Robert Clark, Master Teacher: An Interview

Douglas Reed

Robert Clark taught at the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1981, and at Arizona State University, Tempe, from 1981 until his retirement in 1998. One of his most noted achievements as a performer was his recording, Bach at Naumburg, on the newly restored organ built by Zacharias Hildebrandt in 1747, an organ tested and approved by J. S. Bach and Gottfried Silbermann.  

In the United States Clark served as a consultant to many churches, and was directly responsible for the building of the first two modern mechanical action organs in Arizona: Victory Lutheran Church in Mesa and Pinnacle Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale. He was also advisor for the Richards & Fowkes organ at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Clark has served on many juries for organ competitions, including St. Albans and the Grand Prix de Chartres. In 1992, he received a plaque from the Central Arizona Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, inscribed “Master Teacher.” Clark recently moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Houston, where his daughter, Barbara, will continue her career as a teacher of voice at Rice University beginning in fall 2013.

On May 19 and 20, 2012, the author spoke with Professor Clark at his home in Cincinnati.

Douglas Reed: Thank you for this opportunity to talk. Please tell about some of your early musical experiences that shaped you as a musician.

Robert Clark: It began in kindergarten. In the classroom there was a mockup of a pipe organ that fascinated me. I spent the entire playtime pretending I was an organist. When I was about six years old, I went behind the stage where things were going on at church [First Methodist Church, Fremont, Nebraska] and saw for the first time a Universal Air Chest of an Austin organ. I pushed the flap that opens the door, and, of course, I noticed a great change in pressure. I was totally fascinated.  

 

You’ve mentioned motion or movement training in school.

Yes. The term was not used, but it was pure Dalcroze eurhythmics involving step-bend, step-step-bend, making phrases with your arms, going in circular motion and in advanced cases, walking two steps against three bounces of the ball or vice versa. Dalcroze eurhythmics was part of my training as early as fourth grade, as was moveable-Do solfège. My claim to fame was being able to hear and sing descending major sixth and ascending minor third intervals.

It was a very unusual public school system in Kansas City. I don’t know whether the name Mabelle Glenn means anything to you, but she edited several volumes of Art Songs for School and Studio. In the 1930s, she conducted the Bach St. Matthew Passion at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. During her long career, she was renowned in music education and, surprisingly, convinced the administration to include music in the daily curriculum of the grade schools in Kansas City.

 

What other things influenced you as a youngster? Did you study piano?

Oh, yes. From the fourth grade until I finished high school, my teacher was Margaret Dietrich, who had been a pupil of Josef Lhévinne at Juilliard. Much of the elegance and detail in his playing was transmitted from her to her students. Believe me, she was a strong personality and pushed me very hard at a time when I was quite lazy.

Miss Dietrich would probably be 105 years old now, although I did see her when she was in her nineties after she and her husband had moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. It was very good to see her again. She even told me I could call her Margaret! 

 

Did you study the organ during that time?

Yes, much to my piano teacher’s dissatisfaction (laughter), I did take organ lessons. My first piece was Song of the Basket Weaver, one of the St. Lawrence Sketches by Alexander Russell. I had my first church job when I was 14, playing a two-manual and pedal Estey reed organ. That’s when I became fascinated with playing the famous Toccata by Widor.  

 

Then you majored in organ in college. What led to that?

That’s what I wanted to do! I went to a small school, Central Methodist College, in Fayette, Missouri, and from there to Union Theological Seminary, where I did my graduate study in the School of Sacred Music. Orpha Ochse was one of my teachers at Central. I alternated organ lessons between Orpha and Luther Spayde, who was a strict Dupré advocate. Orpha suggested many subtleties not otherwise available. She was also my first-year theory teacher. 

 

Did you study with N. Louise Wright and Opal Hayes at Central Methodist College?

I certainly did. Miss Wright was one of those very colorful, flamboyant people who made you think you were better than you were. Miss Hayes taught Bach and technique, and Miss Wright taught interpretation.

 

Then you went from Central to New York City?

I did. My first teacher was Clarence Dickinson. I was much too immature and opinionated to understand his breadth of knowledge and approach to teaching. He knew the tradition of Widor and other European masters of his era. Lessons were at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, where there was an E. M. Skinner organ, recently replaced.

That was 1953. Interestingly, I went to the other extreme with Ernest White, who was known for playing as if the keys were hot! He did not force his theories upon me and respected my individuality. I played a debut recital in his studio at St. Mary the Virgin, and that’s probably the only recital I played from memory without dropping a single note.

 

Ernest White had a series of studio organs, right? 

Yes, this was the largest. It was up on the second floor of St. Mary the Virgin. It was quite the thing; it was very controversial and very well should have been!

 

Tell us about other experiences that you had in New York.

While a student at Union Seminary, I had many meaningful experiences. For example, I heard the New York debut of Jeanne Demessieux at Central Presbyterian Church, the “Carnegie Hall” for organists in those days. Quite a number of us went to hear Demessieux, and we all fell in love with her. She played with very high spike heels, the type that would pull up a grate from the sidewalk! Her pedal technique was built around that. I heard her play her repeated-note etude for the pedals—with the spike heels. Indeed!

 

One time, you mentioned the Langlais Suite Médiévale in association with your time in New York.

Yes. I was possibly the first student organist to play that work in the United States. Messiaen was even more controversial. The first piece I learned was the Apparition de l’église éternelle. I wrote my master’s thesis on Messiaen and also translated his Technique de mon langage musical before the “official” translation became available.

  

Let’s talk more about your teachers. You’ve mentioned studying with Gustav Leonhardt.

I knew him when he was not yet 30, on his first trip to the United States. He taught a course on performance practice at a Union Seminary summer session. I had a few lessons on an organ that he disliked and some harpsichord instruction. All of a sudden it wasn’t a case of limiting but of greatly enhancing the possibilities of what a performer could do. He had an incredible stash of information about early sources. Being typically Dutch, he could speak four different languages. So in the class he would read something off in the original language, and finally it occurred to him that no one could understand what he was saying, so he began translating. 

We had many good experiences, including a chance encounter one Sunday afternoon as I was taking the uptown subway. We ran into each other on the way up to see the famous medieval complex, The Cloisters. We had a very good time doing that. He had a great deal of knowledge about medieval art. I simply admired his whole approach to music making, which was very elaborate.

 

When you say he opened up all kinds of possibilities rather than limiting them, what exactly do you mean? 

He spoke about different ways ornaments could be played, places where you would or would not play notes inégales—all of the options open to the musician. Would you play over-dotted, double-dotted, neither, or something in between?  

I remember a subsequent class he did at the University of Michigan. He spent an entire session on about three measures of music. It was the sarabande from the C-minor French Suite. He talked very much about the expressive nature of this: if we over-hold this, such would happen, but if we don’t overhold, something else will happen. I remember something he told me in the early 1950s and which I strongly believe: dynamics are achieved by variations in touch and articulation and by rhythmic adjustment.   

 

Did Leonhardt perform at that time?

Oh, yes! I heard him perform many times. I heard him perform the one and only time on an electro-pneumatic organ at St. Thomas Church in New York City, and he said, “Never again!” And he didn’t. He commented on what a nice place this would be to have a fine mechanical action organ, and finally Taylor & Boody fulfilled that dream. Leonhardt was also a very fine fortepianist, incidentally.  

 

Are there other teachers or musical experiences you would like to mention?

One of my good experiences was being a fellow judge at the Fort Wayne competition with Arthur Poister. He was very insightful and was usually right in his perceptions of the musical personality and even gender of the competitors. 

 

Let’s talk about Bach. I’m curious about how your perspective on Bach has changed over the years. You mentioned learning with the Dupré edition. What has happened?

We have reached a new level of understanding of articulation in terms of listening. After all, a pure legato or even over-legato are types of articulation, but if one reads treatises like J. J. Quantz’s On Playing the Flute, one learns how wind players rehearsed. It was tonguing that made a difference, and of course listening to string playing makes a difference. Where does one change a bow? These are all deviations from a pure legato. Even a seamless legato is a form of articulation and, in fact, harpsichordists deal with over-legato. 

 

How has the revival of mechanical action influenced your thinking?

It has influenced my thinking entirely. My first European trip came quite late, in 1977. I played many of the great organs in Europe. The organ at Kampen, the Netherlands, was the last organ I heard in Europe before returning to the United States. The next day, I heard a chiffy Positiv Gedeckt on the organ at Hill Auditorium and thought, “This will not do.” So, I found a way of getting to a tracker-action organ even though it wasn’t a very good instrument. Students would have lessons in an unheated church in the winter simply for this experience. And then I took many groups of students and others down to the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Toledo, where the important Brombaugh organ, now in Rochester, used to be. We learned a great deal from this opportunity.

What did you learn?

I learned about the sensitive interplay between winding and touch, and realized I could find detail in the music that could not be found any other way. Indeed, the fastest key action is not electro-pneumatic. With a good mechanical action, the response is immediate, providing complete contact with the instrument. Contrary to conventional wisdom, many of the great European instruments are not hard to play. Of course, as the pallets become larger, the action becomes heavier. For example, with a typical basse de trompette, the touch and speech of the lower notes affect timing and interpretation. This is as it should be! It shouldn’t be all the same. I tell my students that the only “perfect” action that does everything consistently is the electronic organ! 

 

And when you’re playing with manuals coupled and a huge sound, you tend to play differently.

Of course. If you listen to my Naumburg recording, the last variation of Sei gegrüsset was played with all three manuals coupled, and it becomes very grand. One plays quite broadly when the action is heavier, whereas the other variations call for a lighter registration and touch. In the partitas, particularly in Sei gegrüsset, there are also many things that relate directly to the playing of string instruments. 

Think of the difference between playing a violin and playing a cello or a gamba. I’m always very happy with students who have played a wind instrument or string instrument or have had experience singing. Anyone wanting to be an organist should learn another instrument. 

 

Can you speak more about singing?

Articulation involves attack as well as release. If you were singing all legato, there would be no consonants, no words. It would be just one stream of sound, which is vocally impossible.

 

You’ve said, “Put a D or a T on that note.”

Yes, but only on a good organ with suspended mechanical action is that possible, because it has to do with the speed of attack and release. I recommend A Guide to Duo and Trio Playing by Jacques van Oortmerssen for comprehensive understanding of early fingerings and their impact on articulation.

 

Let’s talk more about teaching and learning. What are the three most important things to consider when learning and performing a piece?

Traditionally, we say “rhythm, rhythm, and rhythm.”

  

How do you start an organ student? Do you have a teaching method?  

Some of the older teaching methods are outdated. So many deal with absolute silence and space, up and down, no give and take. Music doesn’t work that way. I don’t agree with the idea that we delay learning Bach until we understand historic fingerings. There’s one method that starts with some rather uninteresting music of the Romantic era, but the student is not ready for Bach until he or she knows how to use historic fingerings. Who knows what is “historic” anyway?! Nobody has the same hand. Finger lengths are different. The balance of the hand is different. I think just simple things that are good music are the best way to start: Renaissance pieces, easier Bach, some pieces in the Orgelbüchlein. It is not necessary to delay learning Bach. Early and modern fingering should be included within modern teaching approaches, not as separate entities.

 

In recent decades, there has been a great deal of emphasis on early fingerings.

You may be surprised, but since I came back from Europe, I’ve been almost exclusively into historic fingerings for early music. That doesn’t mean always doing the same thing the same way, but there are times when paired fingerings—3-4-3-4 ascending and 3-2-3-2 descending in the right hand—work on a good sensitive instrument. The trio sonatas include marked articulations that are very much related to wind and string playing. For me, usually the marked articulation determines the fingering anyway. I tend to write slurs rather than numbers in my music.

Do you have any particular memory techniques? You mentioned using solfège.

Yes, I use solfège, but memory, like doing anything else well, simply takes time and practice. I have no gimmicks whatsoever in memorization. It is an extension of the learning process. The ultimate test is to be in a quiet room without scores, and being able to hear every note in a performance the way you want to hear it. And that’s the most secure way to memorize. Without this ability, one tends to rely entirely on a mechanical approach.

 

You have a nice selection of artwork in your apartment. How important is study of the other arts—the visual arts, even film—for a musician?

A good example of Baroque performance practice that few people mention lies in the art of Peter Paul Rubens, whose works are among the finest Baroque paintings. They are full of motion, huge sweeps of the brush, and great detail within those. A good place for any musician to visit would be the Rubens gallery at the Louvre. 

 

Please talk about the sense of motion as it relates to rhythm. Many performances are very speedy and metronomic, but without a sense of movement. 

Well, Duke Ellington once said, “Man, if it don’t got that swing, it ain’t music.” (laughter)

 

You have mentioned the term “lilt.” How does one achieve that?

The harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm had her students learn the steps for the dances used in Bach’s keyboard suites. They would learn the choreography of the allemande, sarabande, the courante, and gigue in their various forms, bourrée, gavotte. This is a very good idea. The more we can see things moving, the better! 

 

What about conducting and singing a line? You’ve recommended the Kirkpatrick edition of Scarlatti sonatas. He recommends walking.

Oh, yes. That’s very good basic reading. It’s an essay on rhythm in the first volume of the Schirmer edition of the Scarlatti Sixty Sonatas edited by Kirkpatrick. That’s very good information. It’s in a question/answer format. Question: “How do I sense the shape of a phrase?” Answer: “By dancing it.” Learn the difference between rhythm and meter: meter is regular; rhythm is essentially irregular. Rubato does exist in Baroque music but not exactly as in Chopin. Kirkpatrick said, “Rhythm is the superimposition of irregularity upon regularity.”

 

Dare we talk about the metronome?

What you should do if you have a metronome is to throw it in the dumpster. It creates arithmetic, not rhythm. 

 

You’ve often mentioned continuo and the value of accompanying, working with other instrumentalists and vocalists. 

Working with other musicians, one discovers many of the subtleties of articulation derived from bowing and tonguing. I learned the hard way not to jump ahead of one’s fellow musicians; you have to listen to the breathing of the musician. I would often jump ahead of the wind instrument player, and I’d be playing before he completed taking a breath! Many organists have this panicky thing: “If I don’t get moving, it’s not going to go!” You must leave space for breathing. Not every instrument is like the organ, where you can have a continuous supply of wind.

 

There has been a great resurgence of interest in improvisation in the American organ world. Can you speak about your views on improvisation and how it relates to performance in general?

In our country we used to have maybe an annual “be nice to improvisation day” and that was the beginning and the end of it. But in France, where the study of improvisation is obligatory, this begins in childhood and continues throughout a musician’s entire career. It’s not a thing acquired quickly or easily.  

Particularly in music before the Romantic era, improvisation was par for the course. But if Liszt and other Romantic virtuosos were to play in a modern-day academic setting, matters would be quite different.

 

These are some fairly major changes from the Dupré method at Central Methodist!

Well, I studied with Dr. Dickinson in 1952. How many years has it been? We’re not doing anything the way we did 60 years ago. Airplanes are not the same. Cars are not the same. The way we dress and the way we think are not the same.  

 

You taught at the University of Michigan for 17 years. Who were some of your closest colleagues at Michigan?

My closest friend in the organ department was Bob Glasgow, who was an inspiration even though we were occasionally different in our approach. Another very dear friend was Ellwood Derr, who was really a historian but taught music theory. He knew an incredible amount about music in general, and you could go to him with almost any question. Another colleague, John Wiley, was very much an expert on Russian music. 

At Arizona State University, Frank Koonce, the classical guitar teacher, and I became good friends. The late Bill Magers, the viola teacher, taught my daughter and was recognized as one of the great viola teachers in the country. There are many other former colleagues including Robert Hamilton, a noted pianist.   

 

You have mentioned Louise Cuyler a number of times.

Yes. There are many stories about her. One time she brought to class a 78 recording of a Beethoven string quartet, which did not meet her standards. She grabbed the shellac record off the turntable, tossed it into the waste basket, and then went apologetically to the library.

 

And what about Eugene Bossart?

Oh, he died recently at the age of 94. He helped so many people. His few detractors were poor musicians, as he demanded only the very best. And 99% of the time, he got it. Yet, he was the kindest person! I remember him calling me once after I had played harpsichord continuo for the St. Matthew Passion. He yelled on the phone, “Hello! Is this Marcel Dupré??” What he really liked was the recitative regarding “The Veil of the Temple.” Yet, he could be super critical and get away with it.

 

Let’s talk about your recordings, particularly your experience at Naumburg.

Jonathan Wearn, the British recording producer, was very particular in recording. After the initial tapes were made, I spent several days with him editing at his home in England. Many of my recordings have some editing, although my Clavierübung III recording has almost none.

 

Had you made any recordings earlier in your career?

No. The Naumburg recording got good notices, I thought, so I went back home to one of my favorite organs, built by Paul Fritts, one that I’d had a voice in designing, and made “Bach on the Fritts.” And then “Bach and Friends on the Fritts.” There are seven recordings in all. I really had wanted to record on the Treutmann organ in Grauhof, but this was not possible because of the illness of my wife. 

 

Speaking of the Fritts—after teaching at Michigan, you moved to Arizona State and taught for 17 more years. It was during this time that you led the creation of the new performance hall and the Fritts organ. Could you speak about
that process?

That was a battle. In the first place, nobody trusted that type of acoustic. It was not designed for piano recitals. The harpsichordists usually like it, but everybody was concerned, “We’ve got to deaden that some way or the other!” I don’t know how many suggestions were offered. We finally made sort of a dual system where drapes could be drawn manually, and I used that very often in teaching when the room was empty.  

