The Williams Family of New Orleans: Installing and Maintaining Aeolian-Skinner Organs (Part 2 of 2)

An Interview with Nora Williams

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pennnsylvania, teaches organ and piano at Lafayette College, piano at Moravian College, and is interim director of music at DeSales University. He has recently founded The Vermont Organ Academy, a website dedicated to promoting the organ and its music, located at .

Those interested in organ playing and organ building have since 1909 turned to The Diapason as a font of information. There have been wonderful articles over the years about gentlemen and ladies who have distinguished themselves as organists; Clarence Watters, writing on his mentor, Marcel Dupré, and the recent tributes to Marilyn Mason come to mind immediately. There has been a dearth of information about female organbuilders. Certainly there have been women involved in organ building over the decades, past and present. Recent developments in society in general towards more equality in the workforce can only have a beneficial effect in this direction. We are fortunate indeed to have this historical vignette by the first lady of American organbuilding, Nora Williams.
—Charles Callahan
Orwell, Vermont

An Interview with Nora Williams
March 10, July 1, 2, and 3, 2005
New Orleans

LM: Your family installed and maintained some of the great Aeolian-Skinner organs in this country. How did you get started in the business, and how did your family’s affiliation with Aeolian-Skinner come about? NW: My father-in-law, Thomas Jackson Williams (Jack, or T.J., as he was known) was from Ripley, Tennessee. He came to New Orleans to install a little Möller pipe organ in Algiers Methodist Church, met Jimmy’s mother, and they married. Jimmy was their first son, and then they had Jack—Thomas Jackson, Jr.
I met Jimmy on March 15, 1947, and we got married on March 28, 1947. (We waited a week because his daddy was out of town.) We knew it was a take from the beginning. I had been singing with a band on a riverboat, had signed to go on tour in a road show, and was supposed to leave town for rehearsals in Mobile on March 23. When I met Jimmy, and we fell in love, I told him I had to leave town on the 23rd. He said, “You’re not leaving, even if I have to marry you to keep you here.” I said, “That’s the only way you’ll keep me here.” Sure enough, we got married in the same little Methodist church where his mother and daddy were married.
I knew nothing about pipe organs. I was just the average person who sat in church on Sunday. As a kid, I would look at the front pipes, wondering how they got all those different sounds out of just 27 pipes. I was always curious about that. The first time I ever ventured into an organ chamber, Jimmy’s daddy was at the console. He waited until I was in the middle of it, and then really let go with a big chord. I went running out of it, thinking, “This thing is a beast!”
Jimmy had been in another line of business. For convenience’s sake, he started working with his daddy, and I went along with them. On one job, in Gilmer, Texas, I was watching Jimmy splicing some cables. He would take his knife and strip a wire, twist it on, then go to the next one. I said, “That looks like fun. Can I do one?” He had four or five lined up in a row. He said, “Sure, go to it,” and handed me a knife and a pair of cutters. I just went phfft, phfft, phfft, phfft, phfft, and had it done in no time, asking him for another one. He said, “Did you already finish that one?” When I said yes, he said, “Look, I’ll go do something else!” He handed the whole job over to me. That is how I got started. We went from job to job after that.

LM: Were you working for Möller exclusively at that time?
NW: Daddy was his own independent service man, but did a lot of work for Möller, and had always taken care of the organ in Kilgore [*First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas], which was a Möller at that time. In 1948, Roy Perry [*organist-choirmaster at First Presbyterian Church for 40 years] wanted to make some changes in the organ, and asked Möller to do the work. Möller told him they were too busy to fool with it, so Roy went to Boston and talked to G. Donald Harrison about the changes he had in mind. Mr. Harrison said Aeolian-Skinner would be happy to make the changes. Roy told him he wanted his own organ men to do the installation, and Mr. Harrison agreed, since Aeolian-Skinner always sent out an outside crew to do its installations.
We got on the job, and in no time, had it finished. Mr. Harrison was astonished that it had gone so smoothly, without our ever calling in griping about not having this or that. He was so impressed that he asked us to go to San Antonio to put up an organ at Laurel Heights Methodist. We went down and installed it, and, again, Mr. Harrison was pleased with our work. Meanwhile, Aeolian-Skinner was about to ship the organ out to First Baptist, Longview, Texas, and Mr. Harrison asked us to install that one. He came down on the train during its installation—he loved taking trains. One of the biggest compliments we ever received in our career took place when we were up in the organ chamber. Mr. Harrison said, “Would someone go down and turn on the wind, please?” Jimmy said, “Mr. Harrison, the wind is on.” He looked at the reservoir and said, “Oh, my word, it is.”
And, so, we had a marvelous relationship with the company from the very beginning. Mr. Harrison started requesting us for other installations. Meanwhile, Roy was so carried away with “The Boss,” as he always referred to Mr. Harrison, and with the sound and the product, that if anyone came to him for advice about an organ, he would say, “Aeolian-Skinner.” All Roy had to do was get an organ committee to Kilgore. Once he played the organ for them, they would just cry, it was so beautiful. There was no question who they were signing with, especially when they found out Aeolian-Skinner cost more than anybody else did! They wanted the top of the line.

LM: That Kilgore organ is a special organ among Aeolian-Skinners. Is this because of Roy Perry?
NW: He had a lot to do with the scaling, but it was a collaboration between Harrison and Roy. Roy knew what he wanted to eliminate from the old organ. I know he insisted on keeping the Vox Humana and French Horn, because they were outstanding, among a few other things. People were outgrowing Vox Humanas at that time, but Roy could see beyond this trend, and thought the Kilgore Vox was very effective.
We always called Kilgore “Mecca.” When we heard that Trompette-en-Chamade for the first time, we didn’t know what to think. [*A-S Opus 1173, Kilgore, Texas, contains the first Trompette-en-Chamade installed in the United States.] We thought, “Did we do this right?” Roy was just scared to death. We had never heard such a thing, but knew it had to be spectacular. We thought about putting flags on it, and someone even suggested shooting me out of a cannon over the audience the first time it was played. But, as it turned out, it was more than a success. When Willie Watkins [*William Watkins, organist at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., and later organist-choirmaster at Georgetown Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., for 40 years] played the Healey Willan Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue on it in 1950, it just knocked everybody over. We knew we had gotten it right.
It wasn’t long before we became representatives for Aeolian-Skinner—Jimmy, his dad, and Roy. As time went by, the bookkeeping became difficult. With the down payment on the contract price, then splitting the commission three ways every time a check came in, they finally gave Roy all the work in Texas, and we took all the work in Louisiana and Mississippi. But, we all worked together on each installation and on all the tonal finishing. That is the way it was for years.
Roy always came into a job before the pipework was committed, so he could set strengths and work out the scaling. Everywhere we worked, he would bring sample Cs and set them on site in the church, so that by installation time, the pipes were ready to go. This was our way of life for years and years. Occasionally Mr. Harrison would ask us to go out of our own territory for an installation, like St. Luke’s Methodist in Oklahoma City, or First Methodist in Marlow, Oklahoma.

LM: What was Mr. Harrison like?
NW: Mr. Harrison was a work of art. His hair was snow white, his eyes so blue, and his complexion so red that he looked like the American flag. He was striking and very beautiful—and laid back. We would haul him off to little towns like Georgetown, Texas, and he would love it. There was a restaurant in Georgetown that had wonderful scotch. He was devoted to scotch. He and his wife, Helen, had a little dog that Roy called a “Maggie and Jiggs” dog. It looked like it was made out of sticks. When they got onto the train, she would put this little dog into her knitting bag, and carry it on with them. Don’t ask me the dog’s name. Anyhow, after Mr. Harrison would take a sip of scotch, he would say, “My word, but scotch is good.”
But, Roy was the biggest character of anyone in my life I’ve ever met. He was a man of many moods. The first time I ever met him I was sitting in his office, which also doubled as the choir room. He came walking in, and I said “Good morning, Mr. Perry.” He just growled at me and did not say a word. I thought, “Well, pardon me!” I was petrified. But, after that, it wasn’t long before we became such good friends that he’d call me every night in New Orleans and say, “What are you cooking for dinner?” All of us loved to cook. He always called me a “Dolless,” saying I was a “doll turned inside out.” You work that one out for yourself.
Roy loved to giggle and have fun when he felt relaxed with people, but he could also be very mischievous. Margie and Marvin Hall had the drug store across the street from Roy’s church in Kilgore. Marvin was the druggist, and his wife expanded the store with gift items, traveling all over the country to stock it. Roy never went to the church without stopping by the drugstore to say good morning. One year, Roy’s birthday came along and Margie wanted to take him out to dinner to celebrate. Roy agreed to it, but made it clear to her he did not like anyone drawing attention to his birthday in public. He asked her not to have a cake or have anyone sing to him. Sure enough, after dinner, here came the waitress with a birthday cake and candle, singing “Happy Birthday.” Roy did not say a word. He just sat there and gritted his teeth. When he got home, he called a local chicken farmer and had him deliver a truckload of chicken fertilizer to Margie’s house and dump it in her front yard. Not only did it burn the grass, they had to hire someone to come haul it off, and the city fined them a $500 nuisance fee. They never bought Roy another birthday cake!

LM: When you installed an organ, did the church pay you, or did Aeolian-Skinner?
NW:The company paid us per job. We didn’t have a salary. We received ten percent of the contract price. If we needed incidentals, we would keep a list of our expenditures and Aeolian-Skinner would reimburse us. But, they always sent so much to the job, like friction tape and spools of wire, that we were pretty well set. We used our own tools, like a table saw and drill press, and just set up shop on site.

LM: After that first job in Gilmer, you were relegated to wiring?
NW: Oh yes, from then on. Jimmy hated wiring. The first kind of cable we had was cotton covered, with paraffin on it. I had to get it all straightened out, then “buzz it out” on the other end, meaning each end had to be identified. All the wires were white, so we would set up earphones on one end, using a little doorbell on the other to identify the different groups. The cable was done in groups of ten wires, so you could identify the groups as 1–10, 11–20, and then lay it in neatly going up the spreader strip. If I had a 61-note switch, I would hook that up first, then “ring it out” with the doorbell at the other end, to make sure everything was in order. It was messy. When I would untwist the wires at one end, I would end up with wax all over the floor. But, it was a system that worked. When the company told us they were switching to a new type of color-coded cables, I was sure I would never learn it, having figured out my own system. But, once I saw it, it was a dream. I could hook up one end, keep my own notes on it, and then hook up the other end and solder it without ever having to ring it out. Nothing made me happier in life than to have a switchboard full of wires to work on. I loved it!
When we were installing the organ at First Baptist in Longview, there was a copper shortage, and cable was hard to come by. Roy finagled around and got a roll of cable from somebody at the telephone company, which was disastrous. The wires were wrapped in paper, and I had the time of my life cutting that paper so the wires wouldn’t touch each other. If I’d had to do that on all the jobs, I would’ve headed for the hills.
Mabel Birdsong was organist there at the time. After she retired, they had a husband and wife team. He directed the choir, and she played the organ. We still serviced the organ then. The last time we tuned there, the wife came in and played a few notes, and said, “This note isn’t in tune.” I told her to just turn her head slightly, and it would be in tune. She didn’t understand that a note doesn’t sound the same in one area as it does in another. I learned that ages ago! Her husband, the choir director, was so jealous of that big Aeolian-Skinner console that he asked Jimmy to cut off the top of it. He said it “shouldn’t be the focal point of the church.” Later on I found out he had built a set of steps behind the console so he could stand above it and be the focal point himself! The pastor’s wife, Mrs. Ford, told me this, and I asked her if he ever got a nosebleed. Of course, we had worked with the church’s architect in the first place to design that console to match his designs for the building. It suited it perfectly. When that choir director asked Jimmy to cut off the top of the console, Jimmy told him yes, but they’d have to do without the combination action, couplers, and top few rows of drawknobs. That is the last time we ever entered that church. Those people were out of their element.

LM: What was Mrs. Birdsong like?
NW:She was the sweetest thing in the world. Her husband was wonderful. Their son, “Sonny,” is also a wonderful person. When they put parking meters in downtown Longview, Mr. Birdsong, senior, would go to the bank and get a bag full of nickels. He would walk around town, and if he saw an empty parking meter, he’d feed it, staying one step ahead of the law. That was his fun, going all over town feeding parking meters.
Mrs. Birdsong was a sweet, docile Southern lady. Dr. Ford, the minister at First Baptist, would say during the service, if her playing got too ambitious, “Mabel, you’re playing too loud. Tone it down a little.” Honey, this was East Texas! We didn’t like roll tops, and this organ did not have one in its design. So, Mabel brought a tea towel from home and put it over the keyboards, “to protect the little darlings.”
One time we were working at St. Mark’s in Shreveport, and Mabel came by with Sonny. She asked Jimmy to come over to First Baptist in Longview to fix a problem she had with the console. He asked her what it was, and she said, “I’ve got it right here in my hanky.” She pulled her hanky out, unrolled it, and there was the cancel button. Bless her heart. Can’t you just see her walking around with a cancel button in her purse?
They were such sweet people. Mr. Birdsong would catch squirrels in cages and then take them out into the woods to set them loose.

