Remembering André Marchal Thirty Years Later

Ann Labounsky

Ann Labounsky, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Organ and Sacred Music at the Mary Pappert School of Music, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Author of Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, she studied with André Marchal and Jean Langlais in Paris from 1962–1964.

Performance artists are most often remembered after their deaths through the compositions that they leave behind. Organ students learn to play works written by J. S. Bach or Franz Liszt, César Franck or Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen or Jean Langlais; and thus their names and their works live on from one generation to another. For the rest, great performers are remembered during the lives of audiences who heard their memorable performances—great teachers, through the lives of their students.
David Craighead, legendary organ performer and now retired professor at the Eastman School of Music, has often lamented about the fleeting nature of fame. Some, like Arthur Poister, are remembered principally through competitions named for them, as in the Poister competition sponsored annually by Syracuse University where he taught; but even now, a few short generations after his death, there is included in the competition application a biographical sketch telling of his life and work.
For very many, there is no immortality of memory. In the words of the hymn: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” It is a sad dictum that those who do not compose most often decompose without leaving a mark on succeeding generations.
There are exceptions, of course. One thinks, for example, of opera singer Enrico Caruso or conductor Arturo Toscanini, great artists whose names continue to resound with their successor performers and audiences beyond specialists in music history. In those cases, they were people who transcended the limitations of the performance practices of their day, and thus left the arts they served transformed forever. For organists, the name André Marchal, the thirtieth anniversary of whose death is commemorated in 2010, must be added.

Marchal’s legacy
There are reasons for which André Marchal will be remembered as a transformational figure in the history of organ building and organ performance. He had an important impact on the organ reform movement in France, and subsequently in America—an influence that is only now beginning to be understood.
In particular, he influenced the Neo-classical style of organ building and aesthetics, through his association with the French organs of Victor Gonzalez. These instruments, in turn, influenced the aesthetics and registration practices of later twentieth-century French organ composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen. At the same time, Marchal was a forerunner in the formation of the performance practice now common today, especially in the interpretation of earlier organ works.

Life
André Marchal entered the world at the end of the French Romantic era and lived until 1980. He was born without sight to middle-class parents in Paris, February 6, 1894. Both his father and grandfather noticed his musical talent at a very early age and encouraged his study of the piano.1 At the age of nine he enrolled at the Institute for the Young Blind (Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles–INJA) in Paris, where he studied organ with Adolphe Marty, and harmony with Albert Mahaut, both students of César Franck.
At the age of seventeen he entered Gigout’s organ class at the Paris Conservatory, obtaining first prize in organ and improvisation two years later. In 1915 he succeeded Augustin Barié as organist at Saint-Germain-des-Près. In 1917 he received the Prix d’excellence in counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatory, in the class of George Caussade. Four years later he was hired as an organ teacher at INJA, where he continued to teach from 1919 until 1959. He succeeded Joseph Bonnet as organist at the Church of Saint-Eustache in 1945, where he remained until 1963.

Recital career
His long and distinguished career as an organ virtuoso began in 1923, when he gave the premiere performance of Vierne’s Fourth Symphony, with the composer present, at the Paris Conservatory. Two years later, he followed with his second public performance at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. In 1927 he toured in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. Again, in 1928, he gave the premiere of a work by Vierne, this time the third suite of his Pièces de fantaisie.
In 1930, he made his first tour of the United States, having no assistance from a guide and without any knowledge of English. (It was through Arthur Quimby—a student of Nadia Boulanger, and Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, who had heard Marchal perform in Paris—that the first tour was arranged.) At the Cleveland Art Museum, he played ten recitals of the music of
J. S. Bach. Seth Bingham, who taught at Columbia University, welcomed him in New York City, where he performed an improvised symphony in four movements at the Wanamaker Auditorium in New York City.2 This was followed with recitals in Chicago and in Canada. In 1938 he gave 30 concerts in the United States and Canada.
After World War II he performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. On that occasion he met the English journalist Felix Aprahamian, who became a close friend and accompanied him on the tour to Australia in 1953.
His concert career spanned half a century; between 1930 and 1975 he made 19 trips to the United States to perform and teach.3 His importance as a teacher drew students from many parts of the world to study with him in his home or at INJA. It should be noted that his first American student, Lee Erwin, who made a career as a theatre organist, came to study with him just prior to his tour in 1930 and was responsible for the first recording on his house organ. His recordings, which also spanned over four decades, likewise have had a continuing impact on organists throughout the world.

André Marchal and the Organ
Reform movement
The Organ Reform movement (or Neo-classical movement as it is called in France) began in the 1920s in Germany and France, spreading to the United States in the 1930s. Albert Schweitzer was a pivotal originator. In France, it was realized primarily through the work of three men in tandem: the performer and teacher, André Marchal; the noted historian and musicologist, Norbert Dufourcq (1904–1990); and the organbuilder, Victor Gonzalez (1877–1956).

Victor Gonzalez
Victor Gonzalez, who was originally from the Castile region of Spain, began his career with the firm of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, where he became their chief voicer. He then worked for the firms of Gutschenritter and Merklin. In 1929, after declining to assume leadership of the Cavaillé-Coll firm, he established his own firm with the help, encouragement, and financing assistance of Béranger de Miramon Fitz-James, founder of Association des Amis de l’Orgue, together with a group of de Miramon’s friends. Gonzalez’s first organ was built in 1926 for the home of Béranger de Miramon, followed the same year by an organ for the parish church in Ligugé. By 1937 there were 50 employees at the firm who worked to rebuild the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Palais de Chaillot, and in the following year to renovate the organs at the Versailles chapel and the Cathedral of Rheims.
From 1929 until 1936, Rudolf von Beckerath worked for Gonzalez on restoration projects for organs in Saint-Eustache, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, Solesmes, Bailleul, the Goüin residence, and the world’s fair in Brussels in 1935, prior to founding his own firm. Though the Gonzalez name is no longer in use, he was succeeded in the business by his son, Fernand Gonzalez, and then by his son-in-law, George Danion. Fernand Gonzalez, who was killed in World War II, was responsible for the design of the Palais de Chaillot. After his death, Bernard Dargassies was charged with the maintenance of most of the Gonzalez organs.4
In 1931 Victor Gonzalez built an organ for the Condé estate of Joseph Bonnet.5 Gonzalez built this instrument very much in the Cavaillé-Coll style of that time, with two enclosed divisions, the usual plan for his house organs. He departed, however, from Cavaillé-Coll by adding a three-rank mixture on the Swell and a series of mutations. The romantic Merklin organ at Saint-Eustache, which was rebuilt by Gonzalez, and the Gonzalez organ from 1934 in the home of Henry Goüin are landmark examples of the wedding of early music to the recreated sounds of early instruments.6 These instruments included many mutation stops and mixtures, which allowed authentic performances of early music. Under the influence of Marchal and Dufourcq, Gonzalez became the leading builder in France for half a century.

Collaboration with Norbert
Dufourcq
Norbert Dufourcq’s collaboration with Marchal began in 1920, when he became Marchal’s organ student after studying for three years with Gustave Noël at the Cathedral in Orleans. Two years after beginning his organ study with Marchal, Dufourcq became principal organist of Saint-Merry in Paris, a post that he retained until his death in 1990. Dufourcq earned a degree in history from the Sorbonne (1923). In 1927 he was one of the founding members and secretary of Association des Amis de l’Orgue. Between 1932 and 1983 he was a member of the organ division of Commission of Historical Monuments. From 1941–1975 he served as professor of music history at the Paris Conservatory. (He also taught at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, from 1935 to 1946.)
During the years 1941 to 1975 Marchal performed many concerts in which Dufourcq provided the commentary. A gifted musicologist and persuasive public speaker, Dufourcq was able to give a poetic overview of the pieces performed, so that the uninitiated listener could follow. His mellifluous voice and the frequent use of the imperfect subjunctive case were noteworthy. Included in the commentaries was a series of eight concerts, entitled The Great Forms of Organ Music, with genres including prelude and fugue, toccata, chaconne, canzona, passacaglia, the chorale, partita, and fantasia. These recitals continued and included symphonic music and program music.
By 1933, Marchal and Dufourcq had become the leaders of the French national committee for the oversight of historic organs throughout France: the Commission des Monuments Historiques under the minister des Beaux Arts. Many of the nineteenth-century Cavaillé-Coll instruments, and earlier instruments by Clicquot, which were under the control of this commission, had fallen into disrepair and required renovations. This circumstance gave the commission the opportunity to rebuild those organs using the ideals of the Neo-classic design that Marchal, Dufourcq, and Gonzalez favored. Their work could be seen in the restorations at La Flèche, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Merry (where Dufourcq was organist), Les Invalides, the cathedrals of Auch, Soissons, and Rheims, the Palais de Chaillot, and the new concert organ in the French National Radio Studio 103, among many others. Many of the foundation stops were replaced with higher-pitched ranks and the reeds re-voiced. Marchal recorded on many of these instruments in the 1960s.
Influence on the Holtkamp Organ Company
This three-part collaboration among André Marchal, Norbert Dufourcq, and Victor Gonzalez, which affected the Neo-classical organ movement in France, subsequently came to the United States through the work of both Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and his son Walter Holtkamp, Jr., who wrote:

André Marchal came to the microcosm that is the Holtkamp Organ Company soon after World War II. While he had been in this country prior to the war, it was not until after that he brought his many talents to us with such marvelous results…. Both my father and I traveled to many cities of our country to sit with André Marchal at the console to evaluate our instruments. He would play and discourse upon the merits and demerits of that particular organ. From every encounter we came away with a new perspective of our work and our ideas.7
A transcript of one of these conversations with Marchal and the two Walter Holtkamps, Senior and Junior, which was recorded following a Marchal recital on the Holtkamp organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland, on May 10, 1957, gives an example of how the Holtkamps relied on Marchal’s advice regarding voicing:
WH (Walter Holtkamp, Sr.): André, we heard last night no 16′ Principal or 8′ Pedal Octave. My son and I would like to go to St. Paul’s and have a lesson on the use of the 16′ and what is lacking in this one.
AM (André Marchal): Your 16′ Principal is too large. There is too much gap in dynamic between the 16′ Subbass and the 16′ Principal. It is too big to be used without the reeds, and when the reeds are on the Subbass does just as well as the 16′ Principal.
WH: Perhaps this is a result of the 16′ Principal being placed against a stone wall rather than in the buffet as in the French organs.
AM: No, I noticed this same character at Baltimore, where the 16′ stands in the open. This is true on all your organs. The 8′ Pedal Octave is also too loud at St. Paul’s, Oberlin, Berkeley, Baltimore.
C (Walter Holtkamp, Jr.): I would like to know Mr. Marchal’s idea of the relationship as to loudness and quality between the Great 8′ Principal and Pedal 8′ Octave.
AM: In theory, the Pedal 8′ should be larger in scale than the Great 8′, but in use I really like the Pedal 8′ to be a little milder than the Great 8′. It could be a little more flutey.8

It is possible that Walter Holtkamp, Sr. heard Marchal’s series of ten recitals of the music of J. S. Bach at the Cleveland Museum of Art in March of 1930. In August of 1956, Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and Walter Blodgett, Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, drove to Methuen to hear Marchal play during the Summer Organ Institute, organized by Arthur Howes, and again the following year to hear him perform and record on the Holtkamp organ at MIT. Along with Fenner Douglas, in the early 1960s Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett traveled to France to study the historic instruments there, including many by Gonzalez. In later years Marchal performed and taught frequently on Holtkamp organs at Syracuse University and Oberlin College. (Despite his love of Holtkamp organs, he often spoke of the similarity between the American builder G. Donald Harrison’s reeds and the French reeds that he loved.)

Giuseppe Englert
The composer Giuseppe Englert, another of Marchal’s students, who in 1954 married Marchal’s daughter Jacqueline, served as translator for the Holtkamps and Marchal during Marchal’s tours to the United States and the Holtkamps’ trips to France. The Englerts’ apartment in Paris, across the street from Les Invalides, was home to a Gonzalez organ, with a similar design to one in Marchal’s home. Maurice Duruflé admired this instrument and was inspired by it for the specification for the Gonzalez instrument in his own apartment. (The organ in Marchal’s home was originally a Gutschenritter, which was enlarged by Gonzalez.)

Marchal and performance practice
In the early 1920s Marchal continued to play in the style he had been taught by Gigout, a uniformly legato touch and a non-interpretive approach to the music of Bach and the Romantic composers. Gigout followed the tradition of the Lemmens school, learned from Widor and Guilmant. During his study of the music of the early masters, in preparation for a series of recitals of early music in 1923, Marchal rethought his approach to technique and interpretation. He was the first, in 1929, to play the two complete Masses of François Couperin. In an interview with Pierre Lucet for a series of recitals on the French National Radio in 1979, Marchal explained the process by which he changed his approach to early music and the organs upon which it could be performed:

Pierre Lucet: Maître, permit me to inquire first of all about your approach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach:
Marchal: It [his approach] was made at two times. I was admitted to the Conservatory and at that time I listened to what was told to me, I learned technique; I was greatly in need of it. And it was from that point of view that I studied Bach. Ten years later [1921], in establishing my repertoire, I began to concertize, and relearned Bach in a completely different manner. This time I studied each piece in depth, trying to understand it in the best way possible; and having assimilated it, I tried to bring out the beauty of each piece by certain ways of playing; for example, the phrasing, the breaths, the registration. Obviously, at that time, there were few organs on which one could register well the music of Bach; we were still in the full Romantic period. But one could still look for lighter stops, clear in any case, which would permit the beauty of Bach’s counterpoint to emerge.
After having obtained my prize in organ [1913], while continuing to play the organ I worked a great deal on piano. Paul Braud, a student of Franck, took an interest in me. I became then more oriented toward the piano, which permitted me to know more music and to play more chamber music. I worked relentlessly . . . I purchased a small mechanical organ to practice my repertoire. It was at that time [1921] that I really tried to express Bach. My colleagues said: “Marchal? He plays the harpsichord”—and that was almost true, since my interpretations that were closest to what I hoped them to be were like the marvelous ones of Wanda Landowska on her harpsichord.9

This process of searching for the appropriate style for early music and the instruments that would bring it to life continued for him through the early 1930s, when he gave a series of recitals of early music on Neo-classical instruments built by Gonzalez. After 1930, Marchal played very differently from his teacher, Gigout, and the other blind teachers from INJA. It was as if he grasped the essence of the music from within himself. His style was powerful, lyrical, and always convincing. His personality was also very strong. There was a radiance about him and a “joie de vivre” that came through in every piece that he played.
His touch was a radical departure from the 19th-century seamless legato that was carried on by Marcel Dupré and his predecessors. He had an infinite variety of touches. By the 1940s Marchal had become one of the most popular performers in France. The public related easily to the musicality of Marchal’s playing and to his vibrant personality. It is not surprising that such a different style—full of authentic poetry and lyricism—would win the hearts of the French public as well as those from other countries. It must also be said that with him and all the other blind organists, there was also something captivating at seeing a blind person being led onto the stage and then left alone to play the instrument, no matter how large, completely independently. When one contemplates the style of playing during the 1920s through the 1950s, which was completely dominated by the legato Romantic style, what is utterly amazing is this new, radically different sound and interpretation. Begun by Marchal, it was later adopted by Marie-Claire Alain and others.
Guilmant and Pirro, in the monumental Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue, 1897–1910 (volumes 1–10 available online), made available for the first time, at the end of the 19th century, the music of Couperin, de Grigny, Clérambault, and many others. Although Guilmant and Pirro recommended the use of the Cornet registration, their grounding in the 19th-century style of playing and registration prevented them from recommending for this early music a complementary early style and registration. Likewise, the six volumes of Joseph Bonnet’s Historical Organ Recitals series, published between 1917 and 1940, continued the same style of playing and registrations. Bonnet’s role in the movement, however, should not be ignored. He was intensely interested in early music but played it in the manner that he had been taught by Guilmant.
Although he had substituted for his teacher, Eugène Gigout, as organ teacher at the Paris Conservatory, Marchal was never connected to any school in France except at INJA and the summer school of Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau. Nonetheless, so many students requested Fulbright grants to study with him, that by the 1950s he agreed to be referred to as a school himself. In America, many other organists fell under his influence through the many masterclasses he gave at Oberlin College, Syracuse University, Union Theological Seminary, Northwestern University, the universities of Illinois and Indiana, the Eastman School of Music, and the Organ Institute in Methuen.

Marchal’s recordings
In the release on CD (Arbiter, 2003) of his first recordings, originally recorded between 1936 and 1948 at Saint-Eustache and the Goüin residence, one can easily understand Marchal’s interest in early music and in the type of instrument that would be well suited to the music of earlier periods. The lyricism, so unlike the usual style of playing during the 1940s, was notably displayed in his performance of the Bach chorale prelude O Mensch bewein dein Sünde gross. His use of free trills, so unlike the measured trills found in the playing of his contemporaries, was quite a departure from the traditional style of playing.
The subtle rubato in all the playing is striking. In the Bach Passacaglia and Fugue, the phrasing of each variation gives life to the great work. The articulation of the pedal line and the variety in the registrations gives much interest to the form of the piece. What is compelling in all of his playing is the strength of the rhythm, especially noticeable in the fugue of this work. While listening to his performances, one senses that it should not be performed otherwise, that it is right.
What we understand today of the stylus fantasticus can already be heard in Marchal’s opening performance from 1948 of Buxtehude’s Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Minor. There is considerable contrast between the free sections and the fugal sections. His personality comes alive in his commentary for demonstrating each stop, with brief improvisations that give fine examples of this style of organbuilding. The Blow Toccata in D Minor brings out the bass in the reed registers with great clarity. Listening to these improvisations on the individual sonorities of the Gonzalez house organ in the Goüin house gives a clear picture of this aesthetic: a Neo-classical organ that, in America, we would call an eclectic organ.
Other recordings include:
Chefs d’œuvres pour orgue de J.S. Bach “10 de répertoire” en 1989. Zurich, Grossmünster 1964. MUSIDISC 203412 AD 650.
Orgues et organistes français du XXè siècle (1900–1950) by EMI Classics (2002) as well as Jeux et registrations de l’orgue, Improvisations, Toccata de Gigout, Final de la 4ème Symphonie de Vierne, Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle de Messiaen, Choral dorien de J. Alain, Saint-Merry, 1958 et 1976. EMI Classics, 1 CD, 71716 2 (1997), Saint-Merry et Saint-Eustache.
The Organ Historical Society website lists the two recordings available through Arbiter (135 and 111) with these annotations:
The works by Buxtehude, Bach, Blow, Purcell, Sweelinck and Vierne were recorded by André Marchal (1894–1980) in April 1948, on the organ at St. Eustache in Paris, then a Merklin which had been rebuilt by Victor Gonzalez in 1927–32. In 1936, the Pathé firm released a 12-disc set entitled Three Centuries of Organ Music from which Marchal’s performances of Cabezon, Santa Maria, Landino, and Palestrina are taken. These first recordings of these early works are performed on an organ designed especially for early music and completed in 1934 by Victor Gonzalez at the home of Henry Goüin in Paris. Marchal also demonstrates the organ stop-by-stop, and narrates his demonstration. Available on Arbiter-135.
Arbiter 111 is described:

This unique CD reissues the 1956 stereo recordings made by André Marchal on his 3/28 house organ built by Gonzalez. The fidelity of the recording is unusually fine, capturing Marchal’s way with 12 of the Bach Orgelbüchlein, BWV 603–612, 614–615, and Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C, BWV 564. There are no revelations here for most of us, and the organ is located in an anechoic environment. The CD is a must for Marchal fans, who will revel in his spoken description and demonstration of the organ.
Although more difficult to locate, it is possible to find in libraries the Lumen recordings of Franck and early French music (Grand Prix du disque 1952); the Bach large fantasies and fugues by Ducretet Thomson; the Clérambault recordings at Auch Cathedral, by LDE 3231; many of these recordings contain the commentaries by Norbert Dufourcq. The Unicorn recordings from MIT (UNLP 1046–1048) of Bach and early French music on the large Holtkamp organ there from the 1950s are excellent.
Marchal’s Complete Organ Works of César Franck, originally released by Erato, has been reissued by Solstice ([email protected]). This recording was awarded the coveted Diapason d’Or. There are many unpublished recordings (some from Syracuse from 1960s, and two recordings from his last American tour in 1974 at the Church of the Assumption in Bellevue, Pennsylvania and in Rochester, New York) as well as many given on the French National Radio.

His teaching and legacy
His system of teaching usually began with having the student play a chorale prelude from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. He usually heard a piece only one time giving all his ideas in the one lesson. For the early French music he did not use “notes inégales” during the 1960s, but by the 1970s he realized that this was, in practice, the style of this music, and adopted its use. His mind was always engaged and he heard every phrasing and nuance. His use of agogic accents to bring out the shape of a phrase was notable. Above all, he made each part sing independently of the other voices regardless of the period in which it was written. He was demanding especially with his more gifted pupils, desirous that each one achieve his/her highest potential.
His influence is continued not only in the legacy of performance practice and organbuilding. A number of publications and prizes have appeared since 1980: a thesis by Lynn Trapp at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, 1982), “The Legacy of André Marchal;” “Tribute to André Marchal” reprint of the L’Orgue Dossier I in 1997, with the addition of tributes by many American students who did not have the opportunity to be included in the original document; and prizes at the biennial Marchal competition in Biarritz.
The Académie André Marchal was founded in Biarritz, France in 1982 by Denise Limonaire to perpetuate the memory of this musical giant, his innovative style of performance, his neo-classical influence on organbuilding, and his rediscovery of early music. Susan Landale serves as president of the Académie, with Jacqueline Englert-Marchal as honorary president. Among other projects, the Académie has partnered with the town of Biarritz to sponsor the “Prix André Marchal,” an international organ competition with prizes in interpretation and improvisation. The competition is held every two years and has grown in quality and size. The ninth competition, held in 2009, accepted eighteen candidates of twelve nationalities. Americans desirous of supporting this valid and significant mission are strongly invited to become members; dues of $80 for two years may be mailed to Ralph Tilden at P.O. Box 2254, Banner Elk, NC 28604. André Marchal awards are given at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for excellence in organ performance.
His impact as a teacher was important. His blind students who obtained the first prize in organ at the Paris Conservatory included: André Stiegler, 1925; Jean Langlais and Jean Laporte, 1930; Gaston Litaize, 1931; Antoine Reboulot, 1936; Xavier Dufresse, 1952; Georges Robert, 1953; Louis Thiry, 1958; Jean Wallet, 1963; Jean-Pierre Leguay, 1966 (who had studied with both Litaize and Marchal). Two other pupils who obtained the first prize who were sighted were Noëlie Pierront, 1925, and Anne Marie Barat, 1976.
His other pupils included Corliss Arnold, Linda Clark, Craig Cramer, Philip Crozier, Alan Dominicci, Norbert Dufourcq, Giuseppe Englert, Lee Erwin (the first American pupil before 1930), Robert Eshenour, John Fenstermaker, Philip Gehring, Emily Gibson, Lester Groom, Jerald Hamilton, Ruth Harris, William Hays, Allan Hobbs, Howard Jewell, Elna Johnson, Margaret Kemper, Ralph Kneeream, Suzanne Kornprobst, Marilou Kratzenstein, Charles Krigbaum, Ann Labounsky, Susan Landale, David Liddle, Denise Limonaire, Robert Lodine, Alan Long, Robert Sutherland Lord, Chamin Walker Meadows, Kathryn Moen, Earline Moulder, Margaret Mueller, Arsène Muzerelle, Lois Pardue, Garth Peacock, Stephen Rumpf, Daniel and David Simpson, Robert Sirota, Rev. Victoria Sirota, Carl Staplin, Roger Stiegler, Edith Strom, Haskell Thompson, Ralph Tilden, Parvin Titus, Robert Judith Truitt, Marie-Antoinette Vernières, Gail Walton, Nicole Wild, and Mary Alice Wotring.