 

What led you to start that project? Was there no good concert hall or teaching instrument at Arizona State?

All we had was an Aeolian-Skinner in Gammage Auditorium. It was one of the late, very thinly voiced Aeolian-Skinners. But since the scalings were surprisingly large, it was revoiced and opened up quite a bit by Manuel Rosales. There was no substantial tracker organ available, except for a few old ones that were quite good up in the northern part of Arizona. There is now a second Fritts in Tucson.

During our first year of recitals, we had overflow audiences. Performances had to be played twice every Sunday, one at 2 pm and the other at 5 pm. There was great appeal among the musical public!

 

Can you give some background on the Orgelbüchlein edition that you and John David Peterson prepared?

I visited the Stadtsbibliothek in East Berlin, and the librarian there was very American-friendly. In fact, he had travelled in the United States. I was allowed to pick up the original manuscript of the St. Matthew Passion. It was like touching the Holy Grail! Luckily, the librarian mailed me a microfilm of the Orgelbüchlein. I shared it with John, who was working on the same project. I might say that the Orgelbüchlein that we prepared goes back to 1984, and it is an edition that needs to be revised—not a great deal, though, because we were dealing with the autograph, and there are simply variants of the autograph that need to be acknowledged.

 

Were the Stasi after you in East Germany?

Oh, yes! They were after any American. It was the typical situation where one saw a face in public and then two days later that same face appeared again. One time I was trapped inside the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg because I didn’t know how to work the key, and a man came, speaking perfect English, to explain how to turn the key. As a matter of fact, the tower of that church is the highest point in the town, and the chief spy looked out from there. She knew everything that went on in that city, including my presence!

After the big change I went to what’s called the Runde Ecke. This museum showed many of  their methods of interrogation, uniforms, and obscene paintings. Every phone in the country was wired. 

 

What were some of the musical experiences you had in East Germany?

I had wanted to go to Stralsund to hear the organ there. The organist was Dietrich Prost, and we hit it off very well. His English was probably as deficient as my German, but we understood each other; we got to the organ and without saying a word we agreed that there was something important there. And he said, “You play like a German!” “Du bist Deutsch!” We had coffee and cake. Many of the musicians in local churches were eager to meet with Americans. Often we went for conversation, coffee, and cake. I remember being in one of the towns near the border and the local organist was complaining, “Here we are only a few kilometers from West Germany, and we cannot see our closest friends and relatives!”

 

Did you play any of the Silbermann organs?

I think I played every one in existence except one that wasn’t playing. In Crostau, they said, “The organist is sick, and the organ is sick.” Strangely enough, one of the finest Silbermanns is the least known, in Pfaffrode. There is some speculation that it might have been the original Rückpositiv for the organ in Freiberg.

 

What about Hildebrandt organs?  You mentioned Naumburg. 

Oh, yes. That was before the restoration and there was enough there that I could get an idea of what the original was like. Of course, the organ had been provided with electric action in the early 1930s, but there were enough original pipes left that I got a pretty good idea of the sound. Another colleague, Thomas Harmon, did quite a bit of research on that. The restoration didn’t take place until after the reunification of Germany. Christian Mahrenholz was one of the leaders in promoting the restoration as early as the 1930s.

 

Did you go to Dresden on that trip?

I went to the Katholische Hofkirche, now Holy Trinity Cathedral. We were told by the tourist guides, “Don’t go in there. Nobody’s there.” But we went in, and we met the organist, Dietrich Wagner, who had lived through the infamous fire in Dresden and told us all about that. He was very friendly and made suggestions on my playing—that I deal with the acoustic because I was playing too legato. I sent him some editions of things not available in East Germany. So, that
was good.

 

We’ve been talking about all kinds of professional stuff. Would you like to talk about your family and their part in your life?

I have four children and three grandchildren. My son, Robert, lives in Los Angeles and does technical work with pathologists. My daughter Susan lives in Oxford, Michigan. She is Mrs. Music through the entire area and manages the Rochester Michigan Symphony Orchestra. She’s a fine cellist and plays the piano. She sings and teaches maybe twenty or
thirty students.

The twin of my son is Jill, who is very focused and controlled with everything she does. At the beginning of her career in New York, she won a grant from the Bosch Foundation. Then her husband was moved back to Deutsche Telekom in Germany, and she now works in an executive role in the famous tower in Bonn.

 

What about Barbara?

I could write a book about her. She’s a singer, very gifted and very devoted to teaching at the Cincinnati Conservatory. I wish she would perform more, because she is at the prime of her career vocally. She knows how to communicate a song in an ever-positive stage presence. That would include eye contact, gesture, and movement.   

 

And your wife, Evelyn?

Evelyn was a singer. She studied at Westminster Choir College and was a good organist in her own right and also had a beautiful soprano voice. She was busy raising the children, but made a point of keeping a voice studio for many years. 

 

What do you think of the combination of organ and piano?

We performed William Albright’s Stipendium peccati for piano, organ, and percussion.

 

Did you participate in one of the Seven Deadly Sins before that?

The preface of the score encourages all the performers to experience each of the seven deadly sins—but not necessarily together. So, we imagined walking out on stage pretending to be angry, hamming it up, growling at each other, shaking fists, and that sort of thing. We had a lot of fun imagining that, and then we settled down and went out to perform. I also did a work for organ and brass conducted by William Revelli, the only person I know who used the moveable-Do system as I do. 

 

That was in Hill Auditorium?

Yes. John David Peterson was at the piano, and Bill Moersh, a graduate of the Berklee School in Boston, was
the percussionist. 

 

You’ve often mentioned Catharine Crozier. 

The first time I heard her, I think I was 14 years old, and I was so moved by that. She played the Roger-Ducasse Pastorale. But I could not figure out what she did with the Brahms
Schmücke dich, because it was not what was on the page, and of course, she played the chorale tune in the pedal. I revered Catharine. She was a perfectionist and had incredibly high standards. Some of her interpretive ideas might be out of fashion today, but I love every inch of ground she walked on!

 

Are there other fine performers you admire?

Any of the fine violinists—Zino Francescatti, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern. Rachel Podger and Andrew Manze, both fine Baroque violinists. Pablo Casals. Fine pianists of any stripe. I like to hear good musicians of any type. I like to hear good oboe players and good flute players. And of course, singers!

 

Finally, please give your perspective on the current state of the organ profession, especially regarding teaching and learning.

David Craighead advised even his most gifted students to be able to do something else if necessary. Considering the realities of today’s organ world, is this anything but being honest, especially to students who dream about being on the back page of the organ journals?

There are teachers who attempt to transfer their own prejudices to their students. It is our duty to deal with gifted students who are free to ask questions. I can say that some of my best students are ones who disagreed with me or others. In fact, at least two of my students have a background playing the accordion! Sometimes these people can be very annoying or irritating, but they can be brilliant musicians.

Too much teaching is, “Me teach. You do.” Or with some students, it is, “You play. I copy.” The most important thing is to TEACH IMAGINATION!

 

Recordings by Robert Clark

Bach and Friends on the Fritts. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 018.

Bach at Naumburg. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 041.

Orgelbüchlein & More Works by J.S. Bach. Robert Clark & John David Peterson at the Fritts Op. 12 in Organ Hall, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 019.

Robert Clark Plays the Brombaugh Organ, Op. 35 at First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois. ARSIS SACD 405.

Robert Clark Plays Organ Works from the Land of Bach. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 034.

Bach Clavierübung III. Calcante Recordings CAL CD 042. 

 

 

Joyce Johnson Robinson

When meeting Kimberly Marshall, one’s first impression is that of great energy. That impression lingers as one encounters her presence in written publications and recordings—she seems to turn up everywhere and indeed, she has performed and presented at American and European conventions and conferences, has written entries for Grove and other music dictionaries, recorded organ music from the 15th to the 21st centuries, and even made videos to illustrate exercises for organists (Marshall kindly produced one for The Diapason).

A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Kimberly Marshall began organ studies in 1974 with John Mueller at North Carolina School of the Arts. After studies in France with Louis Robilliard (1978–79) and Xavier Darasse (1980–81), she returned to North Carolina and completed her undergraduate studies with Fenner Douglass in 1982.

With a full scholarship from the British government, she pursued graduate studies at the University of Oxford (1982–86), earning a D.Phil. in Music for her thesis, Iconographical Evidence for the Late-Medieval Organ. During her time in England, she won first prize at the St. Albans Organ Interpretation Competition in 1985, leading to a contract with the BBC and a recital on the Royal Festival Hall series.

In 1986, Marshall was appointed assistant professor of music and university organist at Stanford, where she presided over organs by Fisk (dual-temperament, 1984) and Murray Harris (1901). Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1991, she continued her research and teaching at the Sydney Conservatorium in Australia. From 1993–96 she served as dean of postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music, developing a new master’s degree in advanced performance studies, awarded in conjunction with King’s College London. 

From 1996–2000, Marshall was a project leader for the Organ Research Center in Göteborg, Sweden, where she taught and performed. Under the aegis of GOArt, she organized the first conference ever devoted to organ recordings, “The Organ in Recorded Sound,” and has edited its proceedings.¹ Appointed to Arizona State University in 1998, Marshall (now Goldman Professor of Organ) oversees the graduate organ studio and presides over the instrument by Paul Fritts (1992). 

Kimberly Marshall has performed and done research worldwide, from a sabbatical in Pistoia, Italy, researching early Italian organ music, to performing on many historic organs, including those in Roskilde Cathedral (Denmark), St. Laurenskerk, Alkmaar (Netherlands), the Jacobikirche in Hamburg, and the Hildebrandt instrument in Naumburg, Germany, which Bach examined in 1746. She has also presented concerts and workshops on early music in Sweden, in Israel, at the 2007 Early English Organ Project in Oxford, and at the Festival for Historical Organs in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Marshall’s publications reflect her eclectic interests. Examples include Rediscovering the Muses (Northeastern University Press, 1993), her edition of articles on female traditions of music making; entries for the Cambridge Companion to the Organ (1998), the Grove Dictionary of Music 2000, and the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (2012); and her anthologies of late-medieval and Renaissance organ music (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2000 and 2004). 

Marshall’s recordings (over a dozen, at this writing) cover a wide spectrum, including music of the Italian and Spanish Renaissance, French Classical and Romantic periods, and works by J. S. Bach. Her most recent CD, The First Printed Organ Music: Arnolt Schlick, celebrates the music of Arnolt Schlick on the 500th anniversary of its publication (2012). A CD/DVD set, A Fantasy through Time (Loft, 2009), featured the organ fantasy genre across five centuries, from Ferrabosco and Sweelinck through Jehan Alain. Marshall has collaborated as organist for a recording of Chen Yi’s organ concerto with the Singapore Symphony (BIS, 2003). Her recording of works for organ by female composers, Divine Euterpe, includes music by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Elfrida Andrée, and Ethyl Smyth.

While at Stanford and the Royal Academy of Music, Marshall gave performances of organ works by Ligeti in the presence of the composer, and she has been an advocate for music by Margaret Sandresky, Dan Locklair, and Ofer Ben-Amots. In a recent article, she described the new Gerald Woehl organ in Piteå, Sweden (“The ‘Organ of the Future’ in Sweden’s Studio Acusticum,” The American Organist, February 2013, pp. 62–65). Her publications and recordings can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberly_Marshall. 

Marshall also maintains a vibrant website (www.kimberlymarshall.com) and a Facebook page, and she can be found on YouTube performing everything from Christmas favorites to Widor. Marshall also has created exercise videos tailored to the organist, in which she demonstrates moves and stretches that work on muscles most used by organists. In person and even via the telephone Marshall communicates a passion both personal and professional, and we wished to explore the life and work that has ensued from such energy and enthusiasm.

Joyce Johnson Robinson: Do you come from a musical family? 

Kimberly Marshall: My mother is very musical and had a beautiful singing voice, but she had very little formal training. Her mother had played the piano, so when I was seven, she asked if I’d like to study the piano. We didn’t have an instrument in my home until my parents bought an upright piano for my practice.

 

What ignited your love of organ music? 

I had the great luck to be born in the town where John and Margaret Mueller were teaching. Margaret is a legendary organist, and she became my piano instructor when I was thirteen. She is a master teacher for young musicians, and she opened my ears to the expressive possibilities of the piano. John attended one of my piano recitals and invited me to study organ with him. What an honor! I began my studies with him on the beautiful Flentrop organ at Salem College, and the next year continued my work as a high school student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Dr. Mueller’s enthusiasm and the range of timbres available on the Flentrop organ sparked my passion for the organ.

 

What works were some of your first favorites?

I was very enamored of French music from the start, Alain’s Litanies and Franck’s Choral III being two of my early favorites.

 

You received a full scholarship from the British government for your graduate work at Oxford. Is that unusual for an American?

Each year, the British government awards up to 40 “Marshall” Scholarships to Americans to pursue graduate degrees at British universities. The Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission was set up in 1953 as a gesture of gratitude to the United States for the Marshall Plan. Scholars in many fields have studied on Marshall Scholarships—Thomas Friedman, William Burns, and Nannerl Keohane, to name three—but there have been very few musicians in the 60-year history of the awards. Perhaps the common family name helped me, although I’m not aware of any direct link to George C. Marshall.

 

You had a contract with the BBC. What did that entail?

This was part of my St. Albans prize, and it started with a recording of my prizewinner’s recital that was later broadcast on BBC. The first contract meant that I was on the books, so to speak, and I was later asked to do other projects, such as recordings at Birmingham Town Hall and London’s St. John’s Smith Square.

 

You’ve done a great deal of work in the areas of medieval and Renaissance organ music. What are the elements of early music that appeal to you?

My interest in early music was sparked by my experience with historical organs while an undergraduate in French conservatories. As a high school student working with John Mueller at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, I had focused mainly on Bach and French romantic music, which led me to continue studies with Louis Robilliard at the Lyon Conservatoire. Every day, I practiced Franck, Liszt, and Messiaen on the beautiful Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. François-de-Sales—it was a marvelous time in my life! After gaining the Médaille d’Or in Lyon, I decided that I should spend some time in Paris working on early music. I was planning to study privately with André Isoir, whom I had met during one of the Salem College summer organ academies, and whom several of my fellow French students had recommended warmly. 

I remember arriving early for the Sunday morning Mass at St. Germain-des-Prés, hoping to go up to the tribune with him, when who should appear but Isoir’s colleague, Odile Bailleux, who hurriedly invited me up the stairs so that she could start the prelude. During the course of the Mass, she played a number of French and English baroque pieces. I loved her playing and her personality and impulsively asked if I might study with her. She agreed, and so I began having lessons in early music with Bailleux at St. Germain. I also went to hear Chapuis play at St. Sévérin in the Latin Quarter whenever possible, and I attended Saturday workshops with him and Jean Saint-Arroman at Pierrefonds, near Compiègne, on an organ built in historical style by Jean-Georges Koenig in 1979. This was a terrific initiation into the performance practice of French Classical organ music, which, with Buxtehude and Pachelbel, was the first pre-Bach repertoire I learned.

 

So you began with French Romantic repertoire and then started playing the tape backwards, so to speak, moving back into French Classical. What specifically appealed to you about medieval and Renaissance works? 

Again, I was inspired to learn about Renaissance music because of my experiences with historic organs. I remember visiting the gorgeous Piffaro organ (1519) in Siena’s Santa Maria della Scala with Umberto Pineschi and Joan Lippincott in the late 1980s. We were enchanted by the gravitas of the 12′ Principale, by the shimmering beauty of the ripieno, and by the delicacy of the Flauto. But Joan and I didn’t know what type of music would have been composed for this instrument—the four-octave compass began at F (without low F# or G#) and was not conducive to baroque music. So we improvised and relished the sounds. Then I started doing some research, uncovering a treasure trove of 16th-century Italian music, including the first “St. Anne” Fugue, composed before 1570! (I published this in my Renaissance anthology for Wayne Leupold Editions, 2004.) 

The desire to demonstrate a historical organ with corresponding repertoire also motivated my research into Arnold Schlick. Years ago, I had the opportunity to perform on the 16th-century Genarp organ in the Malmö Museum, for which Schlick’s music is well suited. I’ll never forget that pedalboard because the sharps were so high that it made playing Schlick’s Ascendo ad patrem meum (with four parts in the pedal) easier than usual, although I had to take my shoes off to do it!

My interest in medieval music obviously did not come from playing historic organs, but rather from my study with John Caldwell at Oxford. As part of my course, I researched the early history of the organ, and I was naturally curious about the sort of instrument that would have accommodated the first surviving keyboard music—the Robertsbridge Codex, circa 1360. Caldwell is an expert on medieval music and English keyboard music, and he encouraged my efforts, giving me insightful suggestions about possible sources and the meaning of obscure Latin references. Another formative influence was my thesis advisor, Christopher Page, who founded Gothic Voices just a year before I began my studies at Oxford. Listening to Margaret Philpot and Rogers Covey-Crump recreating the music of Machaut and Dufay in New College Chapel transported me to new musical horizons. I was taken by the strange beauty of the music, and I wanted to reclaim the organ repertoire from this time. Page was the perfect mentor for me, a scholar/performer of the first order who was able to sell out major concert halls with a program of medieval motets and Renaissance chansons. I was inspired to include 14th- and 15th-century keyboard pieces on my own concert programs. 

Although I have had the chance to perform concerts at Sion and Rysum, I usually play late-medieval music on modern organs, trying to evoke something of its original creation through my articulation and registration. As I tell my audiences, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to medieval replica organs to bring this music to life in the 21st century. What if we hadn’t played Bach’s organ music until we had the perfect Bach organ?

