everything they needed to make copies of Schlicker organs. So Mr. Schlicker was now cautious in sharing information, and an apprentice is at the bottom of the totem pole in need-to-know. 

I got my lecture in Schlicker organ design in a most unexpected way. One holiday season, there was in the factory a 32′ Bombarde, which was to be placed in an organ previously finished with that stop prepared for. Schlicker had placed a small two-rank unit organ in a Buffalo bank for publicity purposes. Since I could play, I was assigned to play Christmas music on the little organ while the bank was open. One day after the bank closed, I returned to the factory, where I was greeted by Ken List. Ken said, “So how is Merry Christmas on the Gedeckt?” I responded, “Well, it’s OK, but that little organ really lacks a proper foundation. Too bad we could not have hooked up that 32′ Bombarde with it.”  

Schlicker overheard the conversation, and while I thought anyone would recognize that I was being outlandishly facetious, Schlicker thought I was serious that the third rank in an organ should be a 32′ Bombarde. “You are there representing the Schlicker Organ Company,” he said. “You know nothing. A lot has to happen in an organ before you include a 32′ Bombarde.” So I heard all about small to medium to large organs in a very informative lecture, though I could have done without the frequent “You know nothing” comments.  

A wiring error

An electro-pneumatic organ was being set up for testing. There was a testing wiring harness used for such purposes. I said, “I have never done this before; there are surely a lot of wires here.” I was told, “There is nothing to it, just start here at the end, and take each wire in sequence.” So I did, but it was the wrong end. Final result was that low C sounded from the highest note on the keyboard and vice versa. I started to play a hymn. “What on earth are you doing?” “I thought I might never again have the opportunity to hear music inverted and wanted to see what it sounds like.” “You idiot, why don’t you just broadcast to the world what a fool you are!” So I stopped abruptly. Fortunately this was the testing wiring harness and not the organ’s permanent wiring.

A bright and dim bulb

Sometimes my education was of use. When something unusual came along, such as “What the heck is an 8/9 None?,” I would know the answer. There was a fine older gentleman, whose name I unfortunately no longer remember, who was in charge of Schlicker consoles. He would review with me console layouts, controls, order of stops, etc. He said, “You know much more than those guys. You should be recognized for your knowledge and taken off the lumber run.” Obviously I liked him. On the other hand, as the wiring example shows, in construction matters I was a rookie. One day I was assigned to a task and heard rumblings, “I don’t know why they assigned HIM this task. HE doesn’t even know how to use a HAM-MER.” The speaker usually got this task. Since in this case it was an overtime task, I was robbing him of time-and-a-half pay. Welcome to the world of office politics. I did not like it, and was a rookie there as well. Fortunately for future employment I learned 1) never be cruel to someone and 2) never be the company scapegoat. 

Organ pipes

Most flue pipes were manufactured in the pipe shop. Reed pipes built to Schlicker specifications were imported from Europe. For flue pipes it was considered that for the vast majority of cases, such things as tuning scrolls, pipe slotting, and tuning collars were detrimental. Take tuning collars, for example. A tuning collar means that at the top of the pipe there is a sudden increase in scale. On bass pipes that were nearly cut to length, the effect is minimal. But on treble pipes, the distortion of pipe shape is considerable. Thus Schlicker organs had pipes cut to length and were cone tuned. This practice was one reason why Schlicker mixtures had outstanding cohesion with the principal chorus.  

The Schlicker sound

Open-toe voicing, low wind pressure, low cutups, etc. are only part of the story. It is well known that some Aeolian-Skinner contracts, such as the Mormon Tabernacle and Grace Cathedral, specified that G. Donald Harrison do the final voicing. It is the artist who does the finishing that gives an organ its distinctive sound; thus organs of the same manufacturer may sound different depending upon who does the finishing. At the Schlicker Company, we had two superb voicers who finished at least the more important instruments. Wally Guzowski voiced with a bold, fresh, exciting sound. I decided that someday I would like him to voice my residence organ when I could afford such. Louis Rothenberger Jr. had a more elegant, refined sound. [We always specified the Jr. because LR senior had also been a voicer.] 