Influence on subsequent
composers
His influence on subsequent composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen in their approaches to organ registration is likewise important to this reflection of André Marchal upon the 30th anniversary of his death. Jean Langlais studied organ with Marchal at INJA and at his home and was influenced by the work of Gonzalez in these two venues, as well as the organ at the Palais de Chaillot, where he performed his first symphony in 1943. His choice of the Schwenkedel organs of Neo-classical design, which he installed in his home and at the Institute Valentin Haüy, next door to INJA, shows this influence. The stops that he added to the organ at Sainte-Clotilde in 1962 included a Larigot 11⁄3′ on the Positif, a Prestant 4′ and Clairon 2′ on the Récit, and a Prestant 4′ and Doublette 2′ on the Pédale.10
The many Neo-classical registrations in his pieces likewise show this influence. For example, even the titles of a number of his pieces refer to these types of registrations: Dialogue sur les mixtures (Suite brève, 1947) and all the movements of Suite française (1948), which are based on titles found in classical French organ music such as Prélude sur les grands jeux and Contrepoint sur les jeux d’anches, and Suite baroque (1973).
As I have already mentioned, Maurice Duruflé often visited the home of Giuseppe Englert to study the specifications and dimensions of the Gonzalez organ, which inspired him for his house organ, also built by Gonzalez. Englert’s house organ was based on the specifications of Marchal’s house organ.11 In Duruflé’s organ works, even starting with the Scherzo from 1926, his registrations depart from the normal 19th-century models.
Marchal and Jehan Alain’s father, Albert Alain—an amateur organbuilder—were close friends and worked together on ideas for the specifications for their house organs. Similarities can be seen in the specifications of each.12 When Marchal had built his organ with a rather classic Positif, Albert Alain wanted to do the same thing.13 Jehan Alain’s first experiences of organ music in his home were influenced by the aesthetics of Marchal and Gonzalez. Jehan Alain and Marchal enjoyed playing and improvising together in Alain’s home. A very early work, Variations sur un thème de Clément Jannequin, demonstrates registrations that call for Neo-classical stops as well as the recall of early music in the title of the piece. Another work of Jehan Alain, Le Jardin suspendu, calls for a typically classical French stop, the Gros Nasard 51⁄3′ on the Positif. Marchal was among the first organists to perform Alain’s music, including Litanies, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin, and Danses à Agni Yavishta, and had them transcribed into Braille notation.
Olivier Messiaen was also influenced by the Neo-classical trends in France. He changed the Cavaillé-Coll organ at La Trinité, where he was organist from 1930 until 1991, to include many mutation stops that were not part of the original specification. Even his earliest organ work, Le banquet céleste (1928), is a departure from the normal registration practices of the period, including Flûte 4′, Nasard 22⁄3′, Doublette 2′, and Piccolo 1′ for the pedal line. As he continued to compose, his works called more frequently for higher-pitched sonorities, often to imitate birds. One could say that it was a far cry from D’Aquin’s imitative harpsichord piece mimicking the cuckoo, but these sounds were all part of an interest in both the future and the past.

Conclusion
It is time to re-evaluate André Marchal’s contributions to the organ reform movement in France; his impact on organbuilding in the United States, particularly in his relationships to Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett as well as Fenner Douglas; and his influence on the leading organ composers of the 20th century: Langlais, Alain, Duruflé, and Messiaen. In light of the development of early organ techniques and the number of publications that have been published and used in the thirty years since his death, it is time to listen again to Marchal’s recordings with a discerning mind and ask where his place is in the development of performance practice.
One certainly hears a wide variety of touches in all his playing. What was his “ordinary” touch? What were the main differences between his style and that of Joseph Bonnet, Alexandre Guilmant, and Marie-Claire Alain? Robert Noehren admired the sensitivity of his touch both on tracker and electric actions. It is also time to re-evaluate his influence on organ building; for example, in the composition of the Plein jeu mixture, which reserved the breaks until after middle C to enhance the clarity of the polyphonic line, and his use of different mixtures for each polyphonic composition that he performed.
Consider, too, the changes in the organ registrations in the music of Duruflé, Alain, Messiaen, and Langlais as compared to many other composers of the 20th century. The required foundations plus reeds on each manual, as a given for organ registration, changed as a result of Marchal’s impact on the Neo-classical organ in France. There is, indeed, much to ponder.
Perhaps Norbert Dufourcq, who was the most eloquent of his collaborators, best expressed the essence of his artistry:

André Marchal seemed to have found by himself the sources to which he probed the depths of his rich and attractive personality: the discovery of the works of the French organists of the 17th and 18th centuries, that of the complete works of Bach (he played almost all of it), of Cabezón, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude . . . It was for André Marchal to penetrate the secrets of a page of music, to discover the tempo, in searching the phrases, in marking the strong pulses, the weak pulses, without ever breaking the melodic line nor the polyphonic structure, without ever losing a rhythm which gave a work its forward motion, its line. One has praised the sensitivity of the Maître. It is better perhaps to speak of his sense of poetry.
To this static but mysterious and majestic instrument, he knew how to assure a poetic and lyric “aura” that he insisted on creating in a convincing phrasing with thousands of details in a style made more subtle by the use of minimal retards; of suspensions slightly brought out or by the imperious accents thrown into the center of the discourse. Goodbye to the inexpressive and neutral legato, André Marchal sought to impose on his instrument a suppleness with the use of imperceptible tensions—jolts of the soul—which did not stop. It is in this that he transformed the lens of the entire school of the organ, in France as in America . . . Under his fingers the organ no longer preached in an impersonal manner; under his fingers, the melodies rushed into the nave to touch the heart of each person. But it was never he who descended upon us. It was us, whom he seized with love, and attracted us to him.14 ■

 

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

An international concert artist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster Fournier is titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church in Paris, France (cf. www.shusterfournier.com). Dr. Shuster Fournier was recently awarded the distinction of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. This is her fourth article to appear in The Diapason.

On June 15, Tournemire played the final “Alleluia” movement in a concert at Sainte-Clotilde that was broadcast live on Paris Radio.
In 1931, the Institut de France had awarded Bonnal the Charles Berthault Prize with 500 francs. Bonnal, however, was looking for other financial awards for his compositions. On March 29, 1932, he admitted in a letter to Tournemire that the private music lessons he gave did not at all cover his expenses:

. . . et vous n’êtes pas là pour m’encourager . . . Je desespère parfois! . . . Alors, je m’endette terriblement . . . et je ne sais ce que je vais devenir.

[ . . . and you are not there to encourage me . . . I sometimes become desperate! . . . Then, I am deeply falling into debt . . . and I don’t know what will happen to me.]

He even began to apply for other posts as a conservatory director in Belfort and in Aix (where he was refused). On February 3, 1932, Bonnal wrote to Tournemire to express his gratitude and ongoing support:

sans doute ma destinée est-elle de mourir à Bayonne. Je m’en réjouirais au reste si ma situation y était en rapport avec mes charges familiales. Je vous remercie de tout Coeur de l’aide précieuse qu’une fois encore (après tant d’autres!) vous m’avez généreusement et cordialement consentie.

[without doubt my destiny is to die in Bayonne. I would really be thrilled if my position was in keeping with my family expenses. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the precious aid (after so many others) which you have so generously and cordially granted.]

On April 25, Bonnal admitted to Tournemire that he was behind schedule and that he hoped to send something to the next competition of the Amis de l’Orgue. In May, 1932, Bonnal composed at Amentcha his most monumental work: his Symphonie d’après “Media vita,” Répons du temps de la Septuagésime in C-sharp minor. Maurice Duruflé played it during the second “Amis de l’Orgue” composition competition, which took place at Saint-François Xavier Church in Paris on June 20, 1932. This time, Bonnal won First Prize and received 4,000 francs. The members of the jury were Gabriel Pierné (president), Alexandre Cellier, Maurice Emmanuel, Arthur Honegger, Paul Le Flem, Henri Mulet, Henri Nibelle, Achille Philip, Gustave Samazeuilh, Florent Schmitt, and Canon François-Xavier Mathias. An honorable mention was granted to André Fleury for his Prélude, Andante et Toccata, and congratulations were given to Daniel-Lesur for his work La Vie intérieure.
Bonnal’s symphony is a free paraphrase in three movements that correspond to the following texts from Septuagesima Sunday, the first of three Sundays before the Lenten season:

1. In the midst of Life we deal with Death. To whom can we turn if not to You, Savior, who has suffered so much for our sins.
2. Holy and Merciful Savior, do not deliver us to a bitter death. Our fathers have hoped in You, and You have delivered them.
3. Our fathers have cried toward You; they cried, and they were not disappointed. Holy God, God full of strength, do not deliver us to a bitter death.
The first movement, rather slow and very calm, presents two themes: the first one is contrapuntal; the second is like a chorale. In the second movement, a luminous trio—a sort of colorful arabesque (with the Positive Nazard, Flute 4' and Tierce 13⁄5' in the right hand, the Swell 8' foundation stops in the left hand and the Pedal 8' and 4' stops)—seems to express the hope mentioned in the text; after a section on the Swell Voix Celeste with a Flute 4' in the Pedal, the piece ends on an A-flat major chord with a quiet 16' in the Pedal. The third movement, which uses themes from the other movements, becomes increasingly flamboyant, leading to a free, lyrical second melody on the Positive Clarinet 8', followed by an arabesque on the Great Harmonic Flute 8'. After a progressive crescendo with the theme announced tutti in the Pedal, two measures of silence and a brief return to the Clarinet solo, there is a final distressful cry. Bonnal dedicated this work to his friend Joseph Bonnet who greatly appreciated it:
Ta nouvelle œuvre est magnifique, d’une grande profondeur de sentiment d’une haute sérénité musicale et poétique. Tu as tiré un parti excellent de la mélodie si belle et traduit les sentiments exprimés par le texte littéraire sous l’âme d’un grand artiste chrétien. Ton œuvre, comme toutes les précédentes du reste, témoigne d’une haute sincérité humaine et artistique.35

[Your new work is magnificent, a very deep, peaceful expression of great musicality and poetry. You have brought out the best in the beautiful melody and translated the feelings contained in the literary text as expressed by a great Christian artist. Your work, like all of your previous ones, testifies to an utmost human and artistic sincerity.]

In this same letter, Bonnet advised Bonnal to contact the publisher Leduc, who, thanks to Bonnet’s intervention, published this work in 1933. Bonnet played this symphony on numerous occasions, notably for a mass at Saint-Eustache Church in Paris on January 28, 1934. He also recorded it for the BBC. Encouraged by these successes, which placed him in the upper ranks of the French organ scene, Bonnal participated in a series of eight recitals organized by the Amis de l’Orgue on the Mutin organ at Saint-Bernard College in Bayonne.

His adherence to the neo-classical organ
Around 1930, Bonnal had been appointed titular organist at Saint-André Church in Bayonne, a neo-Gothic church built 1856–1869. The 32-stop, three-manual organ was built in 1863 by the Wenner et Götty firm from Bordeaux (Georges Wenner and Jacques Götty founded their firm in Bordeaux in 1848). This organ was a gift to the city from Napoléon III. When a vault collapsed above the organ loft in December 1895, Gaston Maille, who had taken over the Wenner firm in 1882, restored this symphonic organ from 1898 to 1902; an electric blower was installed probably during the 1920s. (See photo 3.)
In 1933, Bonnal supervised the restoration of this instrument by Victor Gonzalez, in collaboration with André Marchal, who had a home in Hendaye, and Norbert Dufourcq, much of whose family lived in Labastide-Clairence, a village about 20 kilometers from Bayonne. Bonnal described its neo-classical aesthetic:
on the Swell, we added a Plein-Jeu II and a Clairon that came from the Positive; on the Positive, some new stops were installed: Nazard, Doublette and Tierce, replacing the Gambe, Trompette and Clairon; for early music, the Clarinet was transformed into a Cromorne . . . The deteriorated pneumatic elements were replaced with a modified tubular system which provided more rapid and perfect precision . . .36
Finally, this 35-stop instrument was entirely revoiced to give more fullness to the foundation stops and more distinction to the reed stops. (See photo 4.)

Saint-André Church, Bayonne
Wenner et Götty / Maille (1902) / Gonzalez (1933)

I. GRAND ORGUE (56 notes)
16' Montre
8' Montre
8' Bourdon
8' Flûte Harmonique
4' Prestant
22⁄3' Nazard
2' Doublette
Plein-Jeu IV
Cornet V (C3)
16' Bombarde
8' Trompette
4' Clairon

II. POSITIF (56 notes)
16' Bourdon
8' Principal
8' Bourdon
8' Salicional
4' Flûte
22⁄3' Nazard
2' Doublette
13⁄5' Tierce
8' Cromorne

III. RÉCIT (56 notes)
8' Cor de nuit
8' Violoncelle
8' Flûte Harmonique
8' Voix Céleste
4' Flûte Octaviante
2'/1' Plein-Jeu II
8' Voix Humaine
8' Basson-Hautbois
8' Trompette Harmonique
4' Clairon

PÉDALE (30 notes)
16' Flûte
8' Flûte
16' Bombarde
8' Trompette

Combination Pedals: Thunderstorm Pedal, G.O./Péd, Pos/Péd, Réc/Péd; Pos./G.O., Réc/G.O.; Réc./Pos; Réc/G.O. 4, Pos/G.O. 16. To activate the Reeds: on the Réc, Pos and G.O. To activate the G.O. keyboard. To activate the Pos Mixtures; Réc Tremulant.

Pistons under the G.O. keyboard: Soft Foundation stops, Foundations 8 and 4, Foundations 8, 4 and 2, Tutti Plein-Jeu, General Tutti.

Bonnal performed the inaugural recital on September 27, 1933:

I.
J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue
A Sarabande grave by François Couperin
Father Martini’s Gavotte (for the new “carillon-like stop” [the Swell Plein-Jeu II])
N. de Grigny’s Trio en dialogue (utilizing the Cromorne stop)
D. Buxtehude’s Fugue in C major

II.
C. Franck’s Third Choral
Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique, Op. 57 (nos. 1–4), which had been dedicated to him
Joseph Bonnet’s Epithalamé, Op. 5 (1909)
E. Bonnal’s Cloches dans le ciel (first public performance).
On November 8, 1933, Bonnal’s organ students gave another concert:

Irène Darricau performed two pieces by J. J. Lemmens
Jeanne Larre (Vierne)
Renée Gemain (Franck)
Marylis Bonnal [his daughter] (a piece by Périlhou)
Mady Galtier, the organist at the Saint-Charles Church in Biarritz (a Bach Fugue)
Christian d’Elbée (Franck’s First Choral)
Ermend Bonnal (his own Paysages euskariens).

This beautiful organ has remained unchanged to this day and was classified as a historical monument in 2001. According to the present titular organist, Etienne Rousseau-Plotto, in addition to the French symphonic repertory, French organ music from the 1930s sounds absolutely spectacular on this organ.37
In 1933, the same year as the restoration of the Saint-André organ in Bayonne, Tournemire had requested the Société Cavaillé-Coll firm to modify his own historic 1858 A. Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris. According to an article by Bérenger de Miramon Fitz-James,38 following the reinauguration of this organ on June 30, 1933, the following ten stops had been added to this instrument: a Cornet on the Grand-Orgue; a Tierce and a Piccolo on the Positif; a Quintaton 16', a Nazard, a Tierce, a Plein-Jeu IV and a Bombarde on the Récit; and a Bourdon 16' and a Quinte 51⁄3' in the Pedal. The wind pressure was lowered on the Positif, the Positif Unda Maris was transformed into a Salicional, and the Positif Clarinet was moved to the Récit. In addition, a new console was installed with three 61-note manuals and a 32-note pedalboard, along with numerous pedal combinations. Following this restoration, a series of seven benefit recitals was given to help cover the restoration expenses. On March 22, 1934. Bonnal ended the fourth concert, given with the following artists who performed their own works:

Daniel-Lesur – La Vie intérieure
Olivier Messiaen – Diptyque
André Fleury – Prélude, Andante, Toccata
Maurice Duruflé – Adagio and Choral varié on the “Veni Creator”
Ermend Bonnal – Symphonie sur le Répons “Media Vita”

In 1934, Bonnal was awarded the Prix Durand (with Guy Ropartz) as well as the Grand Prix of a wine competition in Bordeaux for his Hymn au Vin. Bonnal then gave a series of prestigious organ concerts. On March 28, 1936, he performed a recital on Emile Bourdon’s organ at the Monaco Cathedral. On September 1, 1936, he inaugurated, with André Marchal, the organ restored by Victor Gonzalez at the Bayonne Cathedral. On January 28, 1937, he performed his own La Vallée du Béhorléguy au matin in the eighth concert of La Spirale at the Schola Cantorum, with his fellow colleagues: Jehan Alain (Suite), Olivier Messiaen (Jules Le Febvre’s Prélude, Aria et Final and selections from his La Nativité du Seigneur [Les Bergers, La Vierge et l’Enfant, and Les Anges]); Daniel-Lesur premiered his own Cinq Hymnes; Jean Langlais, his own Hommage à Francesco Landino and Mors et resurrectio; and André Fleury, his own Deux mouvements (Très lent and Vif et agité). How exciting it must have been to attend this concert! On April 26, 1937, Bonnal inaugurated the Debierre organ in the Preparatory School at the Aire-sur-Adour Seminary.
In the mid 1930s, both Bonnal and Tournemire were drawn to St. Francis of Assisi. On July 19, 1933, Bonnal had thanked Tournemire for having sent him his Fioretti pieces:

J’admire qu’après le monument qu’est l’Orgue mystique vous puissiez écrire d’autres pièces en renouvelant encore votre style. Une telle abondance dans sa richesse est une chose magnifique et si rare qu’on ne l’avait pas vue depuis Bach! Quel haut exemple vous êtes pour nous: vos disciples! Donc merci mon bon maître et ami d’être la lumière qui nous aide à avancer dans la voie difficile, mais belle!

[I admire that after the monument which is the Orgue mystique that you can write other pieces while continually renewing your style. Such a rich abundance, so magnificent and rare, has not been seen since Bach! What a noble example you are for us, your disciples! Therefore, thank you my dear master and friend to be such a light which helps us to advance on the difficult but beautiful path.]

A year and a half later, on May 7, 1935, Bonnal’s Franciscan Poems39 were performed in a concert at the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux, broadcast live on the radio. That same year, Tournemire and his second wife, Alice, became members of the third order of Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1937, Tournemire finished a theatrical work that crowned his career: Il Poverello di Assisi, Op. 73 (five lyrical episodes in seven scenes on a text by Joséphin Péladan).40 Both Bonnal’s and Tournemire’s two monumental works, centered around this great saint, certainly prepared the way for Olivier Messiaen’s future opera Saint François d’Assise (1983).

His positions in Paris
In 1938, the French Institut awarded Bonnal the coveted Prix Lassere for his compositions. On September 3, 1939, the Second World War broke out. On November 3, Tournemire died mysteriously, leaving the organist post vacant at Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris. However, since the government had closed the church (which was located just across from the Ministry of War) for fear of bombings, no successor was named. Bonnal did indeed write a text for L’Orgue in homage of Tournemire, entitled “L’Homme et L’Oeuvre,” which was published in March, 1940.41
In the summer of 1940, Sainte-Clotilde Basilica reopened. The organ was played during services by Bernard Schulé (1909–1996), an organ student of Joseph Bonnet who was the titular at the British Embassy Church since 1935 and who had substituted at Sainte-Clotilde for Tournemire since fall 1938. Schulé was a close friend of both Norbert Dufourcq and André Marchal.42
In 1941, Bonnal returned to live in Paris, where he was appointed to work with Henri Busser as Inspecteur Général de l’Enseignement Musical à la Direction des Beaux-Arts [General Inspector of Musical Education for the Direction of Fine Arts] throughout France. Dufourcq then organized a competition to determine Tournemire’s successor at Sainte-Clotilde. It was supposed to take place on December 20, 1941, precisely at 1:30 p.m. According to the announcement, the public was invited to attend with free admission; the church was to be heated. The candidates (Jean Langlais, Antoine Reboulot, and Daniel-Lesur) were to improvise a prelude and fugue and the verses of a hymn and to perform a work each by Bach, Franck, and Tournemire. Daniel-Lesur, who was supported by Olivier Messiaen, was hoping to compete. However, this competition was cancelled, due to the fact that many of the possible candidates were held as prisoners or were demobilized in the free zone during the war, thereby preventing them from coming to Paris to officially apply for this post. This was, in any case, Daniel-Lesur’s situation. On December 14, 1941, Norbert Dufourcq wrote a letter to Jean Langlais, informing him that the competition would occur at a later date.43
Then it was decided that an interim organist would be designated at Saint-Clotilde until a competition could be held after the war. When Sainte-Clotilde reopened in February, 1942, Canon Verdrie, the church priest, named Bonnal as titular without a competition, due to his fame as a well-known and respected musician who had been highly recommended by Count Bérenger de Miramon Fitz-James. After his nomination to this prestigious post, Bonnal thus became the successor to his lifelong friend and professor, Charles Tournemire.44 According to Bonnal’s daughter Marylis, numerous prominent musicians encouraged him to accept this post (notably Norbert Dufourcq, Béranger de Miramon Fitz-James, André Marchal, Noëlie Pierront, Gaston Poulet, René Calvet). Bonnal rarely remained in Paris since he often traveled throughout France to inspect conservatories. Thankfully, Schulé was able to substitute for him. (See photo 5, page 28.)
Bonnal felt that making music in French conservatories during this tragic time represented a sign of hope for the future. He encouraged students to maintain the following objectives:

D’abord le travail et la discipline dans l’effort: c’est à dire les deux ferments qui forgent, grandissent et trempent les caractères, purifient et annoblissent les ambitions. Ensuite: la recherche constante de la qualité. Songez qu’il ne doit pas vous suffire d’être d’excellents virtuoses possédant de sérieuses qualités techniques, il vous faut devenir d’authentiques musiciens.
La musique vous la découvrirez dans la pratique quotidienne, dans la fréquentation permanente des grands musiciens, des Bach, Mozart et Beethoven, pour n’en citer que trois parmi les plus grands. Vous devez par la méditation fréquente, essayer d’entrer en communion avec l’âme de ces grands humains qui furent de très grands penseurs. N’en jouer, même parfaitement, que le texte musical, c’est n’en connaître que la lettre, mais cela ne suffit pas, il vous faut en rechercher l’Esprit.
Soyez donc très ambitieux spirituellement et vous aurez un jour la surprise de découvrir la musique là où elle se trouve, en son seul domaine qui est celui des mouvements de l’Ame, de la connaissance humaine . . . en un mot: de la poésie!
Je n’ai jamais oublié ce mot admirable que me dit un jour mon cher ami Paul Dukas: “il n’y a pas d’art sans poésie.”45

[First of all, one must work and discipline one’s efforts: this will forge, expand and solidify one’s character, purify and ennoble one’s ambition . . . Constantly search for quality; it’s not enough to be an excellent virtuoso with a serious technique, you must become authentic musicians.
You must daily discover the great musicians: Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, to mention only these three among the greatest. Through frequent meditations, you must try to enter in communion with the souls of these great people who were very great thinkers. It does not suffice to play the musical text perfectly, this only allows you to know the letter; you must look for the Spirit.
Dare therefore to be spiritually ambitious and you will one day be surprised to discover that music belongs to the exclusive field . . . of poetry!
I’ll never forget the admirable words of my dear friend Paul Dukas who told me one day: “There is no art without poetry.”]

During the war, Bonnal took his vacations each August at Saint-Sever (in the Landes). He stayed in the home of Father Binsoll, the priest in Arièle, a nearby village. Each day, Bonnal visited his dear friends Ambroise Dupouy (organist at the Abbatial Church in Saint-Sever since 1840—who was responsible for the installation of its beautiful A. Cavaillé-Coll organ there in 1898—who died at the end of World War II), and his son Jean Dupouy (1896–1965), who succeeded him. Ambroise Dupouy’s daughter Jeanine, born in 1922, took daily lessons with Bonnal and her father. She has testified to Bonnal’s rigorous and severe approach, emphasizing his noble ideas and his meticulous care concerning details of touch, phrasing and fingering.
At the beginning of his summer vacation in 1844, Bonnal gave an organ concert with Jean Etchepare’s Double Vocal Quartet at Saint-André Church in Bayonne on Monday, July 31, 1944 at 3:45 p.m. This may seem like an odd time to give a concert, but this was due to the fact that many of the organ concerts in churches at that time served as an introduction and a conclusion to the exposition and benediction of the Holy Sacrament. Bonnal’s eclectic programs combined classical music with the popular traditional Basque repertory:

J. S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue (in D minor)
C. Franck: First Choral
A Basque Cantique (sung by the Double Vocal Quartet)
C. Franck: Second Choral
E. Bonnal: Joie et Joie for a men’s choir, set to a text by Loÿs Labèque
C. Franck: Third Choral
Improvisation on a given theme (by E. Bonnal)

E. Bonnal: O Salutaris
Josquin des Près: Ave Vera Virginitas
E. Bonnal: Tantum Ergo (in the Basque style) (sung during the exposition and benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament)
To conclude, Bonnal played J. S. Bach’s Chorale on the Veni Creator (most certainly his Fantasia super “Komm heiliger Geist, Herre Gott,” BWV 651).