 

You put a great emphasis on recital program design. Tell us how you approach programming.

I am fascinated by the many different types of organs that have been created and try to share this fascination with my audiences through interesting programming. My concerts often have a theme, such as A Fantasy through Time, a CD/DVD of organ fantasies from the 16th to the 20th century, or Bach Encounters Buxtehude, exploring through organ music the ways in which the Lübeck master might have influenced the young Bach.

I very much enjoy finding ways to link disparate types of music or to help the audience understand the development of a genre or organ type. Organ music preserved from the early 16th century shows the emergence of national styles, as German, Italian, French, and English musicians began exploring the organs they knew. So it’s a great way to demonstrate the distinguishing characteristics of organs in different European countries, many of which also correspond to some national stereotypes of the people in those countries!

Of course, the organ that I am playing must always be the starting point for any program to be successful. I try to show as much of each instrument as I can, sometimes finding unusual combinations that highlight the geographic or chronological variety of the music. If there’s a beautiful Quintadena or Regal, I need to determine how best to feature it. Because the compass required for 14th–17th century music is usually much less than that of contemporary instruments, it is often possible to play pieces up or down an octave, thereby employing different registers of the stop(s) than are normally heard. Building fine programs is like managing a restaurant, determining from day to day the best menus to take advantage of fresh, seasonal foods while also creating a special atmosphere for the establishment. Registering organ music is like being the chef, knowing the intrinsic tastes of each ingredient and finding inspired (and delicious!) ways to combine them.

 

Has your methodology of programming changed over the years?

Yes, definitely. My changing approaches to programming relate to changing expectations of audiences during the past 30 years. When I started concertizing, I would try to include standards of the organ repertoire, always a major Bach work, another German work (perhaps Buxtehude or Pachelbel), something French (some Couperin, Grigny, Franck, Dupré, Alain, or Messiaen) and at least one “outlier,” some Spanish or Italian music, or a contemporary piece (Albright, Heiller, Sandresky, Ligeti). Organ music was more mainstream then, and audiences knew many of the major works. I would try to give them a sampling of music they would recognize and then add some rarer gems to spice up the program. 

As audiences for organ concerts became less familiar with the instrument and its repertoire, I decided that I needed to introduce verbally the music I was playing. This was difficult for me at first, but I forced myself to do it because I felt that it was important to make a connection with the audience and to tell them what excited me about a particular work. I got a lot of good feedback after concerts, when listeners would say, “I especially appreciated your comments,” or “You really helped me to hear things in the music that I otherwise would have missed.” So I persevered, always planning my comments meticulously and memorizing them. (I later discovered that Winston Churchill had similarly written out his speeches, even including indications concerning their delivery, and memorized them, so that it appeared to audiences that he had a natural gift for public speaking.) 

I found that it helped the flow of my comments to have an overriding theme for the concert, so I began to craft programs that related to a type of music (say, dances or organ fantasias) or that showed influence from one composer or national school to another (such as Bach and the Italian influence or organ music by female composers). With time, the speaking between pieces became easier and more natural, so that now, instead of dreading my time off the bench, I can enjoy looking out at the audience and communicating my ideas to them with words as well as through music. And my themes have become more imaginative, such as “War and Peace” (from early battle pieces through Messiaen’s Combat de la Mort et de la Vie), “Number Symbolism in Organ Music,” and “Bottoms Up!” (a program with my fabulous tuba colleague, Sam Pilafian). Sometimes I am asked to prepare a specific type of program for an event. This happened when I was invited to perform an organ recital for the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music in London two weeks before the 2012 Olympics. The festival organizers were using the theme of competition, so they asked me to recreate the competition between J. S. Bach and Louis Marchand that was planned but never took place. I believe that such a programmatic approach can help bring in new listeners for the organ as well as add new dimensions to the experience of organ enthusiasts.

 

Let’s discuss your teaching. How do you present historical contexts to your students? 

I have a three-pronged approach to this. We study surviving treatises and instruments to learn from them about playing styles. We then develop interpretations of pieces from different national schools and time periods at a specific organ, determining ways to adapt the historical material to real-life performance situations. Finally, I draw links between what is happening in a specific organ school and what was happening in the broader musical, political, and social contexts in which the music was composed. It is vital for my students to listen to great performances of vocal and instrumental music from each of the traditions we study, so that they have a sound ideal in their minds before they try to achieve it at the organ.

 

How do you integrate web-based information with traditional bibliographic research methods?

The most important web-based information in my teaching is the availability of fine recordings through the Internet. Our university subscribes to the Naxos Music Library, and my students are constantly finding new sources of recorded music (and not only organ recordings!) to inform their interpretations. I also investigate historical recordings as part of my research (as seen in my article in The Organ in Recorded Sound), so I use the International Historic Organ Recording Collection (www.ihorc.com) and the Centre for History and Analysis of Recorded Music at King’s College London (www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/music/research/proj/charm/) whenever relevant to a student’s interests. 

I think my students teach me more about what’s out on the Internet than I teach them, although I certainly add a critical element that can be lacking for the generation that grew up on Google. Just because there’s a video on YouTube doesn’t mean that it’s an authoritative performance! Of course, my students and I benefit daily from music editions available through the Internet, especially public domain scores through IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project: imslp.org). Again, one must exercise critical judgment about the context of the original edition, since many reflect the scholarship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is why they are in the public domain. In some cases the scholarship was very sound, but new sources and approaches during the second half of the 20th century may make old editions obsolete, so one must be cautious and not just latch onto the first edition that pops up in the browser.

 

Given the ubiquity of electronic devices and technologies, do you find that students have more trouble maintaining focus and patience? 

Since my teaching is specialized, I haven’t encountered this problem directly, but colleagues who teach more general courses often complain of the need to present material in “sound bytes.” Organists have great powers of concentration, so I’m not sure that my students are a barometer of what may be happening more generally with regard to attention spans in our culture. 

 

Do your students embrace early music as much as you do? 

Some of them do; others don’t. And that’s just fine, because each student is unique and has individual passions that I try to develop through my teaching.

 

You not only work to stay in shape yourself, but you have created short videos to educate others on ways of preventing pain and injury. What led you to promote exercises for organists? 

I am very committed to helping organists stay fit and able to play the organ without pain. To this end, I have been developing some simple exercises to combat the typical problems encountered by organists spending prolonged periods of time in bad positions.² By working to open the chest and strengthen the rhomboids—upper back muscles— it is possible to correct for the kyphosis (humped upper back) that often plagues organists. It is also necessary to make the hips more flexible and to strengthen the abdominal wall in order to have a stable core that grounds the body. [Kimberly Marshall has created a video for The Diapason demonstrating warmup exercises. Visit TheDiapason.com and look for Diapason TV.] With a strong core and good position at the organ, the arms and legs can move freely, enabling one to play for hours without repetitive strain.

 

How did you decide on the muscle groups to work on, and which exercises to do? Did you work with an exercise physiologist?

I have practiced yoga for about 15 years, and this has helped my flexibility and mindfulness. Breathing deeply is the key to so many aspects of our mental and physical performance, so opening wind passages and the diaphragm is top priority! I tend to gravitate towards restorative, yin poses in my yoga practice, so I try to balance that with strength training, especially for the core, shoulders, and arms. For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of working with a fabulous trainer, Larry Arnold. Larry has his own gym in Phoenix and a unique approach to fitness that is rooted in his understanding of the body (his website is www.labodycraft.com). He trains athletes at a very high level, but he’s amenable to improving body function in other activities. I am definitely the first organist he’s worked with, and I’ve taken students to see him as well. We all have the same issues!

 

Since you have a heightened awareness of physical issues, do you assess any weaknesses with your students?

Yes, my students are often kyphotic (hunched upper back), and they usually have tight lower backs from the strength required to support themselves on the bench during hours of practice. These are problems affecting almost all organists, which is why I developed simple exercises to help offset them. Usually, organists need to strengthen the upper back (so that it holds the shoulders down and back, creating a long, free neck) and to strengthen the abdominal muscles (so that the opposing muscles in the lower back can loosen). Individual students sometimes have other physical issues, so I try to create ways to help them with alignment, strength, and/or flexibility. 

 

How do you maintain your own fitness when you’re traveling and concertizing?

This can be a challenge, but mainly because of time constraints. Preparing concerts takes a lot of time and energy, so I focus on flexibility rather than strength training when I am touring. I maintain good flexibility through stretches and poses that don’t require lots of space or special equipment, and I’ve even become rather adept at exercising on the plane. You can do small abdominal crunches in your seat to help stretch out the lower back. Neck, shoulder, wrist and ankle rolls help to keep the circulation going and to prevent muscle strains, especially on long flights.

 

You heartily embrace new technology.

Although I’m of an older generation that actually did research in libraries looking at manuscripts and books, I have learned to embrace several aspects made possible by technological advances in the last 30 years. Scanning projects have made immediately accessible many of the musical sources that used to require air travel and long library stays. Manuscripts, music prints, and recordings are now accessible at the click of a mouse, and this facilitates aspects of my work. Nevertheless, one must be careful to verify information retrieved on the web and to develop a critical sense about the integrity of certain sites. 

I am currently collaborating with David Rumsey on a 4,000-article Encyclopedia of the Organ that provides articles on the history of the instrument in specific countries, with cross-referenced articles giving composers’ biographies, technical information, and organ specifications. We are investigating different online platforms for this in order to make it more user-friendly and to keep it updated. With the speed made possible by new technology, today’s readers are too impatient to look up articles in a book, so we hope to provide links that will pop up almost as quickly as the brain initiates the curiosity to investigate.

Of course, I am delighted to be able to share my own work through online articles, recordings, and videos. The facility of communication makes it easy to get feedback and to carry on stimulating discussions with colleagues. Very importantly, I can now give lessons via Skype with organists who want some tips on playing specific pieces or types of repertoire. This is a great boon to disseminating ideas and to giving instant feedback to those who are experimenting with new techniques.

 

How have the Skype lessons worked out? 

Remarkably well! I was a bit skeptical at first about whether I would be able to have a good idea of someone’s playing through Skype, and then to convey my ideas back to them. But I have found that Skyped lessons can provide an effective way for me to hear someone playing a specific repertoire and to give them input on aspects of performance practice, such as articulation, ornamentation, and rhythmic alterations. I would not recommend Skype sessions for feedback on registration when preparing a recital or as a substitute for an ongoing relationship with a teacher. There is nothing better than being in the same acoustical environment when working together. But Skype enables me to introduce someone to a new style of playing or to help him/her prepare a specific piece without having to make the trip to Arizona. (In some cases, it inspires them to make the trip later!) 

 

You have worked all over the world. Are you multi-lingual? If so, do you find it helps your work (or if not, does that hinder you in any way)? 

I am a firm believer that organists should know several languages, and as my students will attest, I make linguistic study a priority. Reading is of course the most important aspect for research, and I help prepare my students for reading exams at ASU. When we travel together to see organs in Mexico and Europe, they see how important it is to be able to speak the local language when I am setting up meetings with colleagues, working out travel details, teaching and introducing my concert programs in Spanish, French, Italian, or German. I haven’t yet mastered Dutch and the Scandinavian languages, but know enough to read about organs in them. I think Mandarin is going to become an important language for the future, as we work to foster an organ culture in China. I’ve been there twice, and I am optimistic about the potential for developing Chinese organists and an enthusiastic following for them.

 

Is there any other area or type of music that you would like to tackle next? 

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been relishing the opportunity to play a wide repertoire on many different types of organs. I’ve become known for my work in early music, which is very gratifying, but I don’t want to be confined to that, unless, of course, the organ I am playing dictates a specific style of music. I’ve always played romantic and contemporary music, so I’m coming back to some of the 19th- and 20th-century works that dominated my student days as an organist. Hopefully I’m playing them now with greater insight resulting from the intervening musical experience! What excites me about playing the organ is the amazing variety of sound possibilities available. What other instrumentalist can play 14th- and 15th-century music in Sion, Switzerland, and a month later (and 3,000 kilometers north) perform music from a seven-century spectrum on a futuristic organ with over 100 stops?³ 

Perhaps the most extreme example of this “stylistic schizophrenia” occurred this past summer. At the end of June 2014, I performed during the Boston AGO Convention on the Fisk organ at Wellesley College, in ¼-comma meantone tuning with short octave and split keys. Six weeks later, after a wonderful stay in southern France, I appeared on the Spreckels Organ in San Diego’s Balboa Park, complete with tibias and percussion, playing a program of music by Parisian composers. And that, in a nutshell, is why I love the organ. Vive la différence! ν

 

Notes

1. The Organ in Recorded Sound: An Exploration of Timbre and Tempo. Göteborg: Göteborg Organ Art Center, 2012. Available from the author or from www.ohscatalog.org.

2. Some of these may be found at https://www.facebook.com/KimberlyMarshall.
organist. 

3. “The ‘Organ of the Future’ in Sweden’s Studio Acusticum,” The American Organist (February 2013): 62–65. 

 

Kimberly Marshall’s forthcoming recording, A Recital in Handel’s Parish Church, features concerti and passacaglias performed on the new Richard-Fowkes organ in St. George’s, Hanover Square, London. All tracks will be available online in September.

David Wagner

David Wagner holds a DMA in organ from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Marilyn Mason. He has had a career as a performer, a university professor of organ, and as a classical music broadcaster in Detroit, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and in Miami. 

Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra is the author of Bach and the Art of Improvisation, published by CHI Press of Ann Arbor, Michigan. (See Figure 1.) She earned degrees in organ performance and pedagogy, choral music education, and music theory, sacred music, and conducting at Dordt College (BA) and the University of Iowa (MFA, DMA). From 1996–2002, Ruiter-Feenstra served as senior researcher at the Göteborg (Sweden) Organ Art Center, taught improvisation courses at Göteborg University, and launched research on Bach and improvisation. While serving as professor of music at Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas (1989–1996) and Eastern Michigan University (1996–2008), she taught organ, harpsichord, theory, improvisation, and sacred music and directed the Collegium Musicum. 

In Volume One of Bach and the Art of Improvisation (Volume Two will be available in early 2016), she explains the importance of improvisation and how musicians would be well served to study and practice the art to improve their ability as players of repertoire. Ruiter-Feenstra meticulously details how Bach learned and taught improvisation. Using historic documents, she reconstructs an improvisation pedagogy method that has passed the test of time. For musicians today who were never taught how to improvise, Ruiter-Feenstra offers a sound and effective improvisation pedagogy that students and professional musicians alike can learn and own. The following conversation explores Ruiter-Feenstra’s development of this pedagogy.

 

David Wagner: Everyone has a story on how they first fell in love with music and then with the instrument that they play. What is the narrative that will give insight into where you are today?

Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra: When I was six years old, I started to play the piano. After I was able to play a few tunes, I was asked to play hymns. In my ancestors’ Dutch schools, everyone sang metrical Psalms and hymns. The Dutch immigrants had their own schools, their own churches, and their own traditions. I was born in Michigan into the Dutch Christian Reformed tradition and grew up in various Dutch immigrant villages in Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa. (From this tradition, by the way, comes Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and Dordt College in Iowa.) I remember learning Dutch words in which there was no equivalent in English and just thinking that these were English words.

Were your parents musicians?

No, they were teachers. My dad was passionate about what is now called special education and then worked in retirement homes. My mother served as an elementary school teacher and also worked with ESL (English as a Second Language) programs.

 

So, you were interested in music, they recognized that, and they said, “Let’s make sure that Pamela has music lessons.”

Yes. My mother was taking piano lessons when I was in the womb, and I always thought that had some role in developing my ear (she laughs). I started piano lessons at age six, played the violin all the way through elementary school, learned classical guitar, and then I started to play the organ when I was in eighth grade. I played the organ at first because our church needed more organists, and they said to me, “You play the piano, so why not take organ lessons?” I had played hymns in the classroom since third grade, so it felt pretty easy to transfer that to the organ. I had to figure out the pedals, and away we went. My first organ piece was the Karg-Elert Now Thank We All Our God.

 

How interesting—you learned, very early on, proper four-part chorale writing and doubling by playing hymns, and in some ways, you learned thoroughbass by example. Was this pretty much traditional music? 

Oh, yes, the Dutch congregations were singing from the Genevan Psalm tradition when I grew up, and those Psalms have fabulous sixteenth-century harmonies. Sixteenth-century harmonies feature primarily root position and first inversion harmonies, so this is a great way to begin learning harmony. Genevan Psalms have only two note values, which was also important for improvisation. If you are going to improvise and “decorate” something, it’s much easier to work with one or two note values than with many different rhythms. That’s what I would do: I would learn the Psalms and then go home and make variations on them. I practiced my piano repertoire first and then made my own pieces, my variations on hymns. 

 

You really started to improvise at a young age! Did you know at that time, as a youngster, that there was this great tradition of organists and improvisation? 

I had no idea. I just thought it was fun to do. I couldn’t leave my hands off the piano, and I would run out of pieces to play, so then I would start improvising. My parents had their stereo right next to the piano, and I would play their old LP records and later their 8-track tapes of mostly sacred choral music or hymns. I would play a track of a recording, and then go to the piano and try to play the same thing “by ear.” I would go back and forth until I figured out the harmony and the melody. Then, I would start embellishing on it. 

 

So early on it seems that you had decided, “This is for me.” When did you decide to do this for a living and become a professional musician?

Dave, this is the funny thing. I practiced my improvisation just for fun throughout elementary school, middle and high school, but I never played it for my teachers. They always, of course, asked for repertoire, and the discussion of improvisation never came up. When I got to college, I took piano, organ, and voice lessons, and thus, I had a lot to practice. Again, all of these teachers expected repertoire. No one assigned improvisation. 