They were aware that their styles were different, and Wally told me that they worked together to try and make a uniform result. There should be a specific sound quality associated with the brand. These men produced some instruments of distinction. As voicers, they would physically adjust pipes. As finishers in the final location, they would sit at the console, playing through a rank of pipes, pick a note and shout a command to someone like me in the pipes: “Lower the languid,” “Pull the upper lip forward,” “Narrow the windway,” “Increase the cutup,” and so forth.

Deterioration of the Schlicker sound 

As years have passed, I have noticed that some of my favorite instruments no longer have the magic they possessed when they were new. More is involved than just my ears getting older; recordings of the original instruments captured the magic. Here is what I think may have happened. Schlicker instruments were cone tuned and were very stable in tuning within themselves, but the whole instrument goes flat in winter and sharp in summer.

Take a fictitious organ service man Sam Cifodelance, for example. Sam gets a customer who has a Schlicker organ. He orders some tuning cones from a supply house. In winter, when the organ goes flat, he pounds the pipes with the pointed end of the tuning cones to bring the pitch up to A440. In summer, he pounds the pipes with the other end to bring the pipes down to A440. Over time this attention alters pipe mouth dimensions slightly, and what was an outstanding sound becomes an ordinary sound. 

This theory is an educated guess, but I do know that who does the servicing makes a huge difference, is a concern of organbuilders, and improper servicing deteriorates an organ’s sound. It saddens me that some of my favorite instruments have deteriorated. 

Schlicker’s bias

Bad for Aeolian-Skinner, but providential for Herman Schlicker was the rise in popularity of the Orgelbewegung. With his strong German accent and experience in German organbuilding, he was in an ideal place to be the foremost American builder in that style. I discussed with Schlicker a trip to Europe I was going to take. We went through the German instruments I was going to see. “Yah, you must see that,” he would say. For Holland, “There are some good things there.” For France, “A waste of time.”  

The good consultants

One of the first things you do as an apprentice is to rack pipes on a windchest. Here were some pipes that looked like a double row of little milk cans with their lids soldered on top. This experimental rank had been specified by Paul Manz. Louie Rothenberger Jr. was having a very difficult time getting the pipes to speak at all. I made the comment, “I don’t see why we need organ consultants at all. A church should just choose a builder and let their expertise do the job.” Louie responded, “You are new here. You will eventually have the opportunity to visit many organs. When you do, compare those that were built under consultants such as Paul Manz, your teacher Clarence Mader, Paul Bunjes, E. Power Biggs and so forth, with those that had no consultant. I think you will find that our best organs had consultants such as these.” He was right!

When I was at Occidental College, I played among other things French Romantic organ music that I liked. I commented to my teacher Clarence Mader how well the Schlicker played that music. He replied, “Yes, you need French reeds to play that music and I requested that Schlicker include them in the Swell One division.” I bring this up because on his own, Herman Schlicker would not have given the Swell One division a French flavor. Somehow they managed to do that and yet have it integrate beautifully with the rest of the instrument, resulting in far greater versatility. The very best instruments somehow achieved a result of being more than the sum of their parts, a joy to play and to hear. 

The not-so-good consultants

These are the ones who think they know more about organbuilding than the organbuilder, specifying scales, wind pressures, mouth widths, voicing techniques and so forth. One such organ had so many conditions that the final result did not have the distinctive Schlicker sound. Herman Schlicker summed it up thus: “It might as well have been built by ———.” [I don’t know if ——— would want to claim it either.]

In finishing an organ, Wally Guzowski explained to me, “You have to be very diplomatic with the organists. When they tell you what they want, smile and nod your head like you agree with them.  When they are gone, disregard everything they said. Organists know nothing about organ finishing.” A quite common occurrence in finishing an organ would be the arrival of the organist with some last requests for what was going to be his instrument. At that time, it is too late. A successful finishing process brings out the maximum beauty a pipe was designed to give. An organist’s request to now make a German Principal more like a French Montre, for example, robs the instrument of its potential. That decision should have been made long before.¹

Insubordination

I was given two rules, which probably came about due to prior difficulties with employees who were also organists: 1) When you are on an assignment do not play the organ, even during a break or after you are done. Customers are charged by the hour and we don’t want them to think they are paying for you to play the organ. 2) Because you may be called at any time to travel, do not accept a church organist position. It is not fair to the company, the church, or yourself. Rule 1 was difficult to manage; we worked on some beautiful instruments. But I did manage this rule in spite of working on some instruments I longed to play. 