LM: William Watkins told me Roy Perry would borrow the Longview 32' reed and use it in the Kilgore organ for long periods at a time.
NW: I remember they were making a recording at Kilgore once and there was one note on a reed that sounded just fine in the church, but sounded terrible on the playback tapes. We borrowed the undertaker’s car and borrowed the same pipe from the Longview organ for the recording. For some reason, it worked just fine!
Roy loved going to Boston, and he would run up there at the drop of a hat. He had a name for everyone: Tommy Anderson was “The Leprechaun,” and John Hendricksen was “The Dike Plugger.” One of the fellows in the shop, Bill McKenzie, once asked Roy if they had armadillos in Texas, and Roy said, “You’d better believe it. We’ve got them all over the place. When I get back to Texas, I’m going to send you one.” When he got back to Kilgore he got a bottle of booze, wrapped it up in a box, wrote on the address label, “Caution: One live armadillo,” and shipped it off to Boston. When Bill received it, he was too scared to open the box.
Mary McGaffigan was the secretary who handled all the company’s correspondence and sent out our checks. Roy would call her up and say, “Mary, go rattle your tambourine and see if you can come up with some money for us.” Whenever he wanted money, Roy would say, “Go rattle your tambourine.” But, Aeolian-Skinner always paid us on time. We had the perfect setup. The company was ideal to work for, and never gave us any problems. However, it was sometimes interesting to arrive on a job to see how the church people would receive us. Some of them saw us as common laborers, and others treated us like master craftsmen. Once, I was walking down the hall in a church in San Antonio in my work clothes. These ladies were having a tea, and insisted I come in and join them. Here I was in my work clothes, sitting in this brocade chair in an elegant parlor, sipping tea, and eating cake. They were very gracious and lovely. Other places were not like that. If they saw me coming down the hall in my work clothes, they would turn their heads to avoid having to acknowledge me. Of course, I can’t be bothered by that. Just the snooty churches acted that way.

LM: In Dallas?
NW: Houston! One minister there would turn his head rather than say hello to me. For recitals, of course, I would get dressed up. That was a different ballgame. He would then say, “Hello! It is so good to see you.” I wanted to say, “I’m the one you turned away from this morning!” So much two-faced phoniness goes on behind the scenes in churches that the average person never sees or realizes. Churches are often very shallow, for what they are supposed to represent.
Jimmy and his daddy were working in a church in Shreveport, pre-Aeolian-Skinner, re-covering some valves. This was before they had discovered my abilities, so I was absolved from doing any work. I was just sitting around. The preacher asked me if I liked poetry, and I said yes. He invited me up to his office, where he had lots of books. We went down the hall and around the baptistry full of flowers—it must have been a Baptist church. As we walked by, just to make conversation, I said, “Oh, these flowers are so beautiful.” He said, “They’re not as lovely as you are.” Red flag! We got to his office and I grabbed a book out of desperation. He had a new wire recorder he wanted to show me, saying they were able to record the services to take to the hospitals for people to hear. As he was demonstrating it, he kept getting closer, and closer, so I backed away behind his desk. I tried the opposite direction, and he followed me. After about three times around his desk, I flew out that office door. If I had told Jimmy’s daddy about it, he would have clobbered that man. I had already learned that.
Old St. Anna’s Church here in New Orleans was condemned, and had to be torn down. It had a pipe organ, so we disassembled it for storage. It had a very nice wainscoting in the choir chamber, and Jimmy’s daddy wanted to save it. We had a big chute going from the organ to send parts down to the main floor. Jimmy’s grandpa was still alive, and he, Daddy, and I were on the floor, with Jimmy and some other men up in the organ. We had some sawhorses set up, and I was knocking out nails, while Grandpa put them into little bundles. This man walked into the church and watched, and watched, and watched me while we worked. I didn’t realize it, but Jimmy’s daddy was seething. Finally, he had had enough. He looked at that man and shook his hammer, saying, “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you ever seen a woman work before?” That man’s eyes got big as saucers, and he went tearing out of that church!

LM: When did Mr. Williams, senior, retire from the business?
NW: In the early 1960s. He had a bad fall in an organ chamber in Hattiesburg, and wasn’t able to do heavy work after that. He could still do small jobs, though. He was a good tuner, and used a tuning fork to set the temperament in the middle octave. That is how we tuned in the beginning, too. We didn’t have Peterson tuners then. I was always pulled to be the key holder, and would hold keys with one hand and work crossword puzzles with the other. When they came out with the Peterson tuners, I had to work the tuner with my spare hand. That’s when I started reading magazines and pocket books. I would tear all the pages out and put them onto the music rack. I had to do something or I would fall asleep. Two octaves of tuning will put you out faster than anything! We did have some wonderful adventures along the way, though, and reliving those are the rewards of organbuilding.
For instance, at St. Luke’s Methodist in Oklahoma City, Catharine Crozier and her husband were doing a symposium once, and we were there. It must have been right after we installed the organ. During her recital, someone from the church presented her with an Indian headdress to welcome her to Oklahoma, making her an honorary Indian and giving her the Indian name “Princess Crow’s Ear.” The church did this out of complete sincerity, and it was an honor. Poor Catharine just looked deadpan at her husband, Harold, like “What do I do now?” It was beyond her comprehension. If that had been Marilyn Mason, she would have given them their money’s worth!
Another memorable adventure we had was serving dinner to the Duruflés in Houston. They were playing a program at First Methodist, and we invited them over to Charles Moseley’s apartment following their recital. Mrs. Duruflé had to do all the translating because he could not speak English. Mr. Duruflé became very tired, and she explained it was such a strain on him not knowing the language. We were running late with dinner and could see he was getting edgy sitting out on the sofa, so Jimmy went out and gave Mr. Duruflé the menu. When he heard we were serving a chateaubriand with Madeira sauce, he perked up. It was something he had been missing on their tours, having been subjected to American cooking. Jimmy prepared a wonderful French dinner from beginning to end, and had carefully chosen the wines, too. The Duruflés were very friendly. She played the Liszt “Ad nos” on that recital, and it was just wonderful.

LM: Did you know Claire Coci?
NW: Oh, yes. She was from New Orleans, and was delightful and unpretentious. She felt at home in any setting. She was an exciting player, a fancy dresser, and wore a lot of makeup. She used to play in Laurel a lot, and I have a wonderful photo of her seated at the old Austin console there at First Presbyterian Church.

LM: How about Nita Akin?
NW: Yes. We installed the big Aeolian-Skinner in her church, First Methodist Church, Wichita Falls. That was a fine installation, except that Nita insisted on retaining a lot of their old Reuter, saying she needed certain stops “to bury babies.” She also insisted on keeping the old organ’s floating string division, available on every manual, so she could use it in the background to accompany prayers.

LM: Did you also know Dora Poteet Barclay?
NW: Yes. Perkins Chapel and Highland Park Methodist, in Dallas, came along right after we started with the company. Did you know that Dora could not reach a full octave? She was so tiny, and her hands so small, that it is a miracle she could play at all. But, she sure could get the job done. She was very nice and easygoing with us, but cracked the knuckles of her students from time to time. She wanted everything just right out of them. We also put in the organs at Caruth Auditorium, Lover’s Lane Methodist, Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist, Temple Emanuel, and Church of The Incarnation, all in Dallas.

LM: How many employees did you take along for big lifting jobs at installations?
NW: We didn’t have employees, per se, but hired casual labor onsite for our installations. We had our own hoisting ropes and block and tackle. Jimmy wanted to keep everything on our own level, without having to worry about part-time or full-time employees. We did not want that kind of responsibility. When we put in the Aeolian-Skinner at St. Mark’s Church, Beaumont, Texas, we hired a local sheepherder to help. Right after that installation, we had to immediately start putting in the organ at Rayne Memorial Church, here in New Orleans. The sheepherder asked if he could come work on it for us, and Jimmy said yes. About two weeks into the job, Jimmy sent him to the hardware store for supplies. On the way back, he wrecked our car. That is why we preferred doing our own work—to avoid such headaches. We did however, have Tom Cotner work full-time for us for several years in the early ’60s. He joined us when we were putting in the organ at First Presbyterian Church in Wichita Falls, Texas. He stayed with us until 1965, when he went on his own. He is on my “A” list—very talented, and I would trust him with anything.

LM: Was there a noticeable change at Aeolian-Skinner after Mr. Harrison’s death?
NW: Yes—slowly at first. I think organbuilding was just a hobby for Joe Whiteford. He was a nice man but was a rich playboy. His family had money, and his job at Aeolian-Skinner was prestigious, but he did not sweat to put out organs as Mr. Harrison had. His main interest was opera, and he enjoyed going to all the opening night performances. He had a certain amount of input of value, but not like Harrison’s. After Mr. Harrison died, Joe realized the job was more than he could handle. He eased out of it, and that was the decline of the company. It went slowly downhill from there.

LM: How did you react to the news of Mr. Harrison’s death?
NW: I cried and cried and cried. And, I could do it very easily right now, too.

LM: I’ve heard that you would sometimes rescale some organs as they arrived from the factory after Mr. Harrison died.
NW: Honey! At St. Mark’s in Shreveport I had to cut every mixture pipe in that organ! They locked me in a room! Roy and Jimmy would take a sample pipe and figure out how high they wanted it cut, then would give me the proportional dividers. I would scribe it, go through and get them all marked, then cut them up. This went on for over a week—maybe even two. We would do this and not let the bosses know. It was always, “Don’t tell Whiteford,” or, “Don’t tell Gillett.”

LM: So you did it with other organs, too?
NW: Oh, yes—First Baptist in Chattanooga was one we messed with a lot. Don Gillett sent down what he thought were the perfect mixture compositions. We had boxes of our own pipes and used them to rescale his mixtures. Nobody ever knew the difference. In fact, Roy had taken Gillett to task when he was setting up the composition for those mixtures in the first place. Gillett would not back down, though, so Roy agreed to it. However, when the organ arrived, Roy had us change the mixture compositions to his own liking. When Gillett came down to try the organ, Roy asked him what he thought of the mixtures. Don played a few notes and said, “See, I told you it would work!” Roy said, “You were right.” We would go behind his back and change all sorts of things, and he never knew the difference.
This was just at the time of the death throes of the company. Aeolian-Skinner had hired a man from Canada to oversee all the installations. When we got on the job at First Baptist in Chattanooga, he had us working long hours. He really pushed us, and we would work some nights until midnight. He brought a man and his son from Canada to assist in construction and erection, while we worked on metal and wiring. At the end of each day, we would go back and soak in a hot tub—it was wintertime. Finally, this man from Canada came in and said, “Look, they’re running behind at the factory. Slow down!”
The Chattanooga organ is a nice one, but it was a difficult installation for all of us. Everything was coming down to an intermediate switchboard, so I had double the amount of cables to hook up. One wall of the room where I was working was covered with fiberglass. I didn’t realize it, but I was being covered with fiberglass particles. My arms felt like needles were going through them. And, at some point, Jimmy fell through a floor. Plus, it was cold, cold, cold.
Don Gillett came down to Chattanooga and was out at the motel with us. He always drank something called “Heaven Hills Whiskey.” Roy called it “Heaving Hill.” While we were sitting there, having drinks, Don told us about all the changes going on in the company. I looked at him and said, “This is the end, isn’t it? This is the swan song.” He wouldn’t say yes, and wouldn’t say no. I could tell by his silence, though, that the end was near.

LM: Was that your last installation for Aeolian-Skinner?
NW: No. Laurel, Mississippi was our last job with the company, although we rebuilt the Aeolian-Skinner in Columbus, Georgia shortly thereafter. We did the Columbus job independently. Don Gillett had overseen its installation, and it was a disaster. The preacher there, Jim Johnson, who had been in Laurel, Mississippi, was trying to get his former organist, A.G. Bowen, to come from Laurel to take the organ job. A.G. told the preacher he would only take the job if the organ were completely redone. The preacher said fine (he was one of the few preachers on the side of music), so, Jimmy and I went up to see it. I was very apprehensive. It was such a mish-mash that every piece of wood had a different job number on it. Aeolian-Skinner had made the organ out of scraps, and had used anything they had on hand, so that there was no continuity to it. Behind the façade was an enormous drape made out of what must have been the most absorbent material possible. The organ sounded like someone talking with his hand over his mouth. Everything was undercooked, and I had no confidence we could do anything with it. Jimmy was convinced we could, though, and we set up shop. Jimmy set up a voicing room, and we had John Hendricksen come down and revoice everything. We tore down acres and acres of cloth, rescaled things, and added an exposed division and a big reed. It turned out to be one of our best installations—First Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Georgia.
Jimmy incorporated the exposed Great into the existing façade, which had gold pipes. On the back of the new chest was a metal flute. This rich lady from the church came in one day and told us she did not like the way that flute looked there, and that her “architect” said its pipes should also be gold. Roy had already programmed one of his famous silver flutes into the design of the rebuilt swell organ, so he said, “Well, we’ll just have to have a ‘gold flute,’ too.” So, First Presbyterian, Columbus, Georgia is the only organ I know of that has a “Flute D’Argent” and a “Flute D’Or.”

Lorenz Maycher has recently been appointed director of music at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church, Laurel, Mississippi, and is producer of the compact disc series, “The Aeolian-Skinner Legacy,” found at . His interviews with Thomas Richner, William Teague, and Nora Williams have been published in The Diapason.