Following this concert on July 31, Bonnal went to Saint-Sever to rehearse for a “Grand Concert Spirituel” that he was planning to give on Friday, September 8, 1944, at the Abbatial Church there, in collaboration with the Calvet Quartet and the Parish Schola directed by the organist Jean Dupouy. The proposed program:

I.
J. S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue (in D minor)

II.
N. de Grigny: Trio en dialogue
F. Couperin: Sarabande grave
N. Clérambault: Dialogue du 1er Ton
Cl. Balbastre: Noël (“Joseph est bien marié”)

III.
Händel: Sonata (in D major) for organ and violin (with Joseph Calvet)

IV.
E. Bonnal: Paysage landais
Noël landais
Improvisation (on a given theme)

V.
Maurice Ravel: Quatuor (played by the Calvet Quartet during the exposition and benediction of the Holy Sacrament)
At the end, Bonnal had programmed C. Franck’s Final.

During his visits to rehearse in Saint-Sever, the following photo was taken (See photo 6).
Unfortunately, Bonnal’s deteriorating health, due to his many personal sacrifices and concerns during the war, provoked a stroke that led to his death in Bordeaux, on August 14, 1944. This occurred just two and a half years after his appointment to Sainte-Clotilde46 and only twelve days after Joseph Bonnet’s own death.47 In the midst of the liberation of Paris, Bonnal’s daughter Marylis learned about her father’s death while listening to the radio! During this difficult time, Bonnal was buried in Bordeaux.
In 1945, Bonnal’s wife Hélène moved with her young children to Anglet. She survived, thanks to the generosity of an American organist, Mr. MacEvans, who was an officer in the American Army. He also directed a choir at the American University in Biarritz. To this day, Bonnal’s family is still extremely grateful for Mr. MacEvans’ kindness. In addition, André Marchal gave several benefit concerts for Bonnal’s family. On September 18, 1949, at Saint-André Church in Bayonne, with the singer Madame Malnory-Marsillac, the program included works by Bach, Couperin, Franck, Tournemire, and Bonnal (the second movement of his “Media Vita” Symphony). On May 15, 1952, Marchal performed another concert on the Saint-André organ in Bayonne, in Bonnal’s memory, with commentaries by Norbert Dufourcq, for the Jeunesses Musicales de France. This group was highly promoted in the Basque region by Bonnal’s very close friend, Joseph Calvet. Marchal’s eclectic program displayed the various tonal colors of this organ:

Louis Couperin - Chaconne in G minor
François Couperin – “Kyrie,” 5 verses from the Mass for the Parishes
J. S. Bach – Chorale: Christ lag in Todesbanden
C. Franck – Prélude, Fugue et Variation
Louis Vierne – “Final” from the First Symphony.
In 1975, Ermend Bonnal’s body was transported from Bordeaux to the Arcangues cemetery, in the Pyrenees mountains, an area he loved dearly. For this occasion, Henri Sauguet rendered homage to Bonnal’s positive inspiration on his own personal career as well as his contribution to 20th-century French music. Sauguet evoked Francis Jammes’ poem written in homage to Ermend Bonnal:

Taillé dans le dur bois d’un chêne harmonieux,
Ton pur profil, Bonnal, se confond avec l’orgue;
Mais de nous déchiffrer le silence des cieux
Ne te remplis jamais de vile et sotte morgue.
Comme aux astres, le jour, voilés par leur pudeur,
L’ombre est ce qui convient à ta noble carrière.
Ah! que tombe la nuit, et toute ta splendeur
Saura la consteller de notes de lumières.

[Carved in the hard wood of a harmonious oak tree,
Your pure profile, Bonnal, is merged with the organ;
But we must fathom the silence of the heavens
Which never fills you with a vile and foolish arrogance.
Like the stars, during the day, veiled by their modesty,
Darkness is most suitable to your noble career.
Ah! May the night fall, and all of your splendor
Will spangle it with enlightened notes.]

Conclusion
Joseph Ermend Bonnal belonged to a generation of artists from Bordeaux who possessed a high degree of moral perfection in their art and in their personal lives. They all shared a common, spiritual artistic vision, devoid of material ambitions, only desiring to serve music with deep, devoted love and passion. Inspired by the renewal of both traditional and early music, Bonnal formed numerous musical societies to promote this repertory. He left us an important heritage of deeply poetical pieces inspired by the rich culture of the Basque region. The intact organ at Saint-André Church in Bayonne testifies to his adherence to the French Neo-Classical organ. A prominent composer, music educator and administrator, a first-rate improviser and performer, Bonnal was indeed a dignified successor to his master and friend, Charles Tournemire, as titular organist at the Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris. Bonnal served his art with humility. In spite of the numerous obstacles he encountered during his lifetime, Bonnal’s noble aspirations, along with the faithful support of his friends, enabled him to pursue his ongoing quest for perfection.

Acknowledgements
Carolyn Shuster Fournier warmly expresses her gratitude to: Mayette Bonnal, François and Marylis Raoul-Duval (members of Bonnal’s family), Madame Catherine Massip and Madame Vallet-Collot of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cécile Auzolle, Madame Marie-Françoise Romaine Brown-Bonnet, Aurélie Decourt, Madame Janine Dupouy, Brigitte de Leersnyder, Jacqueline Englert-Marchal, Adolphine and François Marchal, Yannick Merlin, Etienne Rousseau-Plotto Marie-Christine Ugo-Lhôte, and to the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund for its grant in 2006.

Andrew Scanlon

The following conversation, conducted both in person and by telephone in March 2013, explores the career of one of America’s most eminent musicians and teachers, Ann Labounsky. Dr. Labounsky was my undergraduate organ teacher at Duquesne University, and she is now in her 44th year as professor and chair of sacred music and organ at that same institution. Some years after completing graduate study and working in church music, I had the privilege of returning to Duquesne as a faculty member, teaching alongside Dr. Labounsky for four years. We maintain a close collaboration, and therefore, I have been in the unique situation of knowing Dr. Labounsky on several levels since we first met in New York City at the 1996 American Guild of Organists Centennial Convention. As a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend, Ann has challenged, encouraged, and supported me in many ways. In this interview, we discuss Ann’s life and career. Several life chapters particularly dominate our discussion: Ann’s student days at Eastman as a pupil of the young David Craighead, and the full circle of Ann and David’s long friendship; Ann’s time as a Fulbright scholar in Paris, studying organ under André Marchal, Jean Langlais, and Marcel Dupré; and finally, Ann’s inimitable teaching career in Pittsburgh. 

 

 

Andrew Scanlon: When people ask me why I decided to learn to play the organ, I most often reply, “Actually, the organ chose me!” Most of your life has been devoted to the organ. What was your first encounter with the organ, and when did the organ first “choose you?”

Ann Labounsky: As a young girl, our family was living in Port Washington, Long Island, and my mother used to take me to a Methodist church across the street from our home. This was before I could read; and I must have heard the pipe organ, but I don’t have much of a memory of it.

Later, we attended Christ Church (Episcopal) in Oyster Bay, where Paul Sifler (also a composer) was the organist-choirmaster. My mother, my brother, and I all sang in the choir, and it was then that I became interested. I was fascinated by the way Paul played. I would come early for choir rehearsals or lessons to watch him practice. I began studying the organ with Sifler at age 15. He was a very good teacher for me, and I loved his compositions. One summer, I went away to a camp, where I couldn’t play the organ for about two weeks, and I missed it so much. I think at that stage, I knew I would be an organist.

 

The conventional wisdom seems to be that before learning the organ, a strong piano background is useful, even essential. Were you already accomplished on the piano? 

My piano teacher in high school was John LaMontaine, Paul Sifler’s partner. He was also a wonderful composer and had a great command of technique. He followed the Tobias Matthay school of relaxation. I would take the train to go to their apartment on 57th Street in New York to take the lessons. It was he who encouraged me to go to Eastman. 

 

Since your piano teacher encouraged you to apply to the Eastman School of Music, did you audition on both piano and organ? What was required for the audition?

Yes, we were required to perform on both instruments. For the organ portion, I remember playing Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 6, but can’t remember which Bach I played. I do recall that I played a recital my senior year of high school and had played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and Wir glauben all an einen Gott on that recital, so I must have played one of those works. For the piano portion, they required that you know all scales and arpeggios, as well as the performance of a work by Bach and a Beethoven sonata. I was very nervous for the audition.

 

Before you went to Eastman, what, if anything, did you know of David Craighead? Did you want to study with him, or were you taking the advice of your teachers?

Well, no; actually, I didn’t know anything about David Craighead. But John LaMontaine had studied at Eastman, and he thought it was a very good school. He wanted me to study with Eastman’s piano teacher, George MacNabb. (It was from MacNabb that I learned the Brahms Fifty-one Exercises, which I still use.) Paul Sifler thought that Catharine Crozier would have been a good organ teacher for me, and I looked into studying with her. However, by the time I entered Eastman as a freshman, Crozier had already left the Eastman faculty for Rollins College in Florida. 

 

Did you audition anywhere else besides Eastman?

No. It always makes me laugh now, because these days, students audition at several schools. But for some reason, I didn’t.

 

Had you given any thought to what might happen if you didn’t get in?

No, that didn’t occur to me! 

 

In 1957, you moved upstate from Long Island and began your new life in Rochester. What are your memories of those undergraduate years? 

Eastman was a wonderful school. For many years, I stayed in close touch with the friends that I made there because we all struggled together. It was very demanding; in fact, I had nightmares. I was so afraid that I wouldn’t do well enough and that David Craighead would make me study with Norman Peterson, the secondary teacher! 

 

Can you recall your close friends and colleagues from that time?

Some dear colleagues included Bill Stokes, Joanna Tousey, Bill Haller, Maggie Brooks, Bruce Lederhouse, Jim Johnson, Gretchen Frauenberger, and Robert Town. Roberta Gary was working on her doctorate and David Mulberry was a senior, but they were beyond me. They were the great legends at the time!

 

How many students were studying organ then?

I think there may have been about ten—smaller compared to what it is now. 

 

Can you recall periods of particular growth in your playing during the Eastman days, or conversely, any precise struggles?

I don’t recall any struggles specifically; everything was difficult. We had to have all our repertoire memorized. I would get very nervous before performances. I wish that I would have found a way to get over that more easily, as I look back now. But all of this contributed to my growth as a musician. 

 

When you arrived at Eastman, in the studio of David Craighead, he was still fairly new to Eastman’s faculty, correct?

Yes, he had arrived in 1955, and I entered in 1957. He always told me this funny story about when I first arrived. Evidently I went up to his office and knocked on his door and introduced myself. I said, “I’m Ann Labounsky: Ann without the ‘E’!” David said he always remembered that.

 

What was Craighead like as a teacher in 1957? What aspects of learning did he emphasize as a young teacher?

He was always very precise. At that time in his life, he was rather nervous, quite inhibited. He would tell you all the things that were not right, but you always wanted to strive to do better in the next lesson. We spent a lot of time on the registration. He used the Bonnet Historical Anthology of Music, which was highly edited, and not a good edition. He used the Seth Bingham edition of Couperin’s music and I hated that music back then; it wasn’t until I went to Paris to study with [André] Marchal that I knew what it all meant!

 

That anecdote reminds us of how David Craighead evolved tremendously, over the years, both as teacher and a performer.

He did. I remember seeing him some years later, perhaps in the early 1970s. He had come to perform in Pittsburgh, and we attended the Pittsburgh Symphony together. He spoke of the Offertoire from Couperin’s Mass for the Parishes, and how he had learned about the notes inégales. For Bach, we changed registration frequently and each change was well marked in the score. Also, phrasing was carefully marked. Craighead was meticulous about every detail, but was patient in working with us until we got it right. He was most effective when he would quickly slide onto the bench to demonstrate a passage.

 

Can you remember your degree recitals?

They were all in Kilbourne Hall on the Skinner organ. For my senior recital, I played the Bach Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, and of course, a lot of American music. David Craighead loved the music of Sowerby. I played Sowerby’s famous Arioso, which was gorgeous on that organ. At Eastman, there was a kind of “shopping list” of music that we all had to work on. Ironically, when we got to Langlais’ music, I hated it! I had performed some of the Hommage à Frescobaldi, and I didn’t like it at all! I also remember playing in the weekly performance class in preparation for my senior recital. At one such class, having completed a play-through of the Bach “A Minor,” I remember David Craighead saying, “That was bloody but unbowed!” 

 

When you were wrapping up your days at Eastman, did David Craighead advise you about what you should do in terms of furthering your education?

David Craighead was very different from Russell Saunders, who told the students exactly what they should do. David took a far more hands-off approach. He gave his students the confidence to make their own decisions. I thought about staying at Eastman for my master’s degree, but decided to go to the University of Michigan. It turned out to be a very good thing to do that, as I would meet my future husband, Lewis Steele, at Michigan.

 

After four years at the Eastman School, I imagine that you had a much broader sense of the organ world, and you knew what you wanted?

I certainly knew that I wanted to go on to earn a master’s degree, but at that time, I didn’t know much about church music or improvisation. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, except that I wanted to learn music.

 

In few words, can you summarize the church music curriculum at Eastman in those days?

It didn’t exist! 

 

Your next move was from Rochester to Ann Arbor. Tell us about what life was like at the University of Michigan in 1961.

In those days, the president of the AGO was Roberta Bitgood. She did a wonderful thing for the new students at U. of M. When we got off the train in Detroit, she met all the students. She had gathered members of the clergy from churches in the area that were looking for organists. She introduced all of us, and as a result, I began a church job right away in Dearborn, Michigan, about an hour from Ann Arbor. 

U. of M. was a very different school than ESM. My teacher there was Marilyn Mason. Mason was less of a teacher for me, but more of a coach. David Craighead had really formed my technique—so she didn’t have to work on that. We worked on musical details and interpretation. We always had our lessons on the organ in Hill Auditorium.

 

Were there other organ teachers?

Yes. Ray Ferguson and Robert Noehren were on the faculty at that time. 

 

Besides organ playing, were there any other memorable aspects of the Michigan graduate degree program that helped you grow?

The courses at Michigan were wonderful! I especially recall Hans David the musicologist, and Louise Cuyler, and I learned a great deal from both of them.

 

You mentioned that you also met your husband while at Michigan?

Yes, I earned the degree in one year and two summers, and I was getting ready to play my recital. I met Lewis Steele on the steps of Marilyn Mason’s studio. I needed soloists to sing in my church every Sunday since we didn’t have a summer choir. I heard his resonant voice, and asked him to sing a solo. That’s how our romance started! 

 

Would you care to elaborate?

Well, three children and four grandchildren later, we are very happy together. 

I could never have done the things I have done without Lewis’s support. He always said that in a marriage, it’s not a 50/50 partnership, rather it’s 100/100. You have to give all of yourself, all the time. He did so much in raising the children. I had no idea even how to change diapers. He taught me. So many of the things I didn’t have (for example, expertise in theology, scripture, choral directing), Lewis did have. It has been a wonderful partnership over the years. I always remember what Marilyn Mason said: “I’d marry him for his laugh!”

 

Can you sum up the church music curriculum at U. of M. in those days?

They had two tracks. You could earn the MM in organ, which I did, or the MM in church music. However, it seemed to me that the only difference was you didn’t have to memorize the recital if you were in the church music track. All students took Robert Noehren’s course in organ building, which I almost failed! You had to know the composition of mixtures, which was too much for me! He was a very good teacher, though. He had a significant influence in the organ department there at that time. 

 

As your time wound up in Michigan, the next big step would be the Fulbright process. What were you doing in Michigan to prepare for the program in France?

By the time I got to Michigan, I knew I wanted to go to France for additional study. In fact, I had applied for a Fulbright while still an Eastman student, but I didn’t get it. I applied a second time while at U. of M. I had been passionate about the French language and was determined that I would go to France one way or another. Every week, I would get together with Deedee Wotring, one of André Marchal’s former students. We would meet for coffee, and she would force me to speak French! 

 

But your love of France and the French language had begun long before Michigan, through your beloved Aunt Julia, correct?

I’m glad you mentioned Julia. You knew her and played at her funeral. She had studied art in Paris after the war, and following her arrival back home in New York, she spent every weekend with us in Long Island. Julia was determined to teach me how to speak French! My father (a geologist and engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project) was Russian, his second language being English. I was determined I was going to Paris to study, even if I had to be an au pair. 

In April, having applied for a Fulbright, saying I wanted to study with Marchal, but not yet knowing my fate, I went to a recital at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, performed by Jean Langlais, whom I met for the first time. I told him I had played his Miniature on my graduate recital at the University of Michigan, and that I hoped to soon be in Paris studying. He replied that he hoped he would see me! When I returned home to Long Island from that recital, I found out I had gotten the Fulbright grant! That was such a great blessing to be able to go, with everything paid for; it was just a marvelous thing. 

I should speak a little bit about how we got to France. The first time we went over was on the “Queen Mary,” and on the “France” a number of times. It took five days, and there was no jet lag, because each day you changed the clocks only one hour. It was a wonderful way to travel. Ruth Woods (Harris) and I went together, both studying with Marchal on a Fulbright grant. We remain close friends.

 

Though you are perhaps best known as the leading American disciple of Jean Langlais, when you set off for France, your initial intent was to study with André Marchal, and you did. Tell us about studying with Marchal.

When I heard Marchal play for the first time, it was at Oberlin. He played in a way I had never heard anyone else play. Each line breathed. I heard music differently when he played, and I wanted to learn what he knew. Fortunately, my French was good enough that I didn’t need a translator, but his daughter Jacqueline often translated for the other students. Lessons were in his home at 22 Rue Duroc. I also wanted to study improvisation. Even though Marchal improvised very well, at that time he no longer taught improvisation. He said: “Well, you may study improvisation with Langlais.”

You must understand about the teachers all over Europe at that time: they were very possessive of their students. You were not able to simply study with anyone you wanted; definitely not several teachers! You went abroad to study with ONE teacher. I studied organ repertoire with Marchal, but Marchal gave me his permission to study with Langlais. After that time, while continuing to study with Marchal, I would then go to Ste. Clotilde in the evenings for my lessons with Langlais, which was wonderful. Playing on the organ that Franck, Tournemire, and Langlais knew so well, and hearing their music on that instrument, made all the difference in learning that music.

 

What musical facet did Marchal underscore the most in how to play the organ?

The touch. He had a way of phrasing each line independently. And he had such a concept of the whole piece. I remember working on Bach’s great Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor (BWV 542) with him. He had the whole piece completely engraved in his mind—every voice. It was amazing to me that this blind man knew music so well. For example, if you used a fingering that was not effective, he could tell!

 

You mentioned having studied Couperin as an undergraduate at Eastman. I know that with his interest in early music, Marchal would make the classical French school an essential part of what you studied. How did your point of view evolve with respect to this music?

Marchal just knew that music. I don’t know how—because he had studied with Gigout, and of course, everyone was playing completely legato then. Marchal attributed his style of playing to studying the harpsichord, saying that as a result, he had learned a different way of playing. And in the 1960s, no one else was playing like that. We usually associate Marie-Claire Alain as a leader in the early music revival for the organ—but even in the 1940s when Marie Claire Alain was very young, it was Marchal who was the first great leader in this movement. There was something about the way he played that helped me understand that “this is how you play!” With Marchal, I studied all Couperin, as well as all the music of de Grigny, Clérambault, Daquin, etc.

 

I recall from other conversations over the years that you recall practicing constantly during the time you were in France. You learned a great deal of music—how much repertoire did you absorb in two years?

In addition to all I mentioned just above, with Marchal, I studied all the Bach trio sonatas, all the big preludes and fugues—tons of repertoire! With Langlais I studied all of Franck’s music, much of Tournemire, and other pieces, too. In terms of how lessons worked, with Marchal (and Donald Wilkins said it was the same with Duruflé), you brought in a piece to a lesson, one of these big pieces, and they told you everything you needed to know. If you brought in the same piece again to another lesson, they said, “Well, I already told you everything I know about it last week!” We knew that we wouldn’t be there forever with those brilliant musicians. Our goal was to cover as much repertoire as possible in the shortest amount of time.

 

Do you still play the pieces you studied with Marchal or Langlais the same way as when you learned them? Or do you perform them differently now?

Wonderful question. I think that the spirit is the same; some things changed a little. I’m constantly trying to think in a fresh way, but the spirit of what I learned from Langlais and Marchal has stayed with me.

 

Concerning Marchal’s teaching, did he have any idiosyncrasies?

Many have said of Marchal that if a student was not gifted, he would be very lenient with that student; but the more diligent a student was, he would be much more strict. And that certainly was true. One funny story was about phrasing in one of the trio sonatas. I had asked why he played it that particular way, and he thought for a long time. After quite a long period of silence, finally he answered: “Because it pleases me!”

 

Many people are very well acquainted with your work and expertise on the music and the life of Jean Langlais. Much of this information can be learned from your book, Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music (Amadeus Press, 2000), as well as from the liner notes on your CD recordings. Would you share with us, in a broad sense, what it was like to be Langlais’ pupil, and how that relationship developed over many years?

Langlais was extremely supportive. He always made you feel that you could do anything! If you made a mistake, he knew, but he was just thinking about the music. Always so encouraging and supportive, he was continually trying to find places for his students to play, and to help them in whatever way he could. As I learned his music, I became more and more interested, and I wanted to learn as much as I could. 

 

Over the years, how much cumulative time did you study with Langlais?

I have no idea. I usually had a weekly lesson on Wednesday evenings, when the church was closed. In addition to that, on Saturday afternoons, we were at the Schola Cantorum, and that’s where we worked on improvisation. Over the years, I returned many more times to study.

 

After remaining in France for an extra year, what path did your career take upon returning to the States?

Langlais asked me to be his guide for his fall 1964 American tour, and I did that. Shortly thereafter, I took a job in a very large Roman Catholic church in New Hyde Park, Long Island. I had a choir of men and boys that I had to develop and direct. That was hard work. 

 

How did you end up in Pittsburgh? Did you move there to take up your position as organ teacher at Duquesne University?

In 1967, Lewis and I moved to Pittsburgh to take up a joint church position at Brentwood Presbyterian Church. Lewis was the choir director, and I was the organist. We had only one child, six months old. Two years later, in 1969, the head of graduate studies at Duquesne University called and asked if I would like to teach organ at Duquesne—but I had never heard of Duquesne! Honestly, I was not thinking about teaching in a college and university. I had done some private teaching, but had not thought beyond that. I wanted to be a church musician and recitalist. Looking back on it, I don’t know why I hadn’t considered university teaching. I was busy at the church and raising our kids. So, in 1969, I began teaching part-time, and it initially cost our family money for me to teach at Duquesne, because I had to pay for child care! At that time, there was a degree program in organ, but no sacred music program or sacred music courses. 

In 1972, around the time of the birth of our third child, the dean of Duquesne’s school of music at the time, Gerald Keenan, called me into his office and said they wanted to hire me full-time. After that time, I was the only organ teacher.

 

What was your strategy for building up the sacred music degree programs at Duquesne? 

I didn’t really have a strategy. I worked slowly, adding courses as it made sense. Even before I was full-time, I had brought Jeanne Joulain to Pittsburgh for a recital and workshop—in that way, I was already developing a tradition of guest artists. The first class that I started was the “Service Playing” course. I was always interested in improvisation, having studied it with Langlais, and I had won the very first AGO improvisation competition in 1966 in Atlanta. I began an improvisation course, focusing on rather simple aspects of improvisation. 

For a few years, we moved along slowly, trying to figure out the curriculum and course requirements. In 1976, the 25th year of the Duquesne School of Music, I decided that Langlais should come to Duquesne. This coincided with the official establishment of the sacred music degree programs. While Langlais was in residence, we awarded him an honorary doctorate, and we had a whole week of concerts featuring premieres of his music. This started things off in a huge way, attracting a lot of national attention. Gradually, more and more students wanted to come to Duquesne, continuing over the years. I couldn’t say in what specific year things really blossomed. Another aspect of our program’s emphasis in church music came after I realized there had been a huge void in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council—no choirs, no hymnals, a very low level of music. I saw that Duquesne had a responsibility and an opportunity to take a lead in this area. The dean, Robert Egan, agreed with me, and we worked for several years on strengthening the program. I called many people at different universities to see what other programs were offering. In those early days, I taught all the courses myself, as we didn’t have that many students. 

 

For many years, you have been a serious campaigner for the cause of the AGO certification program. From where did your advocacy of this program emerge?

Initially from Walter Hilse. I met Walter while we were both students in Paris. Walter, also from New York, was studying composition with Nadia Boulanger and organ with Maurice Duruflé. On Wednesday afternoons, Boulanger taught an analysis class for foreigners at her apartment, for which she had a huge following. She had a small house organ, having been a student of Vierne. Students would play pieces (Fauré, for example), and then she would pull the pieces apart and ask questions. She was a huge personality. I still have the scores. (We had to buy the ones she was going to discuss.) At these classes, Walter Hilse encouraged me to become certified. I distinctly remember him saying “You really should take the AAGO [Associate of the AGO] exam.” He has always been a huge promoter of the exams and has had many private students. Anne Wilson and Todd Wilson, for example, prepared for the exams with Walter. While my husband and I were still living on Long Island, I decided to do this. Once I began teaching at Duquesne University, it occurred to me that those skills were so vital to all students, that they should be learning these skills while studying for university degrees. 