 After arriving in Buffalo, each Sunday I visited various churches to see and hear organs and get a feeling of that particular church. One Sunday, I visited the University United Methodist Church. While certainly not the finest organ in town, the people were very friendly and when they discovered that I was from California and knew no one in town, they invited me to meals and made me feel at home and said, “You have friends here.” Shortly thereafter their organist moved away. “Do you play, Joe? Would you mind substituting for a while till we find a permanent organist?” A few Sundays later, “We want you to be our organist.” “Impossible—I can be called out of town at any time without notice.” “We can have someone fill in on the piano when that happens. Please be our organist.” It seemed like this would work; they knew I would leave without notice when Schlicker called. I would fulfill my obligation to him, and what he did not know would not hurt anyone. This happy arrangement continued for many months. 

I have a couple theories of how Ken List found out about this arrangement. “Joe, you have to tell Schlicker.” I dreaded that conversation, but I was caught, so I set up a time to meet with him. Schlicker told me he understood after all the time I had put into learning to play the organ that I would not want to just let the talent die. So he instructed me to resign and he would arrange for me to have practice time at his church, which had a very nice organ. As a naive young person, I thought as long as I can do my job, he has no business telling me what I can and can’t do on my own time. And there were many around me who encouraged that thinking. Perhaps more than the mundane tasks, this kind of thing is the reason Schlicker had trouble with master’s degree organists. In subsequent employment ‘my own time’ would be redefined by being on call 24/7 with aids such as beepers and later, cell phones. One boss would even follow me into a restroom stall. So now I see that Schlicker was at least trying to meet me half way. 

Money

Perhaps because organs are very expensive instruments, money is a problem in organbuilding. Herman Schlicker was a master of finance. We did not look forward to his daily rounds at the factory. “Robinson, why don’t you gold-plate it while you are at it?” That comment translates to the work is very good, but your progress is too slow and we can’t afford it. So I would speed up. Then, “Robinson, what is this? It will never do! The Schlicker organ is a quality instrument.” While making us employees stressed out during his rounds, he did achieve the right balance, getting us to do good work with enough production speed to be cost effective and keep the firm in business. After he died, that balance was lost and the firm eventually went bankrupt, as have far too many organbuilding firms.²

As an apprentice I made very little. One day I got an unexpected raise. Congress had just passed an increase in the minimum wage, and the salary I was making was below the new minimum. Schlicker added an extra five cents an hour because he did not want to be seen as paying minimum wage. As an apprentice, I rented a room. Most full-fledged organbuilders lived in apartments. I wanted to live in a house in the suburbs and I did not see that happening at any time in the future if I stayed on my current path. Many things I loved about organbuilding—your part in making a thing of beauty. But there were other important things to me that were either denied or out of reach. So my house in the suburbs was financed by leaving organbuilding and becoming a business systems analyst. And I am quite happy with my self-built 22-rank residence organ. Unfortunately, lack of space in my residence made it impossible for the third rank to be a 32′ Bombarde.

The author wishes to thank Justin Matters for permission to use the photographs of Schlicker organs.

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Of the people, by the people, for the people . . . 

. . . that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

These words from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address are in tribute to those killed during the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg of the American Civil War. In the eulogy he delivered after Lincoln’s assassination, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner said, “The world noticed at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech.” Sumner’s other claim to fame is as namesake of the Sumner Tunnel that connects downtown Boston to Logan Airport by passing under Boston Harbor.

Perhaps it’s rare for words like these to appear in the pages of a trade journal, and in today’s volatile political climate I know very well that I tread on dangerous ground. The relationship between politics and religion is strong and prevalent, though the United States Constitution specifically calls for the two to be separate. The differences in worship styles between Northeastern Anglicans and Southeastern Evangelicals are as vast as the wide range of styles found in the world of the pipe organ.

Like it or not, the pipe organ has been associated primarily with the church for some five hundred years. It’s hard to imagine what the pipe organ would be today were it not for the influence of the church. From the late Renaissance to the modern day, most of the music written for the organ comes from the church, and by extension, most of the organ music we might consider secular couldn’t have happened had the church not provided us with the parade of instruments that is our history. One might argue that the organ symphonies of Vierne or Widor are not ecclesiastical music, but without the Cavaillé-Coll organs in the grand churches of St. Sulpice and Notre Dame in Paris, I doubt those two masters would have gotten it together to write that music.