Among his many admiring colleagues, Albert Russell is considered not only a prince of the organists’ realm, but as a gentleman’s gentleman. These attributes are rare enough in this day, but they are uniquely combined with great humility, affability and graciousness.
Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know him for years know also of his dry wit and wonderful good taste. His recently released Aeolian-Skinner Legacy recording [See p. 20–Ed.] enables his outstanding musicianship to be shared with a new following of fans, all of whom will be delighted that he has generously given this fascinating interview.
—Charles Callahan
Orwell, Vermont
July 2007

Lorenz Maycher: Tell me about your early years, and how you got interested in the organ.
Albert Russell: I was born in Marlin, Texas, which is near Waco. Later, we moved to Stamford, near Abilene, out in the Panhandle. I was interested in the organ from early childhood and used to go to choir practice with my mother and drive the organist crazy, reaching up and playing the keys while they rehearsed. I started piano lessons at the age of six, and organ at twelve, taking lessons on a two-manual Estey at the Methodist Church, where the highest pitch was 4′. My teacher would put on the sub-coupler and say she was “searching for depth.” She gave me mostly transcriptions. Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor, Caprice Viennois of Fritz Kreisler, and Dreams of Hugh McAmis were some of my pieces. I went to my first lesson wearing tennis shoes, but she got rid of those. Her students were not allowed to use the tremolo while we were practicing, because she was afraid it would break and she wouldn’t be able to use it on Sunday. She kept a clothespin on the tremolo stop so we wouldn’t use it. There was a ceiling fan above the console in the choir loft where birds would build nests that would fall into the choir loft. Dick Bouchett was one of her students, and later we were good friends.
I left Stamford when I graduated high school and went to study with Robert Markham at Baylor, where I had a full scholarship. Baylor had a good music department, and Markham had built the organ in the main auditorium there; it was installed beneath the stage and had some theatre organ stops in it. He was organist at First Baptist in Waco, where he played a large Pilcher. He was very good to me and brought me back after I had left Baylor to accompany Messiah. I was also chapel organist at Baylor, and was organist at First Lutheran Church in Waco, and, later, First Methodist Church in Marlin.
Then I was in the Air Force, stationed in Bryan, Texas, and was fortunate to get to play in the civilian churches. I would play the chapel service using a field pump organ at first and then we got a Hammond, which made me feel like I was playing a five-manual Skinner. After the service I would then go into town and play at First Presbyterian. When I got out of the Air Force, I went to the University of Texas in Austin, and auditioned for and got the job at University Methodist Church, which was a nice position. Archie Jones, who taught in the music department at the university, was the choir director. It was great fun to try to play the organ loudly enough to support a congregation of 1200 Methodists singing “the good ole hymns!” I would have been an organ major, had we not been required to play from memory. I can memorize, but have never felt I played as well from memory. I don’t make music as well—too busy worrying about the notes. Gerre Hancock, Joyce Jones, and Kathleen Thomerson were some of my classmates at UT. Gerre played at University Baptist Church. The organ at UT was the first Aeolian-Skinner I had any contact with, and it was such an eye opener. I studied organ with John Boe and Earl Copes and learned from both of them. Earl Copes now lives in Sarasota, Florida and is still playing recitals. We are still in contact.
The summer of 1953, I came to Washington, D.C. I had heard William Watkins play a recital at Baylor and vowed then that I’d like to study with him. And sure enough, I did in the summer of 1953. He was so wonderful to me, and got me jobs playing the organ all over town. When I got to Washington, I had $50 in my pocket, so had to get a job in a hurry.

LM: You came to Washington just to study with him?
AR: Yes. Studying with him that summer was such a great experience that I decided to come back to Washington in January 1954 to work with him some more at the Washington Musical Institute, where I completed my bachelor’s degree.
I had gone to a fortune-teller in San Antonio, and she had said I would find a job not related to music in Washington within three days of my arrival. Sure enough, the third day I was hired as a flunky in the office of Senator Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current president. And again, thanks to Bill Watkins, I was busy playing in churches all over town. He opened up a whole new world for me and presented me in recitals at his own church, New York Avenue Presbyterian. I got to know many of the Washington musicians through him and vowed then that, if I were ever offered a job, I would move here. And, sure enough, here I am.
In the fall of ’54, I enrolled in the master’s program at Union Theological Seminary in New York, studying organ with Hugh Porter. He taught his lessons on the E. M. Skinner at the Academy of Arts and Letters. That first year I had a little church job in Cloister, New Jersey, and took the bus out there. The second year, I played at West End Collegiate Church on an old Roosevelt that had been redone by Austin. Donald McDonald had been there, and he turned over the reins to me. We had eight professionals for the choir. It was a fun job.
That year, I decided to study organ with Searle Wright just to get a different perspective on things. I got to play a number of noonday recitals at St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia, where he taught his lessons. Searle’s accompaniments of oratorios at St. Paul’s were superb. He would always laugh and say if he didn’t have such good acoustics, he’d be fired. He didn’t have time to practice a lot, but he always played wonderfully.
I learned about being a good musician from Searle. He always taught such interesting repertoire, like Robert Russell Bennett’s Trio, where all three voices are in different keys. I chided him about that piece for years afterwards for giving me something so difficult. It is a good piece, but is disconcerting!

LM: Every time I run across a recital program of yours, the repertoire is completely different. How did you acquire such a large and varied repertoire, with so much new and challenging music?
AR: I am a fast reader, so can learn quickly. I’ve always had a craving to learn new music, and enjoyed going to Patelson’s to buy music that other organists did not know or weren’t playing. Searle was awfully good about introducing me to music that was not being played a lot.
I also studied composition with Searle. He was never a morning person, and that class was at 9:00 a.m. He was ALWAYS late and just did not want to be there at all! He said I always wrote music that sounded like Delius, which I took as a compliment.
Through Searle, I got to know John Huston quite well, and Robert Crandell, who was at First Presbyterian in Brooklyn. John Huston was at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn with that wonderful Skinner that Virgil’s teacher put in. Charlotte Garden loved that organ. Through the faculty at Union, I made many connections in New York City, and as a result, got to play one of the opening recitals on the new Aeolian-Skinner at St. Thomas in 1956. It was an absolutely thrilling organ. Ed Wallace was the assistant at that time. George Faxon, Henry Hokans, and Clarence Watters were three of the other recitalists on the inaugural series.
During my second year at Union, I was chapel organist and got to accompany the choir’s Christmas concert, with Ifor Jones conducting. I once made the mistake of giving him a pitch with the celestes on. Well, I never did that again!

LM: Was Ifor Jones just a terror?
AR: He could be very hard on people in choral conducting class, and some were reduced to tears. He would say, “You should be a butcher, rather than a musician.” But it certainly separated the men from the boys. He would never allow anyone to conduct a straight four-beat pattern, which he thought was square, but insisted on a flowing, musical pattern. I think I learned as much from him, musically, as anybody.
However, years later, George Faxon and I often combined choirs. Once, we were rehearsing the In Ecclesiis of Gabrieli at Trinity, Boston. I was conducting and George was at the organ. Roger Voisin, the first trumpet in the Boston Symphony, was also playing. He said, “George, I cannot follow Mr. Russell. Would you please conduct?” So, we traded places. It was not funny at the time, but is now that I look back on it. I had always used Ifor Jones’s flowing style of conducting and, of course, orchestral people never knew where I was.
At Union, I also learned an awful lot from Robert Shaw’s mentor, Julius Herford. We all laughed at him at the time for what we thought was his overly romantic interpretation of Bach. Actually, he was making music. We were too young to appreciate that.
Charlotte Garden taught oratorio accompaniment. She was a terrific teacher and organist—and was fun. She was so tiny that she looked like a peanut sitting at that huge Möller console at her church, Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church in Plainfield, New Jersey. She and Virgil were always vying for who could play the large Reger works the fastest.
I studied improvisation with Harold Friedell, and got to play one of the Lenten recitals at St. Bartholomew’s. He was also good to me and had a wonderfully dry wit. He taught at the church, and I would think of what I was going to improvise on while on the subway on the way to the church. As you know, his music is very modal. He improvised in the same style and taught this style for improvisation in service playing. Thank goodness we did not have to improvise fugues or strict form, because I would not have been good at it. Friedell’s service playing was smooth, and he used the organ beautifully—including the dome organ and all those goodies up there.
I remember Virgil came to the Lenten recital I played at St. Bart’s. I did the “Sicilienne” from the Duruflé Suite, and used the dome Vox Humana—shouldn’t have been using it, but Virgil thought it was the highlight. Bobby Hebble and Ted Worth were there with Virgil—we were good friends. I had gotten to know Virgil through a friend of mine who was a tenor in the choir at Riverside. He thought I should play for Virgil once. So I did, and that is how I got started substituting for him whenever he was away, and playing oratorio accompaniments, which was a good experience for me. Dick Weagly conducted the choir and he was a good musician.

LM: When you played for Virgil Fox, what were his comments?
AR: He said, “I like the way you pull stops.” That’s all I remember. But, I learned so much from him just by observing. I had first heard him in recital at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas in 1948. It was electrifying. I also heard Marcel Dupré that same year at McFarlin Auditorium at Southern Methodist University. I’ll never forget Dupré’s recital. It was the first time I heard the Widor Toccata. The Hillgreen-Lane organ was in such poor condition that they had to work on it for a solid week to get it ready for the recital.

LM: Did Virgil Fox practice for hours on end?
AR: Yes, at night. I practiced at night, too. Also, at Riverside, I had to do anything I could to make money, so I ran the elevator, sang in the afternoon choir for oratorios, and ran the switchboard. I probably got $5 for singing, but did learn a lot of repertoire. Virgil loved ice cream, so a lot of the time after practice, we would get in his convertible and go downtown to Rumplemyers on Central Park South. He was not a drinker, so we would have ice cream instead.

LM: Was his playing always prepared?
AR: Sometimes he simply did not have the time to practice, and would come in fresh from a solo recital tour to accompany an oratorio. But his monumental talent always carried him through in great style. Dick Weagly would complain that the organ was too loud, and he and Virgil had many altercations about this. One thing I always admired about Virgil was he stood up for what he believed in, and never changed, whether others thought he was right or wrong. William Watkins was the same way. I got to travel with Virgil some and we had wonderful conversations. He had a lot of personal depth and was a very kind person to many people.

LM: You must have heard some great recitals at Riverside.
AR: Yes. Charlotte Garden, Claire Coci and Searle were some outstanding ones. I remember Claire Coci broke the crescendo pedal.
The summer of ’56, I played for Virgil while he was away. Then, after graduating from Union, I went to Hartford to be organist-choirmaster at Asylum Hill Congregational Church. Soon afterwards, I also got the jobs teaching at Hartt College and as university organist at Wesleyan University.

LM: What was Asylum Hill like when you arrived?
AR: It was very disappointing. I arrived there in August, and people did not go to church in the summer because they were at the shore. There was no air conditioning, so people would not go to church even if they were in town.
We had the services in the chapel, so I had my debut there on a concert Hammond with not many people present. They had gotten rid of the all-professional choir and only had four paid singers. So, in September I really had to start from scratch with volunteers. Later on, we went to eight paid people and started the oratorio choir, which got up to about sixty people. We did all the major works, which I conducted and played. People came from as far away as Boston, Worcester, and Springfield to sing in the choir.
The organ was an old E. M. Skinner, with a very beautiful case, up in the gallery. The Swell reeds were terribly loud, completely obliterating the choir. I was told when I went there to not even think about mentioning a new organ, as the E. M. had just been restored (they had taken out the Swell Mixture and replaced it with a flute celeste). It did have some nice sounds, but soon began ciphering, and finally ciphered on the Tuba on a Sunday morning, which got things going nicely for a new organ.
We formed an organ committee and took them to visit Symphony Hall, Boston, and several other good Aeolian-Skinners. We listened to other builders, but Aeolian-Skinner was by far the preference.

LM: Did Joseph Whiteford design the new organ?
AR: Yes. We drew up the stoplist together. I had met Joe through Virgil, and then later met Paul Callaway through Joe. Both were so good to me, and that started my association with Aeolian-Skinner.

LM: I know a lot of organists who look down their noses at Joseph Whiteford’s instruments, but don’t you think they were beautiful?
AR: Absolutely. Some of Joe’s organs from the early ’60s are among the best instruments Aeolian-Skinner ever built. Philharmonic Hall in New York, for example, was certainly one of the finest. I always enjoyed hearing Joe talk about organs, because he did it from a musician’s viewpoint. Joe had wonderful ears and good taste, but was also a good musician. For my money, that is the reason his organs turned out so well—because they were musical. We spent many hours together at the piano, talking about music and listening to singers. He was exposed to a lot of good musicians, too, and was friends with Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Thomas Schippers, and Earl Wild.
Donald Gillett was also a great artist, and I fully back his work. Both Joe and Gillett did use smaller scales and higher-pitched mixtures than Harrison, but it was beautiful work. You have to remember that we all grew up with organs that sounded like black smoke, where the highest pitch on the entire organ was a 4′ flute. Their organs were a reaction to those. They craved clarity and brilliance, and their organs were suave, beautiful creations.

LM: What were Joseph Whiteford’s goals when he designed the Asylum Hill organ?
AR: One thing he said was, “Let’s build an organ where you can use a lot of it all the time, and not have to save it for Easter Sunday.” It filled the church, but was not a bombastic instrument. I loved it and it played the literature beautifully. In the Ruckpositv, he took the old E. M. English Horn and made a Regal out of it, which was very effective. I used that in the slow movement of the Handel G Minor Suite in the Aeolian-Skinner “King of Instruments” series.
For the opening concert, we did a program for organ and orchestra with the Hartt College orchestra, and did the Seth Bingham Concerto for Organ and Brass, the Poulenc Concerto, and the Handel Sixth—no solo organ repertoire. For the second concert, we did the Duruflé Requiem and I played the Suite.