 

This was not the time for improvisation, was it?

Right. The teachers hadn’t learned it, it wasn’t in the music curriculum, and so no one was teaching it and no one was learning it. I was at Dordt College in Sioux City, Iowa, and my organ teacher was Joan Ringerwole. She selected terrific repertoire and offered me many opportunities to play in chapel and with the Concert Choir. Thankfully, my organ playing with its heart and soul of congregational singing continued. I arrived at Dordt just after the installation of a three-manual Casavant organ designed and voiced by Gerhard Brunzema. Prior to joining Casavant, Brunzema had partnered with German organ builder Jürgen Ahrend, and together they restored many Arp Schnitger instruments. Brunzema, therefore, had a strong historic-instrument basis, and he built and voiced essentially a Dutch-sounding organ with a modern case at Dordt: it has beautiful Dutch vocally inspired principals and a Dutch Vox Humana that sounded reedy. I had heard adults who had this quality of reedy voices. At one of the Dutch churches I had played at, I remember a male member of the congregation who had such a reedy voice that he could cut through the entire congregation with his voice. He was a POW survivor of World War II, and he sang Genevan Psalms as if his life depended on them. His voice was in the tenor range, singing the Genevan Psalm cantus firmus, and other men would sing bass. Hearing that type of singing helped me to understand the Goudimel harmonies (often with cantus firmus in the tenor), as well as how many Dutch reed stops really had vocal models. (See Figure 2.)

 

I have heard people comment on what a wonderful instrument the Dordt College Casavant is, and I hope to be able to hear it in person some day. In growing up, you probably played electro-pneumatic and not mechanical action organs.

At my home church, we had an electronic organ. Sitting down and beginning to play this mechanical action organ was nothing less than a revelation. I became an organist for life because of this instrument.

 

It was that profound of an impact? 

It’s why I pursued organ and church music foremost. I had started out as a piano and choral education major, and I soon thought, “Wow, this organ has such beautiful, human sounds.” It was immediate, it was present, it was alive, and it breathed because it had flexible winding, just like the congregation. Those Dutch people used to sing with gusto. They had passion, and it was exciting to hear them sing. This organ sang in the same way, full of personality and color. 

 

So, what happened next?

Well, as in most universities and conservatories, at that time at Dordt College, no one was teaching improvisation. I worked a lot with choral music and still improvised in the practice room for the first few weeks that I was there. I spent a lot of time in the practice corridors, as I had so much to practice while studying three instruments. When I’d step out of my practice room to get a drink of water, I’d hear other people practicing, and it gradually dawned on me that no one else was improvising. 

 

How interesting! You were a “secret improviser.”

Exactly! I thought to myself, uh-oh, maybe professional musicians don’t improvise. I guess I had better stop. Since no one else was doing it, I thought that if I improvised, maybe people would think that I’m not a serious musician. I wondered if this improvisation “stuff” was akin to just fooling around at the keyboard when I should have been practicing “real music.” So, I stopped improvising for the first two years I was at Dordt. I was hungry for it, so I still was a closet improviser on the piano when I went home on breaks.

So what changed?

During my junior year, Joan Ringerwole invited Klaas Bolt, the famous Dutch organist who improvised at St. Bavo Church at Haarlem in the Netherlands, to come and give a concert.

Bolt wanted to have a “Psalmfest” at the concert, where people were invited to sing with the organ. He featured Genevan Psalms, and he improvised on them with great expression and keen understanding of the colors of the organ and how to use his articulation and registrations to make the organ sing the texts. His organ playing was so alive that I thought, “This is the kind of life I heard in the great Dutch singing of my childhood.” His playing had that level of affect and passion and breathing that I missed hearing in a lot of organ playing when it was just repertoire. Hearing Klaas Bolt improvise was a life-altering revelation to me. Here was a professional musician, and to my ears, his playing was more alive than almost any playing I had heard on the organ. Then I realized every musician has to learn to improvise. Even if musicians never improvise in public, they will play their repertoire in a more profound and musical manner from having practiced improvisation. They are going to breathe; they are going to know the music from the inside rather from the outside. If we just learn music with our eyes and our fingers, we know it a little bit from the outside. We don’t know it from the inside the way an improviser does.

 

Why do you think that is so?

An improviser has to know what makes music work, and what doesn’t make it work. Sometimes you learn most from what doesn’t work. You can’t just say that it didn’t work; you have to ask the question why it didn’t work. How can I fix it, and how can I avoid doing what doesn’t work the next time?

 

After hearing Klaas Bolt, what was the next step for you?

The first thing I did was to begin to improvise again. 

 

In other words, it was like saying “Hello, my name is Pamela, and I’m an improviser!” You became a member of Improvisers Anonymous!

[She laughs] Wholeheartedly! 

 

What did your teachers think of your revelation?

They still wanted to hear repertoire. So, I was still improvising privately in the practice room, but I was improvising and not thinking any longer that it was something I should not be doing. It was really quite the opposite. I no longer felt that I cared if anyone heard me improvising outside the practice room. I started decorating hymns when I played for chapel services at Dordt. When I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa, Delbert Disselhorst and Delores Bruch offered a strong sacred music program. They encouraged me to make variations on hymns, and I was able to practice improvisation within a liturgical context. It was OK to make variations on hymns. 

 

Improvisation and the art of improvisation was something that never really died out in Europe, correct? 

Oh, yes, until recently, it was still required in France and the Netherlands and some parts of Germany. My European colleagues, mentors, and friends were also teaching improvisation, which was so important. That entire pedagogy of teaching improvisation side-by-side with theory, history, and repertoire, however, never really caught on in the United States. 

 

It is starting to be taught here now, isn’t it?

Yes, that is true, although we don’t have a long “apprenticeship” tradition here in the States the way they did in France and in the Netherlands. What is needed is an integrated improvisation pedagogy from which teachers can learn it first, and then learn how to teach it. That’s why it is essential to have a pedagogy that anyone can own. Initially, I think it is great to have a teacher for improvisation, but ultimately it is important to have a pedagogy with steps that you can take and apply on your own. Once you understand those steps, then anyone can become her own improvisation teacher. I had to figure that out for myself, because I didn’t have an improvisation teacher, and I wanted to improvise. 

 

Did you find your improvisation teacher?

I did study improvisation briefly with Klaas Bolt. I also studied with Harald Vogel in Germany and worked a few times with William Porter. 

 

Both Klaas Bolt and Harald Vogel had their European methodology that grew out of a long tradition.

That is why I wrote Bach and the Art of Improvisation. What I wanted to get at in the book was this premise: Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the greatest organ improviser the instrument has ever known and will ever know. So, what was his methodology, and how did he teach his students? I was fortunate to work in Sweden with the GOArt project. GOArt gathered an international group of scientists, musicologists, performers, acousticians, physicists, organbuilders, woodworkers, artisans, and historic preservationists together. We had an entire team of amazing experts studying the tradition of the antique organs and trying to decipher why so many of the antique organs sounded so much better than modern organs. Hans Davidsson started asking these types of questions, and we all joined in with various ideas for figuring out how the instruments were made, how they sounded, and how and in which contexts they were played.

 

So it started from the standpoint of the sound of this musical instrument.

Yes, and then it branched out into how was that sound used, and what did that sound inspire? One of the things that inspired me to keep improvising was that I loved to test out historic organs with improvisation. With improvisation, I have “nothing between my fingers and my ears and the instrument,” so I can more keenly assess the soundscape. This way, you spend more time listening. If you start out with repertoire you are thinking, “Did I hit the right note?” and then you forget to listen sometimes. Improvisation is a great way to test an organ. I do this every time I encounter a new instrument, even if I am playing a concert on it and I will be playing mostly learned repertoire. I begin by improvising through the stops, because I want to hear what is the character of the sounds and in which soundscapes do they coexist most naturally and happily? What does the organ tell me about touch and technique, what does it want to say, and why? 

 

How many years were you involved in this project?

I was in Sweden with GOArt for six years, and it was a fabulously stimulating collaborative project. GOArt is the acrostic for the Göteborg (Sweden) Organ Art Project, which Hans Davidsson initiated and led. The stunning, colorful North German organ built with antique techniques by Munetaka Yokota, Mats Arvidsson, and a highly skilled team represents the apex of the GOArt research in the late ’90s into the new millenium. Those of us who were among the interdisciplinary team of researchers followed the organ building stages of hand-planed wood, sandbed-cast metal, fire-forged iron rollerboards, the physics of wind flow, and we tested sounds, wind pressure, and key action along the way. When the organ was completed, it was thrilling to hear the range of strong, yet vulnerable, transparent, singing sounds of the organ. In my double CD recording of Tunder’s organ works (see Figure 3), I savored the colorful palette of soundscapes by exploring in turn the various families of stops represented on each of the four manuals of the organ. Selecting like stops side-by-side reveals the infinite variation in aural nuance that one can hear in the best instruments, strong congregational singing, and in historic improvisation.

 

Goodness! You really immersed yourself in this project!

I truly did. We had regular symposia. The organists would learn what the physicists were discovering, and they in turn were listening to what performers, pedagogues, and improvisers were discovering. That is how I was able to dig so deeply into the archival material on how Bach and all of his predecessors learned improvisation, and then how Bach and his pupils and successors and other traditions built on this basic methodology. This is an ongoing story of evolution on how musicians learned and taught improvisation. I’ve spent years and years discerning how improvisation pedagogy works. I’m grateful for many opportunities over the years to test out those ideas with wonderful students in the States and in Europe.

 

In Volume One of Bach and the Art of Improvisation, you write, “Improvisation is really extemporaneous composition.” I really love that idea. 

You have to be able, to some degree, to think out the music in your head away from a keyboard before you even play your first note. Here is an example. We have our presidential State of the Union address. The President is reading his speech from a teleprompter for his State of the Union address, but he has a hard copy of the address on paper in front of him. This idea of oration, or the art of giving speeches, goes way back before the days of teleprompters, before the Common Era, to the time of Greek orators. Greek orators had to have a memory that worked in a way different from what we think about when we memorize music. In memorizing music, many people memorize every note. The Greek orator’s memory was much more like a blueprint or an outline for a speech, because they didn’t have computers, or printers or teleprompters. They had to memorize the outline of their speech, and then they decorated the interior lines of that speech. Johann Sebastian Bach was still using that art of memory when he was improvising, and that is what I do also when I improvise. 

 

So you improvise from a mental outline?

Yes, I have a blueprint in my brain; I want to know the beginning, the middle, and the end of what I am doing before I even begin, even though I don’t know specific notes, or even sometimes where the improvisation is going to take me. Within that mental/aural blueprint, there is an “introduction” (Exordium) where you want to grab the listener’s attention. The Greeks did this too. You want to play something “flashy” to say, “OK, this is going to be the mood and the character of the piece, and the key of the piece,” and after that, you launch into something of a narration (Narratio). In the narration, you “tell” the listener what you are going to do, just like the orator is saying, “This is what I plan to discuss.” You are staying in your home key at this time, as you are telling the story at the beginning. Then you have a proposition (Propositio), a new idea that you want somebody to know about. Then, scientifically, to show people that your idea or ideas hold some weight and truth, you have to argue your point (Confutatio). Again, this is what the Greeks would do, they would argue against their proposal, but brilliantly, they would turn the argument on its head to confirm (Confirmatio) the truth of their original proposition. So, in these “confutatios” in music, you can explore other ideas or other snippets of ideas, or take those ideas to new keys; this is what we would call the development section in what is known as sonata-allegro form. However, you come back and confirm it with your recapitulation and return to your home key. After you have confirmed your main proposition, then you end with a conclusion (Peroratio) that has a “bang” and some sort of bookend effect that hearkens back to your original opening attention-grabbing statement.

 

I have heard that composers don’t have to be good improvisers, but good improvisers have to be good composers. 

That is true. Yes. C. P. E. Bach said that. Improvisers learn a great deal from investigating existing compositions and asking questions about specific works in the manner a curious child or tenacious archaeologist might keep asking, “Why?” 

Here’s an example. Knowing that Georg Böhm taught the young Bach made me wonder what influences Böhm’s compositions had on Bach. Böhm’s keyboard works provide excellent material for improvisers, as they are fairly easy to analyze. With a strong thoroughbass foundation, one can emulate some works of Böhm in improvisation. I explored this approach to improvisation pedagogy in Bach and the Art of Improvisation and in my harpsichord CD, Bach’s Teacher Böhm & Improvisation. (See Figure 4.)

I selected a præludium, partita, dance suite, and fughetta of Böhm to perform and then chose specific chorales that would work well with those genres. On the second half of the CD, you can hear my improvisations on those chorales in the style of Böhm, recycling the same genres in new ways. In my Bach, Improvisations and the Liturgical Year CD, I took inspiration from Bach works to improvise on chorales on the Pasi organ at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, Washington. (See Figure 5.) Improvisers make their nests from snippets of material and enduring designs from the
finest composers.

 

Getting back to what you said earlier about copying what you had heard, it makes me think of Mozart. One of the great composers was an improviser at a very young age.

It is said that Mozart had many things worked out in his head before he ever put a note down a paper—very much like a great improviser. 

 

I always figured that people were born with some sort of “improvisation gene” and you either had it or you didn’t.

No, it is like any other skill. It takes work. You cannot become an Olympic ice skater the first time you put on a pair of skates and venture out onto the ice! Just like Olympic athletes, accomplished improvisers have invested thousands and thousands of hours of practice, studying, and coaching. Even as an improviser, “going down the wrong path” can be very instructive. Like any skill, it doesn’t drop from the sky, it is a matter of giving the skill deep, regular focus and attention, sprinkled heavily with perseverance.

 

Can you speak to the benefit of actually copying out a piece of music instead of just making a photocopy?

In Bach’s time, everyone had to copy music. I have my students copy music, for instance, copying out one of Bach’s Inventions from his own hand. They can see that in Bach’s handwriting, there is gesture; it isn’t just some sort of robotic computer-generated notation. You can learn from how notes are written and beamed together. You also learn different clefs like the C clef, so you learn relationships; you are not reading by note names, but rather by intervals and relationships of distance on the page and how that translates to the keyboard. It is as if you are reading words and phrases instead of looking at individual letters. (See Figure 6.) Remember how it was when you first began to learn typing? You first have to think of each key individually, and after a while your fingers know where the keys are, and you can type a word and then later a phrase. It is the same thing with improvisation. No matter how proficient someone is as a player of repertoire, one has to start from the very beginning as an improviser. 

 

This really is very humbling. 

Yes, it is, but it is also very much worth it!

 

It was interesting to learn from your book Bach and the Art of Improvisation that Bach was very demanding of his students, and yet also was extremely practical in what he taught.

Oh, yes, Bach was genuinely interested in getting right to the work of experiential learning. Bach usually took a chorale melody and a thoroughbass. That was the blueprint; the chorales had a soprano and a bass line, and students would have to fill in the alto and tenor part. Wouldn’t it be great if theory could now be taught in conjunction with improvisation? If students had their hands on the keyboard, they would learn theory much better and as an integrated part of musicianship, because they would store information in various memory sources—the tactile, the visual, the aural, and the analytical. The more synapses you have firing, the more aspects of music will make sense on multiple levels. 

 

Also with Bach as a teacher, wasn’t it true that you could not move on “to the next step” without mastering what had been assigned to you?

Ah, yes, Bach’s students weren’t allowed to proceed to repertoire and improvisation before they had their fingering in place!

 

Did Bach know about different fingering traditions, or what today we would call “early fingering”?

Yes, he most certainly did. In fact,
C. P. E. Bach was still documenting it after Bach’s death. This type of fingering was still being used during the time of Bach’s son.

 

Didn’t J. S. have a profound effect on what we consider today as “modern fingering?” 

Bach was one of the first to use the thumb to the same extent as the fingers, which astonished other musicians at the time. Some of Bach’s music doesn’t work exclusively with early fingering described in 16th- and 17th-century treatises. Because of this, the so-called modern scale fingerings used today were already chronicled by C. P. E. Bach as one of several options. Significantly, though, this was not the one and only option. The performer was offered different fingerings for the same passage, and could select the most appropriate fingering to the style and tempo of the piece, to the note values and function of particular passages, to the size of the musician’s hand, and for the articulation desired. Using a palette of fingering choices offers much more sophisticated playing results that can imitate bowing, tonguing, and most importantly, singing.

The clavichord is the instrument Bach advocated most for keyboard practice, as the instrument itself is the finest technique pedagogue. The clavichord offers its best blooming sound when the player plays with relaxed arm weight, with the hand and arm lined up above the key to be played. (See Figure 7.) If the player uses less than ideal fingering and arm weight, the sound will be weak and dull, instead of rich and colorful. The clavichord tangents press up on the strings, allowing for infinite light and shadows in the dynamic range, as well as Bebung, an ornamental vibrato accomplished by pressing weight in and out of the string. Practicing on the clavichord translates to an ideal organ technique and organ playing that sounds much cleaner (clarity of touch and articulation) and more expressive. 

 

You suggest that it is helpful to learn to improvise in the Baroque style. Why?

Most students learn theory from a Baroque perspective first, culminating in analyzing Bach chorales. My vision is to have theory and practice, history and performance integrated as one art. Already, students start with Baroque harmonies in Bach chorales. From there, it is relatively easy to stretch out those tertiary harmonies vertically as well as stretching the harmonic rhythms horizontally to take more space as melodies develop, which is what happens in much nineteenth-century music. The improvisation pedagogy developed in Bach and the Art of Improvisation is a series of steps derived from the repertoire. This pedagogy can easily be transferred to any pattern-based music improvisation (music organized in modes and scales) from medieval music to Messiaen.