 

Did the desire to help students become fluent with keyboard skills such as those tested on the AGO exams prompt you to require the AGO exams as part of the sacred music degrees at Duquesne?

In the early 1980s, I was on the National Committee on Professional Certification. Only one other school in the country was making it a requirement to take the exams. So, I decided to initiate the exams at Duquesne. When you tell people they have to do it, then they just do! Not everyone passed, and people took different exams, depending on their level of expertise. I met many wonderful people on that committee, including Max Miller, Sister Theophane Hytrek, John Walker, and David Schuler, for example. Different years, various others rotated on and off that committee, such as Todd Wilson. 

 

When did you ultimately attempt the Fellowship exam? 

Since I had already made the exams a degree requirement at DU, and I was the National Councillor for Education, I decided that it was time. You can’t just say to someone, “you should do this!”—you need to set an example. During a very busy time, when I had three children, was teaching full time, playing recitals, and was on the national board, I worked with two former students in Pittsburgh, John Miller and Robert Kardasz, to prepare together for the FAGO. Eventually, we all passed! It gave Pittsburgh more people with the FAGO diploma, where previously only Charles Heaton and Don Wilkins had earned it. We needed more highly certified people for a city our size.

 

Why do you consider it so important to take the certification exams?

There are a number of reasons:

1) In order to keep growing you need both long-term and short-term goals. As a student, it’s a short-term goal. Before earning a degree, it helps you have a point of arrival.

2) After my student, John Henninger, graduated from Duquesne, he went on to Westminster Choir College for graduate school and had applied for a church job in Princeton. He had passed the CAGO while at Duquesne, and he was appointed to the job because of having the Colleague Certificate. 

3) The exams represent a very structured way of testing both theoretical and practical skill. You can work at your own pace, and everybody I know who has done this, whether or not they have passed, has profited by it. It seems like a natural thing to do this, when you consider that so many other professions offer certification.

4) Earning an AGO certificate is a way that we show we’re at a certain level in our profession.

5) Earning certification does level the playing field and sets a high standard.

Our professional organization is extremely important. I get upset with people who complain about aspects of degree programs, churches, even the AGO—when the only thing you can do is to get right in the trenches to make things better!

 

Several graduates of Duquesne have gone on to earn the highest AGO certification. How has that made
you feel?

Very proud. You [Andrew Scanlon] being one of them, and now even serving on the national exam committee—that has made me especially proud. My current colleague, Ben Cornelius-Bates, has recently earned the FAGO also. 

 

Reflecting on your almost 45 years of teaching at Duquesne, how would you say your teaching and playing has evolved?

On teaching, David Craighead always said that you learn so much from your students, and I really have. In the beginning, I felt I didn’t know much, but I learned along the way. I found some things that worked well, and I fought the scars of things that didn’t work well. I have found it important to document what each student does. Recently, I got a computer in my studio, and using the “Blackboard” tool has been transformative. I have begun taking notes for each lesson and posting them for each student to view.

In the early days of my teaching, I was still very much in the mode of the teachers I learned from in Paris—Langlais, Marchal, and Dupré. They were very directive. They told you exactly what they wanted you to do. Initially, I taught the way they taught, because it was so fresh in my mind. As things have evolved, I have wanted to help each student find his own voice. I might not always agree with the student, but feel strongly that it’s in the best interest of each student to let them develop their own musical instincts. 

Ironically, when I performed all the recitals that Langlais had organized for me, I still felt I was his student. Langlais said, “You have to do this the way you want to do it.” But he had not taught that way. For example, he was known for saying so emphatically in his teaching that “Franck is tremendously free—just like this!” In improvisation, he taught the Thème libre, which, of course, is not free at all!

As you grow older, you grow in wisdom. You learn a lot from your children, also. They keep you humble, and they really tell you when you mess up! 

When I look at David Craighead, I keep thinking of how he was when I first studied with him at Eastman. Then, he was a new teacher. I had the joy of knowing him so well for the last 14 years of his life, and he had changed so much. He started by telling the students when they had made mistakes, but ended up changing lives. I try to do that too. I try to be a mentor, to do everything I possibly can to encourage my pupils, and help them get along well together. Music school can be almost like a monastery, when you’re all working together, and it’s so important to have a good rapport with your colleagues, to show great compassion for one another. 

Secondly, in answer to your question about my own playing, several things have contributed to the way I have played over the years. One of these was earning my Ph.D. in musicology, and beginning my biography of Langlais as the dissertation. All my years of teaching, the wisdom I gained from colleagues such as Robert Sutherland Lord and Don Franklin, making all the Langlais recordings—all of that contributed to the evolution of my playing. Other factors include the 1985 Bach Year, when I was asked to play an all-Bach recital on the Beckerath organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh. I changed my approach to Bach playing, using all toes, and different fingering. Change was in the air at that time. 

 

Have there been still more recent developments?

Yes. I have been working with Don Franklin on the tempo relationships in Bach preludes and fugues. We have been looking back to Kirnberger’s tempo relationships. I am constantly trying to learn more. If you have everything figured out, you may as well just retire, and I’m certainly not ready to retire!

In addition, after being asked a few years ago to do a peer review of a string methods class, I became fascinated with the violin. I realized that I had always wanted to play the violin, but I was afraid to try! I started taking violin lessons with David Gillis, a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and I’m still studying! I’m working on the Vivaldi sonatas, Opus 2, which I love! It’s a whole other world. 

The most recent development is the establishment of Duquesne’s chant schola under the direction of faculty member Sister Marie Agatha Ozah, HHCJ. We study the St. Gall notation to incorporate those interpretive elements into our singing. In May 2013, I led a study trip to Paris to play the important organs there and gave a short concert at the Benedictine Abbey in Solesmes. 

 

How do you know what to say when a student plays? What not to say? 

Always, I do it by intuition, and I think David Craighead did too. I’m careful not to say too much, and not say too little. 

 

How do you decide not only what to say, but how to say it? How do you break through?

Teaching is so dynamic, because you have to figure out where the student is and how the student will perceive what you say. You always have to be honest, but you need to be helpful—not damaging. You can’t say something is good when it’s not. Some teachers are more didactic, but I find that I do almost everything by intuition.

 

Realizing that you could retire, what keeps you going?

I love what I’m doing. I’m finally at a point when I can do it more easily.

I still have a lot to give to the students. I can still make a difference in their lives, and I still enjoy it. When we look around the country, and see the teachers who have retired, only to see their programs eliminated, that is always a danger. 

 

What are your hopes for the future of Duquesne’s sacred music and organ programs?

We are working very hard to get a world-class organ on campus! We have plans, and hope to be able to do this in the near future. The last piece of the puzzle is to put a doctoral program in place. That has been in discussion for many years, and it has been very challenging because there are many hoops to jump through. Our library holdings have been critical, but we now have many sacred music collections (the Langlais Collection, the Craighead Collection, the Boys Town Collection, the Richard Proulx Collection, to name a few). We have the faculty, and the quality of teaching, but we need more financial support. 

 

What else would you like to say?

Duquesne University has always been a religious institution. Our mission is to train church musicians. There are other schools whose main issue is getting students ready for competitions, which is wonderful, and I admire them very much. But even David Craighead agreed that he wished the Eastman School had done more with church music and preparation for the AGO exams. I want to prepare students to be musicians in churches of all denominations. We are trying to evolve, as the church continues to evolve. Students have to learn both pastoral skills and musical skills. These are difficult to teach. Our internship, for example, is a requirement partially because of NASM accreditation, but it’s also a critical area that we use to help each student in that very way. 

 

Ann, thank you for sharing these details of your life in teaching and performing. Albert Einstein said, “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” My experience of you as a teacher and mentor has been just so. You always gave the students exactly the right amount of guidance, and offered the right words precisely when they were needed; and yet you always allowed each student to discover his own path. You have led the way gracefully, setting a high bar and leading by example. Most importantly you have shown me the importance of constant, ongoing learning. I look forward to many more years of collaboration and friendship and wish you many blessings for continued joy in your work. 

David Rumsey

David Rumsey studied organ in Australia, Denmark, France and Austria. He rose to a senior lectureship in the Australian university system from 1969–1998, also pursuing an international teaching, concert and consulting career as an organist. He worked in various cross-disciplinary fields, especially linking broadcasting, drama and music, arranging a number of major presentations and seminars. In 1998, after mounting a 14-hour spectacle on the life of Bach with actors in period dress and musicians playing historic instruments, he left Australia and settled around 2000 in Basel, Switzerland, where he continues to work as an organist and consultant.

    Posterity bestows no laurels upon mimesis. Since the invention of the Welte-Mignon piano and the Welte-Philharmonie organ, this expression has lost its validity for recording musicians. Generations far removed from ours will be able to recognize the masters of our age in their prowess and in the totality of their artistry. By means of technology, impermanence and time have been vanquished, the moment of metaphysical experience has been captured for eternity.

These prophetic words of Montgomery Rufus Karl Siegfried Straube (1873–1950) have never rung truer, although the long road, technological means, and near total loss of all that he was talking about in relation to the Philharmonie, could never have been foreseen—not even by a person of such eloquence, vision and culture as he obviously was. The British do have ways with words, the Germans perhaps more with music. Was it his English mother who lay behind this uncanny ability to express himself so well?
My former teacher in Sydney, Australia, Norman Johnston, used to sagely advise his students: “Always proceed from the known to the unknown.” It was well expressed and has long served as a useful life guide. Norman was a pupil of André Marchal, Marchal in his turn a pupil of Eugène Gigout. Like beauty, musical genealogy is probably mainly in the eye of the beholder, although it has been perpetuated often enough—as in Albert Schweitzer’s biography. It is often associated—as there—with those who want to trace their instructional lineage back to J. S. Bach.
By this token, Gigout is my musical great-grandfather. As a student, I put him into a box labeled “romantic French”. And there he remained for a very long time. It was an accurate enough generalization, but when you spend whole afternoons with him—or his musical ghost—you soon begin to realize that he occupied a rather special place in the romantic French hierarchy. Furthermore, he does not always perform in quite the way a “romantic” tag might lead us to expect.
Until recently I had never heard Gigout play. Hardly surprising: he died 14 years before I was born and made no gramophone records. But now that I am a septuagenarian, some unexpected events have changed all that. With apologies to clairvoyants and occultists, whose hopes will now be dashed, perfectly rational explanations are offered, while Straube’s prophecy is fulfilled.

The Seewen Philharmonie
The advice of my teacher was particularly apt over the past few years, as one of the world’s few remaining full-sized Welte-Philharmonie organs was restored under my supervision. The instrument was originally intended for the ship Britannic and is now the central attraction in the Museum der Musikautomaten at Seewen, Solothurn, Switzerland. Associated with it is a remarkable inventory of roll recordings, most commercially released between 1912 and 1928.
Several stages were needed in this not uncomplicated exercise, each of them representing a transition from the known to the unknown:
• restoring the organ
• dealing with the Britannic connections that were discovered during the restoration
• making the pneumatic roll-player work
• adding computer control
• tweaking the pneumatic roll player, computer and console systems to work optimally together
• scanning the rolls digitally
• developing software to electronically emulate the Welte pneumatic system
• auditioning the scanned and converted roll data played on the organ itself
• making an inventory of the roll collection, who played, what they played, how they played, and the current condition of the rolls.
With such a complex instrument, and old technologies that had slipped well behind the front line for nearly a century, we proceeded from our knowns to our unknowns with a mixture of confidence, trepidation and patience. Fortunately all went well.
But what of the rolls? We knew that playing them back over the Welte tracker bar and pneumatic player was always going to work—with the age-old reservations surrounding these machines and their many vagaries. Yet this, too, was surprisingly easy.

The Welte rolls
So the rolls could be played again pneumatically and the organ played manually—just as always with the Welte Philharmonie (Philharmonic to most of the English-speaking world). Seewen possesses, however, mostly only one roll of each recording. Even with other known collections, there are limited duplicates about in the world. Most original Welte rolls are nearly a century old now and show distinctive signs of being at “5 minutes to midnight.” Even with some potentially available copies, Seewen’s collection can exist nowhere else in the world, for it mainly consists of original “second-master” rolls from which the copies were made. So the physical wear and tear, and real risk of damage, even destruction, from pneumatic machine playing are best avoided whenever possible.
With only around 250 roll titles known to exist in more than one copy at Seewen, we are clearly treading on rather delicate eggshells with all of them. Our answer has been to scan them once with people and machines that treat them kindly, digitize them, preserve the rolls separately, then play them as often as we want from computer files.
So the next unknown became digital scanning and playback. Could we side-step the pneumatic roll-player with complete impunity? The scanning device needed its own custom-written software to produce playable files. The data was then transferred to the organ’s computer, for which more arcane software programs had to be developed. The interface had to operate absolutely non-intrusively with the organ’s playing action, for this was a unique and highly sensitive heritage restoration. There was a rough row to hoe here for a while, dealing with the huge multinomial equations of at least four different roll types, their age, and the weird but wonderful Welte multiplexing system, which might best be described as early 20th-century pneumatic computing. Welte’s technical standards also varied from roll to roll and with the earlier and later developments of their technology.
Success began to arrive by mid-2009. The unknown was relieved by the known. From October of that year for the following six months, a team of three specially trained scanners began the digitizing process. This required “sensitive fingers” to mount and guide the fragile rolls without damage and ensure that the best “geometry” was attained with, ideally, just one pass. By mid-2010 all 1,600 or so rolls had been scanned and digitized, and are thus now preserved in two forms: the original rolls and their digital conversions.
Still there were many unknowns: What was played? Who played? How? Phrasing? Tempo? Registration? Does this unique collection fully validate Karl Straube’s statement above? A Pandora’s box of questions and future research projects was suddenly opened up while myriads of fine historic performance details became available.
The latter represent the performance practices of an entire generation of organists who preceded most of those generally thought to be the first ever to make recordings. In chronologically defined terms: the rare “electrically recorded” 78s, most notably those of Harry Goss-Custard in the mid-1920s, were preceded by effectively no acoustic organ recordings. It was exactly during this period, 1912–1925, that roll-recording was in its heyday.
Welte in particular, among the few firms making recordings at this time, managed to capture the playing of a whole school of 19th-century-trained organists in this important time-window. While they and many other firms made rolls aimed to sell in the “popular” and “transcription” repertoire arenas, Welte stands out for their dedication to recording the great organists and original organ repertoire of their own epoch. This included Harry Goss-Custard, himself, then about 13 years younger than when he recorded his 78s.
The downside to the Welte system may well be the limitations of one organ for all organists and repertoire, and a tricky recording technology and medium, but the upsides are many. For one thing, the playability and intelligibility of most roll recordings is now far better than any disc made before the mid-1940s. Fate has decreed that Seewen is the only Welte Philharmonie left in the world on which we can preserve and play so many of these early roll-recordings, reproducing the original playing and registration, at the highest possible standards allowed by this system.

Playing the rolls digitally
It is late 2010 as this is being written. We are halfway through a survey of the digitized rolls, a process that should be complete by late 2011. The results are very encouraging—about 85% play well on one scan. Inevitably there are some problematic rolls, some that may never play again, some re-scans to do, an odd roll that is wound in reverse (standard practice with Welte’s cinema organ players) or other eventualities, including five marked but not perforated “first-masters”. But the overwhelming majority turned out to play well—and, considering the historical importance of it all, quite breathtakingly so.
There are many advantages to playing rolls digitally. Quick search-and-play of the stored data and no rewinding—with all of that procedure’s dire threat to aging paper—are simple and obvious benefits. Dialogue boxes giving timings or the actual registration being used are extremely useful. The Seewen organ, which knew two main manifestations—1914 and, slightly enlarged, 1920–1937—can also be switched from one form to another, enabling the rolls to be heard as they were recorded, or as Welte themselves pneumatically patched them up to play on a larger organ (specifically this one). Smaller player-organ manifestations are also available.
One of the most important facilities offered is the chance to restore the pedal to the point where the organist originally played it: due to Welte’s multiplexing system, pedal notes were often adjusted by moving them slightly earlier so the pneumatic technology could still work while roll-widths remained manageable. They had valid reasons for this, but digital editing now allows restoration of that aspect of the original performance. Others, including the correction of wrong notes and stops caused by holes or tears from years of damage to or decay of the paper, are also possible.
The computer in the Seewen organ is wired straight to the final windchest magnets, thus playing far more accurately and precisely than passing the whole process through paper and pneumatic systems with all their vagaries and notorious technological temperaments. That includes roll slippage or sticking, and worn, underpowered motors, to say nothing of arch-enemies such as dust, air leakage or damaged, corroding lead tubing. Another big plus for digital playback is that repeated playings do not create more wear and tear on rolls. Tear can all too literally be what happens. Simply rewinding a roll can be an act of vandalism against a unique surviving historic performance—the rewind moves at some speed and shredding is a better description than tearing when it happens.
Many rolls are no longer reliably playable pneumatically, and this situation must inevitably deteriorate further with time. So it was not a moment too soon to digitize them. In fact, both rolls and digitized scans are now the targets of careful preservation under the impenetrable vaults of this impressively-built museum (was “Fort Knox” more prototype than legend?).

Restoration
We were lucky. For such a sensitive heritage restoration, it was a relief that Welte themselves had built or converted its action to electric back in early 20th century. Had this not already been done, computer playback could have been unthinkable now. The consequences would have been pneumatic playing only, maybe only 50% of the rolls functioning properly, and a destructive process repeated for each playing. Further deterioration, with time running on its legendary wings—and no effective means of correction for rolls not running perfectly true—would have been our rather anguished lot.
The happy confluence of musical and computer skills found in Daniel Debrunner not only saw to the computer control of the organ’s action, but also developed the roll-scanner and necessary software to convert the rolls into digital formats. A collaboration now exists with a number of partners in a research program called Wie von Geisterhand, which, in late 2010, was awarded another Swiss Federal Government grant to continue through 2011 and 2012.
The museum under Christoph
Haenggi’s direction, Daniel Debrunner, and I are among the Swiss and international partners in the Geisterhand team. Now that all rolls are scanned, we have set about auditioning them on the organ. Sure, Gigout can be heard playing his own Toccata, Communion, and Festival March on the Welte formerly in Linz-am-Rhein (EMI 5CD set 7243 5 74866 2 0 CD 2); but that organ is a much smaller model than the Welte recording organ was. Seewen’s full-sized Philharmonie has all the stops Gigout used. Important aspects of the registration can be compromised on the smaller models where, for example, some foundation stops on one manual are typically borrowed from another, or the pedal Posaune 16′ “pneumatically patched” to a Bourdon 16′—just not the same thing. The currently available CD-recorded repertoire is in any case minuscule compared to Seewen’s holdings.

Cataloguing the Welte recordings
At present rates it will probably take until late 2011 to complete the auditioning process and finalize a comprehensive database. We are also slowly incorporating whatever further information we can glean about the total Welte organ roll production and its current whereabouts around the globe. So far we have over 3,600 entries representing over 2,600 known rolls and those mentioned in Welte catalogues. This gives over 1,600 separate titles.
Already a wonderland of historic recordings has turned up. The relatively short playing times of 78s (at best about 41⁄2 minutes) compared poorly to over 23 minutes available from rolls. The roll performances are without surface noise, demand no interruptions to “change sides”, and are in the most perfect “hi-fi stereo”.
Actually, we could say this process goes one step further: it nudges up towards “live” performance. Those who have experienced roll recordings frequently report the feeling that the artist is present, actually playing. An anecdote relates that admirers of Busoni’s once played a Welte-Mignon recording of his at his home while his widow was in the next room. The accuracy of reproduction was so true that she burst in, eyes full of tears, calling out “Ferruccio, Ferruccio!” Wie von Geisterhand (“as if by the hand of a ghost”) is a most relevant project name.

The Great Playback
Our computer technology began to reach maturity in the second half of 2009. In October 2009 the systematic scanning process commenced in the Seewen Museum’s library, which was specially re-equipped for this task. Then, from November, we could launch the long program of auditioning the scanned rolls. Tweaking it all has continued through 2010. In general, we took the rolls in the sequence of their Welte catalogue numbers. This led to some observations of the firm’s “commercial logic” in its rarified market: many of the earliest Philharmonie rolls are recuts from orchestrion or piano rolls, modified to make them play on an organ with 150 holes in its tracker bar. Many were punched by hand: most impressive at Seewen are the long operatic, orchestral, and symphonic excerpts—including entire Beethoven symphonies and lengthy Wagner or Verdi opera potpourris—mostly hand-punched, often on rolls of around 15 minutes’ duration.
The sociology of this is a study in itself, but clearly, as with the British “Town Hall Organ” culture, Welte and its organists had to “entertain”. There was great public demand to hear operatic and symphonic music, but a notable lack of orchestras around to play it, especially aboard ships.
The auditioning of the roll-scans fell into my lap almost too naturally. There was a curious life-flashback here—history sometimes repeats itself in wondrous ways and without warning. When I was about eight years old, somebody disposed of an old acoustic wind-up gramophone in our backyard. This may have been thoughtless for the precinct, but it was kind to me. A vast collection of 78s was dumped alongside this machine. In the glorious outdoors of sunny suburban Sydney, I would play these recordings over and over. My great favorite was Wagner. Hapless neighbors were serenaded with unsolicited afternoons of Valkyries, Nibelungen and Flying Dutchmen. The complaints were legion. My skin was thick.
In late 2009—some 62 years later—I found myself listening to precisely this repertoire once again, but at Seewen. At least it was indoors this time—winter in Switzerland by contrast to summer in Sydney. Nobody was seriously disturbed, and the museum staff’s love or hatred of Wagner expanded or contracted commensurately according to their predispositions to this music. A subtle, inoffensive art of opening and closing the doors on me in Seewen’s “Hall of Auditory Arts,” where the organ is located, was tactfully developed. Or is that a residual “Wagner social conscience” now returning to make me utterly paranoid?
An amazing mastery of musical expression is found in the manually punched performances. All manner of nuances were reproduced—crescendi, sforzati, tremolandi, rallentandi, rubati, “orchestral” registrations—all fully expressive and highly convincing. One would scarcely guess that so many of them were laboriously drilled out by technicians rather than played by first-rate musicians. In fact, these technicians were consummate artists themselves, sometimes trained organists in their own right. They knew their repertoire and the performance paradigms of their day exactly, and had the skills and capacity to precisely build them into these rolls. All of this was through the medium of millions upon millions of tiny holes punched into paper. Yet there was nothing particularly new in this—in another lineage from Père Engrammelle through Dom Bédos de Celles, skills had already passed on to musical barrel-makers telling them how to make “mechanical” music expressive in the 18th century. And there had then been a 19th-century-long gestation of this art, through the orchestrion’s heyday, before Michael Welte and his crew applied their skills to Wagner, Brahms and Beethoven for their Philharmonie.
Such transcriptions were not only a much-favored repertoire of the Welte era, but are also one of the musical genres that the Philharmonie was truly “born to play”. In discussions of lost Beethoven traditions around World War I, these rolls at Seewen must have their part to play: they were created by people steeped in these traditions. They also knew their Verdi and Wagner.
Cinema organ music, light classics, and even hymns were also recorded. We have German chorales played by German organists or English hymns played by Harry Goss-Custard in what must have been the Berlin or Liverpool Cathedral traditions of the time. The variety of information that is stored on these rolls is truly breathtaking.