LM: You made two recordings on the Asylum Hill organ for Aeolian-Skinner.
AR: Yes, the organ solo LP at Asylum Hill included the Healey Willan Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue. We sent the recording to Willan, and he liked some things, and some he didn’t. He thought the organ was too thin for this piece (not having three diapasons on the Great!). The recording also included the organ at Philharmonic Hall in New York City, which I believe was the first recording made on the new organ. Joe Whiteford had been talking to me for a while about recording those two organs, and then he mentioned having the choir do the Duruflé Requiem.
We did the Philharmonic Hall recording first. When we got there, I was supposed to have practice time, but there was something going on in the hall. I had played enough Aeolian-Skinners that I knew what to expect, so I just looked over the organ and set some pistons. When the hall finally emptied, I was able to try out my combinations. We could not start recording until the subway had stopped, which was around midnight, so, I had from 11:00 to midnight to set up the organ and practice. That was it. I practiced and recorded in the same night! When we finally got started recording, we went well into the night. I would stop every hour and take a shower. Joe was present for the session, and the recording engineer for the New York Philharmonic recorded it.
When we made the recordings in Hartford, John Kellner from Aeolian-Skinner did the recording. He was awfully good. We did the Duruflé in a separate session, and as far as I know, it was the first commercial recording of it made in the United States. We sent it to Duruflé, and like Willan, there were things he liked and things he did not like. I hear things now in the recording that I cannot stand—some things that are non-legato that should have been legato, and the choir did not do its best singing—completely my own fault. Ultimately, I did get to coach this with Duruflé when the Asylum Hill choir sang the Requiem at St Paul’s Chapel in New York in about 1964. Duruflé conducted and Madame Duruflé played.

LM: Did you enjoy life in Connecticut?
AR: Living in New York had prepared me for the rough winters. I had always been told that New Englanders were cold people. But I found them to be some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. From day one, it was a happy experience, and introduced me to many people who have become lifelong friends—Barry Wood, at First Baptist, Worcester; Hank Hokans, at All Saints, Worcester; Dick Westenberg. We all played in each other’s churches often. Dick was kind enough to invite the Asylum Hill choir to join his at Central Presbyterian in New York for a concert. George Faxon I got to know through Joe Whiteford, and that was a long, long collaboration. We combined choirs often at Trinity, Boston, and I played for his Evensongs when he was away. Later, when I moved to Washington, he had me come up and accompany the Brahms Requiem during Lent, and the next night I played a Lenten recital. That was a busy time, because I practiced there the week of, got back to Washington Saturday night to play for church Sunday morning, then went back to play the Brahms that night and the recital the next day. The organ at Trinity, Boston was splendid for accompanying. The whole front organ was enclosed, and the console was of George’s special design—low, so you could see over it. That was one of the happiest musical relationships and friendships, with George and Nancy Faxon, I have ever had. We had the best times together and I always stayed at their house. Many late night sessions were spent in their wonderful kitchen over glasses that always seemed empty.

LM: In Hartford, was Asylum Hill the only thriving music program in town?
AR: No. Sumter Brawley did wonderful things with orchestra and chorus, like the B Minor Mass. He was at Trinity Church right around the corner. Can you believe he has now retired and is living in this very building here in Washington? He still conducts marvelous concerts, having done one just recently at the Cosmos Club.

LM: Tell me something about your teaching career.
AR: Hartt College was my first teaching job. I had a lot of good students, and it was a learning experience for me, too. I did the organ and church music courses. Later the college joined the University of Hartford as the music department. We got an Austin in the concert hall. John Holtz, also on the faculty, took over the organ department when I moved to Washington. He was a marvelous teacher—brilliant—a much better teacher than I. He really lit a fire under his students. I was always better at coaching graduate students, rather than starting beginners, which just did not interest me.

LM: Did you start the contemporary organ series at Hartt?
AR: No. John Holtz did, and it really put Hartt on the map. John asked me to review the concerts one summer, and I was so unlikely to do it because I’ve never been a fan of extremely contemporary music. But I had to admit that after a week of listening, it was almost like hearing an old friend.
I was also university organist at Wesleyan. On Sunday nights, I’d go down there to play for chapel then teach the next day. There was a new Schlicker in the chapel. That was an interesting experience, again accompanying oratorios, although most of the time we used instruments with the organ. The Smith College choir would come down and join us. Iva Dee Hyatt was their conductor. She was fabulous.

LM: Were you working seven days a week?
AR: Yes, and I did up until my later years in Washington.

LM: Are you a workaholic?
AR: No. I simply needed the money, and, if I wasn’t teaching, needed to practice for recitals. Here in Washington, even on my day off, I would spend it practicing over at National Presbyterian, rather than going downtown.

LM: When did you come under management?
AR: I got to know Roberta Bailey very well at Riverside, when she was managing Virgil. He was her first client. Then she took on Karl Richter, Hank Hokans, Pierre Cochereau, and Anthony Newman. She and I were friends, and she knew I was already doing quite a bit of recital work, so she invited me to join her. She got me a lot of dates for which I was very grateful.

LM: When did you move to Washington?
AR: 1966. I had been in Hartford ten years. One day I received a letter from the rector at St. John’s, Lafayette Square, asking me if I would be interested in the job. Paul Callaway and George Faxon had recommended me to him. At the time, I had not been thinking of leaving Hartford. But I had always liked Washington a great deal, so was interested. On my way to play a recital in the Midwest, I stopped off here in the middle of a big snowstorm to audition. I was hired in the spring of 1966, and remember weeping bitterly my last Sunday at Asylum Hill, and I cried all the way to Washington. John Harper was the rector who hired me at St. John’s, and was there for my entire tenure as organist. He left me to do my work and was always totally supportive.
Coming here was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Phil Steinhaus was my predecessor. He had been here for two years before leaving to work in Boston at Aeolian-Skinner and the Advent. The organ at St. John’s was a late E. M. Skinner and Son, although Aeolian-Skinner had redone the Great. The choir was a small, professional group of 13, which I had always wanted. The organ was just a mess, and it didn’t take long to convince the rector we needed a new one, which we got in 1969.
I had become interested in Gress-Miles, and thought, in that situation, with the organ stuck in a hole, that an aggressive instrument was the best way to go. There was not enough room to enclose two divisions, which was unfortunate. We had wanted to put the organ in the gallery, but, because St. John’s is a historic structure, we were not allowed to change the room in any way. So, we had to plunk it back in the hole. I worked with Ed Gress on the design of the organ, and he was wonderful. He was a theatre organist, but also knew the classical literature very well and knew its demands. We both drew up individual stoplists, then collaborated on the final one.

LM: How was it for accompanying?
AR: It did as well as it could do under the circumstances, with only one enclosed division. But, if we had gotten a milder organ, it wouldn’t have been successful. The former Skinner there just didn’t get out at all. Paul Hume reviewed the opening recital of the Gress-Miles, and one of the first things he commented on was how much better the new organ got out. I played a solo recital for the opening, and Bob Noehren played another. He was a great mentor of mine. We had met through John Holtz in Hartford. We also did the Duruflé Requiem and the opus 5 Suite on a program. Paul Callaway played the other one—there were four inaugural concerts.

LM: Was the reverberation system in place at St. John’s when you arrived there?
AR: Yes. The church had one of Aeolian-Skinner’s reverberation systems, which allowed one to make music in that practice room situation. The system was very convincing, particularly in the middle of the nave. If you were by the speakers, under the balcony, it was less convincing, although it helped tremendously with hymn singing. There were fifteen speakers, each with delayed sound, and each with its own timing. It was a heck of a lot better than not having it. Christ Church, Cambridge was, I believe, their first one. Joe Whiteford set one up at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston for the 1958 AGO convention. I played the Mozart K. 608 Fantasy, first without, then with, reverberation, and Joe gave a lecture.
At St. John’s, we had several Sunday mornings a year that were all music, so we would do an oratorio. We had excellent singers in the choir, especially after the Kennedy Center opened, which attracted even better singers to town. One time we were doing the Mozart Requiem, and, soon after we began, the alto doing the quartets became ill and had to leave. So, I looked at one of the other altos. She nodded, and sang the quartets without a flaw. Another time we were doing Messiah, and I played the introduction to “And the Glory,” and when it was time for the altos to enter on the opening C-sharp not one alto peeped. So I played it again and, this time, it worked. Explain it.
We hosted several regional conventions in Washington, and the choir either sang programs or services for these. We had the AGO national convention in 1982. I was program chairman for that, and we did the Duruflé Requiem the opening night of the convention to a full house. I’ll never forget the choir processing in to Hyfrydol. Later, they told me, “We just stopped singing so we could hear that enormous, thrilling sound coming from all the organists in the congregation.” You couldn’t put on enough organ. I conducted and played the Requiem, and Donald Sutherland played the Widor Fifth Symphony before the service.

LM: Did you play for a lot of dignitaries at St. John’s?
AR: Yes. Before every presidential inauguration we had an early service. And, every president worshiped there. Once in a while the rector would say, “Let Helen play the last hymn, and you can come out and meet the president.” He was very nice about that. The only ones who were there regularly were the Fords. It sounds glamorous to say the president was there, but security was such an issue that it made life difficult. The Secret Service men would put dogs in the organ chambers. There was one Sunday where we had a bomb scare while the choir was practicing, so we had to finish the rehearsal out on the sidewalk, using a pitch pipe.

LM: You did quite a bit of teaching in Washington, too, didn’t you?
AR: Yes. I got Peabody at the same time as St. John’s, because Phil Steinhaus had been at both, and just turned the reins over to me. Arthur Howes was teaching there at the time. I taught all day on Mondays for $10 an hour. The concert hall had an Aeolian-Skinner, but I taught on a Walcker practice organ with a mixture that could be heard all the way to Washington. I needed my martinis after eight hours of that.
Leo Sowerby also asked me to teach at the College of Musicians. I taught people who came to the college just for organ lessons and who were not college students themselves (there were only eight college students, whom I did not teach). I called my students the “out-patient department,” and they had their lessons at St. John’s. In fact, I met my future assistant at St. John’s teaching her there—Helen Penn. I got to know Leo quite well and learned a great deal from him. I was particularly fortunate to coach Forsaken of Man with him when we did it at St. John’s. He lived on Wisconsin Avenue across from the National Cathedral. We watched the 1968 fires on 14th Street from his apartment. I remember a party where Leo sang “I can’t give you anything but love, baby,” accompanied by Garnell Copeland, organist at Church of The Epiphany. It was something. Speaking of Garnell, I judged the Ft. Wayne competition one year and thought I recognized Garnell Copeland’s style of playing, and sure enough, it was he. We flew back to DC together.
Preston Rockholt was my boss at the College of Musicians. He and Paul Callaway were the organ teachers there. Paul was so much fun. He was tiny, but was a musical giant. He always parked his big Buick convertible car by sound!
I also taught organ at American University and Catholic University. I never enjoyed teaching as much as playing recitals or doing church work. Perhaps I was a good teacher for some people, but I knew I wasn’t for others. Maybe all teachers feel that way. The lovely thing is, some of my former students keep in touch, and we have become good friends over the years.
In the early ’80s, I noticed I had a problem with my right hand. I thought it was carpal tunnel syndrome—something that could be fixed. I would warm up every morning by playing Hanon on the piano for 30 minutes before going to the organ, and noticed it there first. Then, at the organ, I noticed it on the Widor Toccata. One finger, on my right hand, would just lock. So, I went to every doctor in town and in Baltimore, and was not diagnosed. Leon Fleisher had had the same problem, and had been diagnosed at Mass. General, so that’s where I went, to the doctor who had diagnosed him. Sure enough, I had the same thing—focal dystonia—a neurological problem that cannot be cured. I decided to give up the church. I know St. John’s did not understand why I left, and why I have continued to play elsewhere since I left in 1985. But, I had to follow my conscience. I did not want tourists coming from all over the world to a church where the organist could not play major literature. Of course, people were asking right and left for the Widor Toccata for weddings, which was out of the question.

LM: Has your hand problem improved now, twenty years later?
AR: No. It is worse. I have tried everything and have had injections, but they did not work.

LM: Do you play at all now?
AR: Yes. I have done a lot of playing. I have just had to learn which pieces to stay away from—no Widor—and to use bizarre fingering. Fortunately, I have received a number of invitations to play the Duruflé Requiem, which I am still able to do because the most difficult part of the work is in the left hand. Also, I have switched the right hand part in the “Introit” to the left hand. I played it most recently at St. Paul’s, K Street, where I’ve played it several times for Jeffrey Smith, and at National Presbyterian Church. I was fortunate to get to perform it frequently early in my career, too. I also do little recitals for a group of people here in my building and am playing a program for them just this next week at National Presbyterian Church, where I am fortunate enough to practice each week. My good friend, Bill Neil, is the organist there and he is so kind to give me the time. These little demo recitals are very informal—we talk about the organ and I play for them. We just have a good time, like family.
I cannot imagine being more fortunate than I have been all through my school years, career, and now in retirement to have had the teachers, colleagues, friends and bosses who have given me an enormous amount of support and affection.What else is there that matters in life?

Jerome Butera is editor of THE DIAPASON.