 

In your pedagogy, what is the first step? 

I always begin where the student is at and build appropriate steps from there. If the student needs a better foundation in relaxed technique, fingering, hymn playing, note reading, and analysis, we work with those aspects immediately and introduce improvisations such as musettes, ostinatos, and two-voice counterpoint. My students, other professional musician friends, and I have had great fun in developing “improvisation societies” in which we improvise for and with one another on various themes. This puts the improvisation psychology into a friendly environment and allows participants to inspire each other by becoming a “counting choir” to help the improviser keep track of the meter and tempo, by playing rondos, in which each person can try out a small phrase at a time, by offering constructive feedback, fresh ideas, and accountability for practicing.

 

Where do you then proceed from there? 

I use chorales with soprano and thoroughbass and cadences so that each improviser can hear and sing the cantus firmus as well as the harmonic basis, and know with each sense how to fill in inner voices. Gradually, improvisers can work to harmonize a given soprano and to create upper voices from a given thoroughbass. From thoroughbass and chorales, I introduce how to decorate one line at a time using appropriate figures to fit proper voice leading and harmonic function, both with two-part counterpoint and with four-part harmonies. This leads to chorale preludes and dance suites, which get into exciting meter and rhythmic variations. 

 

Bach and the Art of Improvisation, Volume Two is ready to go to press. What is the focus of the second volume?

In volume two, I offer free works, but still within a thoroughbass and chorale framework: interludes and cadenzas, preludes, fantasias, continuo playing, partimento, and fugue.

 

I’d like to hear more about those last three. What about continuo playing?

Many modern continuo-playing realizations simply designate block chords for the thoroughbass harmonies indicated. Some of these are not even careful with appropriate ranges to fit with the soloists, voice leading, or doubling. In contrast, Bach’s continuo playing was described as creating a quartet out of a trio. Instead of resorting to block chord-type continuo, he would most often play the left-hand bass line given and improvise a right-hand part that would fit ideally in dialogue and duet with the other solo voices. When I started improvising in this way in continuo with ensembles, I was astonished at how much more sophisticated it sounds, as well as how much more it enhances what the other instrumentalists are doing.

 

What is partimento?

Partimento is an improvisation pedagogy practiced by many Italians, notably Adriano Banchieri, Bernardo Pasquini, and Girolamo Frescobaldi, as well as several German musicians in the 17th and 18th centuries. Italian composers influenced the art of improvisatory flourishes in keyboard free works. Froberger is a wonderful example of that Italianate influence from his teacher Frescobaldi, as I demonstrate in my Froberger on the 1658 De Zentis CD played on an original 17th-century Italian harpsichord. (See Figure 8.) In his toccatas, Froberger introduced cosmopolitan influences: Italianate improvisatory virtuosic passagework, French dance and overture rhythms, and strict imitative counterpoint practiced by German composers and the Palestrina lineage of contrapuntalists.

The cross-pollination between Italy and Germany was evident in partimento works, including fugue. After Bach taught his students how to work with thoroughbass in chorales, free works, and continuo playing, he introduced partimento fugues in his early fugal pedagogy. (See Figure 9.) In partimento fugues, the subject and answer are introduced. After the initial entrances, the partimento features thoroughbass only. The improviser’s role was to solve the puzzle by placing additional subject entrances in the fugue according to where they fit with the harmony indicated by the thoroughbass. For example, with a four-voice fugue, the improviser fills in the missing voices and remaining harmony in four-voice counterpoint. Most improvisers enjoy puzzles, riddles, or Sudoku. Partimento is a similar musical game and valuable improvisation pedagogy tool. 

So you can use partimento for fugues?

Yes, Bach did, as did Handel. In Volume Two of Bach and the Art of Improvisation, I show examples of partimento fugue as a starting point for fugal improvisation. Bach certainly moved beyond that in teaching, composing, and improvising fugues, and in my final chapter, I offer applications for how to create increasingly professional fugues. 

 

I think most people would feel daunted by the thought of improvising fugues.

Yes, and they did in Bach’s day, too. It is truly possible for anyone who is willing to practice with great attention and perseverance. The results are exhilarating.

But the solution is, as Bach did, to build up each of the improvisation pedagogy steps so incrementally, that fugue becomes simply the next rung of the ladder. 

 

And that’s exactly what you do in Bach and the Art of Improvisation!

Jan-Piet Knijff

This interview was first published in Dutch in Het Orgel 96 (2000), no. 5. Leonhardt had been made an honorary member (Lid van Verdienste) of the Royal Dutch Society of Organists in the previous year. Apart from small adaptations in the first few paragraphs, an occasional correction, and explanations, no attempt has been made to update the content of the article for this translation. The interview on which the article was based took place during the 2000 Leipzig Bach Festival. Leonhardt read the article before it went to the editor and was very pleased with it. I am grateful to the Royal Dutch Society of Organists and the editor of Het Orgel, Jan Smelik, for permission for its republication.*    

 

Gustav Leonhardt (1928–2012) was perhaps after Wanda Landowska—the most influential harpsichordist of the twentieth century. As Professor of Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory he introduced countless young musicians from all over the world to the interpretation of early music, especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. From his work with the Leonhardt Consort—with his wife Marie as first violinist—grew a limited but no less significant career as a conductor: Leonhardt’s contribution to the complete recording of Bach cantatas for Telefunken and his renditions of operas by Monteverdi and Rameau are milestones in the history of recorded music.

As an organist, Leonhardt has not become nearly as famous—perhaps because organists in general don’t tend to become famous in the way other musicians do, perhaps also because he limited himself to early music. Even among Dutch organists, Leonhardt remained an outsider. Therefore, his being made an honorary member of the Royal Dutch Society of organists in 1999 was an important recognition of a man who has helped define the way we have listened to and performed early music for more than half a century.

I spoke with Leonhardt in the summer of 2000 in Leipzig. He was chairman of the jury of the prestigious Bach competition for harpsichord; ironically, Leonhardt’s former student Ton Koopman held the same position at that year’s organ competition. I met the master after one of the competition rounds and we walked together to our hotels. Leonhardt is often said to have been formal; it is well known how he used to address his Dutch students with the formal pronoun u (pronounced [ü]; the equivalent of the German Sie); this must have come across as utterly prehistoric in the 1970s. But in fact, Leonhardt was extremely friendly; he conversed easily and openly about a host of topics. As we passed by the Thomaskirche, Leonhardt volunteered his opinion of the new Bach organ by Gerhard Woehl.¹ The conversation quickly moved from Woehl to Silbermann, and Leonhardt mentioned the organ at Großhartmannsdorf, which he played in the film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach: “You know, that Posaune 16 . . . ” His face and gestures spoke louder than a thousand words. I asked why no organbuilder today seemed to be able to make such a Posaune. “Look,” he said dryly yet firmly, “first of all, you have to want it.”

In 2000, at 72, Leonhardt was very much alive and well, still playing some 100 concerts a year. For a concert in Göteborg that year, he didn’t even have a hotel: he arrived in the morning, played a concert in the afternoon, and flew on to Portugal in the evening for a concert the next day. I asked whether he enjoyed traveling; he shrugged: “I mean, it’s simply part of it.” Leonhardt was happy to have the interview on his ‘free’ Friday, when there were no competition rounds. “But if you don’t mind, could we do it early?” What is early, 9 am? “Well, earlier would be fine too.” 8:30, 8 am? “Just fine.” It sounded as if 6:30 would have been OK too.

 

Jan-Piet Knijff: How did you become interested in organ and harpsichord?

Gustav Leonhardt: Through my parents, I think. They weren’t professional musicians—my father was a businessman—but they were enthusiastic amateurs. What was rather unusual was that, even before the Second World War, we had a harpsichord at home, a Neupert, a small one.² My parents played Beethoven and Brahms for pleasure, but from time to time also Bach and Telemann. Apparently they thought they had to buy a harpsichord for that. I had to learn how to play the piano as a boy; I mean, had to, it was simply a part of life. I don’t remember liking it very much. When the harpsichord came, they let me play written-out figured-bass parts. I didn’t care much for it, but of course, it must have shaped my musicality. During the last few years of the war there was no school, no water, no electricity. Marvelous, of course—especially that there was no school! Moreover, I turned sixteen that year, so I more or less had to hide from the Germans. My brother and I took turns being on the lookout. It was all very exciting. During that time, I was so attracted to the harpsichord. And since there was little else to do, I simply played all the time. And of course, there was the enormous love of Bach. Dad was on the Board of the [Dutch] Bach Society, where Anthon van der Horst conducted.³ At fifteen, I started studying music theory privately with van der Horst. Yes, that I enjoyed very much. I often pulled stops for him at concerts. That’s really where my love of organs comes from.

 

J-PK: You went to study in Basel. Would it not have been logical to study in Amsterdam with van
der Horst?

GL: Maybe, but harpsichord was high on my wish list too. And the Schola Cantorum in Basel was at the time the only place in the world where one could study early music in all its facets, including chamber music and theory. It pulled like a magnet: I had to go there.

That was in 1947, only a few years after the war, and Holland was really still a poor country at the time. There was very little foreign currency, so studying in Switzerland was not all that easy. Thankfully, my father had business contacts, so from time to time, I went on bicycle from Basel to Schaffhausen to pick up an envelope with Swiss francs . . .⁴ I studied both organ and harpsichord with Eduard Müller, for whom I still have the greatest admiration and respect.

 

J-PK: Can you tell me more about him?

GL: He was first and foremost an excellent organist, who in addition was asked to teach harpsichord, I think. He was the organist at a terrible organ, but whenever a new tracker was built—Kuhn or Metzler in those days—we went to try it out, right away, you know.

The way people played Bach on the organ was still pretty dreadful at the time, with many registration changes, swell box, that kind of thing. But even then, Müller played completely differently. For example, he would tell you that it was common to change manuals in this-or-that bar, but that that was simply impossible, because you would break the tenor line in two! So I learned from him to analyze very ‘cleanly’ and to use that as the basis for my performance.

Harpsichord playing was still very primitive in those days. The instruments I played on in Basel were simply awful. It wasn’t until later that I came to know historic instruments. The idea that you used different types of harpsichords—French, Italian—didn’t play a role at all. I did collect pictures of historic instruments, but really without wondering what they might sound like.

Strangely enough, Müller was not at all interested in historic instruments as far as harpsichords went. On the other hand, he was very precise with articulation. You had to play exactly the way Bach wrote. Bach was the order of the day. A little piece by Froberger or Couperin every now and then, but mostly Bach, really. August Wenzinger,⁵ with whom I studied chamber music, was much broader in that regard. He played the whole repertoire: French, Italian, and the seventeenth century as well. We also had to sing in the choir, Senfl and Josquin, but also monody. That was a revelation. We had Ina Lohr,⁶ who was the first to use the old solmisation system again as the basis of her theory classes. Everything was incredibly interesting.

Look, things were kind of black-and-white at the time. On the one hand there was Romanticism, and that was horrible, so you wanted something different. The Neue Sachlichkeit played an important role. I think I actually played very dryly in those days.

 

J-PK: Many people would argue that you still played dryly many years later.

GL: Everyone is free to think whatever they want, but I personally think I have allowed much more emotion in my performances over the years.

 

J-PK: Were there still others who influenced you as a young musician?

GL: [Immediately] Hans Brandts Buys.⁷ We lived in Laren, near Hilversum [between Amsterdam and Utrecht—JPK]. I played cello as well, and I sometimes played the cello in cantata performances he directed. I never studied with him, but he had an enormous library, most of all about Bach. In one word: a dream. I used to spend hours there, browsing, making notes. Brandts Buys also had a two-manual harpsichord, something quite unusual at the time. He had an enormous respect for what the composer had written. I learned that from him.

After my studies I got to know Alfred Deller, the famous countertenor.⁸ I had heard a tiny gramophone record of his and was incredibly impressed. It showed that singing could be more than a dead tone with tons of vibrato. Diction: that was what it was all about. The tone helps the diction. Deller was a master in this regard. That is incredibly important to me. We organists and harpsichordists have to think dynamically too. We have to shape the tone.

 

J-PK: After your studies you became Professor of Harpsichord in Vienna.

GL: Well, I mean, I taught there and yes, it was called ‘Professor.’ I actually went to Vienna to study conducting, even though it did not interest me very much. I don’t even remember now why I did it. It may have been at the urging of my parents. Organ and harpsichord, how was one ever going to make a living that way? With conducting one could at least pay the bills, that kind of thing.

But the most important thing in Vienna was the library. I’d sit there all day, from opening till close, copying music—by hand of course—and making notes from treatises. I still use that material today. Much has been published since, but not nearly everything.

 

J-PK: What kind of things did
you copy?

GL: Oh, everything. Froberger, Kuhnau, Fischer . . . Tablature too, I could read that easily back then—I’m completely out of practice now. I also copied lute tablatures, just out of interest.

In Vienna I got to know Harnoncourt.⁹ We were just about the only people interested in early music and played an awful lot together, viol consort also. That was relatively easy for me because of my cello background.

 

But after three years Leonhardt had had enough of the Austrian capital and returned to the Netherlands, where he was appointed Professor of Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory. At the end of the 1950s he became organist of the Christiaan Müller organ of the Eglise Wallonne, the French Protestant Church of Amsterdam.

 

GL: My wife is francophone and we both belong to the Reformed Church, so we went to the French church as a matter of course. I knew the organ already, but it was in very poor condition at the time. The action was terrible and it played very heavily. So when the position became vacant, I said that I was willing to do it on the condition that the organ would be restored properly. That was fine. I knew Ahrend already, so he restored the organ, with Cor Edskes as consultant.¹⁰ 

 

J-PK: How did you meet Ahrend?

GL: I don’t remember exactly. In any case, I had seen an organ they had built in Veldhausen.¹¹ That was a revelation back then, but I have recently played the organ again and it was still a revelation. That doesn’t happen very often, that one thinks the same way about an organ so many years later.

 

J-PK: What made Ahrend & Brunzema so special?

GL: I don’t know. They just understood organs somehow. They had ears and just knew how to get the sound they wanted.

 

J-PK: Ahrend has often been criticized for imposing too much of his own personality on an instrument when restoring it, for example
in Groningen.

GL: Well, I mean, he does have a strong personality, and in the Martini [the Martinikerk at Groningen—JPK], a great deal had to be reconstructed. In such a situation one can hardly blame anybody for putting his mark on a restoration.

 

J-PK: Was that also the case in Amsterdam?

GL: No. A lot of Müller pipes had survived in excellent condition and the new pipes Ahrend provided matched the old pipes very well indeed. Yes, the Waalse [Eglise Wallonne—JPK] is definitely the best-preserved Müller in my opinion—not that there is a lot of choice, unfortunately.¹² 

 

J-PK: You made a whole series of recordings on the organ, including composers such as Froberger, Couperin, and de Grigny . . . 

GL: . . . who really don’t belong there at all. You are totally right about that and I really don’t remember why we did it. Perhaps Telefunken wanted some diversity in the repertoire. On the other hand [he continues almost triumphantly], what should I have played on the Amsterdam Müller instead?

 

J-PK: The Genevan psalter, I suppose.

GL: [He laughs, covering his mouth with his hand.] Precisely—or Quirinus van Blankenburg.¹³

 

J-PK: As a harpsichord teacher, you have had a tremendous influence on a whole generation of harpsichordists from all over the world.

GL: Oh, come on . . . For a long time, I was simply the only one.

 

J-PK: Have you never wanted to teach organ?

GL: I’ve never really thought about that. But even for harpsichord I never had more than five students at the same time. That was more than enough. The rest of the time I was so busy with concerts and recordings.

[The conversation moves in a different direction; Leonhardt clearly wants to discuss something else.]

I don’t know if it’s on your list, but the difference between organ and harpsichord, I wouldn’t mind saying something about that. Look, the harpsichord has in a way stopped at some point in time. The organ went on, but changed completely. In my view, organ and harpsichord are intimately connected. To a large extent, the instruments shared the same literature and performers played both instruments. That stops at the end of the eighteenth century and in my mind it’s only because of its function in church that the organ has continued to exist. In other words, without the church, the organ would have died out as well. Interest in the organ at the beginning of the nineteenth century was practically zero, really.

All right, so the organ continued to exist. But over time, it changed so much that, really, it became a different instrument, at least in my view. That is a problem for the present-day organist that really does not exist for harpsichordists. How can a man serve so many masters? I don’t believe that is possible; at least, I can’t.

The problem is, we aren’t theorists. Musicologists can study different styles—that’s not a problem. But we musicians have to take the work of art in our hands . . . [an expressive gesture] . . .
and present it. That is something completely different; it demands much more ability to empathize. I have to say, when all is said and done, the colleagues whom I admire the most tend to be those who specialize at least to some extent.

[I mention an early-music specialist who at the same time is a jack-of-all-trades. Yes, Leonhardt agrees: a great musician.] But even so, you can hear that he plays so much other music as well.¹⁴ It’s a problem, of course. Take the flute: How much literature is there from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Three Bach sonatas! We harpsichordists can bathe in a wealth of early music. One can easily spend a lifetime with it.

 

J-PK: Don’t you think the old composers are so far away from us that it is more difficult to empathize with them?

GL: No, I don’t. If you really study the time and the art of the period in all its facets—painting, architecture, and so forth—a composer like Froberger can come just as close as, say, Widor. And look, Widor has become early music too by now. One has to study that just as well. It’s no longer our own time; it’s not self-evident.