So: what is there?
Seewen is the inheritor of the largest ship’s organ ever built and the most important single collection of roll recordings by fully romantic-tradition organists. Listed here chronologically according to their birth years are just 29 of Welte’s organists—about one-third of the total:

1842–1912 Carl Hofner
1842–1929 Johann Diebold
1844–1925 Eugène Gigout
1851–1937 Clarence Eddy
1853–1934 Franz Joseph Breitenbach
1858–1944 Marie-Joseph Erb
1861–1925 Marco Enrico Bossi
1862–1949 Samuel Atkinson Baldwin
1863–1933 William Faulkes
1865–1931 William Wolstenholme
1865–1934 Edwin Henry Lemare
1865–1942 Alfred Hollins
1868–1925 Paul Hindermann
1869–1929 Herbert Francis Raine Walton
1871–1964 Walter Henry (Harry) Goss-Custard
1872–1931 Walter Fischer
1873–1916 Max Reger
1873–1950 Karl Straube
1877–1956 Reginald Goss-Custard
1878–1942 Alfred Sittard
1878–? J(ohann?) J(akob?) Nater
1882–1938 Paul Mania
1884–1944 Joseph Elie Georges Marie Bonnet
1886–1971 Marcel Dupré
1890–? Kurt Grosse
1893–1969 Joseph Messner
1897–1960 Karl Matthaei
1898–1956 Günter Ramin
fl. 20thc “Thaddä” Hofmiller

Apart from the slightly special cases of Carl Hofner and Johann Diebold, the next earliest-born of Welte’s organists was French: Eugène Gigout. Born in 1844, he was educated directly in his country’s great 19th-century traditions of playing, which he himself helped to create and consolidate.
Judging by evidence on the rolls, the Freiburg recordings were made at least in early 1911. But 1910 must be more likely, since a preview of the Philharmonie was presented to the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1911. The final development—with order books then opened—was at the Turin Exhibition of November that same year. Most rolls were then made and released 1912–26, neatly covering the period up to electrical recording, and briefly overlapping it. During World War I, there was a dramatic reduction in factory output, and after 1926 productivity again slowly tapered off as entertainment changed focus to other media—radio, 78s. Roll production later dribbled away to special wartime releases, re-releases or late releases of earlier recordings. The last recording year found so far is 1938 (Binninger playing Böhm on W2244).
Surveying it all, we get an impression of several waves of players fully immersed in their own traditions, with birth dates—and thus, broadly, traditions of playing—covering a span of over 50 years. From England, the USA, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, these organists were considered among the best available from anywhere in the early 20th century. While the list above tells many interesting stories, it is primarily a roll-call of Welte-preferred leading organists selected from about 1910 onwards. Others may have been asked and did not record for one reason or another. Those who did record were ones that Welte saw as potentially “best-selling” artists. Let us make no mistake about it: this was a highly commercial enterprise.

Italy: Bossi
Welte’s Italian connection was uniquely through Marco Enrico Bossi. He was the first organist ever to officially record for them (July 1912). Perhaps the link was made when Welte exhibited their prototype Philharmonie at the Turin exhibition of November 1911? Bossi’s son—also a German-trained organist—had just conducted an orchestral concert there in October. The original organ works that Marco Enrico plays are Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 539), Dubois’ In Paradisum, and Franck’s Cantabile. Transcriptions include Henselt’s Ave Maria, op. 5 (arranged by Bossi), Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 10 (second and third movements), and a Schumann March (arranged by Guilmant). The Chopin Funeral March, Debussy’s “Girl with the flaxen hair,” and Haydn’s “Ah! vieni, Flora” (from Quattro Stagioni/Four Seasons) were also recorded—the arrangers are unidentified, but quite possibly Bossi.
Most importantly, he recorded four of his own pieces: Hora mystica, Folksong from Ath, Fatemi la grazia and Noël, op. 94, no. 2. (The titles of pieces given here reflect the Welte catalogue with its sometimes quaint, often inaccurate presentation—where needed they are corrected.)
Bossi’s playing is notable in many ways; for example, the detachment of pedal notes in the Handel, giving the effect of a double-bass playing spiccato. Notable also is his tendency to arpeggiate some cadential chords and detach in counterpoint—an almost constant marcato broken by rarer moments of “targeted legato” in BWV 539 (cf. Hofner and Gigout later: same generation, same idea?). He was clearly a powerful interpreter. Most notable is Fatemi la grazia, which has an entirely variant ending to that in his printed edition. Other organists—his contemporaries—also play works of Bossi on Seewen’s rolls.
A major article by Nicola Cittadin on this topic is soon to be published in an Italian organ journal.

France: Gigout, Bonnet, Dupré, Erb
The French 19th and early 20th century school accounts for four Welte organists. Their training is an interesting chapter: Gigout was principally taught by Saint-Saëns, Bonnet by Guilmant and Vierne, and Dupré by Guilmant, Widor, and Vierne. The Benoist-Saint-Saëns-Gigout and Lemmens-Guilmant-Widor lineages are indeed musical genealogies of significance here.
The other, Erb, was an interesting choice. He was Alsatian; when he was in his early teens, his country became annexed to Germany. The proximity of Straßburg to Welte’s base in Freiburg is noted. The repertoire he plays is interestingly mixed, although the French school is clearly important and predominates.
Ernst/Bach (G-major concerto)
Vivaldi/Bach (Adagio from the A-minor concerto)
Guilmant (Invocation in B-flat Major; Funeral March & Hymn of Seraphs, op. 17; Melodie, op. 45; Grand Choeur in D Major, op. 18; Elevation, op. 25)
Franck (Pastorale, op. 18, no. 4)
Three arrangements/transcriptions: Mendelssohn (A Midsummer Night’s Dream—Wedding March), Debussy (Prélude de l’enfant Prodigué) and Wagner (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg—Walther’s Preislied).
The freedoms Erb takes are sometimes little short of astonishing by today’s measure, perhaps even questionable—not least in the Franck Pastorale. His playing constantly fringes on what we might now define as poor, including rhythmic oddities and wrong notes. Yet, hear him through, and the lingering impression is that you have at least learned something. It is too easy to spring to quick judgements here—we are seeking a full understanding of a quite different era. Erb’s playing does not conform to what is generally acceptable today, but it at least changes perspectives and questions our paradigms in this digitally edited, “technically perfect performance” era.
Dupré was later to be one of the very few of Welte’s organists well-represented through gramophone recordings. His earlier roll recordings offer important supplementation and enhancements. An Improvisation on a Theme of Schubert (#2047) is of particular note in this connection. It seems to be a hitherto unknown recorded improvisation. Only two copies of the roll are currently known to exist. Both are in Switzerland: one is at the Barnabé Theatre Servion near Thun, the other at Schloss Meggenhorn, near Lucerne. That from Barnabé has been digitized at Seewen and plays well. It is at any rate skilled and entertaining extemporization, well demonstrating his talents when he was around 40, a most useful and important addition to the surviving Dupré heritage.

North America: Eddy, Baldwin (Lemare, Bonnet)
The North American contingent is represented by no lesser personages than Clarence Eddy and Samuel Atkinson Baldwin, with club membership extended fully to Edwin Lemare and partially to Joseph Bonnet. Eddy recorded Clérambault and Couperin, then on through Liszt, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Bossi, Buck, and Faulkes. Also German-educated at the right time and place for it, Eddy plays the Reger Pastorale in a notably fine interpretation. Transcriptions of Wagner (Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin; Prelude to Lohengrin, Pilgrim’s chorus from Tannhäuser, Isolde’s Liebestod) and one of his own works (“Old 100th” Festival Prelude and Fugue) complete the bigger picture, not to forget his inclusion of From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water by Charles Wakefield Cadman (catalogued confusingly as Wakefield-Gudmann From the land of the sky-blue).
Eddy’s compatriot, Samuel Baldwin, leaves over 20 rolls, including Buck’s Concert Variations on the Star Spangled Banner, op. 23, and Guilmant’s Sonata in D Minor, op. 42 (complete, on 2 rolls).
Eddy and Baldwin are among the most generally significant organists represented here, but Lemare naturally deserves his very special place. The full story of Lemare—luminary in the entertainment tradition—has been well-told by Nelson Barden (The American Organist 1986, vol. 20, nos. 1, 3, 6, 8). Barden has also made CDs of this most extraordinary organist’s rolls. Seewen has almost all of the rolls, including Lemare playing his famous “Moonlight and Roses” (Andantino in D-flat). However, it seems that some additional rolls exist at Seewen that were not available to anybody until recently. They are:
1239*, Dubois, Sylvine
1241*, Mendelssohn, Ruy Blas Overture
1265**, Guilmant, Funeral March & Hymn of the Seraphs
1266*, Lemare, Symphony in D Minor, op. 50: Scherzo
1267*, Lemare, Symphony in D Minor, op. 50: Adagio Patetico
1269*, Wolstenholme, Romance and Allegretto
1270**, Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg—Präludium
1274***, Gounod, Queen of Saba (Sheba): March and Cortège
With W1286* (Guilmant, Reverie, op. 70), three sources give J. J. Nater as organist, only one Lemare. At present we are ascribing it to Nater.
* = master roll
** = master roll and at least one copy *** = two master rolls held

The British organists: Faulkes, Wolstenholme, Hollins, Walton, Goss-Custard
The British organists of the “Town Hall Organ” era—not to forget that of the Great Exhibitions—were well-represented in the Welte catalogues: six of them. Along with Lemare, they all reacted to their era’s special need for entertaining organ music. This choice of British organists is not surprising when we consider the firm’s exports to England (Salomons’ and Britannic were probably their first, Harrods and many others followed). Not only are some of the most notable recitalists of the era listed, but they also recorded a proportionately large number of rolls. Harry Goss-Custard was Welte’s most prolific organ recording artist, and their catalogue of his rolls overwhelmingly swamps the lists of his disc recordings. Only one work, Lemmens’ Storm, appears to be duplicated on both roll and disk.
The recordings of Faulkes, Wolstenholme, Hollins, Walton, and both Goss-Custards were no doubt made partly to satisfy this British market with so many wealthy industrialists or shipping magnates. The Salomon Welte at Tunbridge Wells is preserved, recently restored, and is a sister—if not a twin—to the Seewen organ. They are the only two of their kind left in the world today on which Welte Philharmonie rolls can be properly played pneumatically, taking the original recording organ’s specification into account. Tunbridge Wells’ capabilities also extend to play Cottage #10 Orchestrion rolls. Its action remains completely pneumatic except for the remote Echo division, which is, and always was, electric.

Germanic territory: Hofner, Diebold, Ramin, Straube, Grosse, Breitenbach, Hindermann,
Hofmiller, Messner, Matthaei
German, Austrian, and Swiss organists account for about half the performers in the above list, and more are represented in our database. Numerically they occupy the most substantial block of historic talent here—their recordings mainly reveal the highly influential Berlin school of around 1900 (Eddy studied there, too). Leipzig, Freiburg, and Rheinberger’s influence in South Germany are also well represented.
Whatever predilection Welte might have had at the outset to use English talent and make good sales to that country, the First World War put a damper on that, although the firm was sleeping with the enemy by releasing Harry Goss-Custard’s rolls well into and through the time-span of this conflict. But they mainly had to concentrate on organists on their own side of enemy lines in the 1914–18 stretch.
The earliest-born of all these seem to have been Carl Hofner (1842–1912) and Johann Diebold (1842–1929). Hofner was educated in Munich, where the Bach tradition is sometimes said to have persisted longer than anywhere else. He was active as organist and teacher around Freiburg/Breisgau from October 1868. Then, appointed as organist at Freiburg Münster, he commenced duties on January 1, 1871. One temptation is to think that Rheinberger was his teacher in Munich. It is possible. But the teacher would have been a mere three years older than the student, and Rheinberger was only appointed professor in 1867, by which time Hofner had been in Metten for some seven years.
In 1878 Hofner settled in Freiburg. There he taught the Swiss organist and pedagogue Joseph Schildknecht, who later wrote an important Organ Method. Hofner features in early organ roll titles: #716, #717, and #722. Of these, the Bach Praeludium and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 549 on #716) is an impressive performance, varying only slightly from the note-readings of modern editions, exhibiting considerable freedom mingled with strong forward drive, and mixing a predominantly detached style of playing with seemingly carefully selected moments of legato. The relationship of this playing style to Bossi’s and Gigout’s might again be noted. The miscellaneous chorale setting of Herzlich tut mich verlangen is on #717, and an improvisation “on a theme” on #722 (not released until 1926).
Hofner died on May 19, 1912, so it was at the very end of his life and slightly before the otherwise earliest known organ recording activity by Welte with Bossi. Thus Hofner seems to have been a kind of early “trial organist” for the company. His may well also be the closest German training we will ever have to Bach’s own era—whatever musical relevance that might or might not have in these circumstances.
Diebold is represented by only one Bach piece—Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565)—almost certainly the earliest recording we will ever possess of it. The fugue has notable differences in approach and note-readings from our practices today. Diebold’s rolls were released by Welte between 1912 and 1922. This possibly shunts him marginally later than Hofner, so perhaps he was the later to record. According to the catalogue, Seewen’s holdings and other known Welte collections, including those in the USA, Diebold played the following on Welte rolls:

Organist Johann Diebold
Welte #753* Birn, Weihnachts-Fantasie über Kommet, Ihr Hirten, op. 12
754* Böttcher, Festal Postlude
755* Faulkes, Lied, op. 136, no. 2
756* Mendelssohn, Sonata, op. 65, no. 1 in F Minor
757* Seiffert, Fantasie on a Motiv of Beethoven, op. 10
758* Tinel, Improvisata
774* Jongen, Pastorale in A Major
778* Neuhoff, Andante in E-flat Major
779* Jongen, Pastorale in A Major
780* Guilmant, Communion in A Minor, op. 45
781* Rheinberger, Romanze, op. 142, no. 2
782* Mailly, Finale aus Sonata für Orgel, D dur
783* Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
* Rolls and their scans now exist at Seewen, mostly in good playable condition.

The recordings of Ramin and Straube, the latter being the auto-prophetic author of the text quoted above, provide illuminating comparisons. The skill of the student, Ramin, at least equaled that of the master, if these rolls are any guide. Kurt Grosse is an interesting enigma—virtually unheard of today, he was one of Welte’s more prolific recording artists, with over 50 roll titles to his credit. This includes some of the epic Reger works (Fantasia on “Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme,” op. 52, no. 2; Toccata and Fugue d/D; Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H, op. 46). The
B-A-C-H is on a single roll and takes nearly 20 minutes to play; “Wachet auf” takes over 23 minutes (on one roll). Born and trained directly into the first generation of post-Brahms and Reger musicians, Grosse was mainstream Berlin organ school to the core. His playing—including some Brahms Preludes from op. 122—is a fount of challenge, example, and information.
Breitenbach was Swiss. Born in Muri/Aargau, later organist at Lucerne Cathedral, he moved mainly about the southern regions of Germany near Stuttgart. Paul Hindermann was similarly placed—he recorded rolls of Bach, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Boëllmann, Schumann, Guilmant, Salomé, and Reger. Hindermann was a student of Rheinberger, although he plays none of his master’s works on the rolls surviving at Seewen. Nor is he listed in this connection in any known global resources we have so far seen. Hofmiller is the most prolific single Rheinberger exponent in this collection—he plays five of Seewen’s 14 Rheinberger rolls. No evidence of him playing other Rheinberger rolls has yet been found.
Mention was made above of Messner, the Salzburger. He studied in Innsbruck and Munich. Unfortunately he was not a prolific recording artist—even if some more rolls currently under calligraphic examination do turn out to be his. We certainly have a “Fugal Overture” to “Theophil” Muffat’s Suite for Organ and two works of Reger (Consolation, op. 65, and Romance in A Minor). It is just one of the many side-steps you have to take with this former musical culture when you note Muffat’s first name is given—as he sometimes did himself—as Theophil, a direct translation of Gottlieb. In this connection, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach was still attributed in the Welte catalogues with the Vivaldi/Bach D-minor concerto transcription, now known to have been by his father.
The early days of the Organ Revival can be very well chronicled through some of these rolls. The 1920–37 additions to the Britannic organ also display Organ Revival influences—although it is surprising how gently voiced the two Manual II mutation stops are. Even leaving Bach (over 80 rolls) aside, there is Eddy (playing Clérambault, Couperin), Messner (Muffat), Binninger (Georg Böhm) and others, who present us at least with interesting insights. Buxtehude is played by Ramin, Bonnet (most interestingly, being the only non-German to do so, possibly under known influences of Guilmant or Tournemire), Stark, Landmann, and Straube. William Byrd is played by ten Cate, Paul Mania includes some Couperin, Dupré and Daquin, while Bonnet also plays Frescobaldi (appearing as “Trescobaldi” once in the catalogues).
The Swiss organist Karl Matthaei was already a most remarkable pioneer of early music in the 1920s. Since then, performance of early music has taken on ever greater specialization, and seemingly also performance improvement—although anybody who wants to pass definitive public judgement on that might need to show a modicum of bravery. At any rate, it is remarkable to have Matthaei’s work preserved here. He plays Bach, Buxtehude, Hanff, Pachelbel, Praetorius, Scheidt, and Sweelinck, forming an amazing early-music oasis in this otherwise high-romantic roll collection.

Improvisations
Some of these organists improvised, too. This is again very important musical documentation in its own right, the vast majority of it otherwise unavailable. The Seewen collection lists well over 20 improvisations, including organists Dupré (mentioned above), Grosse, Hofner, Hollins, Lemare, Mania, Ramin, and Wolstenholme. One of particular interest—by Hermann Happel—is a cinema organ improvisation: Nachtstimmung.

The current state of the art and technology in Seewen
There are always caveats in roll-playing technology. For instance, nobody knows the exact speed at which Welte organ rolls actually ran (or even if they all ran at a standard speed). So tempo cannot be pinpointed to three decimal places. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of research into this topic has resulted in what has yielded a reasonably objective basis for our scanning. This checks out well against subjectively-convincing musical results.
We came to a roll transport speed of 50 mm per second over the scanner’s “tracker bar”, taking into account all our knowledge of the subject and the experience of others, including authorities such as Peter Hagmann and Nelson Barden.
After we derived this figure, we did ongoing subjective checks. The resulting playback limits of “acceptably fast or slow” are all fully credible. About 40 musicians have so far had input and have delivered this consensus. Thus, the hand-punched roll of the overture to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro can scarcely go faster, and Grosse’s Brahms Opus 122 Chorale Preludes seem about as slow as you would normally want them. The overwhelming bulk of the machine-made Beethoven and Wagner rolls are precisely at “tempo expectations”.
The only evidence we have yet seen of different settings being required to the normal position on the organ’s speed lever is confined to a few rolls, such as Lemare’s (#1217 Siegfried-Idyll) or the complete Boëllmann Suite Gothique (on one roll #752) played by Paul Hindermann. Their boxes have a sticker on them: tempo langsam einstellen (set the tempo to slow). No further details. One presumes that means at the left end of Welte’s speed-lever scale—which is about 20% slower than “normal”. Technological problems can result from this, whether the roll is played pneumatically or scanned. Experiments in the 1960s had the Boëllmann roll played twice at differing speeds for some surviving radio recordings—but the whole system is so sensitive that changing the speed changes the registration! The roll does not play properly at the moment, either pneumatically or digitally, slow or fast.
Subjectivity, technical limitations, and variant playing paradigms still leave questions in roll speed equations. Welte’s records are lost or only vaguely defined in their entire Philharmonie heritage. There are timings marked on some roll boxes, and these are generally very close to those resulting from our scan speed of 50mm per second. Whether this is totally reliable evidence remains to be seen—multiple markings on some rolls are significantly at variance with each other. The cinema organ rolls have a high proportion of timings but some just say “4 to 5 minutes”—a 25% tolerance? The timing marked on the box of #955 (Beethoven Symphonie Pastorale IV. Satz) at 10′10″ is clearly around 7% slower than the roll-scan at 9′29″. And 7% is perceptible. So 50 mm/sec is possibly marginally too fast for this. Alternatively, the Beethoven Egmont overture (#956) is given as 8′30″ on the box, and our scan runs at 8′37″—so 50 mm/sec is fractionally too slow?
Comparison with the few acoustic recordings of the same piece by the same artist could also be a guide, but little more. Pianist Grünfeld’s (Schumann) Träumerei performance on organ roll (#516), early adaptions from original piano rolls, is three seconds longer (2′40″) than his acoustic recording (2′37″). If meaningful at all, this could indicate our 50 mm/sec is again a mite too slow? Seven minutes is written on one roll lead-in which takes 9′09″ to play—so here our choice is much too slow. Dominik Hennig (Basel/Lucerne), Daniel Debrunner, and I are currently spearheading further work in this arena. István Mátyás (Vienna) has also become involved.
We have some details of the timings of historic 78 recordings by Alfred Sittard. At the moment, only one looks to be directly comparable with the same artist’s roll recording (#1037, BWV 533, Präludium E moll), and that is 3′23″ (roll-scan) against 3′23″ (78). But the recordings were made about a decade apart, and while they seem to give fullest endorsement, the chances of achieving such split-second timing precision could also be approaching the miraculous rather than yielding scientific plausibility. Direct comparative tests on the existing Welte organ at Meggen, however, very closely endorse our chosen scan speed of 50 mm/sec.
The most likely explanations are, firstly, that Welte could not or did not hold precisely to an exact speed even if they were clearly conscious of this problem, and secondly, that such precision of tempi was simply not seen as a problem in their era.
The organ’s playing action repetition rates come into this. These are among the more objective tests available to us. In fact, these rates can be quite amazing. They are often used by Welte to give rapid orchestral tremolo effects in the big Wagner-style transcriptions (e.g., “Lohengrin selection” #642). But the firm was sometimes up to a degree of trickery here, as fast repetitions are occasionally achieved by alternating between manuals, thus doubling the limit. Even so, with hand-punched rolls they can be faster than humans can play and crisper than what seems to have been attainable from console playing. There remain obvious physical and musical limits—the diameter of holes in the paper, for one. With our current roll scanning speeds, these limits are reached but not exceeded. The geometry of rolls tugged over the tracker bar, from a take-up spool whose effective diameter increased as the music proceeded, also needs compensation from a digitizer that uses a (linear) roll-tracking pulley.
Investigations will probably be ongoing in perpetuity, but so far we seem to have achieved a convincing position. At any rate, speed adjustments and take-up spool diameter compensations in the organ’s computer allow any future, possibly better-authenticated, roll-speed figures to be applied.
It is probably significant that many who worked with these organs in the later 20th century often simply shunted the Welte pneumatic motors out and replaced them with electric motors that could take the loads more reliably. We restored the Welte roll-player pneumatic motor exactly as it was—typically with its power only barely equal to its purpose—but used fully adequate electric-motor systems for the scanner.
Another caveat is that the performances themselves are not always faultless—sometimes it is the organist, sometimes the technology. This leaves a dilemma— if we don’t make corrections, then they could sound poorly when judged solely by the standards that we are accustomed to. There seems to have been a degree of acceptance of wrong notes, variant tempi, inconsistent phrasing, registration errors and compromises, or other expedients—e.g., from playing 3-manual works on a 2-manual organ—that could well be beyond some current tolerances but were completely acceptable at the time.
Of further significance is the fact that these organists played from earlier editions. The editions are sometimes marked on the master-rolls. Notation has been read or misread, or mistakes in playing were more readily accepted. Yet composers were often still alive—or their culture was well recalled in living memory—so some organists could have been playing on a kind of “original authority” not known to us.
Leaving the performances alone, even if they seem faulty to us, is paramount. Perfection tends to be approached rather than achieved in the culture of paper roll recordings—as with CDs today for that matter. Moreover, the recording musicians, and, not least, Welte’s roll-editing staff, were all thoroughly entrenched in their own era’s musical paradigms. So anybody wanting to glean secrets from these performances is duty-bound to sit up and listen, even if—or especially if?—their credulity is stretched by non-conformity to today’s norms. Grosse, for example, five years old when Brahms died, born and trained directly into that and the Reger tradition, does not hold the lengthened notes in the op. 122 Herzlich tut mich erfreuen (#1859) and rather slavishly obeys—even exaggerates—the phrasing slurs. We could lose credibility if we played it like that today, and perhaps Grosse would have lost credibility then, but we emphatically desist from “corrections” of this kind to the scans.
No doubt, the relative perfection attainable from modern recordings and sheer professional competition have produced changes in standards and expectations. No doubt also, inherited traditions, after several generations of variant pedagogical opinion, have some part to play. What the rolls clearly demonstrate is that both playing standards and performance practices have changed. To make a metaphorical mixture out of it: at least some of today’s guru-preachers of authentic romantic organ playing might need to get back to their bibles.
Organists then were not all attuned to today’s slick playing approaches, although some, like Lemare, actually fathered them. It is also evident that varied interpretations and sometimes seemingly inaccurate, even “unrhythmic” playing were accepted. So: was it an epoch of rubato beyond that which we can now tolerate? Such freedoms are different. Or perhaps it was simply fame, justified or not, that sold roll performances, good or bad? Reger’s works seem mostly to fare better when played by others than the composer himself. Gigout, Eddy, Bossi, Lemare, the Goss-Custards, Dupré, Grosse, and Ramin are among those whose playing is particularly fine, although their interpretations are often at variance with today’s expectations.
One hand-punched roll (Welte #429) of Mozart’s well-known “mechanical organ” work, KV 608, gives some neat surprises: it promotes brisk tempi where some modern editions have perpetuated slower suggestions in parenthesis. Some organists have followed the slower option. Perhaps these parentheses were not known when the rolls were punched? Does retention of a faster tempo date back to an earlier practice, closer to Mozart’s intentions? Who put them there, why, and who follows them may be pertinent questions. The piece naturally presents itself on the Seewen organ with romantic tonal qualities, but these are overlaid with some classical performance attributes. At any rate, with apologies to myself and all good colleagues, it comes across like no organist—or two—can or would ever have played it. Thus, in performance paradigms—was this intended? At least this source is a century closer to its origins than we are now. The tempo of the opening (erstwhile “Maestoso”) section is around half note = 60, perkier than that normally heard within my earshot.