One of America’s leading concert organists, Todd Wilson is head of the organ department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He also teaches at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, and serves as organ curator of the Norton Memorial Organ (E. M. Skinner, 1931) in Severance Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra. He has recently been appointed as Artist-in-Residence at Trinity Cathedral (Episcopal) in Cleveland, and as House Organist at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron.
For nineteen years he was director of music and organist at the Church of the Covenant (Presbyterian) in Cleveland. From 1989 through 1993 he was also head of the organ department at Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music in Berea. Prior to these positions, he served as organist and master of the choristers at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York. In New York, he taught on the faculties of Adelphi and Hofstra Universities and was organist of the George Mercer School of Theology.
Todd Wilson has been heard in concert throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. In 1992 he was a recitalist for Austrian Radio in Vienna, and he has performed for the American Guild of Organists national conventions. He has recorded on the JAV, Delos, Disques du Solstice, and Gothic labels.
Todd Wilson has won numerous competitions, including the French Grand Prix de Chartres, the Fort Wayne Competition, the Strader National Scholarship Competition, and the national competition sponsored by the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. A sought-after adjudicator, he has been a member of the jury for many of the world’s most prestigious competitions such as the Nuremberg Competition (Germany), the Calgary International Organ Festival and Competition, the St. Albans International Organ Festival (England), the Grand Prix de Chartres and the Toulouse Festival Competitions (France), and the American Guild of Organists National Young Artists Competition. Todd Wilson is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists, <www.concertorganists.com&gt;.
I met with Todd at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland in May 2008 and at Trinity University, Deerfield, Illinois in April 2009.

Jerome Butera: Tell us about your childhood and early training. Where did you grow up? Did you come from a musical family?
Todd Wilson: I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. My father was an amateur musician—he played the French horn in his early years and always loved the horn. During the years I was growing up, he didn’t have the time to keep up his playing. Then, much later, ten years before he passed away, he went back to horn playing and enjoyed it greatly. My early musical recollections are LPs of Sousa marches and the Mozart horn concertos played by Dennis Brain. My dad played those all the time. To this day I still adore Sousa marches and all the standard horn repertoire.

JB: Did you start with piano lessons?
TW: Yes—my real start in music was at age nine or so. The church we attended was Trinity Episcopal in downtown Toledo, which had a wonderful Skinner organ and in those days a thriving men and boys choir. When I was in the fourth grade I was recruited for the choir. The choirmaster was a wonderful man named Wesley Hartung. He came to our house, we all sat down in the living room, and he said “I think Todd would be a good boy for the choir.” I was just transfixed by the whole thing—I loved the choir, the camaraderie, the singing, and the organ. This was quite a grand old Skinner organ that had many beautiful sounds and a thrilling 32-foot Bombard that shook the whole building.
You can imagine this 9-year-old drinking all this in. I went to Wesley Hartung and said “I want to play the organ.” I can still remember him looking down at me and saying “You shouldn’t even touch the organ until you’ve had many years of piano.” So I said “OK, let’s get going with the piano right away.” He was a wonderful teacher, a very strict old-school teacher, and you didn’t pass one piece until every “I” was dotted and every “T” crossed and you could play it perfectly from memory. Everything had to be just so. He started me off by setting the bar very high, and I’ve always been hugely grateful for that.

JB: Did you study organ with him also?
TW: No, unfortunately he passed away before I was able to start on the organ. I always kept up the piano, and to this day I still love playing the piano. The literature and the feel of the piano—it’s so good for the fingers. I continued piano study with Hugh Murray, who was the organist at Rosary Cathedral in Toledo, and started the organ in high school with a wonderful man also there in Toledo named James Francis, who was the organist at Collingwood Presbyterian. Collingwood Church has a Holtkamp, Sr. organ from about 1955 in the balcony—Rückpositiv on the railing, all exposed, so it was the opposite of the big Skinner organs that I had experienced at that time.
I can still remember walking in for that first lesson with Jim Francis when I was a freshman in high school. I remember the sound of the organ and the feel of it—I remember being struck by how different and how clear this organ was. That was another little turning point for me as an organist—my first exposure to a “modern organ,” as it were.

JB: What kind of teacher was he?
TW: He was a terrific teacher, very encouraging to me. He allowed me to play some things that were a little beyond what I should have been doing through high school, but at the same time that stoked my enthusiasm in a big way. I remember I did a recital my senior year in high school and really worked hard on it—that was the first full organ recital I played. Jim Francis was a wonderful man and fun—a very different personality than Wesley Hartung. He was younger with a vivid sense of humor.

JB: Were you playing at a church in high school?
TW: Yes, all through high school I always had little church jobs around Toledo, and Jim would set me up with substituting here and there. I remember a few jobs where an organist would be out for several months. Jim would get wind of it and recommend me.

JB: That’s great experience; you got to see a lot of different organs.
TW: Different organs, different services, different denominations, hymnals and all that. My senior year in high school I had a nice little Methodist church that was my first time being responsible for a choir week by week. I still keep in touch with a few people from that choir. There was a nice two-manual organ and the choir was right in front, and I got to do lots of standard choral literature, Palm Sunday cantata, all sorts of things like that. For a senior in high school to be in charge of planning, rehearsing, performing, publicizing—it was all a valuable and exciting experience.

JB: What led you to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music?
TW: Jim Francis had studied there in the early ’50s with Wayne Fisher, with whom I went on to study.

JB: What kind of teacher was Wayne Fisher?
TW: He was a remarkable teacher. I was so lucky when I think back on it, to have stumbled on these fabulous teachers—my folks didn’t know much about organ teachers so they weren’t in a position to choose one who was better than the next, and I didn’t know enough—it was all just mostly dumb luck to follow on these people one right after the other. I always felt very fortunate about that. Jim Francis suggested I should go down to Cincinnati for a high school summer music institute. I went for two summers in high school, and Wayne Fisher and I hit it off right from the beginning.
He was a fabulous teacher. He was one of those bachelors whose students were his family, and it was a multi-generational family. He kept in touch with all the students from years before; there’d be parties and it was such fun. I would say that I worked very hard and played very hard in those college years. I practiced like mad and learned a lot of things then that are still at the core of my repertoire—because I learned them so well in those years and memorized them solidly.

JB: As a player, was Wayne Fisher flamboyant or scholarly?
TW: No, not scholarly, he was not of that scholarly generation. He grew up in the ’20s and the ’30s and studied with Dupré in France in the ’30s; his bachelor’s degree was in piano, and his master’s degree was in organ. So he had wonderful fingers, very live fingers I would say—he was that kind of player. His playing at its best was full of rhythm, full of vitality, full of color. He was a musician who loved the organ and played it very well, but his interest in music and I think his general approach to music was not that of an organist only. He had a huge record collection, and only a small bit of it was organ. He was a great fan of the piano literature and Rachmaninoff in particular. I remember Wayne Fisher telling me about traveling in the early ’30s to hear Rachmaninoff play a solo recital at Severance Hall in Cleveland.

JB: Todd, you’ve been in Cleveland for almost 20 years. Can you tell us a little bit about the positions you had before you came to Cleveland?
TW: I had always been much involved with and enthusiastic about the English cathedral repertoire and Anglican music in general. I really wanted to go to England and spend some time soaking up things day by day in an English cathedral. During my master’s degree preparation I thought more seriously about that, and several people helped me out, Gerre Hancock in particular.
I wrote letters to several English cathedral organists asking if I could come over and hang around. Nowadays that sort of thing is pretty common, but in those days there weren’t so many opportunities. I remember Jim Litton had done that early in his career and John Fenstermaker had as well. I talked to both of them and they suggested a few people to write to.
One of them was Allan Wicks at Canterbury Cathedral. Of the folks I wrote to, the first one who wrote back and said yes was Allan Wicks. So, after finishing my master’s degree, I spent about a year in Canterbury, playing some and accompanying some, watching the rehearsals day by day, and listening to every service the choir sang. I helped out in various ways and also had the chance to travel around England and Europe and hear the music in other collegiate chapels and cathedrals.
It was during that fall that I thought I should enter the Chartres Competition. I was feeling burned out from competitions because I had entered a lot of them in college, and I thought I’d do one more and really give it my best. So I worked hard that summer preparing. There were three rounds, and you had to play everything from memory, and it was a very demanding competition. I was very fortunate to win, and that enabled me to play some concerts around France—it was great fun. But I spent that year mostly in England, based at Canterbury, and it was a wonderful experience.
When I came back to the U.S., I took the job that my former teacher had had at Collingwood Presbyterian Church in Toledo for a year. I was able to do lots of things because I was full of youthful enthusiasm, and we did concerts and many ambitious programs that I never had the resources to do at a church before.
But I really wanted to be in an Anglican situation, so I was very happy a year or so later to get the job at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York. That’s a cathedral with quite a long and interesting history—not a terribly large building, but very beautiful. I loved working with the men and boys choir. The years there were some of the happiest of my life. I still look back with the fondest memories and still keep in touch with some of the kids who were in the choir—those were very special times.

JB: Did you go from Garden City to Cleveland?
TW: Yes, after brief stays back in Cincinnati and in Paoli, Pennsylvania (outside Philadelphia). Our first child had been born in Garden City, but even in those days, of course, Long Island was a very expensive place to live, and we paid what seemed a fortune for a small one-bedroom apartment. We came back to Ohio where housing prices and the cost of living in general were much more modest and still are.

JB: In Cleveland you were able to combine Church of the Covenant and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Was that a joint appointment?
TW: There was the possibility of it. I started teaching at CIM the second year I was here. Karel Paukert who had taught at CIM was ready to give that up, and it was very nice that it worked out.

JB: And you were able to have some of your organ students as organ scholars at the church.
TW: We’ve had church music interns over the years at several churches here in Cleveland––Covenant being one of them—a terrific succession over 20 years of wonderful students, several of whom have gone on to fine careers of their own.

JB: Was the choir an all-professional group?
TW: No, it’s a mixed group, with usually ten paid singers. We often had some students who sing with us, but I tried to have section leaders who were not students to lend continuity over the years. We had some wonderful singers who stayed with us for a long time.

JB: How do you balance the demands of your church work, teaching schedule, recitals, recordings, and family—what’s your secret formula?
TW: As you well know, it’s never easy and it’s a constant juggling act. It’s very rare that I feel I’ve done a perfect job of it.

JB: What do you enjoy doing the most?
TW: I enjoy all of those things. As an “older” father with kids spanning quite a number of years, I love the time with each of them. It’s a challenge to do everything and feel like you’re doing your best all the time. Sometimes when you’re doing that many things you feel you’re stretching yourself a little thin. Often it’s good for us to be stretched; you realize it forces you to be economical with your time and make really good use of a limited number of hours.
I love the teaching, I love the church work; the balance of those two things over the years has been very rewarding. We’ve had some terrific students who have been such a joy, and the annual cycle of the church year has been very helpful, sort of an anchor in life. I love playing the Sunday service. No matter how scattered you may feel in other ways, having the chance to play great hymns on a wonderful organ with a really good choir—it keeps you grounded. So much inspiring choral literature comes up again and again; you think of all the wonderful Advent anthems, and you think “oh boy, it’s about to be Advent again,” and the same for every season. I’ve enjoyed all of that tremendously.

JB: When did you come under management?
TW: A long time ago—just before Karen McFarlane moved the agency to Cleveland, it must have been about 1982 or so. I was in Garden City. I remember quite vividly Karen called me and asked if we could have lunch, and we met at a little deli in New York. She invited me to be part of the management, which I accepted very gratefully, and have been happily a part of the management ever since.

JB: You’ve played recitals all throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, including some of the significant orchestra hall installations—Walt Disney Hall, the Meyerson, and here in Severance. Could you single out a few especially memorable recitals on fine organs?
TW: Well, there are so many organs that are really a delight in various ways. I always find that question a little hard to answer, because I usually forget to mention some organ. In recent years I certainly loved playing the Disney Hall organ because I was able to play with the L.A. Philharmonic—and I especially love playing with orchestra. I think for any of us those gigs are always infrequent, especially when you get to play with a top-level orchestra in a beautiful hall on a wonderful organ. It’s rare that all those things happen to come together. So that was a real treat. I played a number of years ago for the OHS national convention at Girard College in Philadelphia, and that was a big thrill. Just recently I have to say the new Fritts organ at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Columbus is sensational—certainly one of the great organs I have played in this country or anywhere else.

JB: Tell us about your role as organ curator at Severance Hall and about the restoration.
TW: I wasn’t really a part of the restoration. They invited me to take this position as curator when the organ was done, and it’s a joy to be connected to such a fine organ in a beautiful hall, and with one of the world’s great orchestras.

JB: And you’ve done recordings here too, haven’t you?
TW: A couple of recordings. The Musical Arts Association of the Cleveland Orchestra asked me to do one of Christmas music, which I believe is still the only solo recording of that organ, and then a couple of years ago a CD with Michael Sachs, the principal trumpet player of the Cleveland Orchestra. We did a recital at Severance of organ and trumpet things and recorded that program.

JB: I’m looking over your discography, and there’s such a range. You’ve done the complete Duruflé works, a disc of Widor, Jongen, Langlais, Bonnet, Demessieux and Dupré, the complete Thalben-Ball, the complete Frank Bridge, a 2-CD set for Delos (In a Quiet Cathedral), Double Forte with David Higgs, and National Cathedral Live. You’ve mentioned the trumpet and organ CD here and you’ve done an organ and cello recording with your daughter Rachel. Tell us about that one.
TW: That was really fun to do, and we did it in your neighborhood at St. Luke’s in Evanston. Rachel is my oldest daughter, and she recently graduated from Ohio State University. She studied cello from about age five and is a very gifted cellist, really a beautiful player with a very fine ear. Her ear is certainly much better than mine. I remember when Rachel was nine or ten she’d hear a soloist in a choir, someone I’d think was singing magnificently, and she’d say “you know, that note was a little sharp.” It sounded fine to me, but that’s the kind of ear she has.

JB: The list of recordings represents, one would have to say, a very eclectic repertoire. Do you find yourself drawn to any particular period of music or any particular composer?
TW: I think as the years go by my interests in music and organ music are more and more eclectic. I’ve always enjoyed playing 19th and 20th century music, and I suspect that if I were going to name any area I might say that, but I certainly would not want to be limited only to that repertoire.