Some twenty years ago my friend and colleague, the widely respected organ historian Barbara Owen, commented, “We have to get the organ out of the church.” I was dumbfounded—I guess because I found I was too dumb to understand what she meant. How could the organ possibly survive without the church? It was the comment of another friend and colleague, Steven Dieck, President of C.B. Fisk, Inc., that enlightened me a little. To paraphrase Steve’s comment, large portions of modern society might never have the chance to hear a pipe organ—those people who would never be caught dead in church, or more to the point, those who would only be caught dead in church! After all, some people never go into a church unless they’re in a coffin.

The organs we find in concert halls, university auditoriums, and increasingly rarely, in municipal auditoriums are available to the general public without risk of exposure to the perceived perils of organized worship, and it’s the municipal organ that is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The first American municipal organ appeared in 1864 when E. & G. G. Hook built a four-manual organ with 64 stops for Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. That organ was restored by the Noack Organ Company in 1982 and is still very much in use. Records show that Roosevelt built an organ with 129 stops for the Chicago Auditorium in 1889, the year that Benjamin Harrison was inaugurated as America’s twenty-third president, and three years after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. I don’t know how many organs that large had been built before 1889—but it sure must have stood out as one of the great cultural icons of its day. And with what I know about the organs built by Hilborne Roosevelt, it must have been a knockout.

In 1882, Thomas Edison proved the practicality of the commercial and residential use of electricity by installing electric lighting in the home of J. P. Morgan at the corner of Madison Avenue and 36th Street in New York. When the Roosevelt organ was built, the development of electrical applications was still in its infancy—the organ had tracker action. That’s a huge organ. The stoplist shows that there were indicators for low, medium, and high wind pressures—imagine the army of people needed to pump that organ.

In 1921 E. M. Skinner built a five-manual instrument with 150 stops for the new 13,000-seat Municipal Auditorium in Cleveland. Those were the days before radio and recordings, and it was expensive to hear the few great symphony orchestras across the country, so the municipal organ was the only way for many to hear live performances of great music. Accounts of the introduction of that organ give us a glimpse into the popularity of the public pipe organ. Following the dedication of the organ, Harold MacDowell, the Cleveland City Architect wrote: 

Despite the oppressive heat, the crowd which had been collecting since noon soon exceeded the capacity of the mammoth hall and long before the time set for the inaugural recital all seats were filled and more than 5000 men, women, and children were crowding the corridors of the colossal structure. The police which were out in large numbers were at first able to hold the crowd into a semblance of order, but soon gave up in despair as the eager mob swept all before it.¹

That means there were at least 18,000 people in attendance. A riot before an organ recital? Wow!

It wasn’t only big cities that had municipal organs. Melrose, Massachusetts is about seven miles north of Boston. Today there are around 29,000 residents. In 1919 when the Austin Organ Company installed the 78-stop organ in Soldiers and Sailors Hall, just over 18,000 people lived in Melrose. As we learned in Cleveland, that’s just enough to make an audience.

If you’re interested in reading more about this heritage, visit the website www.municipalorgans.net, where you’ll find a chronological list of American Municipal Pipe Organs. You can click your way further in to find stoplists and histories of most of the instruments. Thanks to the creators of that website for making so much information available. I’m sure that was a labor of love!

Two cities in the United States still have important secular organs with seated municipal organists: San Diego, California and Portland, Maine. San Diego is home to the Spreckels Organ, housed in the Spreckels Organ Pavilion at Balboa Park. It’s one of the world’s largest outdoor organs, and though it must compete with the flight paths of San Diego International Airport, it remains a popular attraction. Municipal Organist Carol Williams and visiting artists offer weekly concerts. Like so many other cities, San Diego has been struggling to manage a deficit budget, and after much well-reported arguing, the City Council voted in 2011 to renew Williams’ contract for ten years, continuing the city’s sizable contribution to her salary. You can read an article about the city’s decision in the San Diego Union Times at https://www.utsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/02/civic-organist-contract-renewed/?ap. The article cites that the city has a $40,000,000 deficit—but they approved funding of $286,000 for a ten-year contract for Williams. Compare that to Alex Rodriguez (aka A-Rod) of the New York Yankees who was paid $33,000,000 in 2009. That’s more than $203,000 per game, which is close to ten years for Carol Williams. According to www.baseball-reference.com, A-Rod’s aggregate salary as a baseball player is $296,416,252. That’s enough money for a thousand municipal organists for ten years. Play ball!