The registrations
Roll-recorded registration practices can be quite clever, with often very unexpected choices or later-edited technical manipulations. Guilmant’s “Seraphs” Cortège (#770) is registered with Harfe at the end, and a trick of roll-editing allows the double-pedaling segment on two registrations to be effectively realized. Such roll-editing clearly supported the organist in registrations corrected or enhanced during the post-recording editing processes. Lemare’s quick additions and subtractions of an 8′ in his Study in Accents (op. 64, roll #1181) may have been achieved with intervention—or not, knowing Lemare. His own endorsement given to the post-production master could hint at this: “Correct at last”. Equally his reputation for dexterous stop-manipulation could well be in evidence here.
The tendency of some Welte organists to draw the Vox Coelestis (on its own) and leave it on through all later combinations, including build-ups to plenums, is nowadays surprising. Reger plays the whole of the first section of his own Benedictus entirely on the Vox Coelestis alone—yes, without even another stop to beat with it. Moreover, he couples it to the pedals, but the rank has no sounding bottom octave, so you often hear just a vaguely-pitched Bourdon 16′ humming away in that lowest pedal octave. The Vox Coelestis clarifies the bass dramatically, but only from tenor C upwards—and then beats with it. This would be unacceptable in most organ lofts today. Yet it is the same whether we play the master roll or either of the two copy rolls we possess, whether digitally or pneumatically (#1295).
Reger’s idiosyncracies are legion in this roll collection. One wonders, when he turned up for his recordings, whether he did not adjourn immediately after his session to the local inn rather than stay on to check and edit his performances? Or maybe he had been at the inn before he made them? Quite possibly both. He had apparently not played organ for about five years when he was delivered to the studio around July 26, 1913 in that rather swank Maybach with its white-walled tires and klaxon (photo, p. 29).
Diebold, a pupil of Töpfer (1842–1929), also shares with Hofner and Gigout the honors of the first recordings and, just possibly, some residual Bach playing traditions. He held a major position in Freiburg/Breisgau and plays Mendelssohn’s first sonata complete (on one roll, #756). For the slow (second) movement he uses the Vox coelestis alone for an entire section which, on account of that same missing bottom octave, omits the C “manual-pedal-point” altogether! While that looks like a clear technical fault, we cannot afford to simply switch in a stop of our own choice to correct it. Further investigation is required, and if this is the way he played it, then no corrective action can be taken by us without at least alerts being issued.
The use of what is loosely referred to as “bells”—in fact there are two sets, both on Manual I: Harfe (xylophone) G–a3 and Glocken (tubular bells) C–g0—is also notably far more frequent than most would normally envisage today. As children of organ reform, we would probably almost never use them even if available. Yet it was an important selling-ploy of Welte’s, along with “Vox Humana”, “Tutti”, “Echo” and otherwise-identified rolls that captured the public’s imagination while draining their purses. So there could have been pressure on organists to use these stops. Some did, some did not. Bells are heard, logically enough, in Bonnet’s Angelus du Soir played by Bonnet himself (#1615), Massenet’s Scènes pittoresques: Angelus played by Samuel Baldwin (#1353), Wheeldon’s The Bells played by Goss-Custard (#2015), or the Wagner Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin (hand-punched, #642). Surprises arrive, though, in Ramin’s fine performance of Reger’s op. 129 (Prelude, #1991) or perhaps Bossi playing Dubois’ In Paradisum (#1011). The ocean, bad weather, and funerals seem to conjure up bells—Eddy in Schubert’s Am Meer (#1666) as well as Goss-Custard in William Faulkes’s Barcarole in B-flat major (#2001) or Lemmens’s Storm by Goss-Custard (#1121). And the list continues with Lemare in Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre (#1251), Erb in Guilmant’s Funeral March & Hymn of Seraphs, op. 17 (#770), and Eddy in Bossi’s Ave Maria (#1648).
The use of the Vox Humana also surprises at times, both with and without Tremulant—and that seems to be independent of “School”. Grosse playing Brahms’s chorale preludes is one notable instance. It was another Welte selling-point—proud of their rank modelled on “Silbermann”, even if it had zinc resonators. Wolstenholme’s use of it in Rheinberger’s Intermezzo (Sonate op. 119, #1546) is typical and effective. Possibly 50% of these performances use bells and/or Vox Humana at some point or other. The Harfe stop combined with Vox Coelestis is another surprise—yet this is expressly required by Karg-Elert in the printed edition of one of his works.
There is no evidence that coercion was used to force organists to choose favored stops—their use, while sometimes surprising, usually seems appropriate. The Vox Humana is occasionally used as a kind of string stop—doubly enclosed, thus allowing each of two boxes to be opened or closed. It can emit some very charming ppp dynamics down around the sound-levels of an Aeolina when both boxes are closed. It also allows useful, delicate-gritty pitch-definition to be maintained in low chords that don’t merely grumble. Grosse in Brahms’s op. 122 (Herzliebster Jesu, #1858) uses this rank well in such a context. Statistically it seems to have been far more often used then than it would ever be today—even if we still included it in our typical new organs. We seem to be “Vox-humana-clasts”, having all but eliminated one of the few organ registers that existed continuously from Renaissance through Romantic and even into cinema organs relatively unchanged. All of Welte’s organists, and the makers of hand-punched transcriptions, had a veritable field day with it.
Some of Bonnet’s interpretations are quite striking—his rubatos and/or rhythmic freedoms playing his own Berceuse (#1612) single him out. Equally so his use of the swell pedal, in an expressive playing style, at times notable for both speed and degree of dynamic change.
One other interesting example of organists and playing styles here is the much-beloved “crescendo fugue”. Alfred Sittard, a German organist, composer and musical editor, was born April 11, 1878 in Stuttgart. He studied in Cologne, then in 1903 became organist at the Dresden Kreuzkirche. In 1912 he moved to Hamburg Michaeliskirche and, in 1925, became an organ professor in Berlin, where he died on March 31, 1942. As mentioned above, he is important in early recording contexts, making 78s in the 1928–32 era. His roll recordings for Welte are much earlier: he included J. S. Bach, Franck, Händel, Liszt, Reger, Saint-Saëns, and his own Choralstudie: Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein. A significant influence in the early days of the organ reform movement, Sittard also edited and published music by Buxtehude, Scheidemann, and Weckmann. On Welte roll #1036 he applies the crescendo-fugue approach to the Bach G-major Fugue (BWV 541ii), working through both prelude and fugue in a little over nine minutes, a steady, unrushed performance. To the fugue he applies a “crescendo-diminuendo-crescendo-plenum” scheme, occasionally soloing voices out on Manual II. There is no associated accelerando.

The afternoons with Eugène Gigout
Singling out just one performer for special attention risks the appearance of sidelining the others, but the Seewen collection is truly massive, and demarcations need to be set for an article such as this. We could as well take Wolstenholme, Lemare, Ramin, Faulkes, Straube or any one of dozens of others.
Gigout was the earliest-born of the group invited by Welte to make the first official recordings. His session began on August 6, 1912, the last of five pioneering recording organists. Bossi, Sittard, Breitenbach, and Erb had preceded him. The next group began with Bonnet on February 6, 1913. As will be clear above, Gigout is “musical family” so my curiosity reigned supreme. As it turns out, my arrogant inverted nepotism quickly led to the humility of some unexpected revelations. What comes out of this has the broadest possible implications to the music of his age, his own music, how it was played, and specifically how he and others played it.
Functioning alongside the Lemmens-Belgian derivative school in Paris, but not being part of it himself, he also kept up good friendships with Franck and Guilmant, who were. It was a somewhat unusual cross-tradition situation. Here teacher-pupil genealogies had significance and were potential minefields. Gigout seems to have transcended the traditional in-fighting and was respected by all. Even his choice of recorded repertoire shows no sign of the polarized French organ politics of this era or later—the inclusion of one Franck and four Lemmens pieces alone is testimony to that.
He was in his “mature prime”—aged 68—when he made these recordings. He died at 81. We presume that, like Reger, he was also chauffered up in the Maybach and given the Welte “red carpet treatment”, so aptly described by Nelson Barden in his articles on Lemare.
This all places Gigout in a very important light historically. In early 2010, I found myself listening to him play—effectively “live”—on what turned out to be a number of unforgettable afternoons. The repertoire that he recorded and which survives in Seewen is listed here.

1079* Bach, Toccata, F dur
1587* Bach, Largo (Trio Sonata V)
1588* Bach, Allegro Moderato (Trio Sonata I)
1080* Bach, Präludium E-flat major
1585* Bach, In dir ist Freude
1586* Bach, O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde’ gross
1081* Boëllmann, Marche réligieuse (op. 16)
1592* Boëllmann, Sortie, C-major (op. 30, no. 5)
1591* Boëllmann, Communion B-flat-major (op. 30, no. 5)
1589* Boëllmann, Offertoire C-major (op. 29, no. 2)
1590* Boëllmann, Elévation, E-flat-major (op. 29, no. 1)
1082* Boëly, Andante con moto (op. 45, no. 7)
1595* Chauvet, Andante con moto no. 6 (arr. Dubois)
1596* Chauvet, Andantino no. 9 (arr.Dubois)
1083* Franck, Andantino G Minor
1598* Gigout, Marche réligieuse
1599* Gigout, Chant (from Suite) (“Lied” in catalogue)
1084* Gigout, Toccata
1085* Gigout, Communion
1086* Gigout, Grand Choeur dialogué
1600* Gigout, Marche de fête (Suite)
1087* Gigout, Minuetto
1597* Gigout, Marche des rogations
1601* Gigout, Fughetta
1602* Gigout, Cantilene
1603* Gigout, Allegretto Grazioso
1604* Lemmens, Scherzo (Symphony concertant)
1606* Lemmens, Fanfare
1607* Lemmens, Cantabile
1605* Lemmens, Prélude E-flat major
1608* Lemmens, Prière (“Gebet” in catalogue)
1088/9* Mendelssohn, Sonata, op. 65, no. 6 complete (on 2 rolls)
1609* Saint-Saëns, Sarabande
* indicates master-rolls.

There are four further Welte rolls known to have been cut by Gigout, but they are neither in Seewen’s possession nor in any collection we yet know of:
1090 Mendelssohn, Prelude, op. 37, no. 2
1191 Schumann, Etude, op. 56, no. 5
1593 listed as “Chauvet-Dubois”: Grand Choeur, no.1, I. livr.
1594 listed as “Chauvet-Dubois”: Andantino, no. 3, I. livr.

Bach
Gigout’s choice of Bach works is significant—with two big preludes and two trio sonata movements, he was not choosing an easy way out. His Bach playing may now be outmoded, but it is instructive: trio registrations, tempo, and general treatment in a “reserved romantic” style that allow the music mostly to be heard without undue fuss. We get the impression that he is always very conscious both of the counterpoint and of the formal structures.
In the Toccata in F (BWV 540—erroneously “E major” in the catalogue!—#1079), whatever questions about his registration there may now be, the organ itself, as always, was a major conditioner of choice. Foundational at the start—all manual flue 8′s and the Fagot 8′ (free reed) coupled—no Vox Coelestis—he makes a quick crescendo to full organ from about one minute before the end. The tempo is sprightly and the work springs to life musically, although he takes some surprising liberties in varying tempi. The ornamentation shows no modern awareness of Bach’s practice, nor is it “purely romantic,” for that matter. There are main-note trill executions and sometimes short, inverted mordents. The duration is 8′57″.
The Trio Sonata slow movement (BWV 529ii, #1587) uses the 16′ Pedal Subbass (coupled to both manuals), while Manual I (RH) consists of Vox Coelestis + Gamba, and Manual II (LH) just the Bordun 8′ + Wienerfloete 8′. He could have used a reed but chose not to—which does align with some modern thought on these matters. He starts with the box tightly shut for a lengthy period of time, then there is a degree of swell pedal manipulation. Again there are some freedoms—instabilities?—in tempo. He takes 5′40″ to play it (and concludes, omitting the short modulatory coda at the very end).
The Trio Sonata first movement (BWV 525i, #1588) is taken at a good “Allegro Moderato”—wherever that indication came from: Forkel 1802 through Griep-enkerl to France? The emphasis with Gigout is on the moderato. Freedoms at the cadential points, and some variant note-readings to today’s editions and performances are part of this item. Registration is Manual I (RH) flutes 8′ and 4′ (coupled to Pedal Subbass 16′ and Cello 8′) against Manual II Oboe 8′ (LH). There is rather a lot of swell pedal used, which could explain the relatively detached playing in the pedal against the more legato manual realizations, questioning modern approaches, which would have articulation strictly identical between manuals and pedals. Duration is 4′40″.
The E-flat major Prelude (BWV 552i, #1080) uses a big, reedy plenum alternating with second-manual flues and Oboe. There is again freedom in the rhythmic interpretation, but a rather noble and “grandiose” basic tempo is chosen. The trills are played as simple “upper mordents”. Like many of these early 20th-century performances, the artists took their time in tempi that were often, but not always, steadier than some today. Duration is 10′51″. There is no known matching roll of the fugue by Gigout.
In dir ist Freude (#1585) takes 3′38″. Both manuals are coupled to the pedals—with foundations 8′ (no 4′ or higher) including Manual I Principal and Manual II Oboe. The swell-box is open, tempo and rhythm are markedly flexible, and there are a few small variant note-readings. The plenum is brought on in a block towards the end, and the trills are then effectively upper-note trills. The roll technology needs some intervention: the pedal advance is at times disturbing. The scan is slated for further checking and possible correction, but this is not expected to change registration, tempo, agogic accent or articulation.
With O Mensch, bewein’ (#1586) we find a slow, but non-dragging tempo. The duration is 5′40″. There are many swell crescendos, the solo is on Manual I Principal + Traversfloete + Vox coelestis; this is accompanied by Manual II Wienerfloete + Aeoline, all 8′s. The pedal Subbass 16′ is coupled to both manuals, giving a very solid bass. This seems intended and occurs elsewhere—perhaps it was because he came from a French tradition of Principal-oriented pedal “Flûtes” where effects like this were more normal? At any rate, it is good fodder for nourishing further thought. The trills are main-note “lower-mordents”—mostly just single mordents. The Adagissimo is scarcely observed—little more than a trace of rallentando (with a brief crescendo and diminuendo from the expression pedal).
These two chorale preludes from the Orgelbüchlein provide some fuel for discussion. Gigout was born 94 years after Bach’s death. Naturally that gives him no open access to styles of playing in Saxony, or even correct editions, but his interpretations are not without distinction, and elements of them could well have some relevance. Similarities to the playing of his German contemporary, Hofner, and the Italian Bossi, have been noted above.

Boëllmann
Gigout, quite apart from being the teacher of Léon Boëllmann, had a close personal relationship with the whole family. This could give added significance to the following recordings.
In the Marche Religieuse (#1081, 7′42″), we have a sensitive performance with some relatively free moments, again especially around cadences. The freedoms are more frequent and crafted differently than those of his Bach: is there a small, but conscious stylistic differentiation being made here? Gigout begins on 8′s, including the Vox Coelestis. He then crosses to Manual II Bordun 8′ + Aeoline 8′ before returning to Manual I (as it was). After the initial change, he proceeds for a time, while the pedal is left coupled to a strong Manual I (Principal, Vox Coelestis, Flutes—all 8′). This again gives unusually solid pedal notes against the Manual II registrations. It all becomes rather grandiose towards the end with a reedy plenum, after which he reduces to (reedless) 16′–2′ foundations (RH on Aeoline alone). The conclusion is also notable for its highly detached articulation in the pedal.
The Sortie (2′43″, #1592) is played strongly and with much energy. The Communion (2′41″, #1591) is appropriately meditative. The Offertoire (3′48″, #1589) and Elevation (3′55″, #1590) originally gave us transposed tracks playing Manual II a semitone higher. This was simple enough to fix unobtrusively, but there remain other small problems with the rolls and consequently their scans. The timings should stand. The rest must wait until the massive logistics of this entire exercise permit.

Boëly
Andante con moto (op. 45, no. 7) is recorded on rolls by both Gigout (#1082) and Bonnet (#1203). The comparisons are instructive: Gigout registers with Vox coelestis and Traversfloete on Manual I, sometimes with Bourdon 16′, and with 8′ Aeoline, Viola and 4′ Blockfloete (RH solo) on Manual II. The second last chord is played on Manual II, but there is no echo passage at the end, at least not as there is with Bonnet. Tone is strengthened for a time towards the middle of the piece by Gigout’s addition of Principal 8′ (Manual I) and the double-bass-like tones of the Violonbass 16′ (Pedal). Bonnet, on the other hand, uses the Traversfloete 8′ and Vox coelestis 8′ on Manual I in a similar manner, but never changes it until he removes the Traversfloete for the echo at the end (leaving the Vox coelestis drawn alone—sic!). On the second manual he draws Viola 8′ and Wienerfloete 8′ and makes a more definite and lengthy closing echo passage—an entire phrase rather than just the final chord or two. No manual couplers are used by either organist and only I/Ped is drawn supplementing the Subbass 16′on the pedals. Bonnet’s 3′23″ contrasts with Gigout’s 2′57″ in a noticeable 12–13% tempo difference. Gigout’s slurring is slightly more conscious and expressive.
These two performances are broadly consistent with each other, but the differences are illuminating. They are both, judged subjectively from today’s vantage point, within fair limits of representing authentic “school” manifestations. What is at least equally important is that they also show how variant interpretations were just as much part of that “school” as conformity to norms ever was.

Chauvet/Dubois
The Dubois transcriptions of Chauvet are a phenomenon of their epoch, apparently rather liked by Guilmant, who included them on his programs. The Andante con moto is played freely by Gigout (#1595, 3′31″), with some quite beautifully shaped phrases, while the Andantino (#1596, 3′51″) is similarly endowed with a sensitive rubato, phrasing, and fine feeling for the melodic lines that characterize this piece. It is all rather clever—you quickly forget they are arrangements. Gigout plays fewer transcriptions than most of the other Welte organists relative to his recorded output.

Franck
Gigout playing Franck—lamentably only the one piece—must be a precious jewel in the entire history of recording. We have many other organists playing his music, but, frankly, none with quite this pedigree. They are barely a generation apart and co-existed in the same school, same city, on good terms with each other for decades; Gigout grew up in Franck’s culture. This puts another aura of special credibility on this recording.
The Andantino in G Minor (#1083) plays very well. Of interest is the eternal articulate or note-commune (or similar) question: “precedence to counterpoint or to harmony”? Here it seems to be harmony, judged by some octave leaps in the left hand to notes that the pedal is already playing. They are not lifted and repeated.
Registration summary: accompaniment commences on Vox Coelestis (alone), solo on Manual II Wienerfloete and Vox Humana (with Man II/Man II Superoctave). Mid-section he adds the Traversfloete to Man I. Here the upper voice is soloed by playing it in octaves—he either achieves an uncanny legato control here or Welte is assisting in the editing processes. At any rate the “solo” and accompaniment on the one manual is very effectively contrived in this way. The Pedal Subbass 16′ is coupled to Man I (again no point in coupling the bottom octave to the Vox Coelestis, but there it is). Next solo section is on same Man I and Pedal registration as first, but Manual II is now Oboe alone and no octave coupler. For the penultimate section he uses Man I and II coupled (giving Travers-
floete + Vox Coelestis + Wienerfloete and Horn—all 8′s). Then the Oboe replaces the Horn. The conclusion is just Aeoline and Vox Coelestis. There is not a lot of swell expression, but what is there is effective and the lack of it at times good contrast. This reminds us of Franck’s Third Choral in the middle section, where at one moment he indicates no “nuances,” only to make a most poignant and beautiful contrast when he does. The tremulant is not once used. Gigout takes 7′42″ to play the Andantino.

Lemmens
Once again we have an unusual authority in these recordings—music of this Belgian founder of the French School being played by a first-generation exponent.
In the Scherzo (“Scherzo Symphony concertant” in the catalogue, #1604, 4′59″) he gives a masterly performance, very expressive, if unhurriedly played. Gigout’s mastery is tangible. His arpeggiation of the chords begins slowly and then moves more quickly, producing a quite striking musical interpretation. A romantically imaginative treatment of the melodic line is also evident, along with freedoms and rubatos that captivate us while still leaving the lingering impression of a vestigial classically disciplined approach.
This tilting to the classical is well illustrated in the Fanfare (#1601 and # 4513). Some might be familiar with Gigout’s playing of it on the Linz-am-Rhein organ from the EMI CDs, but, while the tempo and articulation are in concordance, the registration there is not at all what Gigout heard when he recorded it. While some organists today understandably love to play Lemmens’ Fanfare, it is interesting to compare some performances with Gigout’s. He takes 3′07″, giving it a stately rendition, certainly compared to some who seem to be attempting a speed record for the piece. Gigout’s performance demonstrates ever so clearly how tempo is critical to successful phrasing, and how phrasing, alongside speed, is his key to playing this piece. The more constant legato (or glossed-over legato slurring) of some modern performances—partly enforced by their fast tempi—also conjures up important comparisons: Gigout’s articulation is once again here what we could consider as looking back towards the 18th century. It is mostly quite distinctively detached, but he graces this with an expressive legato in special “purposeful slurring” at clearly-selected moments. His targeting and treatment of these—most notably at cadential points—stems from the music itself but his interpretation is distinctive, structured and precise, part of Gigout’s general style and nowhere better heard than here.
In the Cantabile (#1607, 5′35″) his registration is Manual I Traversfloete, Manual II Bordun and Aeoline 8′ to start with (RH solos). Later the Principal 8′ is added to Manual I. Pedal Subbass 16′is coupled to Manual I throughout. The end returns to the initial registration. He uses much swell expression coupled with some neatly romantic rhythmic freedoms.
For the Prélude in E-flat major (#1605) the registration is: Pedal Subbass 16′, Cello 8′, Man II 8′ Viola and Aeoline, and Manual I Fagott, Prinzipal and Vox Coelestis (all 8′)—Man I/Ped and Man II/I. This is another masterly and strikingly beautiful performance by Gigout. The scanned roll plays remarkably well. Gigout takes 4′42″ to play it.
Prière (#1608, 3′18″): For this erstwhile “Vox Humana en Taille”, his registration is Manual II (LH) Vox Humana 8′ + Aeoline 8′, Manual I (RH) Vox Coelestis 8′(on its own—sic!) with Pedal Subbass 16′ coupled to both manuals. The swell box is open; all is registered without tremulant. Again he employs much expression pedal, sometimes manipulating it rather faster and more dramatically than we might expect. We are reminded here of the few early references to swell manipulation, for instance Handel as reported by J. Hess “struggling with the new device” in London. Broadly speaking, the era of 18th-century nag’s head swells was followed by one of trigger and ratchet devices in the 19th century and balanced swell pedals in the 20th with all their “logarithmic” and “fine-tuning” capabilities as well as allowing the foot to be removed and the set dynamic remain. Although the Welte swell was balanced, there are hints that Gigout might still have manipulated it a little like a 19th-century French ratchet device. Sometimes in these roll recordings, other organists also play in this manner: a little more gross than subtle. It does pose the question as to whether, in an era of historic performance consciousness, we should be differentiating our swell pedal techniques according to delineated 18th, 19th, or 20th century practices. This is just one of the many cans of paradigmatic worms opened up by this world of roll recordings.

Mendelssohn
Sonata op. 65, no. 6 (complete sonata on two rolls #1088 and #1089). This recording was an early Welte release from 1913. As with some others of that vintage, the pedal is advanced to a point of audible discomfort. Accordingly, this is one slated for corrective treatment, after which a better impression of the original performance should be available. That aside, Gigout opens with a reedy combination; then, for the flute and pedal section, he uses his characteristic “expressive articulation”. The swell expression is again a chapter in itself—perhaps a little exaggerated by some modern standards?—but the entire performance is a useful revelation of Mendelssohn interpretation in the immediate post-Mendelssohn era. Gigout, born just three years before the much-traveled Mendelssohn died, was a first-generation inheritor of that musical world.
The arpeggiated chords section (“Allegro molto”) is taken at about half note = 55—slower than the 69 that might be expected from available editions today. The freedom in Gigout’s arpeggiation is again notable, and two curious appoggiaturas are also heard in this section. A few problems linger—possibly from the early development of this technology, possibly uncorrected mistakes, and, just possibly, Gigout’s actual intentions. There are some variant note-readings to today’s norms, e.g., the soprano “A” in bar 43 for example is held right over and only broken just before the last-beat “D” in bar 44; the pedaling from bar 55 is not always exactly as marked.
This was an interesting choice for early release by Welte: French-Gigout playing in the German-Mendelssohn repertoire stream. Object lessons may also be found in his adaptation of this work to an early 20th-century German organ. The chorale solo after the beginning is played on Manual I Traversfloete 8′ + Gamba 8′ + Vox coelestis 8′. It is very effective. The second movement Fuga following really does start “forte”—both Manual II Oboe and Manual I Fagott are included and the swell box is entirely open. At bar 64 an F-sharp instead of F-natural (alto part) is played. The final movements are registered distinctly more reedily than many modern performances—partly occasioned by the organ’s resources, partly by Gigout’s free choice. A fine playing sensitivity in the last movement is well evident.
The complete sonata takes nearly 17 minutes to play. Roll one (1st and 2nd movements) is 10′37″ of music, and roll two (3rd and 4th movements) 6′07″.
Was Welte in something of a hurry to get this roll out? If so, it might also explain the fairly coarse pedal advance and other compromises. Mendelssohn formed a major block in the Welte catalogue and was clearly very important there for his place in German musical culture. Erb had recorded the Midsummer Night’s Dream Wedding March, which was released 1912, and Köhl followed in 1913 with Sonata in C Minor, op. 65, no. 2. But the former was relative trivia and the latter did not represent the truly great interpreter that Gigout offered. Harry Goss-Custard, Clarence Eddy, and Edwin Lemare’s later releases of 1914–16 did much to fan the “Mendelssohn transcription” flames, but very little to represent the sonatas. So it was Gigout, the Frenchman, left to fill this breach with Mendelssohn interpretation until the post-WWI releases. Even then, the offerings mostly included transcriptions and only the odd movement, never again a complete sonata.