JB: You’ve had experience with Skinner organs and have played many Ernest Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner organs—do you have particular fondness for that type of organ?
TW: I enjoy them very much, and appreciate all the remarkable craftsmanship and the beautiful sounds, often very extraordinary sounds. But I enjoy playing lots of different organs, and as the years go by I am more and more persuaded of the great value of playing mechanical-action organs on a regular basis. So I wouldn’t want to limit myself to playing electric-action organs by Skinner or anyone else. Mechanical action makes you more aware of details that even with your best efforts you’re not sensitive to in electric-action instruments. You listen in a different way, your perception is much heightened, I think. I’ve certainly noticed that in teaching. I can see such a difference in students when they play regularly on a mechanical-action organ.

JB: Do you have any comments on the current organ scene—the renewed interest in Cavaillé-Coll, certainly in Skinner and Anglican-style organs, as well as the continued interest in historical building styles?
TW: It all seems to me very healthy. I remember so well growing up that there were very rigid camps: this was OK, and that was not OK, and there was very little sympathy or empathy between those various camps.
There’s not much of that anymore, and so many fabulous organs are being built in all these different styles, with a remarkable degree of quality and musicality. It’s all very good. It’s wonderful as players, as musicians in the broadest sense, to be able to play all these different kinds of organs with an appreciation for what it takes to play a particular type of organ really well. It makes us broader and more complete musicians. The organ profession is much livelier, I think.

JB: Do you have any observations on the general style of teaching and playing from your college days to where you are now?
TW: I think the teaching and the playing reflects that same thing. The standard, the versatility, and the knowledge required to be an adaptable organist nowadays are a great deal broader than they were 30 years ago, and that’s all to the good.

JB: Has your playing changed in the last 30 years?
TW: I hope so! It’s hard to be your own best judge, but one learns so much through teaching. It’s listening, it’s thinking how does this music work, what is it all about, how can I help this student to zero in on that. Of course, you deal with that in terms of your own playing as well, and I think the instruments are a great prod to better playing, better teaching, better listening with all these different styles. You travel around and play recitals and you’re going to play a wide variety of organs nowadays in all the styles that you mentioned.

JB: Now you’ve also done some silent film accompaniment. Tell us how you got involved in that.
TW: I’ve always enjoyed improvising, and the first year I was in Cincinnati was Gerre Hancock’s last year there before he went to St. Thomas in New York. Another influence for me was Jim Francis, my teacher in Toledo. When I went down to Cincinnati as a high school student, he said “Now you’ve got to visit Christ Church and hear Gerre Hancock play.”
I was so bowled over, I can still remember that first service I heard. It was the middle of the summer, nothing big going on, but his service playing was such a departure from anything I had heard before. I was smitten by it, and have been a huge admirer of Gerre’s ever since. We had him here at Covenant for a weekend a year ago. He worked with the choir and improvised and gave a talk at our AGO annual dinner. It was such a treat for me to have him work with the choir—we did a whole program of his music.
Hearing Gerre play really fired my interest in improvisation, and I’ve always kind of dabbled in it. I started doing the silent films at Covenant on our summer concert series. Sure enough a lot of people showed up, and one thing led to another. Every so often someone asks me to do a silent film.

JB: What music do you play for that?
TW: My repertoire of films is not very large, so I usually have some themes for each film and I do leitmotifs, a kind of quasi-Wagnerian approach. I have a little theme for each main character, drama themes, and love scene themes; but mostly I try to have some identifiable themes for the main characters and then fill in around that. And then it’s fun to put in little snippets of standard organ literature depending on the audience. If I’m playing for an AGO chapter, I try to put in dibs and dabs of famous organ pieces, just sneak enough in that they might guess what that is.

JB: You’ve referred to your cellist daughter Rachel; can you tell us more about your families?
TW: Anne and I had two children, Rachel and Clara; Clara just finished her sophomore year at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and is working on a pre-med track. She’s a fine pianist and loves to play. I’m married to a wonderful woman, Jenny Eppich, who is an urban planner, and we have two children: Ben who just turned nine, and a little daughter Ruth who is four.

JB: Are they musical children too?
TW: Ben has a very sweet voice, and I think he could be a fine member of a boys choir. He matches pitch well and also plays the trumpet. We did Britten’s St. Nicolas a while ago at Covenant, and Ben sang the boy Nicolas to great acclaim—that was a very special moment for me as his proud papa, as you can imagine.

JB: You’ve had an interesting year. Tell me about the time at Indiana University.
TW: It’s been an interesting and challenging year! I taught at CIM one day per week, and continued as curator of the organ in Severance Hall, while commuting to Bloomington and teaching there for three or four days each week. I enjoyed teaching at IU, but ultimately we were not able to move to Bloomington on a permanent basis. I sure became a fan of books on tape during those long drives back and forth!

JB: What are some of your goals now in Cleveland?
TW: I look forward to the continued evolution of the CIM organ department. We have a wonderful new president of the school, and it really is the start of a new era there. We’ve been fortunate to have terrific students, and I enjoy working with them as performers and church musicians. It’s an ongoing pleasure to look after the organ at Severance Hall, certainly one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world. I’m thrilled to be part of the music program at Trinity Cathedral! It’s a beautiful building with two Flentrop organs, a very lively and diverse congregation, and a superb new musician in Dr. Horst Buchholz. Another fun new project will be to create a concert series and other uses for the newly restored Aeolian organ at Stan Hywet Hall in Akron. Stan Hywet is the amazing Tudor Revival-style home built by F. A. Seiberling, the co-founder of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. The house organ is located in a spacious and remarkably beautiful music room.

JB: Do you have any recording projects on the horizon?
TW: I’m making a recording on the new Fritts organ at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a sensational organ, pretty eclectic, really more so than Fritts’s earlier work—very successful and very exciting. You can play quite early music, Renaissance and pre-Bach, and everything right down to the present day. It’s a very large and complete 3-manual organ in a superb acoustic. We’ve already recorded the music for organ, cello, and English horn, and I’ll record the solo pieces in the next few months.

JB: What’s on the recording?
TW: The Reubke Sonata, which people have been after me to record for a very long time. It’s been one of the cornerstone pieces of my repertoire since college days. So often people ask after recitals if I’ve ever recorded it, and I never have. When I played that organ in Columbus I thought it would sound fabulous there. So, the Reubke, some Widor, a piece for organ and cello by Craig Phillips, and Calvin Hampton’s Variations on Amazing Grace for organ and English horn, which is a piece I’ve always been very fond of and I don’t believe there’s any commercial recording available. This will be on the Delos label.

JB: Any humorous experiences you would care to share?
TW: I don’t have the best memory for funny events, except when they happen to float to the surface prodded by something else. I was recently reminded of one quite funny story, which is funnier now that I look back on it some years later.
This would have been ten or twelve years ago when we got a new console at Covenant, a movable console that’s been such a joy to play, built by the Holtkamp company. The organ is essentially an Aeolian-Skinner. In the mid-90s Holtkamp provided a console and made a few tonal additions as well. We had a dedication service for new console, with fancy music and blessings. Tom Trenney was my student assistant at the time, and we both played lots of stuff.
There is a big hooded trumpet in the rear balcony that’s by far the loudest stop on the organ—a wonderful stop, and it plays from the gallery Swell. One of our frequent habits was to put that on with the Unison Off so we could have it available when we wanted it, but it wouldn’t play through the normal Swell to Great coupler. Unbeknownst to us, there was a little electronic bug in the console, and all the gallery Swell played through the front Swell coupler—so when we had that big trumpet ready it turned out to be playing all the time. The console is positioned around the corner and we really couldn’t hear all that well. So, I think we played nearly every verse of every hymn with that great big Chamade trumpet on without knowing it—which would have been deafening in the congregation and most atypical certainly. The grande dame of the congregation said after the service that the organ now had “that Holtkamp edge.” Chick Holtkamp and Karen and everybody laughed greatly afterward.

JB: What are some of your non-musical interests?
TW: I treasure time with my family, as the years seem to pass ever more quickly. We all especially look forward to our annual summer get-away to Wellfleet, Cape Cod. Jenny and I love bike riding and gardening together. I’m an avid reader, particularly of anything historical. Sports-wise, I am a lifelong baseball fan, and also enjoy golf, even though my golf game has gone mostly downhill since I was in high school. Pie baking has become my cooking specialty, and I hope to find time to broaden my cooking repertoire in the years to come.

JB: Todd, thank you for the interview. We wish you continued success and will follow your career with great interest.

50 years of teaching at The University of Michigan, Part 2

Part 1 of this interview appeared in the October issue of The Diapason, pp. 16-21.

Q: I just wonder how you get all your energy.

A: Well, maybe it's because I'm from Oklahoma. I do exercise a lot. I walk quite a bit and I used to bike a lot, too.

Q: Does everybody in Oklahoma have energy like that?

A: It depends on the genes. They're always friendly, I know that.

Q: What suggestions do you have for young organists?

A: There might be some suggestions which are based on my own experience. One of them is the Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared," because as I look back the break that I had was in 1950 when the Boston AGO called me to say "Robert Ellis was to play and he cannot play. Will you play the Schoenberg 'Variations' for us?" I had less than two weeks to prepare this piece. But fortunately I had been prepared. I'd had my lessons with Schoenberg. I'd been preparing the piece and playing it for some time. I had it memorized.

The second thing is to be flexible. That is, if someone asks you to play, don't say, "I won't play because we don't have four manuals." Don't say, "I can't play because there's only two manuals."  Roll with the punches, be willing to fit into the situation. It's better to be playing a recital and have to make a few compromises than not be playing at all.

The third thing, very important, is be dependable. If you say you will be there, if you say you will do such and such, be there, do it. Be known for your dependability and your accountability.

Don't procrastinate. That comes along with being dependable. Don't put things off. I have a very fine colleague in the organ department--James Kibbie. He is the splendid example of this. He never procrastinates. If I suggest something or if I ask him to do something, he does it immediately. I think that's an important aspect of our work. If for any reason I might have to put off something, it's because my inner sense of the whole situation says "wait." We all know of situations where if you had waited a little bit things would have worked out a little better than if you had gone ahead immediately. So I say procrastination with a grain of salt--using your own judgment.

These four things matter: to be prepared, to be flexible, to be dependable, and not to procrastinate.

Q: Please tell about the Fisk organ here which is named "The Marilyn Mason Organ."

A: The organ which stands in the Blanche Anderson Moore Hall in the School of Music is a result of a lot of thinking and consulting and wondering what was going to happen next with our department. Robert Clark was teaching with us at the time we were thinking and trying to decide. He had just made his first trip to what was formerly East Germany. We knew that we were going to have this fund started by Judith Barnett Metz. She told me, "I would like to do something in your honor. Would you like a Marilyn Mason scholarship?" I said, "Well, we need an organ more than anything." So she gave Michigan the initial funds. Bob Clark said, "We should have a copy of one of those beautiful Silbermanns because we don't have anything like that." At that time, about 1979-80, there was nothing like that in the States. So he was the one who gave us that marvelous idea, and the whole faculty--Robert Glasgow, James Kibbie & Michele Johns--thought it was the right thing to do. So, that's what we did. The interesting thing is how it came about. I went to our Dean, Paul Boylan (and he had just become the Dean in 1979). I said, "We're going to have this money for an organ, but we can't have an organ without a place to house it." He said, "I want to have a rehearsal/concert hall for musical theater, because we're expanding that wonderfully." Then he said, "Can't we think about combining the two?" which is of course what we did. So we arranged to visit President Shapiro (this was during his very early days in office) and called on him together with this proposal. He said, "I'll be glad to help you and I think it a good idea." So he was very helpful in getting us funds from the legislature. Then there was other money which helped us get the Palmer Christian Lobby. People donated for that. The Earl V. Moore people donated for that. Bill Doty, Mildred Andrews and Franklin Mitchell also donated to the lobby. The hall is named for Blanche Anderson Moore (wife of Earl V. Moore) who was a very devoted patron of the arts. She came to many organ recitals. I remember seeing her at Hill Auditorium when some of us were playing. And so we named this hall in her honor. The organ contract was signed in 1980 with Charlie Fisk, who said, "I won't have the organ for you until 1985." We said, "Oh, it will never come." He said, "It will be here quicker than you can realize." That was really the truth--it was here very quickly. We dedicated the organ on October 4, 1985, and it was a special occasion.

Q: Was the organ named for you at that time?

A: No, that was a few years later. Dean Boylan said that it should be named for me because the initial funds had been given by Judith Barnett Metz in my honor. This was a very nice gesture, and I appreciate it very much.

The organ is modeled after a Silbermann, but there is no specific organ which it copies. We would not want, and  we could not make a perfect copy simply because the hall is different and the time is different. We're no longer in the 18th century. In most of the churches where the Silbermanns stand the organ is in the west gallery, while this one is in the front. We have a very nice situation the way the hall is built. There are tiers of steps that go up to the organ. Last night, as part of our Institute, there was a choral concert with James Abbington, conductor. The singers were standing on these different steps, and it was nice for the 20 singers to be heard that way in  acoustics quite sympathetic for the voices.

Q: The Fisk organ has provided the students there with an opportunity to encounter historic organ building principles that they wouldn't have in other places.

A: Exactly. It's been a big impetus for us. I am especially glad that we could provide the original type winding: the bellows may be hand pumped and a recital could go on despite an electrical storm, and Michigan has them. With this organ, our teaching organs and the organ at Hill Auditorium, we feel very blessed. We have 16 practice organs plus 3 teaching organs and 2 performance organs. We have the magic number of Bach--21.