As the weather in Portland, Maine is nothing like that of San Diego, Portland’s Kotzschmar Organ is indoors, located in Merrill Auditorium of City Hall. Housed in an elegant case at the rear of the stage, and sporting a five-manual drawknob console, this grand instrument is the pride of its city. And while San Diego has just over 3,000,000 residents, the entire State of Maine has about 1,300,000 people, 64,000 of whom live in Portland, the largest city in the state. To put the scale of the state in closer perspective, the capital city of Augusta has 18,500 residents! 

The institution that was Curtis

Cyrus H. K. Curtis grew up in Portland, Maine. His father Cyrus Libby Curtis was an interior decorator and amateur musician who met the struggling immigrant musician Hermann Kotzschmar in Boston, and offered to help him establish himself in Portland. Kotzschmar became conductor and pianist for the Union Street Theatre Orchestra, in which Curtis played the trombone, and organist and choirmaster of the First Parish Church (Unitarian) where Curtis sang in the choir. Can you detect a pattern? As Kotzschmar was gaining traction in Portland, he lived with the Curtis family, and Cyrus Libby Curtis gave his son the name of his favorite musician, hence the initials H.K.

In the ensuing years, Kotzschmar founded choral societies and orchestras, performed as conductor, organist, and pianist in countless concerts, and taught a generation of the city’s musicians.

Meanwhile, Cyrus H. K. Curtis really made something of himself. He founded the Curtis Publishing Company in 1891 and subsequently launched the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies’ Home Journal. Later he founded Curtis-Martin Newspapers, Inc., whose properties included the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Evening Post. Cyrus
H. K. Curtis made a lot of money, and he carried the musical influence of Hermann Kotzschmar all his life. He purchased three pipe organs for his home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania (Aeolian, Opus 784, 943, and 1374); he donated a 160-stop Austin organ to the University of Pennsylvania where it still stands, recently renovated, in Irvine Auditorium. He gave huge amounts of money to the Philadelphia Orchestra, and his daughter Mary Louise Curtis Bok founded the Curtis Institute of Music, named in honor of her father. Hers was a particularly classy honor as the Curtis Institute was founded nine years before her father’s death!

§

At about 2:00 in the morning on January 24, 1908, a fire started in the city electrician’s office in Portland’s City Hall, ironically caused by an electrical short-circuit in the Gamewell Fire Alarm System that was housed in the office (pesky new-fangled contraptions). Because the alarm system was the first thing to go, the fire quickly went out of control and City Hall was destroyed. Coincidentally, Hermann Kotzschmar died on April 15, 1908. After plenty of discussion, the remains of the building were razed and the cornerstone for the new City Hall was laid on October 6, 1909, and on January 10, 1911, former Mayor Adam Leighton announced that Portland native Cyrus Curtis was donating a pipe organ to be installed in Merrill Auditorium of the new City Hall in memory of Portland’s most prominent musician.

The new City Hall was dedicated on August 22, 1912. Municipal Organist Will C. Macfarlane was at the organ. The program included Macfarlane’s performance of Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, a report from the city building committee (Adam Leighton, chairman), presentation of keys to the building by Owen Brainard of the architecture firm Carrere and Hastings (designers of the New York Public Library and the House and Senate Office Buildings in Washington, D.C.), presentation of the organ by Cyrus Curtis, unveiling of the Hermann Kotzschmar bust by his widow Mary, and acceptance of the whole shebang by Mayor Oakley Curtis (no relation). Macfarlane also played his own compositions Evening Bells and Cradle Song, and a transcription of Kotzschmar’s Te Deum in F. Judge Joseph Symonds gave an oration, and representing the Catholic Bishop of Portland, Rev. Martin A. Clary gave the prayer and benediction. Must have been a lovely afternoon.²