Saint-Saëns
Sarabande: this roll (#1609, 3′17″) also gave us a few problems on account of paper movement and distortion, the results of aging, humidity, and other factors, which caused one manual to be transposed a semitone and some small “glitches” of probably little enduring consequence. The transposition fixed, it is evident that this performance also allows interesting comparisons; for, in spite of the classical form—and articulation patterns with 18th-century echoes?—he gives it an overriding romantic treatment endorsing our earlier assessment concerning his stylistic consciousness.

Gigout plays Gigout
Gigout playing his own music is, naturally, of paramount importance. With these rolls we are the fortunate inheritors of much unique material. In general, he seems to move his pieces well along in tempo (of relevance might also be his slightly faster tempo than Bonnet for Boëly’s Andante con moto mentioned above). He shows ties back to 18th-century practices, partly through the repertoire forms he uses (Minuet, Fughetta, March) as well as certain elements of their musical styles. It is evident that his own playing is positioned squarely between “18th-century articulate” and “19th-century legato”—not, however, a general compromise between the two, more a deliberate application of one or other at given moments.

Marche réligieuse (#1598, 4′27″)
He commences on foundations with Manual I Fagott 8′ (a free reed), then crescendos to full organ: the performance fringes nicely on the grandiose and there are some tasteful rhythmic freedoms worthy of observation.

Lied (from Suite) (#1599, 7′39″)
This starts with Manual I 8′s, Vox Coelestis + Traversfloete; he later adds the (manual) 16′ then Principal 8′. The Aeoline 8′ on its own in Manual II accompanies for a time, after which a series of slightly varied foundational registrations follow.
The Manual I Bourdon 16′ was interestingly not available on the original 1909 recording organ, but we know this was modified and some of it reportedly changed under Lemare’s influence. Lemare seems to have first been there, however, after Gigout—although there is prima facie evidence that he might have included this stop in his registration schemes. Either Welte had already included it well before Gigout’s 1912 arrival or there is the possibility of a technical error or an intervention through which the company “re-registered” the piece themselves later. So far there is no significant evidence that the company did this, other than at the behest of the artist, although we know they were perfectly capable of all manner of editing: notes or stops, in or out.

Toccata in b minor (#1084, 2′58″)
This famous work, as played by Gigout himself, is a most interesting exposition of his intentions as well as his flexibility in creative adaption given the resources available. The registration includes Harfe on the main manual (they actually perceptibly sound through in the first section as the pedal is already coupled to Manual I but he plays on Manual II). In fact, the pedal is only used as a manual I and II “pulldown”—just 8′ pitches—until he brings on the Posaune 16′ (alone) for the final chords.
It may eventually be shown that the bells are company intervention or some technical fault that has eluded us. Their presence or absence in the Weil-am-Rhein recording may or may not be of relevance for all sorts of reasons. It has, however, been checked thoroughly by all of us involved—many times—and for the moment we can come to no other conclusion than that they are there as Gigout’s intention or at least with his blessing. Judged in relation to the rest of the collection, this would certainly be the kind of repertoire for which bells might be used. To give a further glimpse into this world of roll-recordings in direct relation to this question, there are some cryptic markings on many of our master rolls—including this one—that are yet to be fully interpreted. These enigmatic details relate to the Harfe, Vox humana, rarely Tremulant and sometimes other stops, occasionally also “Tutti” or “Echo”. They seem to be a check on important aspects of registration, organ models, and appear to endorse the use of some stops which “sold” these organs and their rolls. It is obvious that they were reviewing them for some reason or other in the 1923–1926 era. Similar markings seem to relate to adjustments they did in the crescendos and pedal. On the box of this toccata it gives “Harfe”, on the master-roll lead-in it gives “H ung.f.V.h 23” (Harfe ungeeignet für Vox Humana 23 [Harp unsuitable for Vox Humana 1923]) and “Tutti”. The H is specifically underlined. Make of it all what you will, but all roads seem to lead to the Rome of bells (Harp) being used in this piece quite intentionally. As might be expected from a tradition not so noted for including bells in their specifications, this Toccata is probably a lone example in Gigout’s recordings (although see below Marche des rogations).

Communion (#1085, 4′10″)
Gigout uses the Vox coelestis combined only with the Traversfloete (rather than another string, or Principal).

Grand Choeur dialogué (#1086)
The tempo is relatively sprightly here, with a 5′20″ duration for the entire piece. He takes some notable tempo freedoms and there is no shirking the double-pedaling or any other difficult technical aspects of this work. Gigout plays it as he wrote it except for one moment where the pedal is slightly changed—seemingly either a lapse on his part or editing/technology—and there are elsewhere some slightly variant note readings for whatever reason. But the work is overwhelmingly played intact and true to its published text. The Seewen organ suits it rather well with its strong Trumpet 8′ on the second manual: the manuals are coupled, the second is every bit the equal of the first. Thus the final effect tends to be an addition or subtraction mainly of Manual I foundational weight, aided and abetted by the 16′ Clarinet on Manual II (from tenor G up) when he plays on the main manual. Some subtle but perceptible sound-source shifts from side to side, reflecting the organ’s windchest placements may also be detected, promoting the “dialogué” aspects. It keeps an equality of balance while still offering distinction in tonal effect and sound location. Nevertheless he adds and removes stops, increasing the effect of “dialogué” (actually removing some before the end).
In the pedal he desists from using the Posaune 16′ at all, nor is any form of octave coupling evident (it was available). In fact the piece is dynamically slightly more restrained than it could have been, most notably leaving the main manual Trumpet and the Pedal Posaune off—in other words it is not played with the full tutti available from the organ, showing that Grand Choeur does not necessarily mean absolutely everything.

Marche de fête (from Suite) (#1600, 7′05″)
This is another excellently articulated and finely chiseled performance in Gigout’s more grandiose manner. The rolls account for two of the three works in this Suite.

Minuetto (#1087, 4′53″)
Here he plays the solo on the Clarinet 16′ at the start of the “A”-sections, and uses a purposeful, detached articulation in the pedal along with some notable freedoms that clearly draw this to our attention. The pedal advance is noticeable and needs correction. His rubatos and rallentandos are interesting—sometimes there is a characteristic short pause-and-dwell before launching into a new phrase. Tempo borders on brisk, shattering some slower concepts of “Minuet” perhaps, but the piece moves along convincingly.

Marche des rogations (#1597, 3′51″)
This needed some correction of a transposed track, and the roll-scan is not yet ready to play with full technical certainty, but his articulate performance style is again indisputably evident. Transposed tracks and apparent paper warpage leave questions as to whether his use of bells is really correct. For the moment, however, it seems quite possible and works well since only the Glocken (C–f#0) is drawn, giving a 3-manual effect with Manual I bass + Manual I treble + Man II).

Fughetta (#1601, 2′34″)
This was first published in 1913, the year after he had recorded it for Welte. Another neat Gigout performance, it moves along energetically and displays his characteristic articulation-and-slurring mix using a slightly reedy registration—both Manual I Fagott 8′ and Manual II Oboe 8′ are added to strong foundations at 16′ in pedal and 8′ in manual.

Cantilène (#1602, 4′08″)
A very tasteful, expressive performance. As accompaniment Manual I Traversfloete 8′ + Vox Coelestis 8′, later adding Principal 8′, RH solo on Oboe 8′+ Wienerfloete and Bourdon 8′s. The Pedal Subbass 16′ is coupled to Manual I. He applies almost constant, but tasteful, swell expression, and there are some interesting, not entirely predictable playing freedoms.

Allegretto Grazioso (#1603, 3′34″)
The RH Solo is on the Wienerfloete, sometimes with Oboe and Horn (the latter is a remarkable large-scaled flue rank). The LH accompaniment is on the Traversfloete 8′ + Vox coelestis 8′, with Principal 8′ added for a time. Pedal registration is Bourdon 16′ coupled to Manual I (LH). The interpretation is in a similar style to that of the Cantilène.

•

Most of Welte’s organists play their music relatively “straight”—that is, without a lot of obvious interpretative freedom in tempo, articulation, rhythm, ornamentation, or rubato. With some, it is even as if they were sight-reading and had not considered the formal structures, subtleties, or even cadences, or, if they did, then they don’t appear to want to do much about them. Gigout is one of the more notable exceptions to this. Yet even he had limits that confined his interpretations mostly to relatively conservative boundaries, certainly by some of today’s more exaggerated standards. In the light of recent research, we can probably say that Gigout was not on solid ground with his 18th-century ornamentation. What he does demonstrate, however, is a romantic tradition and a notable variety of approach to styles.
Notwithstanding the caveats, we have here clear insights into Gigout’s entire musical environment and particularly just how he expected his own music and the traditions surrounding him to sound. As ever, we are free to take or leave the evidence of these rolls with impunity, but those looking for direct sources of playing paradigms for this era will welcome these recordings. Interestingly, the Swiss organist Franz Josef Breitenbach (Lucerne Cathedral) and German Thaddäus Hofmiller (Augsburg Cathedral) also recorded one roll each of Gigout’s music for Welte: Breitenbach the Scherzo, Hofmiller the Marche funèbre. These also have distinctive value in the larger Gigout picture available here.

Conclusion
Posterity may well bestow no laurels upon mimesis: but laurels are due to the whole sequence of events and visionary people who, by an extraordinary 20th century cultural-preservation miracle, have safely delivered this full-sized Philharmonie linked with the largest roll collection left in the world today as a symbiotic musical entity into the 21st century. The performances of these organists can once again be heard and studied, and Straube’s “moment of metaphysical experience” is available to us in a more enduring form than ever it was. ■

The Museum at Seewen is committed to making these performances accessible. Already many public and private, national and international, visits, demonstrations, and symposiums for organists, organ societies, organ students, and teachers have taken place. More are planned as well as some CD releases—three in 2011 on the OehmsClassics label—but the volume of material means that not everything can be published, certainly not immediately.
In the meantime, scholars, organists, organ teachers and their classes are very welcome. However, the playing of these performances is not part of the museum’s regular guided tours except for a few selected demonstration pieces. So, visitors hoping to hear these rolls will want to make special arrangements. From now, through 2011–12, anyone with a serious scholarly interest should make initial contact through me at <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A>.
From 2011, a major centennial exhibition commemorating the appearance of the Welte Philharmonie at Turin in 1911 will be mounted by the Seewen Museum. Information is posted at <A HREF="http://www.bundesmuseen.ch/musik automaten/presse/00108/00109/index">www.bundesmuseen.ch/musik automaten/presse/00108/00109/index</A>.
html?lang=en>.
This will include symposium-style sessions dedicated to specific organists and aspects of organ playing. Details will be posted.
You can hear examples of
• #1274, Lemare playing Gounod’s Queen of Sheba: March and Cortege
• #1084, Gigout playing his own Toccata in B Minor
• #1106, Goss-Custard playing Elgar Imperial March, op. 32
• #717, Hofner playing the Bach Prelude on Herzlich tut mich verlangen (BWV 727)
at the following web-sites:
<www.david rumsey.ch> or
<www.musikautomaten.ch&gt;

Acknowledgements
Christoph Haenggi, Director of the Seewen (SO/CH) Museum der Musikautomaten
Brett Leighton, Linz (A), who read this through and offered many important enhancements
Nelson Barden, Boston (USA)
Jim Crank, Redwood City, CA (USA)
Marco Brandazza, Lucerne (CH) custodian of the Meggen Welte and its collection of rolls
Gerhard Dangel, Augustiner Museum, Freiburg/Breisgau (D)
Daniel Debrunner, Biel (CH)
David Gräub, Biel (CH)
Dominik Hennig, Basel (CH)
István Mátyás, Vienna (A)
Hans Musch, Freiburg/Breisgau (D)
Lars Nørremark, Denmark (DK)
Jean-Claude Pasché, Theatre Barnabé, Servion (CH)
Christoph Schmider, Direktor Archepiscopal Archives, Freiburg/Breisgau (D)
and to my wife, Elizabeth, and many others, including the entire Geisterhand team, my sincere gratitude for shared expertise, support and ongoing work in this field.

*

An abbreviated history of recording
(with particular reference to the organ)

1870s–1900: Pioneers of acoustic recording; the cylinder
1877: American inventor Thomas A. Edison developed the “talking machine.” As commercially offered, it could both record and reproduce sound using wax cylinders.
1887: Emile Berliner filed a U.S. patent for a “Gramophone” (using discs instead of cylinders.)
1888–1894: Cylinders were sold, e.g., with readings by Tennyson and Browning. Brahms recorded one of his Hungarian rhapsodies. Josef Hofmann and Hans von Bülow recorded piano music.
1890: Magnetic (wire) recording was first explored by Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen.
1894: Charles and Émile Pathé established a recording business near Paris. They issued cylinders. By 1904 the catalogue contained ca. 12,000 titles. Berliner began manufacturing his gramophones, founding the “Victor” firm. Their recordings (many novelty items) became popular, especially from coin-in-the-slot machines.
1897: The pianola was patented by E.S. Votey—originally a limited form of Vorsetzer.

1900–1910: “78” era; piano roll-recordings
From 1902 a marked rise in public interest occurred, particularly with recordings of Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso. The fortunes of Victor waxed.
1904: The Welte firm perfected and marketed their Vorsetzer, which was integrated into the “Welte-Mignon” piano from 1905. The recording and issue of piano-roll performances now became a good commercial prospect, although more the province of the rich. Early artists included Cortot, Paderewski, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Rubinstein, Grainger, Gershwin.
By 1910 possibly 85 percent of recorded music was classical.

1910–20: The acoustic boom
Birth of organ roll recordings
With the phonograph an early mass-media phenomenon was created, no longer just the province of the rich. The “78” (78 disc revolutions per minute) recording fully replaced the earlier wax cylinders and became entrenched as standard. Originally made from shellac—later synthetic thermoplastic resins gave better results with less “surface noise”—they came in 10-inch and 12-inch sizes, the largest of which were capable of durations extending to about 41⁄2 minutes.
by 1912: The first roll recordings of organists were made by Welte in Germany—but ownership of player organs was virtually the sole province of highly affluent individuals, institutions, or companies. Some (rare) early gramophone recordings of organists were made in England and the first complete symphonies were recorded in Germany: solo instrumentalists and opera singers followed with excerpts and potpourris.
1914–1919: Phonograph sales quintupled. Original composition also began for player piano, which sometimes attracted leading composers (Stravinsky, Étude for Pianola 1917). Later Hindemith (Toccata for mechanical piano 1926) and others, notably George Antheil (Le Ballet mécanique, 1926) and Conlon Nancarrow continued this genre of recorded music. Only two roll-composed works for mechanical organ are known: the experimental stage piece, Triadischen Ballett by Oskar Schlemmers (1888–1943) was revised by Hindemith in 1927 as Suite für mechanische Orgel but survives only in an early recording (available on CD) and Studie for mechanical organ by Ernst Toch (1887–1964) which appears to have been lost.
1917: The “Victor” label increased its sales with classical releases, especially popular from their collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
All early commercial sound recording and reproduction to this point was achieved solely by acoustical means.

1920s: Electrical recording, broadcasting; roll recordings
From the early 1920s the vacuum-tube (“valve”), invented by Lee De Forest, paved the way for applications such as the amplifier and the record-cutting lathe. Microphones, earphones and loudspeakers now replaced the old needles and acoustical horns, while turntable drives shifted from the wind-up spring to the electric motor. The recording of “classical” music increased greatly but popular music and jazz also established their places. American and German scientists developed Poulsen’s earlier wire recording technology and researched the potential for magnetic tape as an alternative medium to wire.
1923: An optical system of sound recording was invented by De Forest—of special relevance to sound films.
From 1925 electrical recording quickly predominates.
1926: Radio broadcasting is introduced and music becomes far more freely available to all classes of society.
1926–30: After a decade or so of more experimental organ recordings some early organ recordings appear, taking advantage of the newly available electrical technology (Alcock, Darke, Bullock, Palmer, Roper, Marchant, Thalben-Ball—the most notable in England was Harry Goss-Custard who had already recorded on Welte rolls). Edwin Lemare, another Welte player-roll recording artist, later made discs in the USA.
1928 (November): Louis Vierne made 78s at Paris, Notre Dame Cathedral.
Around 1930 in Germany, Walter Fischer made 78s of Rheinberger and Händel organ concertos in an unidentified location, but generally thought to be the Berliner Dom. Alfred Sittard—who had recorded on Welte rolls released from 1913 onwards—made some 78 recordings between 1928–32 in Berlin (Alte Garnisonskirche) and Hamburg (Michaeliskirche). Six of Sittard’s recording titles are duplicated on both roll and disk (two Bach, three Handel, one work of his own).
1930–1: Charles Tournemire made recordings at Paris, Saint Clôtilde.
From 1929 onwards the great economic depression threw the recording industry into serious decline: dance music recordings played on jukeboxes helped sustain a contracted market throughout the 1930s. The vogue of the player piano and player organ began to decline with this and the increasing popularity of the radio and phonograph, although player piano culture survived to a remarkable degree through the mid-20th century.

1945–1970: Microgroove recordings; tape
After World War II, magnetic systems were brought to full technological acceptability (the “tape recorder” era began and the use of wire declined). Similarly constant improvements in optical systems endowed motion pictures with ever higher quality sound.
1948: The “long-playing” record was first introduced (LP 331⁄3 revolutions per minute, for a time also a 45 rpm format); discs made of “vinyl” took over and the “78” quickly disappeared from production. Available maximum playing times increased to 20–25 minutes (about the maximum capacity of some of the rolls from 30 years earlier).
1958: Provision of two separate channels of recorded information in the one groove ushered in the era of “binaural” (stereophonic) recording. This became standard.
The era of “hi-fi” particularly boosted organ disc recordings, which had suffered badly from inadequate technology hitherto. This led to a notable increase in “complete” (e.g., Walcha playing Bach) works and comprehensive anthologies of organ music and organs.
Tape also was used for video recordings.

1970s: Digital
1970s: Digital recording technology displaced analogue and took over the industry (quadraphonic and similar experiments followed but were mostly unsuccessful except in cinemas).
In the late 20th century the player-piano concept was reinvented and applied; e.g., Yamaha’s “Disklavier,” which offered self-recording, and selected performances by artists from Horowitz to Liberace.
1980s: Fully digital compact discs (CDs) were introduced; they dominated the market by the 1990s. Playing time increased to over an hour. Digital editing and mixing techniques also evolved to produce a highly-packaged sound quality.
By the early 21st century, DVDs had also become a factor in sound and video recording as well as mass information storage. Their playing time could now cope with almost any extended musical form, including videos of operas. Recording to computer hard drives and memory sticks recently became an option and seems set to quickly become a new standard.

Ann Labounsky

Ann Labounsky, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Organ and Sacred Music at the Mary Pappert School of Music, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Author of Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, she studied with André Marchal and Jean Langlais in Paris from 1962–1964.

Jacqueline’s childhood memories of her parents’ home, 22 rue Duroc in Paris’s Seventh Arrondissement, included frequent encounters with famous leaders of the musical world. Her father André Marchal was already a highly regarded concert organist and teacher, and her mother, Suzanne Greuet-Marchal, was a singer of note who also taught at the Institut des Jeunes Aveugles. Their home became a center of hospitality and lively conversation, reminiscent of the famous Paris salons, where artists and musicians, young and old, gathered to discuss their passionate views while enjoying aperitifs. Among the frequent guests in this salon were famous French and international musicians and artists: organist/composers Louis Vierne, Jean Langlais, Jehan and Marie-Claire Alain, and Maurice Duruflé; musicologist Norbert Dufourcq, founder of Les Amis de l’Orgue; and the English critic Felix Aprahamian. She remembered that it was Louis Vierne who was like a grandfather to her, who taught her to tie her shoes! Jean Langlais, who lived only two doors away on the same street, likewise was a special friend. At one Christmas, she proudly showed Langlais the crèche given to her by her grandparents by guiding his hands over the scene. Inspired, Langlais composed his famous La Nativité from Poèmes Evangéliques. For Jacqueline, rue Duroc was affectionately called “organists’ row.”

Early on and throughout her life, Jacqueline also became involved in helping the blind students at the Institut nearby the “organists’ row” on Boulevard des Invalides and the graduates of the school at the Association Valentin Haüy at 5 rue Duroc. It was a great source of pride to her when the main hall at the Institut was renamed Salle André Marchal after her father.

From 1930, beginning with Lee Irwin, American students came to Paris to study with André Marchal in his home. Many of them were Fulbright Grant recipients who were required to state on their applications which school they wished to attend. Marchal was soon declared to be a school, and for many years that followed, it was Jacqueline who welcomed them, found housing and places for them to practice, and translated for them at lessons.

Her love for America and Americans began early and remained an important part of her life to the end. As a teenager, she learned to speak English by living for a time with an English family in England. In 1938, at age sixteen, Jacqueline accompanied her father on his second American recital tour, handling all the details of taking care of him, translating for him, and managing his travel schedule. She received her baccalaureate degree in 1940 from the Lycée Victor-Duruy on Boulevard des Invalides. English was her forte. Subsequently, in 1944, she earned an undergraduate degree from the Sorbonne in English literature called “License d’anglais.” Later, she worked in Cleveland, Ohio, in the library of the Cleveland Museum, and earned a master’s degree in English Literature at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

For the first part of the Second World War, the Marchal family lived in Hendaye, in the Basque country of France, which had not yet been occupied by the Germans. Jacqueline secretly made an American flag in anticipation of American troops landing on the Basque coast. When the troops marched in front of their home “Guéréza,” she proudly displayed her flag and invited them in for tea, coffee, and gateaux.

In 1954, Jacqueline married Giuseppe Englert, a composer, organist, and pupil of her father. The religious wedding ceremony took place in Hendaye, at St. Anne’s Church, with her father as organist, and Norbert Dufourcq acting as his stand-in to give her away. As a wedding present, Jean Langlais composed his suite of pieces known as the Organ Book for the couple. The final piece, Pasticcio, was built on two themes derived from their names in Braille notation. Shortly thereafter, Jacqueline and Giuseppe took up residence in a beautiful fourth-floor Paris apartment on the Boulevard de La Tour-Maubourg, facing the dome of Les Invalides. There they continued the salon tradition, entertaining students and friends from around the world.

Among Giuseppe and Jacqueline’s close friends was organ builder Victor Gonzalez. It was Gonzalez who had enlarged the house organ for Marchal at 22 rue Duroc, where he taught for so many years. Likewise, in 1952, he built and installed a similar two-manual instrument with 16 stops and 1,147 pipes for their apartment on Boulevard de La Tour-Maubourg. This became a favorite place for students to practice, and it so impressed their friends that Maurice Duruflé used it as a model for his own Gonzalez instrument.

Jacqueline continued to serve as Marchal’s guide for most of his subsequent nineteen tours to America, sometimes accompanied by Giuseppe after their marriage. Among the high points of these years were Marchal’s dedicatory recital in 1975, during his last U.S. concert tour, on the newly installed organ in Alice Tully Hall in New York, and many trips to Oberlin College, where he often served as guest faculty member. Even after Marchal’s death, she and Giuseppe continued to travel to America, where they participated and presented papers in events such as the symposium on André Marchal and Giuseppe Englert at Duquesne University, and a conference at the University of North Texas in Denton.