Q: Would you talk about your family?

A: My first husband was Professor Richard K. Brown. Many of my students knew him. He was a true gentleman, a wonderful engineer and teacher, a man whom I had first met in 1945. We were married in 1949 (long enough time for him to see me in action, so to speak, and he knew what he was getting). He continued teaching at the University of Michigan until he retired in 1987.

We have two sons. The first is Merritt Christian Brown (named after my father and Palmer Christian), born in 1955. He's a scientist who earned his Ph.D. here at Michigan. He took classes with his father in engineering. He would come home and tell his father, "You could make that course even more strict. You have some very gifted students in there." Richard would say, "But I'm aiming for the middle students as well as the gifted ones." Then he would say to his son, "Please, don't go into engineering." Our son played the violin just wonderfully, studying with Gustave Rosseels at Michigan. When he would finish practicing, I would say, "Oh, Chris, you play so beautifully, but please don't go into music." So, here was this young man with opposing directives, so he chose acoustics. After earning the Ph.D., he continued research in the Kresge Hearing Laboratory. Later, he read a paper at an acoustical conference in Los Angeles. An engineer who heard him there said, "We would be very interested in having you join our research at Massachusetts General Hospital." Chris was intrigued with the work they were doing, so he joined that research group. His mentor there was Nelson Kiang. Dr. Kiang later invited him to teach at Harvard. He is Associate Professor at the Harvard Medical School where he teaches physiology. His specialty has been the inner ear. His music and his engineering led him into this.

To me, that's a lesson that young people must know. You must explore the options, and how better to explore the options than to go to school. If you're a freshman or sophomore in school and not happy with what you're doing, it may be that the Lord in telling you to go in a different direction.

I had a wonderful student, Weston Brown. After his sophomore year, he said, "You may be mad at me, but I think I want to change my major." I said, "No, I want you to do what you want to do." He said, "I am making straight A's in German and I am making a B in music history." I said, "The Lord is trying to tell you something." He said, "I love German." He earned the Bachelor's and Master's and later a Ph.D. from Columbia in German and musicology. That's a fine example of how you can find options if you keep watching. The best advice is to watch for the options and hope to find something that you enjoy doing. Try not to think about money. If you think only about the money you will make, you may end up doing something that you don't enjoy .

Our second son is Edward Brown, a wonderful young man who's a free-lance photographer. He lives in California. He likes California because the light is always wonderful there. But I think he loves it because there's no snow, fog or ice.

Q: Did either son have an urge to play the organ?

A: Not really, probably because they heard so much playing. It didn't turn them off, but they probably thought one organist was enough. I practice the piano a lot a home. Once one of our neighbors, Mary Sinnott, said to our son Edward, aged 10, "What's your mother doing?" He said, "She's playing the piano." The next day, Mrs Sinnott said, "What's she doing now?" He said, "She's still playing the piano." They got used to that.

When they were younger, I put them to bed with organ music on the house organ which my husband and I assembled in 1955. I gave that organ to two doctoral students, Howard & Marie Mehler. We purchased a small Walker tracker for practicing. My family has always been very supportive but also understanding with my schedule. The dishes may not get done or the beds made if I have to practice.

In 1991 my husband had enjoyed four years of retirement. Gardening was one of his interests and his beautiful rhododendrons still bloom. He suffered a stroke on May 7, 1991. We had to take him to the hospital. We thought he would recover from this, but on July 23 he slipped away. Both of our sons were extremely supportive of me at that time. Even though I had this great loss, I still had my teaching which was a comfort to me. I had become organist of the First Congregational Church in 1984. There, Tom Marshall had been my trusty assistant. I had the inspiration of the Wilhelm organ at the church and we had the Fisk here.

In the autumn of 1991, I felt more settled. Music was a great support to me. One of our good friends, Jim O'Neill, formerly chairman of the French department, called. "We have a dear friend and he would like for you to play a memorial service for his wife who died some time ago." Other friends, Mary and Bill Palmer, arranged dinner where I met William Steinhoff. Later, he came to the house to discuss music he wanted--mostly Bach and Mozart. I played for that service in January of 1992. After that, we had lunches and dinners. It was satisfying to spend time with someone who was not in music and yet who was very supportive. It's important to have a sympathetic person near you, someone who understands you. He is an emeritus Professor of English Literature at Michigan. Although he had taught here for 30 years, I had never met him. We were married on May 8, 1993. Someone said, "What did you do about music?" I said, "I played for my wedding!" We were to be at the church Saturday morning at 11:00. My sons were there along with Bill's nephew and niece. No one else was present. I said, "Well, I'm just going to play the prelude." So I played the Guilmant March on a Theme of Handel. Bill came in, saying, "Am I late?" So, Terry Smith performed the service for us. Then I moved to the organ and played the Widor "Toccata." That was a fine ending for our wedding service.

Q: Do you have brothers and sisters who are musical?

A: My brother James Clark Mason was musical. He was a wonderful family man, and loved his four children and wife. He died two years ago. My sister, Carolyn Mason Weinmeister, is active in computers and computer programming.   She enjoys music and sports. She lives in Oklahoma City and has one daughter and son.

Q: How do you keep your positive attitude?

A: A lot of this is based on the loving care that we had as children. Both our mother and father were supportive of us. My mother always did the cooking and dishes so that I could practice the piano or go to the church and practice the organ. A loving home, to be surrounded by such love, and a religious home, to be surrounded by Presbyterian Protestantism--these things are what you cannot take away but also what you can't buy. Parents must be aware of this when raising children. That religious upbringing that I was given is something that no one can ever take away and I hope I never forget.

Q: You continue to be a church organist, and you've been a church organist for a long time along with your teaching. Have you been an organist at several churches in Ann Arbor?

A: I was a substitute organist at the Presbyterian Church where we belonged for many years. When Zion Lutheran needed an organist, the music committee invited me to play there. I was the organist for many years in the early sixties. John Merrill was the choral conductor. I enjoyed the liturgical service and the Lutherans. I enjoy being a church organist and I like to play hymns.  I sometimes remind the students that if they are church musicians the title "church" comes first, with the flexibility and dependability that I mentioned earlier. And, after all, that is usually where the best organs are!

We were out at our lake cottage one Labor Day weekend, and I had to return for church on Sunday at Zion Lutheran. I went to the Schantz organ, saw the bulletin and #15 for the processional hymn. I opened the hymnal and found "Joy to the World." This was on Labor Day weekend! I thought--these Lutherans, if they want "Joy to the World" they're going to have it! I really gave it the full treatment. The choir came down the aisle with their books under their arms. Not a person was singing. When they arrived in the chancel the minister announced, "And now we'll have the opening hymn, number such-and-such." I had misread it and the "15" was the page number for the order of service. Regardless, I enjoyed the Lutheran service very much.

In 1963, I had a fine student, Donald Williams, who was just graduating. I recommended that he take over and he was invited. Dr. Williams was the organist/choirmaster at Zion Lutheran for over 30 years.

We need not frown on church and service music. As I said, that's where the good organs will be. We have at First Congregational a wonderful conductor, Willis Patterson, who inspires us all. My assistant, James Nissen, is Associate Director of Music. He is so versatile that he can play if I am gone or conduct if Willis is gone. That is good.

Q: The fact that you keep active in church music is a testimony to your own students and a good way that you can tell your students what they are going to experience when they go out to church jobs as well, because you know just what they will encounter. I think a lot of organ teachers in colleges are detached from that.

A: I don't want to ask my students to go into church music without experiencing it myself. We must not be detached from church music. We must be right in the swing.

One thing I do tell my students who move into church positions: You're a new organist and choir director in a church. If you don't hear anything, you're terrific. Keep telling yourself that. You'll always hear when somebody doesn't like it. When they don't like it, you must smile and try to agree. Don't be defensive. They may have a reason for saying so.

Q: I'd like to know when the cooking requirement came into the DMA program.

A: All my students, even Master's degree students, are invited to cook a meal for us. That idea came in the '50s. One of the nice meals that was prepared was by John McCreary and Phil Steinhaus. They knew that Jean Langlais was coming. They said, "We'll prepare a Master's dinner." So they prepared a wonderful dinner for us. It's referred to on page 15 of the book, Hommage à Langlais, in Langlais' diary, where he says, "We've had a dinner with the students and Marilyn Mason and her husband." That dinner was memorable because there was a pot roast which was luscious. The flavoring on the meat, the carrots and onions were delicious, but the potatoes had been added too late and they were hard. Langlais was trying to eat them with his knife and fork and said, "Is this some new vegetable in the United States that we don't know about?" Poor John was so chagrined. Those potatoes will always be remembered as the ones that didn't make it. That was the beginning of that requirement. And I am now so proud of Phil, his wonderful career as organist/choirmaster and his work with Aeolian-Skinner, and with John, too, 30 years in the Cathedral in Honolulu as Organist/ Choirmaster! I do feel we had that cooking requirement especially for the men, but we must all learn to cook.

Q: You're certainly well known for your jokes. For many years you had a joke book that you lost along the way.

A: No--it was stolen at Riverside Church. I was playing a recital there. The organ console had two large mirrors so the audience could see while you play. I thought I would put my purse right behind me. That purse had my joke book and some jewelry. Someone reached in behind and took the whole thing. Someone said, "What nicer way to lose it than to have it stolen from Riverside Church." But I've kept a lot of stories in my head. Along with flexibility comes a sense of humor--mostly to be willing to laugh at yourself. If we can have the light touch as we go along, I think that helps.

Q: Along with that, can you think of some humorous incidents in your travels that would be interesting?

A: I can think of some humorous things that happened here in Ann Arbor. I was playing for freshman convocation in the first week in September for about 4,000 new students. I had played the prelude, but they asked me to play a special piece. I chose the Haines "Toccata," which is something that I enjoy playing and can play without too much extra practice. The Dean of the Faculty, Charles Odegaard, looked over at me and said, "And now our organist will play --Miss Marilyn Monroe." All of these students just howled, and he was so embarrassed. He said, "Oh, I'm sure Miss Mason will do just as well." Then I did play and it was fun.

Another thing that happened at Hill Auditorium occurred in 1985. I had scheduled a series of 16 recitals of the music of Bach (1985 was 300th anniversary of Bach's birth). So I was doing that series here at the Fisk organ every Sunday afternoon at 4:00. But I was also supposed to play for a graduation ceremony at Hill Auditorium at 2:30. So I said to my colleague Sam Koontz (our organ technician at Hill Auditorium who knew the organ like the back of his hand and who had been one of my Master's students), "Will you please play the final hymn, which is the Michigan hymn, and then a postlude?" Sam said, "I'll be glad to." I played the opening prelude, the processional and "The Star-Spangled Banner." The console was in the corner on the far stage left. By this time it was about 3:00 and I needed to leave. So I left, and Sam was on the bench. I got to the Fisk on time and played the Bach recital in the afternoon. But I heard afterwards, the Vice President of the University, Richard Kennedy, had said at Hill (which he had never done before) "We're so happy to have our organist today--please thank Marilyn Mason." He looked back at the console. Sam threw up his hands in dismay, because I wasn't there. After that, when I was thanked for these occasions, Mr. Kennedy always looked back to see me.

Q: You mentioned that there have been 111 doctoral students. Do you have any idea of the total number of students you have taught?

A: No, I don't. But in over 50 years there were a lot of students. I wish I'd kept track, but at the time that is not the most important thing. Actually, we have graduated 600 organists in the Bachelor's and Master's programs since the first ones in 1932.

Q: I remember seeing the sea of people at your recognition dinner in 1986. All those people had been touched by your life, and also by the blue pencils that were given to each one.

A: I got the idea of the blue pencil from Palmer Christian. It's such a good way to mark music and it's easy on the eyes. It's a very important thing to mark fingering and how you're going to do things--not to have a Monday way, a Wednesday way, and a Thursday way. I have a student, Robert Jones, in Houston, who's fanatic about that. The strategy in the hand helps us to play. There are many people who say they're far too "creative" to mark their fingering. These are very often the ones who don't play as well as the ones who know where they're going.

The next thing is making the goals in your study. If you have a piece you want to learn, divide it into sections rather than trying to learn the whole thing all at once. Young people should have goals to learn certain music. In the semester system, we have juries for the music the student has learned. I don't know but that all of us don't waste time by being rather aimless. We waste time by not having an objective. That's why I've enjoyed teaching, because the goal is to be there and to have a plan.

Another goal I've had over the last five years is recording all the works of Pachelbel. He's such an imaginative composer. He doesn't have the rhetoric of the North Germans. He has a sweetness, placidity and strength in his music, and it has been a great joy to learn and play his music. These are recorded in the Musical Heritage Series. I began the series with the freely composed works, but then there were enough chorale preludes for three disks. The chorale preludes were written for services or as interludes for hymns. So we decided that the chorale would be sung first. A gifted tenor in the doctoral program, Robert Breault, sang the melodies. After  recording the chorales, we came to the Magnificats. I asked a Benedictine monk, Irwin West, to sing the alternation. There are more Magnificats written for the first tone than for any other. Dr. Tom Strode and his Boychoir sang the alternation for Volumes 7 and 8.

Q: Have you done some additional teaching elsewhere in addition to your teaching at Michigan?

A: I did some  teaching at Columbia University during summers while I was in doctoral studies. I taught at St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia, where Searle Wright was the organist. I also taught at Pomona College in Claremont and at the school in Brazil. But I love Michigan a lot. What's wonderful about teaching is that the clientele changes. I have had students for as many as four or five years. I have recommended that some of my students study with my other colleagues in the department. Prof. Glasgow, Dr. Kibbie, and Dr. Johns each have their own special things to offer.