§

In January of 2007, the FOKO board asked the organ committee to investigate the possibility of some additions and major repairs to the organ. Specialists were called in to assess the questions and replied that the general condition of the organ was poor enough to make the work feasible. FOKO responded by inviting a group of widely respected experts to participate in a public symposium in August 2007 to discuss the organ in detail and develop recommendations for the future of the instrument. The participants were Joe Dzeda, Nick Thompson-Allen, Jonathan Ambrosino, Walt Strony, Curt Mangel, Peter Conte, and Tom Murray. Craig Whitney of the New York Times served as scribe and followed the event with a written report. As chair of the organ committee, I was moderator of the event. After years of study, the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ and the City of Portland announced plans for the renovation of the organ. In September 2011, Portland’s City Council approved a grant of $1.25 million for the project. Just before the Council meeting, Mayor Nicolas Mavodone, City Manager Mark Rees, and two members of the City Council joined me on the stage of Merrill Auditorium for a tour of the organ. The mayor marveled at the thousands of pipes, took a slew of photos with his cell phone, and commented that he had stood on the stage dozens of times presiding over civic events without having any idea what was behind the organ case. He repeated those comments for the City Council and the members approved the funding unanimously. Watching both elected and appointed city officials discuss and approve the motion to care for that organ at such a meaningful level was a great experience for an organbuilder.   

FOKO is raising the balance to fund not only the organ’s renovation but to endow the positions of Municipal Organist and Organ Curator, and to extend the organization’s ambitious and effective education programs, bringing Maine’s schoolchildren together with the King of Instruments.

The renovation of the organ will be accomplished by Foley-Baker, Inc., of Tolland, Connecticut. Having completed similar projects on the organs of the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston (The Mother Church), Symphony Hall in Boston, and the Aeolian organ in the Chapel of Duke University, Mike Foley and the staff of FBI bring vast experience to this project.

To commemorate the centennial, FOKO will present a Centennial Festival of concerts and masterclasses starting on Friday, August 17, 2012, and culminating with a grand Kotzschmar Centennial Concert on the actual anniversary, Wednesday, August 22. Participating artists and presenters include Tom Trenney, Walt Strony, Mike Foley, Dave Wickerham, Frederick Hohman, Michael Barone, Thomas Heywood, Peter Conte, John Weaver, Felix Hell, John Bishop, and Ray Cornils.  

The festival will be housed at Portland’s Holiday Inn By the Bay. Details will be announced soon. Like a hawk, you should watch the website of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, www.foko.org. Summer in Maine is as good as it gets, the Kotzschmar Organ is a grand instrument, soon to be prepared for its second century. And you’ll never have a better chance to gather with such a list of luminaries in such an intimate city. Hope to see you there.

A. David Moore, Inc., 

North Pomfret, Vermont

All Hallows’ Parish, Davidsonville, Maryland

From the builder

Designing an organ for All Hallows’ Church involved some unique challenges for its builder. The small brick building dates to 1734, and was gutted by fire in 1940. Rebuilt much as it was (without the Victorian alterations), the original walls and brick floor were retained. It seems that until 2010, the parish never owned a pipe organ.

The decision to place the organ on the left side of the chancel included the requests that the casework be no taller than the altar window, that the instrument be no larger than the sacristy in the opposite corner, and that the case was to “fit” the furnishings of the room. Thus, the back and left sides of the organ are against the walls, and maintenance can be done only through the front and right side of the main case. The detached console and Positiv division are one unit, adjacent to the case front, and facing the choir on the other side of the nave. Three flats of Open Diapason and Principal basses face the congregation, and the side contains two flats of Open Diapason basses, one of which is in a door that can be opened for Great and Pedal tuning. Those offset basses are operated by a remote assisting mechanism in which a small amount of air travels down a 5/16″ diameter tube that feeds a small wedge bellows and valve below each pipe.

The Great is on a C and C# chest, with the smallest pipes in the middle. The Positiv is played from the upper keyboard; the chromatic chest is at floor level; and the pipes are tuned by removing a grille on the top of the case. The manual keys are suspended, with a backfall system that pulls up the Positiv pallets; angled trackers and a rollerboard operate the Great pallets. The Positiv stop knobs are in the console and the Great knobs project from the main case on the organist’s left. The basswood tables of the chests will not split; the sliders are of quarter-sawn maple; the slider seals are of Neoprene; there is no plywood in the organ; the wind pressure is almost two inches; and the temperament is Kirnberger III.

Though the acoustics are quite good and the sound of the organ is focused by a curved ceiling, there is a slight “flutter echo” heard by a listener in the center of the room. The maple case is of wood harvested on the Moore farm in North Pomfret, Vermont, and sawn on location by a Wood-mizer band sawmill. There are no carvings on the case, but some subtle ornamentation appears at the tops of the pipe flats. The cornice of the case was copied from the 18th-century American case in Old North Church, Boston, and the All Hallows’ sacristy cornice was changed to match it.  