Giuseppe preceded Jacqueline in death in 2007. In the years since then, she was cared for and assisted by their nephew, Michel Snethlage, the son of Giuseppe’s sister, Amalie. Michel accompanied her to the subsequent Biarritz organ competitions, in annual trips to Lausanne, Switzerland each summer, and in Paris spent many hours organizing papers and mementos of her father, mainly for the Bibliothèque Nationale’s André Marchal Archives, and for her husband Giuseppe, including recordings of Marchal’s performances on the French National Radio, which have recently been issued on the Solstice label as Hommage à André Marchal. Even during the last weeks of her life, she remained vitally interested in all aspects of organ culture and continued to be particularly sensitive to the need for diplomatic handling of the various personalities in this field.

Jacqueline was memorialized in a service of benediction, on May 4, at the parish church of Saint-Pierre du Gros Caillou in Paris. Marchal student and international recitalist Susan Landale served as organist. Music included compositions by Bach, Franck, and Brahms—the style and interpretation of which is part of the great legacy of André Marchal. In attendance were about 150 friends, including three Americans: James David Christie, Jon Gillock, and Mrs. Michel Snethlage, the wife of her nephew. Cremation followed, and her ashes were placed next to those of her husband at Père Lachaise Cemetery on May 11.

It has been my very great privilege to be counted among her friends; to be the beneficiary of many of her great kindnesses during her long life. Among the most recent of her American visitors, in July 2011, was Jeremy Jelinek, age 15, a student of mine from Pittsburgh. Jeremy wrote the following in response to news of her death:

 

I will never forget last summer when I visited Paris. I was so blessed to have the opportunity to meet Mme. Englert. Her sweet and kind personality was personified through her generous hospitality. Not only had she invited me into her home, but she invited me to come at my leisure. She would have let me continue to play the pipe organ in her apartment all day. She insisted that I stay and make myself at home. Meeting Mme. Englert was a once in a lifetime opportunity and event that will always be memorable and special to me. I am so sad to see a woman of such Christ-like humbleness and selflessness pass away. However, I am assured that she has been taken to a more appropriate place—a place of eternal rest where she will experience true happiness and joy. Requiescat in pace.

 

Jeremy’s experience was only the latest of hundreds of students and friends over the years. All of them say, in response, “Amen.”

In 1982, Jacqueline and other supporters founded the Académie André Marchal in Biarritz, France. It was charged with keeping Marchal’s significant legacy alive and flourishing, and over the ensuing thirty years, it has done so. Jacqueline supported it with generous gifts of her time and treasure. It is the resolution of the members of the Académie, both French and American, that the next organ competition in performance and improvisation, to be held in Biarritz in October 2013, will be a memorial to Jacqueline. Those desiring to contribute may send a check, in dollars, to: Académie André Marchal, c/o Mr. Ralph Tilden, P. O. Box 2254, Banner Elk, NC 28604.

 

 

Marijim Thoene, Lisa Byers

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in Organ Performance/Church Music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song are available through Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts. Lisa Byers received master’s degrees in music education and organ performance from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from the University of Toledo, Ohio. She is retired from teaching music in the Jefferson Public Schools in Monroe, Michigan, as well as from her position as organist/choir director at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Tecumseh, Michigan. She currently subs as organist in the Monroe area.

This year’s gathering marked the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Michigan Conference on Organ Music, directed by its creator, Marilyn Mason. Organists from France, Germany, Poland, and the U.S. performed on the Aeolian-Skinner on the stage of Hill Auditorium. The shimmering golden pipes of this organ made this year’s theme especially appropriate: “Pure Gold: Music of Poland, France and Germany.” The conference was dedicated to the memories of Erven Thoma, a Michigan DMA graduate in church music, and William Steinhoff, Professor Emeritus of English at U-M and husband of Marilyn Mason.

Sunday, October 3
Frédéric Blanc, 43-year-old native of Angoulême, opened the conference with a program of all-French music. He introduced his program by saying that Fauré, Ravel, and Debussy are never far away in nineteenth and twentieth-century French organ music. Their influence was undeniable in the works Blanc performed, a mix of well-known and loved repertoire—Franck, Choral in A Minor and Cantabile; Vierne, Carillon de Westminster and Méditation Improvisée (reconstructed by Duruflé), repertoire that is occasionally heard—Prelude in E-flat Minor (from Suite, op. 5) by Duruflé and Allegro (from Symphony VI) by Widor, and repertoire that is rarely heard—Introduction et Aria by Jean-Jacques Gruenwald, Toccata (from Le Tombeau de Titelouze, on Placare Christe Servulis) by Dupré, and Prelude (from the suite Pélleas et Mélisande) by Debussy, transcribed by Duruflé.
Blanc’s technique is formidable and his choice of registration was both poetic and daring; however, his playing became more impassioned and inspired in his improvisation—a Triptych Symphony based on three submitted themes: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, Hail to the Chief, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. His imagination and creativity were dazzling as he altered rhythms and keys of the submitted themes, seamlessly moved from dark and somber to warm and brilliant colors, from pensive to ebullient moods, and ending with a bombastic pedal toccata. He delighted in making the instrument hum, growl, and break forth in glorious trumpeting.

Monday, October 4
On Monday afternoon Frederic Blanc gave a lecture entitled “A Mind’s Eye.” He spoke informally of how his life as a musician has been shaped and influenced by unique circumstances, his teachers, and his views on improvisation. While he was a student at the Bordeaux Conservatory, Xavier Durasse heard him play and persuaded him to come to Toulouse, where he was then asked to be organist at St. Sernin. There he had all his nights to play the organ, and there he met Jean-Louis Florentz, André Fleury, and Madame Duruflé. When she heard him improvise, she said, “I will take you to Paris and I will make you work very hard.” He told how he was not prepared to play Dupré’s Variations on a Noël, one of the required pieces for the Chartres competition, and she told him he had to be able to play it from memory in fifteen days or she would never see him again. She was delighted when he came back in fifteen days and played it from memory. Blanc said that the most important thing he learned from her was that “each piece has its own way to be played, you must express yourself, your sensitivity must flow through the music.”
Blanc’s candid answers to questions about his own improvisation left me feeling that here is a man whose life is charmed, who is fully conscious of the rare gift he has been given, and is fully committed to nurturing it. When asked who taught him how to improvise, he answered: “I wasn’t. I listened to Madame Duruflé, Pierre Cochereau, Jean Langlais, and to recordings of Tournemire. Nobody can give you the gift. If you are not given the gift you will never be able to improvise a symphony . . . I heard Cochereau at Notre Dame and it was like magic, like being pierced by a sword, raised to heaven. He was at one with the organ.”
When asked about the state of organ building in France today, Blanc lamented that there are no organs in concert halls, and the organist cannot be seen in the lofts in churches. He commented that Cavaillé-Coll was a builder who turned toward the future and restored his own organs for new music, especially those organs in Notre Dame and Sacré Coeur.
Blanc’s final dictum concerning how to play French organ music: “After historicism, it must be the music and what you have inside.”
Charles Echols, Professor Emeritus of St. Cloud State University, lectured on “Observations on American Organ Music 1900–1950,” covering a large variety of topics: the movement of American composers to create “American” music; changes in musical style and organ building between 1930–1950; approaches to researching organ music by American composers; and an introduction to the organ music of René Louis Becker, whose scores have been given to the University of Michigan by his family, who were present at the lecture.
On Monday evening Martin Bambauer, 40-year-old organist and choirmaster at the Konstantin Basilika in Trier, played Dupré’s Poème héroïque, op. 33; Tournemire’s Triple Choral, op. 41; Liszt’s Eglogue (from Années de Pèlerinage), transcribed for organ by Bambauer; Karg-Elert’s Partita Retrospettiva, op. 151; Iain Farrington’s Fiesta!, plus his own improvisation. He played with great precision and refinement. His performance of Tournemire’s Triple Choral, op. 41 was an Ann Arbor premiere. Farrington’s four-movement work, Fiesta!, was a bit of fresh air, conjuring up all sorts of secular venues, from a stripper’s stage to a cocktail lounge.

Tuesday, October 5
On Tuesday, Martin Bambauer began his lecture, “Tournemire’s Triple Choral,” by saying that it was Tournemire’s first major organ work, and he had learned it in a week (!) and played it for the fourth time in public yesterday, and that it was not a very popular piece. Truly, I would have thought he had been playing the piece for years. This early work of Tournemire is introspective and cerebral, and at the same time hints at the other-worldliness that would characterize his later work. Bambauer mentioned that in 1896 the Liber Usualis became Tournemire’s constant companion, and when he became Franck’s successor at the Basilica of St. Clotilde in 1898 he only improvised on chant in the services. He thought sacred music was the only music worthy of the name, and when Langlais questioned him, asking what about the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, he said it didn’t matter! Bambauer recommended listening to Tournemire’s eight symphonies, among them Search for the Holy Grail and Apocalypse of St. John. Tournemire was drawn to the mysterious and supernatural, apparent not only in his music, but in his biography of Franck in 1931, and the naming of his two cottages “Tristan” and “Isolde”—his Opus 53 bears those names.
Bambauer pointed out that Tournemire was recognized as a great improviser, and Vierne described him as being “impulsive, enthusiastic, erratic, and a born improviser.” Tournemire’s Five Improvisations, recorded in 1930 at St. Clotilde and transcribed by his student, Duruflé, are his most popular works. His L’Orgue Mystique, fifty-one liturgical sets of five pieces each, was composed between 1927–1932 and is the Catholic counterpart to Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. Bambauer explained that the first edition of L’Orgue Mystique was dedicated to César Franck and states in the preface that the performer is free to choose the registration; however, in the second edition Duruflé includes registration and manual changes.
Bambauer’s insightful analysis of Tournemire’s Triple Choral not only focused on his compositional techniques—use of imitation, paraphrase, and inversion—but how and when Tournemire used the same harmonic vocabulary as Franck. Bambauer illustrated the meticulous craftsmanship in this early work of Tournemire based on his newly created chorals entitled “The Father,” “The Son,” and “The Holy Spirit,” and discussed how the prose with which Tournemire prefaced each choral was mirrored in the music. Tournemire’s prose offers a poignant testimony of his profound faith and allows the listener to participate in Tournemire’s personal vision.
Bambauer commented that the highlight of the piece occurs at the end as the three chorals softly merge together. Bambauer treated us to another performance of Tournemire’s Triple Choral and “the knowing made all the difference.”
Tuesday evening James Kibbie, Professor of Organ at U-M, presented a stunning memorized recital. He has a special affinity for the music of Marcel Dupré, Jehan Alain, Dan Locklair, and Jirí Ropek. He played Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in B Major, op. 7, no. 1, with conviction and assurance. The pleasure of hearing Alain’s rarely played Two Preludes was heightened by being able to read the texts that accompany them. Kibbie’s sensitive interpretation made the images of the text take on a life of their own.
Dan Locklair’s Voyage was another kind of tone poem, providing a journey to fantasy lands filled with sounds of the ebb and flow of tides, jazz, bird song, chimes, and billowing waves evoked by hand glissandi. Kibbie managed to weave together these disparate elements into a fabulous and entertaining voyage.
It was a pleasure to hear Kibbie speak of his meeting Jirí Ropek when he won the Prague Organ Competition in 1979 and of his continuing friendship with this celebrated organist/composer who suffered greatly during the Communist oppression. Kibbie related conversations he had had with Ropek that offered insight into his music. Of the three Ropek pieces on the program, Kibbie said that the Toccata and Fugue (dedicated to Kibbie) was the most complex and dissonant, and mirrored in the work is Ropek’s philosophy: “Life is not only one melody, but many and dissonances, but in general I’m quite melodious. No frightening the audience.” To hear this account made Ropek’s Toccata and Fugue, filled with haunting and aggressive motives, a kind of musical autobiography. Kibbie also explained the compositional process of Ropek’s Fantasy on Mozart’s Theme. In 1775 Mozart improvised a work in a monastery, and only the first 57 measures were written down. Ropek was asked to play it and he added a cadenza. He worked on it over the years and finally he attached his own music to Mozart’s original piece. It was one of the last things he wrote before he died and is dedicated to the students of James Kibbie at the University of Michigan. It was published in 2009.
Kibbie mentioned that he had just played Ropek’s Variations on “Victimae Paschali Laudes” in Prague the week before and made a recording for the radio at the Basilica of St. James where Ropek was organist for 35 years. This beautiful work has become a signature piece for Kibbie.

Wednesday, October 6
Five recitals were performed on Wednesday, an intense day of listening.
The first recital of the day was played by Andrew Lang on the Létourneau organ in the School of Public Health. Lang is a student of James Kibbie and commutes from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His program was well suited for the room and instrument: “The Primitives” and “Those Americans” (from Five Dances for Organ) by Calvin Hampton; Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot, BWV 678, Fughetta super Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot, BWV 679, and Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, BWV 544, by Bach. Lang played with verve and energy; the contrapuntal lines were electric with clarity and precision.
The day’s second recital was played at Hill Auditorium by Józef Kotowicz, who received his doctoral degree in 2001 from the Music Academy in Warsaw. He is active, playing recitals in music festivals throughout Europe, producing a radio program devoted to organs of northeast Poland, recording on the organ in the Cathedral Basilica (Bialystok), and teaching and serving as organist at St. Adalbertus Church. Two of the most interesting pieces of his ambitious program were works by Mieczyslaw Surzynski (1886–1924), Improvisation on the Polish Sacred Song “Swiety Boze,” and Stefan Lindblad (b. 1958), Espanordica. Kotowicz explained to me that “Swiety Boze” is a very popular hymn in Poland and is sung often during funeral services. A translation of the first line reads: “Holy God, Holy [and] Mighty, Holy [and] Immortal, have mercy on us.” The hymn has inspired many composers.
After hearing the performance of Surzynski’s Improvisation, it is easily understood why he is the most revered Polish composer of organ music. The work began with a statement of the hymn, and six dramatic variations followed, with variations one and five being the most riveting. In variation one, thundering chords are played in the manuals while the cantus firmus is heard in the pedals. In variation five, a fiery toccata is in the manuals while the cantus firmus thunders in the pedals.
Kotowicz’s performance of Lindblad’s Espanordica was electrifying. Each of the three movements—Rhapsodia, Nocturno, and Litanies—is built on Spanish dance motifs. Kotowicz told me that Stefan Lindblad lives in Göteborg, Sweden. Lindblad has composed two large works for organ, Hommages and Espanordica, which Kotowicz has performed in Ann Arbor. Both of these pieces have never been printed and he is the only Polish organist who has the scores. He also commented, “It’s interesting that Lindblad is almost completely unknown in Sweden, so I feel like his promoter. I know him personally because I often play in Sweden.”
In honor of Chopin’s 200th birth year, Arthur Greene, Professor of Piano at U-M, performed an all-Chopin recital. It was truly a gift to hear such great artistry.
His program provided a rich and tantalizing view of Chopin’s brilliant oeuvre. Greene drew sounds out of the piano like a magician—singing, soaring, langorous melodies, and thunderous, tumultuous chords. Greene is a master in knowing how to use his body in eliciting such sounds, and in controlling the exact timing of each key and creating suspense through poignant pauses. The audience was captivated by the huge gamut of emotions, from laughter to dark despair, that were portrayed in Greene’s memorized recital. In his hands each piece became a sort of microcosm of its own, glowing with its own unique beauty. His program included three short Mazurkas (op. 67, no. 3; op. 24, no. 3; op. 24, no. 4), the well-known Nocturne in E-flat Major, op. 9, no. 2, Écossaise, op. 72, and four Ballades (op. 23, op. 38, op. 47, and op. 52).
The 4 o’clock recital featured graduate students of James Kibbie and Marilyn Mason. Each performer played with such artistry, conviction, and joy. Their discipline and dedication to their art was obvious. Those performing from Kibbie’s studio included Joseph Balistreri (In Organ, Chordis et Choro by Naji Hakim); Susan De Kam (Partita sopra “Nun freut euch” by Lionel Rogg), and Richard Newman (Final from Symphony No. 5, op. 47, by Louis Vierne). Mason’s students included Timothy Tikker (Pièce Héroïque by César Franck) and Louis Canter (Adagio, Fugue from The 94th Psalm by Julius Reubke).
The final concert of the conference was played by Charles Echols. His entire program was devoted to the music of René Louis Becker (1882–1956). In his notes, Professor Echols described Becker’s career as a musician in the Midwest, and commented that among the many churches Becker served as organist were Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit and St. Alphonsus Church in Dearborn, Michigan. Echols also indicated those pieces that have been published and those that are in manuscript form. Echols’s playing was flawless, and he is to be thanked for advancing this composer’s work, which recalls the music of Mendelssohn.
Professor Marilyn Mason has been responsible for the organ conference at the University of Michigan, a “happening” in Ann Arbor for 50 years. When I asked her what inspired her to begin this incredible conference she told me: “I began the conference for our students; my then manager, Lillian Murtagh, urged me to sponsor Anton Heiller, who had never played in Ann Arbor. Further, I realized since the students could not have a European experience there, we could provide it for them here: especially to hear organists who had not played in Ann Arbor. Some firsts in Ann Arbor were the Duruflés, Mlle Alain, Anton Heiller, and many more. This contact also provided a window of opportunity for the students, many of whom went on to study with the Europeans after having met them here.” This gathering together of world-class performers and teachers continues to nurture and inspire. We are indebted to Marilyn Mason for literally bringing the world to us.

•

These articles represent the ten sessions that I reviewed (each session is designated by roman numerals I–X).
I. Sunday, October 3, 4 pm, A Grand Night for Singing, Hill Auditorium
This inaugural event was a multi-choir extravaganza led by conductor and artistic director Professor Jerry Blackstone. He was assisted by other U of M faculty conductors, vocalists and instrumentalists. Six U of M student auditioned groups participated, with approximately 650 students. Composers ranged from Monteverdi to Sondheim, fourteen in all, and many various ensembles, representing a variety of musical genres. Each of the sixteen presentations, including choirs, solos, opera, theater, and musicals, was greatly appreciated by the audience, which rendered a standing ovation.

II. Monday, October 4, 10:30 am, dissertation recital by Jason Branham, at Moore Hall, the School of Music, on the Marilyn Mason Organ built by Fisk
Branham’s recital featured Buxtehude’s Praeludium in E Major, BuxWV 141, Bach’s Liebster Jesu, wir sind heir, BWV 731, and Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major, BWV 529, Clerambault’s Suite du deuxième ton, and Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major, op. 65. Branham performed with an understanding of musical forms, in a sensitive and confident manner. The variety of works presented allowed him to demonstrate well many registration possibilities of this unique instrument. This performance was acknowledged with great applause.

III. Monday, October 4, 4 pm, dissertation recital by Christopher Reynolds at Hill Auditorium
Cantabile by Franck, Passion, op. 145, No. 4 by Reger, Prelude on Picardy by Near, Meditation on Sacramentum Unitatis by Sowerby, Elegy in B-flat by Thalben-Ball, Praeludium in g, BuxWV 149 by Buxtehude, from Zehn Charakteristische Tonstücke, op. 86, Prologus tragicus by Karg-Elert, and Concert Variations on The Star-Spangled Banner, op. 23 by Buck. Reynolds appropriately approached and performed well the pieces that required a reflective and meditative interpretation. His registrations, musical sensitivity, and facility made his selections interesting for the listeners who aptly responded with approval.

IV. Tuesday, October 5, 9:30 am, Organs of France
IX. Wednesday, October 6, 9:30 am, Organs of Bach Country
X. Wednesday, October 6, 10:30 am, Organs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Janice and Bela Feher presented three narrated photographic summaries of the European pipe organs visited and played on University of Michigan Historic Organ Tours, 2005–2009.
Organs of France were viewed via a PowerPoint presentation of pipe organs from various regions of France. The Fehers showed examples of French Baroque, Classic, Romantic, and Symphonic organs, and they highlighted sites and instruments associated with important organists and composers. Instruments included organs built by Dom Bedos, François-Henry, Louis-Alexandre, and Robert Clicquot; Jean-Pierre Cavaillé (grandfather), Dominique (father) and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (son); and Moucherel. The photographs of the organs were enhanced by illustrations of their settings; highlights of the organs included historical cases, consoles, and principal internal components.
Organs of Bach Country traced the life of Bach, with photographs of the places where he grew up, the churches where he worked, and the organs he designed and played, along with additional photographic documentation of the organs of Andreas and Gottfried Silbermann, and Arp Schnitger.
Organs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire included pipe organs of Hungary (Budapest, Esztergom, Tihany, Zirc), Austria (Vienna, Melk, St. Florian, and Salzburg), and the Czech Republic (Prague). Historic and modern organs were presented from a variety of churches, cathedrals, abbeys, and concert halls. The photographs showed churches and organs associated with Mozart, Bruckner, Haydn, and Liszt. The photographs and information about these organs and their sites will be available in the near future from the University of Michigan Organ Department website.
The photographs described above and information are contained in several books available through <blurb.com>. The Fehers, along with Marilyn Mason, have produced a photo book about historical organs of Germany and Demark related to Bach and Buxtehude, entitled Sacred Spaces of Germany and Denmark. Their second book on the organs of Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic is entitled Sacred Spaces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They are beginning to work on another book about the organs of France and Northern Spain. All books may be previewed and ordered from <blurb.com>.

V. Tuesday, October 5, 10:30 am, lecture by Christopher Urbiel, “The History of the Frieze Memorial Organ at Hill Auditorium, The University of Michigan”
Urbiel’s interesting history of this grand organ housed in Hill Auditorium began with the early instrument at Festival Hall at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Farrand & Votey organ, 1876 and 1893. Albert Stanley purchased the instrument for $15,000 during U of M President Angel’s tenure. It was placed in University Hall and named for Professor Frieze, founder of the University Musical Society and Choral Union, in 1894. In 1912 it was moved from University Hall. The organ has been changed, modified, and “rebuilt” through the years: Hutchings (1913), Moore, Palmer Christian, E.M. Skinner (1928), G. Donald Harrison, Noehren/Aeolian-Skinner (1955), Koontz (1980), renovated in 1900s, and rededicated to Frieze in 1994. Urbiel was very detailed and thorough in his presentation on the Hill Organ, a large unique instrument, and the audience showed great appreciation for his informative and delightful lecture and pictures.

VI. Tuesday, October 5, 11:30 am, lecture by Michael Barone, “Louis Vierne (1870–1937): The ‘Other’ Music (songs, piano pieces, chamber and orchestral works).”
Michael Barone presented the audience with a detailed listing (seven pages), containing comments, performers’ names, disc identification, and other information of Vierne’s “other” music as described in his lecture title. He discussed Vierne’s life and provided insight into the interpretation of his music based on the tragedies and pain Vierne suffered in the losses of his brother and son, coupled with the difficulties Vierne endured in his career, health, and home life. Barone provided more than 20 recorded excerpts, with verbal descriptions and information in an entertaining and interesting manner. Near the end of the seven-page compilation, Barone listed a disc summary of Vierne’s non-organ repertoire. The audience appreciated Barone’s thorough work, sense of humor, and sensitive presentation.

VII. Tuesday, October 5, 1:30 pm, lecture/demonstration by Michele Johns, “Organ ‘Plus’”
Dr. Johns began her lecture/demonstration by sharing some down-to-earth tips when deciding to use the organ with other instruments in services and concerts. She discussed conducting from the organ, getting funding, how to pay performers, ways to obtain band and orchestra members, vocalists, planning rehearsals, and rehearsing. Her program featured three pieces written for organ, two trumpets and two trombones, which she conducted from the organ. In celebration of this 50th annual University of Michigan Conference on Organ Music and in honor of the Organ Department, an arrangement of “Angels We Have Heard on High” for congregation, brass quartet, tympani and organ was premiered. This was a welcomed and enjoyed opportunity for the conferees to participate in this rousing and exciting setting written by Scott M. Hyslop. Dr. Johns received thanks for her expertise.

VIII. Tuesday, October 5, 2:30 pm, lecture by Steven Ball, “Music of René Becker”
Dr. Ball gave a brief history of René Becker, son of Edouard, who was an organist at Chartres Cathedral. Born in 1882, Becker and his four siblings trained at Strasbourg’s Conservatory of Music. In 1904, Becker moved from France to St. Louis and taught piano, organ, and composition at the Becker Conservatory of Music, which he formed with his brothers. He later taught at St. Louis University and Kendride Seminary. In 1912, Becker and his wife moved to Belleville, Illinois, where he became organist at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. It was at this time that son Julius was born, the only living child of René. Julius, a retired banker, presently lives in Birmingham, Michigan.
René Becker became the first organist of the newly built Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit in 1930; an AGO member, he helped to establish the Catholic Organists Guild, and with his son founded the Palestrina Institute. Becker retired in 1952 at the age of 70 from St. Alphonsus Church in Detroit. He left over 160 compositions for organ when he died in 1956. Dr. Ball shared some pictures of René Becker and introduced Becker’s son Julius and his family to the conferees. It was a delight to see Julius Becker (keeper of some of Becker’s compositions) in person. Steven Ball received a four-year grant to record René Becker’s compositions.