 

J-PK: You had to practically put yourself in Bach’s shoes when you played the lead role in Jean-Marie Straub’s film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach.

GL: It wasn’t acting, you know. Performing in costume, that’s all. Just because I happened to do the same things as Bach did: playing organ and harpsichord, and conducting. Well, except for composing, of course. [A gesture of profound awe.] I found it a very respectful film, it was made with a lot of integrity, and I enjoyed contributing to it, also because Bach has determined my whole career.

 

J-PK: I think Frans Brüggen once said in an interview, ‘Leonhardt is Bach.’¹⁵ 

GL: [A gesture makes clear that he couldn’t disagree more.] I consider Bach the greatest composer who ever lived. But I also see him as a composer in his time, not just as some remarkable phenomenon. In that sense, I’m not a Bach man.

 

J-PK: Your career has mostly focused on harpsichord playing and conducting.

GL: Well, no, not conducting, that has always been a side path; I don’t do it more often than once or twice a year. The Bach cantata project, too, was really only one or two weeks a year. Conducting to me is in a way the same as playing chamber music, except I happen not to be playing.

J-PK: My point is that as an organist you have been relatively free to do whatever you wanted.

GL: That is true. The harpsichord is my livelihood; the organ is in a sense a luxury. It’s also a different kind of instrument. [Enthusiastically:] One can be crazy about an organ, I think. Harpsichords don’t really have that. That is because an organ usually has a much stronger personality than a harpsichord; that is part of what makes it such a fantastic instrument. On harpsichord, one has to work much harder to get a beautiful sound. A good organ does half the job for you if not more. A good organ dictates—in the best sense of the word—much more than a harpsichord.

 

J-PK: With all your interest in past centuries it seems that there is one aspect of our time that interests you in particular.

GL: I think I know what you mean.

 

J-PK: Fast cars?

GL: [Big smile—for a moment he looks almost boyish.] As the Germans say, Wenn schon, denn schon.¹⁶ If one needs a car at all, surely a beautiful one is better than an ugly one. I just got a new Alfa 166, three liters, and it really is a great pleasure. It’s a rather fiery one, you know, the kind that just wants to go out for a ride. In the city, he has to stay on the leash, but out of town . . . Yes, a real pleasure. ν

 

* I am also grateful to Hans Fidom, the former editor of Het Orgel who suggested that I interview Leonhardt. Finally, I thank my wife Brigitte Pohl-Knijff and the following colleagues, students, and friends for their comments on earlier drafts of this translation: Margaret Barger, Robert Brown, Jim Nicholls, Jodie Ostenfeld, and Paul Thwaites. For any dutchisms that remain I take sole responsibility.  

1. Gerhard Woehl built the new Bach organ (IV/61) for the Thomaskirche in the Bach year 2000.

2. The founder of the firm, Johann Christoph Neupert (who was apprenticed to Johann Baptist Streicher in Vienna) and his descendants were avid collectors of historic keyboard instruments. Still in business today, the firm built its first harpsichord in 1906.

3. Dutch organist, conductor, and composer Anthon van der Horst (1899–1965) was conductor of the Dutch Bach Society from 1931. He taught organ at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where his students included Albert de Klerk, Piet Kee, Bernard Bartelink, Wim van Beek, and Charles de Wolff. 

4. Schaffhausen, on the Swiss-German border, is some 60 miles from Basel.

5. August Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a cellist, viol player, conductor, and a pioneer of historically informed performance practice. He taught both cello and viol at the Schola Cantorum from 1933, where his most famous student (apart from Leonhardt) was no doubt viol player Jordi Savall, who succeeded him in 1974.    

6. Ina Lohr (1903–1983) studied violin in Amsterdam and theory and composition in Basel. One of the founders of the Schola Cantorum, she taught theory there on the basis of solmisation. She was also assistant conductor to Paul Sacher with the Basel Chamber Choir.

7. Johann Sebastian (Hans) Brandts Buys (1905–1959) came from a large Dutch family of musicians, which included some fine composers. A pioneer of harpsichord playing in the Netherlands, Brandts Buys was also active as a conductor. As a performer and musicologist he specialized in the music of his namesake, J.S. Bach. Brandts Buys had an unusually strong interest in historically informed performance and was the first in the Netherlands to conduct the St. Matthew Passion with a small choir and orchestra (1947). Leonhardt presumably took part in performances with the Hilversumse Cantate Vereniging (Hilversum Cantata Society), which Brandts Buys led during the war years 1943–1945.

8. The countertenor Alfred Deller (1912–1979) was central in reviving and popularizing the countertenor in the twentieth century. He founded the Deller Consort in 1948. Benjamin Britten famously wrote the role of Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Deller (1960), who recorded it with the composer conducting.  

9. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (b. 1929), cellist, later conductor, founder of the period-instrument ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien (1953, first public performance 1957). Harnoncourt’s Concentus and the Leonhardt Consort collaborated for a recording of Bach’s St. John Passion (1965) and shared the complete recording of Bach’s sacred cantatas for Telefunken’s Das alte Werk. 

10. Jürgen Ahrend (b. 1930), German organ builder, active 1954–2005. In the 1950s and ’60s Ahrend and his then-associate Gerhard Brunzema (1927–1992) were perhaps the most serious, consistent, and successful in reviving the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North-German organ style.  

11. In Bentheim county, Germany, near the Dutch border. The organ was built by Ahrend & Brunzema in 1957, and enlarged with a Rückpositiv by the Dutch firm Mense Ruiter in 1997.

12. Other surviving Müller organs include those in Haarlem, Leeuwarden, Beverwijk, and the Kapelkerk at Alkmaar. 

13. Apart from more imaginative works such as the cantata L’Apologie des femmes (The Women’s Apology, 1715), Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654–1739) published a Harpsichord and Organ Book of Reformed Psalms and Church Hymns (The Hague 1732).

14. Fortunately, I no longer recall whom I mentioned to Leonhardt.

15. The Dutch recorder player, flautist, and conductor Frans Brüggen (b. 1934) performed extensively with Leonhardt in such groups as Quadro Amsterdam and the trio with cellist Anner Bijlsma.

16. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’

Helping Students Choose Fingerings VII 

I start this month’s column by following up on my closing comment from last month, that I would write about how to recognize, in these particular circumstances, when a fingering issue is really a hand distribution issue. I have written at length about hand distribution (as the principal subject of three columns, July, August, and September 2014, and in passing elsewhere). Since fingering choices can’t be made prior to hand distribution choices, it is a necessary part of the student’s autonomous thinking about fingering that they think about hand distribution. I enumerated this among the guidelines with which I would send a student off to work out fingerings. At this current stage, when you as the teacher are watching and evaluating a student’s fingering choices, you need to evaluate whether there is any awkwardness created by playing some notes in the hand that is less easily suited to reach them. 

It occurs to me that this is usually closely bound up with the use of the inner part of the hand. When notes are positioned such that either hand might reasonably play them, then it is (usually? always?) the thumbs and second fingers of the two hands that are in competition for those notes. It is also true that awkward hand position often (though not always) results from choices about the use of the thumb. Also, the decision to use the thumb or second finger to play a particular note will often change what the rest of the hand has to do with the other notes—the notes that “officially” are in that hand, and have to remain so. Therefore, as you watch, listen, and check for matters of concern in a student’s fingering choices, your alertness for hand position problems and your checking for hand distribution issues can largely converge. 

 

Hand distribution

A hand distribution decision that is an actual issue or question can only arise when there are more than two simultaneous or overlapping notes. Otherwise either one note per hand makes sense, or it is trivially easy to play both notes together in one of the hands, when the outer notes are close enough that either hand can reach the inner notes. If those conditions are met, and there is anything awkward-looking occurring, as I sketched out last month (twisting of the hands, hunched shoulders, grimacing or other uncomfortable expressions, tight-looking tendons or muscles), then asking the student to review hand distribution choices is a good idea. This will not always be the answer and will not always solve the problem to switch notes into the other hand. But perhaps it will, and it is logically the first easy thing to check. 

There are only two hand possibilities for any note, as well as limited fingering choices for notes that are within the reach of either hand. A significant proportion of what look like tricky fingering spots can be solved by correction. Again, it is a good idea to prepare students in advance to think about this, but equally important to keep an eye on it along the way.

Speaking of the thumbs, I am aware of the pitfalls of using thumbs on black notes, as you also know if you have read this column often. I mentioned that as something to send students off thinking about as they work on fingering. And clearly if you see a student using a thumb on a black note and it looks awkward, that is a spot that you and the student should scrutinize. However, the opposite problem can also occur. From time to time I see a student conscientiously avoiding playing a sharp or flat with the thumb when doing so would be best, maybe actually fine, maybe a bit awkward but the best available choice. Beyond just adjusting the fingering, this can be an opportunity to remind the student that guidelines are just guidelines, and that it is the maximum hand-comfort itself that counts. Guidelines are really guesses about what is likely comfortable most of the time.

 

Fingering forward and backward

One of the concepts with which I suggested sending a student off to work on fingering was that fingering should be accomplished forward and backward: that we shouldn’t always start somewhere and finger ahead in the music from that point. Rather, we should sometimes consider where we want the hand or a finger to be at a certain point and reason backwards from there. This is especially important when there are crucial spots that are difficult to finger. We must give those spots what they need, and work outward in both directions to incorporate them into the overall flow of the fingering. One way to notice when a student has given in to the common tendency to start at the beginning and go forward with fingering is to notice when a fingering crashes (or even crashes and burns!). That is, when everything looks smooth, makes sense, sounds continuous and accurate as to rhythm, and then suddenly falls apart: the hand looks bent out of shape, hesitations or wrong notes occur, and so on. A subset of this is the appearance of sudden, not musically sensible substitutions. An instance of this is demonstrated in Example 1.

I would not expect a student to attempt literally this fingering, though someone, perhaps a real beginner, might. It would probably be an executed but not written-in fingering, since the very act of writing this shows that it is too elaborate. But it encapsulates the principle of starting somewhere, running out of fingers, and not having a good way to recover. If the passage went like that exhibited in Example 2, then the impetus to use the fingering in Example 1 would be more understandable. If the passage went like that in Example 3, then the fingering in Example 1 would be in the conversation as a possible solution. This assumes a desired legato. As always, with non-legato technique, fingering possibilities are expanded.

There is an interesting fork in the road with substitutions in general. They can be either a sensible solution to a tricky fingering moment, preserving the desired articulation and using the hand efficiently, or a desperate attempt to rescue a fingering disaster. We must know how to tell these apart, and in evaluating a fingering that a student has brought back to us we can use a discussion of this distinction to help the student become aware of the best ways to use substitution. If we see substitution, especially if it is executed but not written in, then we should invite the student to talk about the reasons behind it.

Example 4 demonstrates another sample of a fingering’s crashing because of lack of planning. This is one that I have indeed seen frequently in real life. In this case, if a significant overall non-legato is what is desired, then there might be nothing particularly bad about this fingering. It might or not be comfortable or be best overall. But it is the kind of pattern that often or habitually arises not out of a purposeful decision about articulation, but rather from starting somewhere and not planning. If you observe a fingering like this and hear awkward irregularities in articulation, then it is something that should be questioned. 

Substitutions are one way under some conditions of achieving legato. In general, as you watch your student’s new fingering, bear in mind that there are many ways of making successive notes legato, and when they are intentional for the purpose they are important and good. But they are also at risk for not being the simplest way to execute the successive notes. If you see a student using a legato fingering, it looks awkward, and they are not actually executing the legato (that is, having planned out a somewhat complicated fingering for which the only rationale would be to connect notes, and they are in fact optionally releasing fingers and not connecting the notes), then this is a time to query. Sometimes an impulse to use a legato fingering at all costs comes about because that fingering feels like holding on to the notes for dear life and creates a sense of note security. That sense is a false one if the fingering is awkward or if it causes the hand to be rooted in one place when it should be free to move to another. 

One point to notice in watching student’s fingerings is whether there are spots where a finger seems to be falling naturally over a note, but the student plays the note with a different finger. There can be many reasons for this to happen. One of those is that the student is in fact planning just as I have been writing above. In that case, the benefit of starting a discussion about that spot is that it can allow the teacher to ratify the student’s sense that what is being done makes sense. However, it is also possible that the finger that seems to be falling naturally over the next note would have been the right one to use, and that the student hasn’t seen this. This is often because it is just a less-favored finger than the one that the student is using—finger 4 being often less favored than 3, or 5 being usually less favored than anything else, for example. But it can be for essentially no reason. Sometimes if I say, “Finger 4 is almost touching that note. Why not play it with 4?” the answer may just be, “Oh, yeah. That looks good,” or even, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” Not thinking of options is universal, and is part of the reason that we study and teach. Sometimes there is an impulse to look for the more complicated when the simpler would have been just as good and actually better because it is simpler. Moments when a finger that seems to be easily aiming at the next note is not used are sometimes instances of this. This kind of thing happens with everyone, not just students and certainly not just beginners.

 

Fingering patterns

I wrote earlier about note patterns and how and when they can or cannot be a scaffolding on which to build fingering patterns. This is a key thing to look for when a student brings a fingering back to you. There is the two-headed basic manifestation: is the student missing any opportunity to achieve simplicity by applying good, repeated patterned fingering where it would work, and is the student imposing a patterned fingering where it is actually made awkward by something specific in the notes? There are also a couple of special cases. Is the student using the same fingering when there is an exact repeat of a passage? This can be literally a repeat sign applying to some sort of section or, for that matter, successive verses of a hymn, assuming that they are played the same way as to such things as “soloing out,” etc., or it can be a more limited return of the exact same notes. It can be in one hand or through the whole texture. It can be a full-fledged da capo as in the big E-minor Fugue of Bach among innumerable examples. 

Is there ever a legitimate reason to use a different fingering for two instances of exactly the same notes within the same piece? I am not sure that I have ever decided to do so. Maybe so with hymn verses, even apart from the obvious reasons derived from desired changes in texture, since the player might want to project a significantly different feeling with various verses, and that might make fingering and interpretive decisions result differently. In principle, a desire to project a different feeling when the same notes come back within a repertoire piece is a real possibility. In fact, it should always be considered. After all, a passage is different when it is being heard as a repetition or a hearkening back to something heard earlier. I do not recall that I have ever wanted to manifest this through different fingering: perhaps I have thought of these differences as being more modest or subtle. If a student plays the same thing with different fingering when it occurs at different places in a piece, that is likely to be because of insufficient planning or mistaken execution. But pointing it out could still spark an interesting discussion of the matter! 

 

Wrong notes and rhythms

What about wrong notes, wrong rhythms, out-and-out unsuccessful playing? The relationship between these sorts of problems and fingering planning is a complicated one. One point of good fingering is to make it as easy as possible to execute the notes. In fact that is what we have essentially been looking at as “good” fingering in these columns, since this discussion has by and large not been about fingering as an interpretive tool or as a tool of historical accuracy. However, it is always true that enough really well carried-out practicing can make almost any fingering work. So in a sense “good” fingering has as its purpose reducing the amount of practicing that will be necessary. And you could say that practicing has the purpose or effect of making it unnecessary to have planned good fingerings, although there is probably never a good reason to use it for that purpose. I have occasionally, just as an exercise, tried practicing a purposely awkward fingering, one that stops well short of being “dangerous” in the sense in which I have discussed that earlier, and trying to get it to work well. This has had mixed results. It has been successful enough to convince me that if I had had any reason to stick to it I could probably make it work, but not successful enough to make me think that that would ever be a good idea.

If a passage that a student reports having fingered carefully and practiced well doesn’t seem solid, it is reasonably likely that the fault lies with the practicing more than with the fingering planning, or that the passage is simply not ready to go at the tempo that the student is trying. Ragged, hesitant, or otherwise unsuccessful playing is not one of the most reliable indicators of non-optimal fingering. But note that this is really about the percentages: sometimes bad fingering is what is going on in these situations. It is quite common for a student to say, “I can’t get this bit right. There must be a better fingering I could use,” when in fact it really is all about the practicing.

I am going to leave it there for the time being. In so doing I am aware that, as I suggested at the beginning of last month’s column, I have by no means exhausted this subject. I have not, for example, talked very directly about how to make a more interventionist approach work. For me, the gist of that is to wear that approach lightly: to let students know that even though you are making the initial fingering choices, you want them to think those fingerings out and ask you questions about them. I may return to this specifically another time. I also could at this point write a whole column just about how my own approach to all of this has evolved during the time when I have been writing these columns! I may indeed return to that at some point, partly for the content of it, partly because it is a bit of a case study in self-teaching. 

Next month, I will be on to other things.

Steven Egler

Steven Egler is Professor of Music Emeritus at Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, where he taught organ for 41 years. He is also director of music and organist emeritus at First Presbyterian Church, Mt. Pleasant, where he served for 35 years (1976–2011).  He is currently dean of the Saginaw Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

This interview with Morgan and Mary Simmons of Evanston, Illinois, longtime musicians (1968–1996) at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, reveals their strong relationship as evidenced in their 65-year marriage (1953–present). We met on July 29, 2017, at their home in Evanston, where they have lived for 50 years.

They discussed their rare collaboration in several positions throughout the years, and they shared wonderful anecdotes about their time as students at the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music, various church positions, and music making in general. The Simmonses shared the importance of their respective families and the influence that their families had on them and their careers as individuals and as musicians.Morgan and Mary also revealed insights into working with two high-profile pastors—the third and fourth respectively—of Fourth Presbyterian Church:  Dr. Elam Davies (1968–1984) and Dr. John Buchanan (1985–2012). 