In the Great, the metal pipes are 28% tin and 72% lead, with small amounts of copper, antimony, and bismuth; the metal was cast from old organ pipes. The 8′, 4′, 22⁄3′, 2′, and 13⁄5′ ranks are close to Hook pipe scales, and have fairly low cutups and moderate nicking. The Holpipe is a metal chimney flute, and has 12 stopped wood basses; a new Haskell bass serves the Viol; and the Hautboy is an exact copy of a Hook stop. The Positiv Stop’d Diapason is of wood, small in scale but with a good fundamental tone, and is copied from a Geo. S. Hutchings stop; the Flute is of stopped and open wood and has metal trebles; the Fifteenth has 24 Claribel-style open wood basses and metal trebles. The German scales for the Dulcian are a composite, and there are half-length resonators in the lowest octave. The basses have wood blocks and shallots made in one piece, and the dimensions for the shallot openings, bores, tapers, and inside resonator diameters are close to 18th-century North European practice. The use of wood for a shallot avoids the need for lead or leather facings. In terms of hardness, the wood is somewhere between lead or brass and a leathered surface, and the brass tongues are fairly wide and thick. Long tuning wires are labeled on the tops and are easily reached.

The installation of A. D. Moore’s Opus 34 was enjoyable, and there were many trips to Davidsonville for installation, final voicing, and tuning. The crew of builders—A. David Moore, Tom Bowen, John Atwood, and Lubbert Gnodde—stayed with Jan and Mike Power. Mike Menne is the organist at All Hallows’, and collaborated on the organ’s specification. Mr. Gnodde played the dedicatory recital on November 7, 2010, which included works by Alain, Bach, Sweelinck, Scheidemann, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Couperin, Langlais, and the “Flower Duet” from Lakmé by Léo Delibes, featuring Sharon Potts and Laurie Hays, sopranos.

—E. A. Boadway and A. David Moore

From the organist

All Hallows’ Parish, also known as South River Parish, is one of the original parishes established by Act of the General Assembly of the Province of Maryland in 1692. As a worshiping community, it existed as early as 1650, with its first written record that of the birth of Thomas Chaney on 1 March 1669. The original church building, now lost, was probably of timber construction, and either burned or deteriorated to the extent that a new building, at a new site, was constructed, with the aid of a levy of 20,000 pounds of tobacco, around 1727–1730. The church bell, in a separate wooden tower, bears the inscription “Belonging to St. All Hallows’ Church 1727” and was probably provided by Queen Anne’s Bounty. 

The 1727 building, still in use, is a modest brick, hipped-roof building, just under 30 by 60 feet. There are no records extant that show the original seating plan of the building, but in the 19th century a small balcony was taken down (probably originally for the use of some of the 200 slaves who had been baptized by the second rector), and at least twice remodeled in the Victorian taste of the times, with heavy dark wood furnishings, stained glass, and slip pews.

The church was nearly lost on 11 February 1940 when a disastrous fire broke out about an hour after a service, destroying everything but the brick walls. For the rebuilding, it was decided to return the building to the look and feel of the early 18th century with white walls, white box pews, and clear glass windows. 

There is no record of any pipe organ during the building’s first 280 years, so any description of musical accompaniment before the fire is purely conjectural. After the restoration, a series of electronic instruments was installed in the front of the room. When a new rector arrived in 2000, he hired his friend James Weaver, Curator of the Division of Musical Instruments at the Smithsonian and co-founder of the Smithsonian Chamber Players, to come to the parish and revive a flagging music program and small choir of willing and enthusiastic singers. During his tenure, Weaver established a high level of musical expectation but hesitated to begin a project to replace the dreary electronic. When he left to pursue other projects and I arrived, enthusiasm to begin an organ project was high and the process began.

Early on, it was determined that (1) the organ would have mechanical action, (2) it would be tonally appropriate to the age of the building, (3) it would be visually designed so as not to overwhelm the scale and balance of the architecture, and (4) the primary visual focus at the front of the room would continue to be the triple window behind the altar. The restoration of the early 1940s had created two large closets in the front corners of the building. One was used as a tiny sacristy, the other as storage and placement for the bass speaker cabinets of the organ. It was determined that the organ would be placed where the sacristy had been, and the sacristy moved to the other side. The Altar Guild was quite pleased, as they had improved facilities and more extensive storage. 