Thanks to Ken Wuepper of Saginaw, Michigan, for audio technology support, and to Morgan and Mary Simmons for their careful editing assistance.

 

Steven Egler: Morgan, let’s begin with you telling us about your childhood and formative years.

Morgan Simmons: I was born in Andalusia, Alabama, April 6, 1929. Although I only had one sibling, my extended family was huge with 50 first cousins. Both of my parents came from large families, and my paternal grandmother was the oldest of 16, 14 of whom I knew.

Since both my grandmothers lived across the street from each other, and I lived only a block away, I got a lot of attention growing up.

 

Were you the oldest?

Morgan: No, my sister was three years older, and for both of us family was exceedingly important.

 

Recall for us your earliest musical experiences.

Morgan: I sang in the children’s choir of the First Methodist Church of Andalusia, and I started piano lessons when I was in the fourth grade with a very old-fashioned lady, Josie Lyons, who taught piano in the ladies’ parlor of the Methodist Church. She was a real taskmaster. If we were late to lessons we did not have a lesson, but we were still charged. She was also the organist and choir director of the church and wore very interesting attire for Sunday worship—a white satin surplice with a purple full-length skirt and matching scull cap for winter months; a white lace surplice with black skirt and matching cap for the summer.

I also took up clarinet but never perfected it; then at age 15, I began organ study. This opened an exciting new chapter in my life.

 

Mary, please tell us about your early years.

Mary Simmons: I was born February 22, 1930, in Centralia, Illinois. When I was six, we moved to Carbondale, Illinois, and I had a wonderful childhood with my sister who was five years older than I and my brother who was three years older. 

Unlike Morgan, I did not come from a large family. My mother was one of six children, and my father was an only child. This was the family that I mostly knew.

When we moved to Carbondale, I became a piano student of Helen Mathis, later Vogler, who was head of the piano department at Southern Illinois University. I studied with her until I graduated from high school, and it was good that she took such great interest in me.

When I was in the eighth grade, my mother thought that I was getting bored with the piano and suggested that I would like to study organ.

I studied organ at the Presbyterian Church in Carbondale with Eloise Thalman, who was a very good organist and took me under her wing. I loved it from the first day that I started, and during the summer, I got up early and rode my bicycle to the church to practice because I loved it so much. 

After having had a few lessons that same summer, Mrs. Thalman came to my home and said she would be taking her husband to the Mayo Clinic and asked me to play for church. What a shock that was! From that point on, I was hooked.

Morgan: Mary didn’t say that she has perfect pitch, which was discovered before she was six years old. Her native abilities are far greater than mine: I’m not a gifted, natural musician and have always had to work for everything I’ve done, so that has figured in our musical experiences through the years. 

It has occurred to me that one of the big factors that has enhanced my life is related to World War II. My father was in the military, and when I was a junior in high school we moved from Andalusia to Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was the beginning of a totally new experience for me.

Shortly after arriving at the army base, I had the good fortune of studying organ with a chaplain’s assistant, Lee Sistare, who was a graduate of Union Theological Seminary’s School of Sacred Music where he had been a student of Clarence Dickinson. He introduced me to Dr. D.’s Technique and Art of Organ Playing and plied me with stories of church music in the “Big Apple.”  

During my stay at Fort Bragg, I sang in the Chapel Choir. The chapel was only two doors from our quarters and had a small, two-manual Hilgreen-Lane organ where I was able to practice. 

Following my two years in Fayetteville, I returned to Andalusia for my senior year in high school and had lessons with another Union graduate, Henry Whipple, who lived in Montgomery. I took the bus every other Saturday to Montgomery for lessons with Mr. Whipple, who had been a student of Palmer Christian and Clarence Dickinson. On those same Saturdays, I had piano lessons with the  distinguished pianist Lily Byron Gill. She had studied with Moszkowski in Paris and was a teacher of the old school, who taught Czerny and Hanon, so I was exceedingly fortunate. 

 

How did you learn about DePauw University?

Morgan: A young chaplain, who was from Indiana and knew about my interest in organ and church music, recommended that I consider DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. I had never heard of the school, yet I was determined to go to Union once I had completed my bachelor’s degree. I was granted a Methodist scholarship and thus attended DePauw for my undergraduate study. 

I appeared in Greencastle green as a gourd, having taken the train from Alabama. Alas, I arrived without my wallet! It had worked its way out my hip pocket and went to Chicago on the Monon railroad. Believe it or not, it was returned to me a couple of days later with all the money still in it, so it was another of those serendipitous experiences that has graced my whole life.

My first-year organ teacher was Bernice Mozingo, a graduate of DePauw, and who had studied with Parvin Titus and Palmer Christian. The organ professor at DePauw, Dr. Van Denman Thompson, was very particular about taking first-year students, but at the beginning of my second year, I began my study with him. He was unlike any musician I had ever known.  

A larger-than-life individual, he graduated from New England Conservatory in one year, took postgraduate work at Harvard, and was teaching college in Arkansas at age 19. He came to DePauw when he was 20 and taught for 47 years. 

His wife, Eula Mae, blind from age three, was a very accomplished musician in her own right. Together they had seven children, the youngest of whom they named Lynnwood in honor of the person known by many as America’s greatest organist, Lynnwood Farnam. 

He was also teaching and performing Messiaen and other contemporary composers long before many other organists of the day. 

The organ used for teaching was in Gobin Memorial Methodist Church, a four-manual vintage Kimball instrument with fabulous strings, and before I arrived, the Aeolian-Skinner Company had added an unenclosed positive. In 1943, a two-manual “Baroque” organ was installed in the balcony, so we had the best of both worlds.

In terms of teaching, he was unique. During an opening conversation at the console, he would sit facing the stop jams and comment on my playing; then he would leave me alone while walking up and down the aisles of the church, return and say, “I think you’d be better to put your third finger on the B-flat.”  

He had an incredible ear. A fellow student said he called up to him during one lesson, “The vacuum cleaner is sounding a flat F sharp. You’ll have to play a little louder.” Besides being a wonderful teacher, he was a fabulous performer and improviser. 

Marcel Dupré came to the campus to play in 1948, and l listened in the back of the church while Dr. Thompson demonstrated the organ for Dupré by improvising a lengthy theme and variations. Upon its conclusion, Dupré stood up and shouted, “Prima, prima!” 

I had wonderful experiences at DePauw and made life-long friends with such people as Charles Heaton and Maureen and Art Carkeek. It was here that I was introduced to the A.G.O. There was a student chapter, and I got my feet wet during my senior year when I served as dean.

 

Mary, please tell us about your college experience and study.

Mary: When I graduated from high school, I was determined to continue organ study but also piano. I went to the University of Illinois because that was a tradition in my family. My grandfather, my father, my mother, my mother’s brothers and sister, and their spouses, as well as my sister and brother and their spouses, were all graduates, so it was a given that I would join the “club.”

I started out as a double major in piano and organ, but after two years I decided to drop the piano to a minor and really concentrate on organ. My teacher was Paul Pettinga, a fine pedagogue and a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory.

When I graduated, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do; however, my brother, who was a ministerial student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, told me about the School of Sacred Music there.

I interviewed with Hugh Porter, was accepted, and attended from 1951–1953. That was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with Hugh Porter and his wife Ethel, which was enhanced by experiences and the varied opportunities that the city had to offer.

 

Was two years the typical amount of time that it took to complete the Master of Sacred Music degree, and did it include fieldwork as well?

Mary: Yes.

 

What was Union Seminary like when you arrived in 1951?

Morgan: Mary and I both arrived at Union the same year—the fall of 1951—and were, of course, overawed by the city. It was the “golden age,” both for the seminary and for the city of New York in terms of church music. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich were both at their prime as professors at Union.

Hugh Porter was director of the School of Sacred Music, having succeeded Clarence and Helen Dickinson, who were still around and still teaching. They came on Wednesday, which was known as D-Day. 

Mrs. Dickinson was quite a character and was the first woman to have received a PhD from Heidelberg University. She was said to be able to talk the horns off of a Billy goat and that she had talked her way into a required course that had been previously closed to female students. She wrote her doctoral dissertation, in German, on Italian art of the Renaissance. 

The Dickinsons taught a course about the history of sacred music, and Dr. D. taught
a course on oratorio solo accompaniment.

Both Mary and I studied with Hugh Porter whose style of teaching was quite a contrast to what I was accustomed. He was very much on-the-bench and over your shoulder while humming and tapping rhythms and penciling, and it took some time to get used to his more hands-on approach.

 

Would you liken him to anyone more recent, such as Russell Saunders’s style of teaching?

Morgan: Perhaps. He had studied with Lynnwood Farnam, a perfectionist of the first order. I have no first-hand knowledge of Russell’s style, but I had the good fortune to study one summer with Arthur Poister following my doctoral degree. With him the music was paramount—the technique secondary!

I also studied with Marilyn Mason who emphasized technique: careful fingering and pedaling. With Dr. Thompson you learned by osmosis!

In New York, one could experience an oratorio every Sunday. At that time, Dickinson was at the Brick Church, Frederick H. Candlyn was at St. Thomas, Harold Friedell was at St. Bartholomew’s, Norman Coke-Jephcott was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Robert Baker was at First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and Vernon DeTar was at Ascension. DeTar was very smart: he presented his oratorios on Monday evenings, thus avoiding competition.

Those were exceedingly memorable occasions; I remember DeTar conducting Honegger’s King David with the Witch of Endor being portrayed by Madeleine Marshall, who was the diction teacher at Union and a wonderful person. We became close friends, and she subsequently came to Evanston to do a program for our A.G.O. chapter. It was a heady time to be in New York. No question!

 

Mary, what can you say about your time at Union?

Mary: My experience was a little different from Morgan’s. He more was interested in the theological studies than I was, although I loved being there and making friends. We had chapel five mornings a week and, like many of us who had jobs related to the seminary, I was in charge of the choir robes. I was constantly cleaning the robes, removing candle wax, and replacing collars. 

I especially remember having a course from Harold Friedell on writing descants. I loved doing that and composed some pretty good ones as a result. I also studied composition with Norman Lockwood for a very short time.  

During my second year, I served a small church in the Bronx with an integrated congregation. In spite of the fact there were so few children in the area, they wanted me to start a children’s choir, so we scheduled the rehearsals for after school. It was an extra trip for me, because I had to take two separate subway lines and a bus to get to the church. 

I did, however, manage to get a small choir to perform some decent anthems. It was a learning experience for me, and I especially enjoyed the children. 

When Morgan and I were married, one of the fathers brought some of the children to our wedding. It was such a thrill to have them there.

 

Morgan, please tell us about your fieldwork experience at Union.

Morgan: For two years, I was fortunate to serve a Lutheran church in New Rochelle, which had had a Union person before me. We were able to perform Messiah with outside soloists (“and I accompanied,” whispered Mary). 

For the first time I had the joy and privilege of working with children’s choirs. Years later after going to Fourth Church, I realized how much I missed this phase of music ministry.

It was a tradition that the Porters invited the entire student body to their cottage in Connecticut for a retreat at the end of each academic year. That’s when Mary and I became serious with one another. The following October, we became engaged and made plans to be married in James Chapel at the seminary. Because our parents and many friends would be attending our commencement, we set Sunday, May 17, 1953, as our wedding date. Dr. Lewis J. Sherrill, author of a powerful book, The Struggle of the Soul, and my spiritual advisor, performed the ceremony. Like the Porters, he and Mrs. Sherrill became like family to us.

Hugh played for our wedding, and our reception was held on the 15th floor of Riverside Church. We left the city for our honeymoon in pouring rain, drove up the Hudson to a rustic cottage, and returned Tuesday for commencement to receive our Master’s degrees. You can imagine the flurry of activity surrounding all of these events!

Following graduation in the summer of 1953, Mary and I were named as musicians for the first Montreat Conference in North Carolina. We accepted this invitation with the provision that, if I were drafted, I would not be able to fulfill my obligation to the conference. Sure enough, I was drafted and had to return to Alabama to report for duty, leaving Mary alone to complete the term. Upon my return to Alabama, my father was diagnosed with a serious illness for which I got a month’s deferment. 

I was in the infantry and trained at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in the crack platoon of the division. The only way that I got through the ordeal was to rely on my sense of humor and say to myself, “If only so-and-so could see me now, crawling with a rifle on my belly under live ammunition!” We were known as the top unit with an A number-one record for performance. 

 

What do you mean by “crack”?

Morgan: “Crack” refers to the discipline that was used in an attempt to “break” (or “crack”) you, but I got through it. 

As fate would have it, Frederick Kent, who had been in the class ahead of me at DePauw, worked in the Third Army Chaplain’s Office at Fort Jackson. He asked me where I would like to be stationed after basic training, and I said Fort Benning. This was the closest base to my home in Alabama and where my sister and brother-in-law were stationed. Being another serendipitous experience and following those eight weeks of hell, I ended up with a plum job at Fort Benning. I was able to practice, took a speed-reading course, and enrolled in a French course, knowing that I was going to need it for my doctorate.

 

Mary, where were you at this time?

Mary: I was with Morgan’s parents in Andalusia. Upon Morgan’s return home after basic training, his father brought out a bottle of champagne for celebration.

Describe your time in Columbus, Georgia, and your activities there?

Mary: After this, we moved to Columbus, adjacent to Fort Benning, where I got a job on the post and did some organ subbing in the area.

Morgan: During that time, we got involved in the church music life of Columbus and were instrumental in founding the Columbus Chapter of
A.G.O., for which I served as its first sub-dean.

 Since I was stationed there for 18 months, we also determined that, if Mary got pregnant by a certain time, we’d be able to take advantage of the Army hospital. It worked and our son, David, was born on May 5, 1955. We call it a historic birthday: 5555!

I was released from the Army that June and then attended summer school in New York to begin work on my doctorate at Union. 

 

Please tell our readers about your year (1955–1956) in England where you attended the Royal School of Church Music.

Morgan: Prior to separation from the Army, I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship, and the following September, Mary and I and our four-month-old son sailed for England where I began study at the Royal School of Church Music at Croydon. At that time and for many years, the Royal School was housed in Addington Palace, which once served as the summer palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary, David, and I had gracious accommodations on the second floor of the magnificent edifice. 

Cyril V. Taylor, a very fine biblical and musical scholar, was the warden of the School. He had been with the BBC Radio Ministry, and at the RSCM, he taught courses on psalmody and hymnody. This is where I became interested in the subject of my doctoral dissertation: Latin Hymnody: Its Resurgence in English Usage. Subsequently, I researched the translation of Latin hymns into English and did a fair amount of research at the British Museum in London.

I had a few organ lessons with Sir William Harris who, at that time, was organist to the Queen at Windsor. I took the Langlais Suite Brève to one lesson, and after hearing one page, he shut the book and said, “I will not listen to such music.”

Then I had the audacity to think I could study with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music. During our initial session and in no uncertain terms, he informed me that I wasn’t ready for him!

He sent me to William Lovelock, professor at Trinity College in London. Like Van Denman Thomspon, he was also a mind-blowing musician. He could write out a melody, harmonize it by writing the alto line, then the tenor, and then the bass, just one voice at a time. So I had almost a year’s study of basic harmony with Lovelock, which complemented my undergraduate and graduate school experiences. 

Gerald Knight, director of the Royal School, was a gracious host to Allen Sever (another Fulbright Scholar) and me and took us on trips to Ely, York, and other cathedral cities. 

I also had the amazing opportunity of hearing Lessons and Carols at Salisbury and King’s College, Cambridge.

We were introduced to Prince Philip during a reception for all Fulbright scholars at the English-Speaking Union. Another time, Sir William McKie, organist at Westminster Abbey, entertained Mary and me for tea. These encounters were among the highlights of our time in England. 

 

After being in England for a year, you returned to Union where you pursued your Doctor of Sacred Music degree.

Morgan: Yes, but unfortunately, we had to shorten our time in England because of my father’s illness, so we returned four weeks earlier than had been scheduled. 

My father died in July 1956, and we returned to Union that September where I began my doctoral study. 

I also assumed the position of minister of music at the Bound Brook Presbyterian Church in Bound Brook, New Jersey, succeeding our friend, Charles Heaton, who had just completed his doctorate at Union. It turned out to be a wonderful experience since the church had a long history of fine church music going back to the days of Ifor Jones, esteemed conductor of the Bach Choir Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

 

Of mention on the current website of Bound Brook Presbyterian Church is: “Many of our former directors of music have become of note in their field. Ifor Jones who was here in the 1930s became the third director of the Bach Bethlehem Choir and has edited many Bach cantatas and anthems. Morgan Simmons was here in the 1950s and went to and retired from Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Other noted names are Charles Heaton and Clifford Case, former U. S. Senator.”

Morgan: Thanks for doing your homework! I had not known of Senator Case’s relation to the church, which is the third oldest church in the state of New Jersey, founded in 1688, and has missed only one service in its history. That was when a battle was being fought during the Revolutionary War on the church grounds. 

We had a blizzard one year while we were there, but we held church with 17 in the choir and 50 in the congregation. I was never so proud of a choir!

Ifor Jones and E. Power Biggs had been contemporaries at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and both came to the United States in 1930. Although Jones was an organist, Biggs excelled in organ and Jones in choral work.

The Bound Brook Church offered abundant opportunities to put into practice what I had already learned and was continuing to learn. 

We had a large children’s choir program of six choirs and enjoyed annual subscriptions to children’s concerts in New York City for six Saturdays each year. They heard orchestral music, took boat trips, and learned about city life—a testament to the generous support of the congregation.

There was a good choir library, also. During our first year, we did the Bach Magnificat, about which the chairman of the music committee was initially very uncertain, but she was delighted that we could actually “pull off” something like that! 

 

Was Mary with you in that position?

Morgan: Oh, yes. Mary was always there accompanying.

 

So Mary, were you playing all of those oratorio accompaniments before they became published scores for organ?

Mary: Yes. I always loved accompanying, even in high school.

Morgan: Our second and third children were born while we were in New Jersey—one between children’s choir rehearsals on a Saturday morning, and the other between church services on a Sunday morning. 

 

How convenient!

Mary: We had a good apartment that came with the job, good train service into New York, and made lifelong friends.

Morgan: At Union, I was studying during the summer with Marilyn Mason (as mentioned above) who was also working on a doctorate. Plus, I studied with John Huston, organist at First Presbyterian Church.

Also mentioned earlier, my doctoral dissertation centered on Latin hymnody. It included the study of plainsong hymns being introduced to the Church of England during the middle and latter part of the nineteenth century.

The dissertation was accepted by Oxford University Press in New York but was rejected by the London office, so it was never published. Mary did all the typing of the 300-page document, and I penned in more than a 100 musical examples in four copies, no less.

 

Did you include footnotes?

Morgan: Oh yes!  

Mary: And I was pregnant at the time!

Morgan: In addition to the dissertation requirement, I had to write annotated program notes for six organ concerts and six choral programs.

 

Now, tell us about your move to Evanston and your job at First United Methodist Church.

Morgan: After six years at the church in New Jersey, I received a joint appointment here in Evanston at First Methodist Church, which became First United Methodist Church, and Garrett Seminary, which became Garrett- Evangelical Theological Seminary. That appointment began in January 1963, and I succeeded Austin Lovelace in both of those positions. Once again, we had the opportunity to do excellent repertory at First Methodist. 

Before Alice Millar Chapel was built in 1962, the church was closely associated with Northwestern. It was the site of many of the university choral concerts as well other musical events.

Shortly after we arrived, the church was the venue for an all Randall Thompson concert with Randall Thompson himself in attendance. On many occasions, we collaborated with the choral forces at Northwestern.  

Mary was technically not on the staff, but she did all of the organ accompanying for the church. We made many close friends, both at the church and at Northwestern.

 

Mary, how did you deal with the orchestral reductions to piano that were then the only available keyboard scores for these large choral works. Did you think that this was a difficult task at all?

Mary:  We did consult the orchestral scores, and I could pull out things that were important. Most of the time, however, I used the accompaniments in the vocal score in order to figure out what should be highlighted.

Morgan: One of Mary’s specialties was the Brahms Requiem, which we performed both in Evanston and later at Fourth Church. In addition to the organ, we added timpani and harp. 

With other scores, such as the Mozart Requiem, we used orchestra, although the first time we did the Mozart at Fourth Church, we used just the organ.

 

Speaking just a bit ahead of ourselves, what was the condition of the organ when you first went to Fourth Church? 

Morgan: It was the original 1914 E. M. Skinner organ that had undergone some additions and changes in the late 1940s, but there had been no mechanical changes. There were no general pistons, yet it had three master pistons that controlled divisional pistons number four, five, and six but not the couplers. We also used one of those master pistons as the general cancel since there was none, and it was important for silence. Needed sound could be provided by the crescendo pedal! 

That first year, Mary played the Mozart Requiem without general pistons, and it was quite something. Also, the organ had 230 dead notes when we went there!

 

Why did you move from First United Methodist, Evanston, to Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago?

Morgan: Essentially, I was not reappointed to my position at the church in Evanston, not on musical grounds but rather ministerial difficulties. There was much turmoil going on in the church at the time, and I was going to be without a job. 

One Sunday in June 1968, a distinguished gentleman appeared after the postlude and introduced himself as chairman of the music committee of Fourth Presbyterian Church. I knew that Fourth Church was looking for an organist, but I also knew that it was the sort of place where one did not apply. He said that they were looking for a new organ and wanted to know what my opinion was. He gave to me the names of three companies that they were considering, complimented me on the service, and left.

That afternoon I received a call from Elam Davies, pastor of Fourth Church, who said that Mr. McLeod and his wife had attended First Methodist Church that morning and liked what they heard. He then invited me to have lunch with him the next day and told me that they were looking for a new organist. We met for an interview, after which he offered me the job. He said that he had plenipotentiary power and was able to do this if I was interested. I told him that the offer was very enticing, but that I had an appointment with a pastor from another church and was not yet in a position to make a commitment.

The next evening I met with Louis Evans, Jr., pastor of the Presbyterian Church in La Jolla, California, who did not have plenipotentiary power and who was not in a position to offer me the job.

The next morning, Elam called me and inquired where this church was. I told him, and he soon got back to me after having looked up the statistics and said, “It looks like a good church, but there’s only one Fourth Church!” I told him that I thought he had majored in persuasion in seminary, and the rest is history. I never had a contract, never had a secretary.

 

What about the administration of the music program at Fourth Presbyterian?

Morgan: I did all of that myself as well as all of the church publications for a time. I did all of my own typing, along with Mary’s assistance in proofreading.

Right at the beginning of my tenure, the organ was front-and-center: they were definitely going to replace the instrument.

Mary: I’d like to intersperse here that it was Elam who suggested that I should be on the payroll. Thus, I became a regular member of the paid staff as associate organist.

Morgan: Unlike any other pastoral relationship that I had prior to this, there was a bond with Elam right from the beginning. We worked together from 1968 to 1984.

At one point, there were a couple of disgruntled choir members who tried to get me fired. Elam said that, even if there were no choir remaining in the loft, I would still be organist and choirmaster. That’s how strong his support was for me. Even after his retirement to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, we remained close friends.

One of my biggest responsibilities was developing the choir. Dr. Davies gave me the authority to hire and fire as necessary, but it took me four to five years to create the choral sound that I carried in my head.

The choir was all paid, and as a result, one always exchanges one set of problems for another. Having never worked with a paid singer before, let alone an all-paid choir, I was presented with a whole bevy of challenges and potential for tension in the ranks as well as dealing with prima donnas.

 

Please talk about the installation of the Aeolian-Skinner in 1971.

Morgan: Elam Davies did not have a good experience with the organ in his previous church in Pennsylvania. As a result, he was determined that the organ was going to be an Aeolian-Skinner, and we engaged Robert Baker as the consultant. We also worked closely with then president of the Aeolian-Skinner Company, Donald Gillette.

The organ was finally installed in the fall of 1971 and was essentially crammed into a very tight and remote space. It replaced the E. M. Skinner instrument of fifty-nine ranks with one of 125 ranks, which made for even tighter quarters.

The big problem was that Aeolian-Skinner was essentially bankrupt at the time, and they cut all kinds of corners on the mechanics of the console, including the combination action, which was very unsatisfactory and which eventually had to be completely replaced. Robert Baker played the dedicatory recital, and we had an organ recital series during the rest of our tenure.

 

Considering that you were there as the organ was being planned, what input did you have regarding the stoplist?

Morgan: I insisted that we had to have a Harmonic Flute on the Great, yet I had to fight for it since in those days 8′ stops were not in vogue! I also insisted that we retain the French Horn. We also saved as much of the original E. M. Skinner pipework as possible.

The very first Kleine Erzähler was included in the 1914 organ, and there is a letter in the archives from E. M. Skinner in which he says the following:

 

I have invented a new stop through my study over this case. I wanted to [include] a Flute Celeste of which I’m very fond; [however] it takes a considerable room and I set about finding a way to take less room. I wanted to make the stop softer than usual, so I had some pipes made to a small scale from the model of my Erzähler. The result is a most beautiful combination—I think the most beautiful soft effect I have ever heard. The sheer beauty of this stop gives me a very great asset and adds another to my list of original stops. I call it Kleine Erzähler which means ‘Little Storytellers.’ The stop is so talkative I have always said it named itself. 

 

It has been retained in the new instrument by Quimby Pipe Organs, along with the Harmonic Flute (1971 Aeolian-Skinner, Opus 1516) and the French Horn (1914 Ernest M. Skinner Company, Opus 210).

 

Considering that Rev. John Buchanan was such a prominent figure in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., describe your day-to-day working relationship with him?

Morgan: John and I had a very good relationship, but it acquired a new dimension because it was my first time  to work with a senior pastor who was younger than I.

Initially, I intuited that John felt I was still “wedded” to my relationship with Elam. It took some time to convince him that this was definitely not the case and that he had my total respect, admiration, and affection. He was very supportive of the music ministry, bringing to the equation his own accomplishment as a trumpeter and love for brass music that eventually led to the establishment of a fine ensemble that continues to enhance worship.

Elam was very much a hands-on pastor; for instance, he’d tell the young assistant pastors when they needed to polish their shoes. I missed that with John because there were times when I thought staff needed to be called to account. 

Elam also had a mind like a steel trap, came to staff meeting with no notes, took no notes, and yet quoted verbatim what was said and who had said it. He kept a calendar in his head, and you knew that he was on top of everything that went on in the church. If he trusted you, you had his total support, yet his was a different style of administration as well as a different style of preaching which was very dramatic and frequently went off topic. By contrast John’s sermons were perfectly crafted, informed by insatiable reading, and on point—qualities that led to his international prominence.

 

Upon your retirement from Fourth Church in 1996, the following quote from the Chicago Tribune speaks volumes.

Quote of John Buchanan, Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1996, “Organist Retires On a High Note.”

 

Pastor John Buchanan, while praising his [Morgan’s] ‘impeccable musicianship,’ also noted one job drawback for Simmons. Over 27 years, Simmons had sat quietly, between musical offerings, through ‘2,688 sermons and 1,700 weddings,’ a patience required in few other art forms.

 

Among your many activities, you’ve enjoyed success as a composer. What can you say about your composing?

Morgan: Most of my compositions can be described as “occasional” pieces. For instance, the impetus for Cityscape was the 1992 annual Festival of the Arts at Fourth Church, “Faces of the City.” It is based on a three-note descending scale (C-B-A) which comprises the opening notes of the popular song, “Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town.” Coincidentally, these same pitches are the beginning of Old Hundredth  (sung every Sunday at church) and are incorporated in the concluding movement of the work, “The Magnificent Mile,” an allusion to the location of Fourth Church. 

Reflections for Oboe and Organ was written for Ray Still, renowned former oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and premiered by the two of us in a recital at Fourth Church in 1976. 

Because I am not gifted with a keen ear like Mary, composing is an arduous task, most of which is done at the keyboard. I may get a musical idea, but I don’t commit it to paper without checking it out at the piano. The sounds of the Fourth Church organ and the acoustics of the building also influenced the coloration of many of my compositions.  

Prelude on a Melody of Sowerby features the Kleine Erzhäler and Celeste, which Sowerby would have heard and played. The piece builds to full organ after a blast from the Festival Trumpet, which dates from the 1971 Aeolian-Skinner.

On the occasion of the Fourth Church Morning Choir tour to Britain in 1990, I composed settings of the Canticles and responses for Evensong, which the choir sang at Bath Abbey, a service at which my mentor Cyril Taylor and his wife were in attendance. The highlight of that tour was the singing of his magnificent hymn tune Abbots Leigh in his presence and in that awesome building.  

 

Your hobbies include gardening and needlepoint. Please tell us how you became interested in these wonderful, non-musical activities. (The photos included here of your garden and needlepoint are testaments to your skills and artistry.)

Morgan: I began doing needlepoint at the age of 18 under the guidance of one of my aunts. The gardening goes back to age four when I was given a dedicated space in our yard for my own plantings. Addiction to the plant world has only grown through the years.

The needlepoint includes over 30 pieces for Fourth Church—mainly the chancel cushions, a cross with attendant panels and replicas of stained glass—plus the large 4′ x 4′ tapestry of The Burning Bush which hangs in the new building at Fourth Church and which was created in honor of the musicians who have served the church.

 

Why needlepoint?

Morgan: It is therapy: I don’t sit still well. I guess that it has had something to do with my itchy fingers!

 

In a statement that you sent to me before the interview, you said the following:

 

I was always sensitive to the fact that I had BIG shoes to fill. In Isaac Newton’s words, ‘If I have seen further than others, it was only by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ I wouldn’t dare to presume that I’ve seen further than others, but I am acutely aware that I have a BIG debt to those who have gone before me.”

 

Because you are a giant in our field, what do you have to say to those of us who are standing on your shoulders?

Morgan: I’ve spoken about the fact that I don’t have outstanding, native musical ability. Whatever success I’ve had has been a combination of managerial and musical abilities. Additionally, I believe that I have a good balance of IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient). 

My IQ is not “off the charts,” but I think that my emotional quotient and my personality play a large part in my ability to relate to people. This is particularly important in working with choirs.

The voice is difficult to teach because you cannot see it, so you have to use your imagination to convey ideas. I would make comparisons between fabrics and sound—beige chiffon or “tweedy” and other such comparisons—to which people could relate. I often quoted the maxim expounded by William Self:  “No one is a soloist; everyone is a soloist,” superb advice for creating a unified quality of sound. This is difficult for me to talk about, and, if anything, it might be perceived to be conceited.

 

I don’t think that you are being conceited. Rather you are being honest and, as you feel comfortable, revealing of your skill in working with choirs.

Morgan: Through the years, I’ve gone through much self-searching and self-evaluation, and I’ve tried to conquer (not necessarily “the demons”) but various issues. I’ve experienced Dalcrose Eurythmics, yoga, acupuncture, and Alexander Technique. 

My sister used to say that the definition of an A-type personality is one who smacks one’s face against the automatic door because you get there before it opens for you. Needless to say, she and I were both A-types and could recognize the trait in each other.

 

Are you saying that this is something you’ve had to conquer over the years?

Morgan: Yes, it’s been both a bane and a blessing—a compulsion to measure up to the goals and responsibilities that I’ve set for myself. There is a big dose of “driveness” in my makeup that comes from my inner drive and my family background.

 

Do you have something else to share about experiencing the world at an early age?

Morgan: As a child, I had the good fortune of being exposed to the outside world. My mother was an incredibly independent woman and well ahead of her time. In 1940, she organized an 8,500-mile driving trip from Alabama to Portland, Oregon, and back. There were seven of us—my mother, sister, and I, an aunt, and a friend of my mother, and her two daughters—piled into a 1938 Buick! 

We stayed with friends and relatives along the way as well as in motor tourist camps (as they were called then), and this was long before the interstate highway system! We saw the Grand Canyon, the World’s Fair Exposition in San Francisco, with Johnny Weissmuller and Esther Williams. Additionally, we visited the Mormon Tabernacle, Carlsbad Caverns, and Yellowstone Park. This was just the start of the world opening up to me.

In the summer of 1949, I joined my family in Germany where my father was stationed. That was the first year of the Salzburg Festival, which we attended, and we also visited Bayreuth where I had the opportunity to play Wagner’s piano.

During our time at Fourth Church, we took the choir on three European tours: Salzburg and Vienna, England, and Italy.  

 

How did the Fourth Presbyterian Church Anthem Series (Hope Publishing Co.) come to be?

Morgan: This was a result of our friendship with George Shorney, who was at that time president of Hope Publishing Co. He became a member of Fourth Church—and I don’t want this to sound immodest—because of the music.

There are 16 anthems in that series: 11 were composed during our years and five were added after our retirement.

 

Who initiated the Morgan and Mary Simmons A.G.O. Scholarship for Young Organists?

Morgan: John Buchanan’s older daughter Diane married Rick Andrew, whose parents, Edith and Edward Andrew, initiated the scholarship with the A.G.O. upon our retirement from Fourth Church in 1996. It is presented annually for students attending a P.O.E. (Pipe Organ Encounter).

I’d like to add that I think the P.O.E. program is one of the best things that has ever happened to the Guild.

 

You also developed an arts series and organ recital series during your tenure at Fourth Church.

Morgan: Before Elam Davies retired, I proposed an arts festival, which he strongly supported by designating funds for its inception. Robert Shaw, Maya Angelou, Dave Brubeck, Gwendolyn Brooks, and other luminaries were featured on this series, which continued until our retirement.

 

Might you comment about the future of our profession?

Morgan: The drop in A.G.O. membership is alarming, yet better and better organists and instruments are appearing on the scene. 

 

What do you think is the reason for the decline in A.G.O. membership?

Morgan: I think that it’s a reflection of society: people are generally not “joiners” anymore.

 

Might it have something to do with the organ’s role in current-day worship?

Morgan: Case in point: some years back I attended a study program at St. Olaf College, and while there I attended a Lutheran church in Northfield. Sitting silent in that church was a fine, tracker instrument while the service was led by piano and guitar. This was disturbing. I’m sorry to say that this is not an uncommon occurrence!

 

Another common thread among those whom I have interviewed is that they have all said the same thing: they became interested in the organ due to their early exposure to the organ in church. Unfortunately, young people are not being attracted to the organ and its music like in the “old days.” This has adversely affected the number of those who are entering the profession.

Morgan: As an early teen, I thought that I was going to enter the ministry, but I eventually realized that my speaking voice was not of the right caliber to occupy the pulpit.

 

Do you have any words of wisdom to pass along to our readers as well as to the next generation of organists and church musicians?

Morgan: I wish that I had some words of wisdom, but I can honestly say that some of these young players are just fabulous. I believe that the future of the profession is in good hands if they can persevere with grace and commitment in the challenging times in which we live.  

 

Thank you, Morgan and Mary. You are the great musicians of the Magnificent Mile!