A number of organbuilders were consulted, both from the U.S. and abroad, in our search for a builder. Almost every builder proposed an instrument that would be the dominant visual focus in the room. Some of them were tonally based on no more than an 8′ flute. David Moore, recommended by St. Margaret’s Convent in Boston and United Church on the Green, New Haven, was the only one who demonstrated an enthusiasm to work within our constraints.

As the organ and case design progressed, David proposed a novel solution: place the console at right angles to the main case and put the second manual pipes in the console in the manner of a continuo. In that manner, the main case could be lowered to match the sacristy on the other side, maintaining the Georgian balance of the church interior, while providing the tonal resources we needed. It also made it possible for the organist to face the choir directly across the chancel, with excellent sight lines.

The tonal design had three major objectives: (1) to provide leadership for congregational singing, (2) to accompany a wide variety of choral music, and (3) within its modest resources, to play as wide a spectrum of organ music as possible. 

Early in the planning stages, it was determined that the foundation would be an 8′ Principal, with both an 8′ flute and string to provide solid unison tone. A full diapason chorus, including 22⁄3, would be included, but the modest size of the building made the inclusion of a mixture unnecessary. The suggestion of a Hook-style Oboe as the Great reed was inspired! We insisted on a Tierce as well, for both solo color and ensemble brilliance. Having used a continuo for a year and a half before the instrument was installed, a similar tonal scheme of 8′, 4′, and 2′ for the second manual seemed natural. David suggested a Dulcian to round out the resources of that manual, adding significantly to the color possibilities of the instrument.

The organ has proved a tremendous success. Visually, it slips effortlessly into its corner of the building. The three pipe flats of the case front echo the semi-circular arches of the tripartite east window, repeated in pipe flats on the case side. The most oft-repeated comment from parishioners was “It looks like it’s always been there!” It was decided to use the natural darker grey of lead/tin pipe metal in the display pipes rather than shiny tin to minimize visual distraction from the altar. The wood façade pipes of the 8′ flute of the second manual are painted white to match the case. Many people don’t realize they are pipes at all until they see the mouths near the floor! The use of removable slatted grilles at the top of the second manual case allows for both good tonal egress and tuning ease. 

Musically the organ has been a huge success. The modest stoplist of 13 registers, with two reeds, two mutations, and four unison flue ranks lends itself to performing a wide spectrum of music. Though much of the instrument is inspired by 19th-century American organbuilding, early music sounds extremely convincing. Bach sounds very convincing, Sweelinck variations show off varieties of tonal color, the Dulcian can sound like a Renaissance consort when used by itself but becomes a chameleon when combined with one or both of the Positiv flutes. The Hautboy functions as a ‘petit trompette’, smooth in the treble and bolder in the bass. It serves as a very attractive solo stop, but when combined with the principals, becomes bold and assertive. Add the Twelfth and Tierce and it becomes a fiery French Grand Jeu. The solid foundation tone makes the instrument an excellent vehicle for Mendelssohn, and the Viol, both alone and with the Holpipe, provides softer sounds. There is sufficient tonal variety for stirring hymn singing as well as accompaniment of Anglican choral music. 

In addition to a performance by the young Dutchman from David Moore’s shop, Lubbert Gnodde, further recitals in the inaugural series were presented by Mark Brombaugh, Bryan Mock, and myself, with repertoire ranging from late Medieval to William Albright. 

The instrument continues to serve as proof that a real pipe organ is within the realm of possibility for a small parish, and that it can provide more musical satisfaction than an electronic with a plethora of digital gadgets and twice as many stops.

—Michael Menne

Cover photo: Sabine Joyce

GREAT (I) 56 keys, CCРg3

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Holpipe

8′ Viol

4′ Principal

22⁄3′ Twelfth

2′ Fifteenth

13⁄5′ Tierce

8′ Hautboy

POSITIV (II) 56 keys, CCРg3

8′ Stop’d Diapason

4′ Flute

2′ Fifteenth

8′ Dulcian

PEDAL 30 keys, CCРg3

16′ Bourdon

Couplers

I–P

II–P

II–I