Robert Glasgow excels in the nineteenth-century interpretations, while Dr. Kibbie enjoys the baroque and contemporary. Michele Johns with her expertise and experience has brought  much to our curriculum in church music practices. Her position as organist/choirmaster at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Plymouth, has given "hands-on" experience to so many of our students.

Q: Was there ever a thought that you would go anywhere else to teach?

A: I had a wonderful offer from USC  and Raymond Kendall in the '50s. But I talked to my husband and to Dean Moore and decided to stay here.

Q: In a job interview, someone once asked me what I would like written on my tombstone. What would you like to be remembered for?

A: You would like to think that the things you have done have been a blessing to other people and that you were kind. We all have our own opportunity to serve. So, for the stone, I have two suggestions: "She served and enjoyed" or "S. D. G."

Q: Thank you, Marilyn, for your 50 years of teaching at the University of Michigan and for the positive influence you have had on so many lives!

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Mississippi. His interviews with William Teague, Thomas Richner, Nora Williams, and Albert Russell have also appeared in The Diapason.

Robert Town has recently retired after more than forty years of overseeing the organ department at Wichita State University, where he established a legacy of the highest standards in organ performance with his many award-winning students, oversaw the plans and completion of a world-class concert hall and organ, and brought the great organists of the world to the Wichita community through the Bloomfield concert series. In this colorful interview he reminisces about his student life at Eastman, his encounters with eminent musicians such as the Gleasons, Arthur Poister, Marilyn Mason, Marcel Dupré, the Duruflés, Mildred Andrews, and Claire Coci, and his notable career as a teacher and recitalist.

—Brett Valliant

Director of Music, Worship and the Arts

Senior Organist, First United Methodist Church, Wichita, Kansas

Lorenz Maycher: Tell us about your early years.
Robert Town: I am from Meridian, New York, a little village just west of Syracuse. My parents took me to church for the first time in 1940, where I heard the one-manual, six-rank 1876 Hook & Hastings organ. And that was it. I started piano lessons when I was five and took all through my school years.
I became fascinated at the age of ten with something new on the market—the Hammond organ. My mother and I had stopped into Clark Music in Syracuse, and Mr. Clark showed us a church-model Hammond, which I thought was just wonderful. The Hook & Hastings organ in our church was thought to be old and beyond repair. At my instigation, when I was ten, I raised money with other kids in town by putting on circuses, magic shows, and the like to start an organ fund. At the end of two years we had raised $50. The Ladies’ CIC from church added $50, my father $100, and the man who owned the hardware store $100. Before long, we had enough to buy the Hammond organ for the church. I played the prelude and postlude sometimes, and took Hammond organ lessons at the music store in Syracuse. I became the organist at that church at fifteen, and then at First Baptist Church in Weedsport, New York when I was fifteen, where I played a two-manual, ten-rank Steere & Turner for $5 a Sunday.
In my sophomore year of high school, Warren Scharf, who had just finished his master’s degree with Catharine Crozier at Eastman, came to Auburn, New York, to be organist at Second Presbyterian Church, which had, and still has, an E. M. Skinner organ in the gallery. I began lessons with him, and he started me right from the beginning of the Gleason book, with exercises and pieces for manuals alone. At the age of fifteen, having to start from the very beginning was demoralizing, but was the correct thing to do. I studied with him for about six months, until he was drafted into the Army, ending my organ lessons. However, I had become intent on studying with Catharine Crozier at the Eastman School. When her first records came out from Kilbourn Hall, I bought them right away, even before I had anything to play them on. When her Longview, Texas, records of American music came out in 1953, I bought those. They are still marvelous to this day.
I met and heard Miss Crozier for the first time when I was fifteen, at an AGO regional convention in Utica, and made an appointment with her the next year to see how I could best prepare to become her student. I took off two days from school and took the bus over to Rochester to meet with her. Not wanting me to develop any bad habits, she urged that I not take organ lessons until I came to study with her. She did say piano was of the utmost importance, however, and that I could not have enough of that, emphasizing scales and arpeggios.
When I went to audition for her on December 18, 1954, they neglected to tell her. So, after my ear training test and piano audition, Edward Easley, who directed the auditions, looked around for her and found that she had gone out shopping. He found Mr. Gleason in Sibley Library and had me play for him instead. Halfway through my audition, Miss Crozier walked in. I was playing the Messiaen Celestial Banquet, and got so distracted that I left out the pedal part! Afterwards, to my great surprise, she said in a very cold and unsympathetic tone of voice, “Would you do a modulation for us?” I was so shocked that I turned around and said, “You mean from key to key?”
I was devastated when, in 1955, just as I was about to graduate from high school, I learned Catharine Crozier and Harold Gleason were resigning from the Eastman School. I had already been accepted.
As a teacher, Catharine Crozier had been difficult and unsympathetic. She had too many students to suit her, wanted an assistant to take beginning students, and only wanted to teach upperclassmen. Miss Crozier was unhappy.
I think it would be safe to say they knew they were leaving Eastman by January of 1955. Robert Hufstader from Rollins College wrote Eastman asking for a recommendation for a replacement for Arden Whitacre, who had resigned, and that is how the Gleasons found out about the opening at Rollins. Over Christmas holiday, they went down, unbeknownst to anybody, and looked the job over.
I went to Eastman in the fall of 1955. David Craighead, who was 32 years old at the time, had been appointed the new organ instructor. He came to have a very successful tenure at Eastman, and was a prince of a fellow, but his teaching style was very different from Catharine Crozier’s. When Catharine was in a lesson, it isn’t an exaggeration to say the student might receive a tap on the shoulder every two measures. When Mr. Gleason gave her students lessons while she was away on tour, her students did not think he was a very good teacher because he did not stop them every two measures!
In one of my first lessons with David Craighead, I had some things from the Gleason book, and he admitted he did not agree with all the precepts of that method, saying it was too fussy, with too much to be concerned about. He did not even think it was necessary to wear organ shoes and played in his street shoes. I sat in the practice room with the Gleason book, working on pieces for manuals alone, which, after time, Mr. Craighead thought were too easy for me; so he assigned about ten chorales from the Orgelbüchlein and two of Karg-Elert’s chorale improvisations, an impossible leap from what I had been playing. The former Gleason students would sometimes come in and say, “It would be helpful if you would do it this way.”

LM: What were the practice organs and studio organs like at Eastman?
RT: The organ in Catharine Crozier’s studio, where David Craighead first taught, was a three-manual Aeolian-Skinner of about 26 ranks. The whole instrument was installed in a chamber in the ceiling. In Norman Peterson’s studio, next door, the Great and Pedal were on the floor level (the early records of Catharine Crozier at Kilbourn Hall have a drawing of that Great and Pedal on the cover), and the Swell, Choir, and basses were located in the ceiling chamber. There were three Aeolian-Skinner practice organs that were in great demand all the time. One was called “the Trumpet Skinner”; one was “the Mixture Skinner”; and the third was a small three-manual. The other practice organs were two-manual Möllers of five ranks each, most of which were original to the school when it was built in 1921, and two three-manual Möllers in such poor working order that no one could use them.

LM: You told me an amusing story about hearing Claire Coci when you were a student at Eastman.
RT: The year before I went to Eastman, Claire Coci played a recital at Kilbourn Hall, and some of the Eastman students sat behind the console. As things went wrong, she would curse, often loud enough for the first few rows to hear. When we found out she was to play a recital on the Holtkamp organ in Crouse Auditorium at Syracuse, two carloads of us organ students from Eastman drove over to hear her, and the Syracuse students reserved the front two rows for us.
While she was practicing for that recital, a couple of organ students were listening to her from the balcony. She noticed and called up, “Do you kids know where there is a Coke machine around here?” One of them ran downstairs and brought her up a Coke, and, in one of her enormous gestures in playing, she knocked it off the bench and the bottle shattered on the floor. When she finished practicing that piece, she got up and kicked the broken glass under the pedalboard.
For the recital, the dress she was wearing had many different layers which had to be parted to get out of the way and put over the back of the bench. She fussed and fussed, trying to find the part. She couldn’t, and finally muttered, “My God, it would take a road map to find your way in here.”

LM: From Eastman, did you go right to Syracuse to work on your master’s degree with Arthur Poister?
RT: Yes. Arthur Poister was a great man—very sensitive, intuitive, and wise. Classes began in the fall of 1960, and lessons with Poister were a revelation, as was playing the Holtkamp organ at Crouse Auditorium. He waited about three weeks into school to comment on my playing. I had been working on the F-Major Toccata, which was one of his favorite pieces, and played it for my lesson, which certainly was not a finished performance. Beverly Blunt came in to wait for her lesson. He looked at her, and said, “Did you hear that? Wasn’t that wonderful?” He did that to encourage me, and it did. To have ANYONE say I was wonderful! I walked out of there on a cloud!
Arthur Poister taught at Crouse all morning, and had full reign of the auditorium, with his students practicing there afternoons into the evening. We each had Crouse one hour a week. I loved exploring, hearing, and getting to know that organ. I visited there this past summer for the first time since our Marcussen organ was installed here in Wichita. Curious to see how the Holtkamp in Crouse would seem to me these days, I sat down in the stifling heat and played individual stops and choruses, then finally got to full organ. When the old Roosevelt Trombone came on in the pedal, I concluded it was still magnificent.

LM: What would Arthur Poister say about a piece like the Toccata in F? Did he tap you on the shoulder every two measures?
RT: No, no—never. He did not like articulation in Bach, and had learned and memorized all the Bach works with Marcel Dupré over the course of two years in Paris. He thought Bach should be played legato, regardless of Walcha and others on the scene at the time. He taught and used the ornaments as explained in the Dupré edition of the Bach works. If someone detached something, he would say, “You kids! You just want to break up things, when it would be so much more beautiful if you would just stop that!”
It was amazing how his students came to play the way they did, because he never said much about pedaling or fingering. In fact, I was studying the Partita on “O Gott, du frommer Gott,” and, in the last variation, I did not know what to do in one passage. He said, “You have had enough organ to be able to figure it out yourself.” Then, he threw in a little hint by saying, “It may be all thumbs.” When I look back at my Syracuse years—Calvin Hampton was there, Paul Andersen, Lawrence Jamison, who was the star of the undergraduates—when I look back on the preparation of the undergraduates, and the caliber of master’s recitals with that man, it was phenomenal. It is the mystery of Arthur Poister how it happened—how he did NOT correct fingering or pedaling, and only talked about the way it must sound. His only concern was how to communicate musically.

LM: Did you ever play for Marcel Dupré?
RT: No, but I met and heard him July 6, 1969, on my first trip to Europe. I was with two other Americans, and we started out unsure that any of the big organists would be playing that day, it being time for their holiday, and our having made no prior arrangements to visit organ lofts. We started out at 9:00 at St. Clothilde, and Marie-Louise Jacquet came down the aisle after Mass. I inquired if Langlais was at the console, and she said, “Yes, and you may go up.” I was the first to enter. He was sitting at the console, waiting for the next Mass, and turned and said, “Yes?” I introduced myself and the two others, and said, “I bring greetings from Catharine Crozier.” He was delighted, and said, “Tell me, is she still playing that perfectly horrible Reubke piece?” He very kindly and generously went over the stops on the entire instrument. Then, he opened his Braille watch and said, “I have just enough time to play the Franck B-Minor Choral for you before the next Mass.” He seemed so delighted that someone had come up to visit him in his organ loft. We signed his guest book, and he showed us to the door before he had to pile back on for the next Mass.
We then walked to St. Sulpice, where Mass was already in progress. We walked far enough down the aisle to look back and see who was in the loft. We couldn’t see anyone, except one man standing at the rail. After a time, he noticed us looking up with great interest, and motioned for us to come up. There were 15 or 20 other people in the loft visiting that day, including Guilmant’s granddaughter. The man who had motioned to us took me by the shoulders, led me over and planted me on the left side of the console, and I listened and watched HIM—Dupré—improvise and play. We were told he had just played the Bach Passacaglia. After our arrival, it was all improvisation.

LM: Did he welcome you?
RT: Oh, no. He was absolutely oblivious to anyone being there at all—no eye contact, no smile. His hands were deformed with arthritis, and it was most distracting for me to watch him play. The little finger on his left hand had a joint that actually pointed up, instead of down, so he had to play on a different part of that finger. It did not seem to bother him. During communion and at other times, when he wanted to see how they were making progress downstairs, he would insert a pedal point into his improvisation, stand up on the pedals, and look down the length of the nave. His improvisations were fantastic, and we were in seventh heaven. His postlude was very reminiscent of the first piece in his Fifteen Pieces—big, block chords on full organ, with the theme in the pedal. The other improvisations were very contrapuntal.
When Mass ended, apparently he had an appointment with someone, because a young man came up to him. When Dupré saw him, they went off together to a room behind the console, and were there for some time. On his way to the room, he did not take notice of anyone. When they emerged, he made his way back to the console, again without acknowledging our presence, and began the prelude for the next Mass, which was the “Grand Orgue” Mass. When the postlude of the “Grand Orgue” Mass ended, all of a sudden, he looked around and noticed there were people there. I extended my hand and introduced myself as a former pupil of Arthur Poister. If ever in my life I saw a face light up, it was at the mention of Poister’s name. His gnarled hand shot up in the air—“AH! ARTHUR!” I wish I had a picture of it. He asked me to please give Poister his best. After that Mass, we stood outside St. Sulpice and watched as Dupré came out and got into a Mercedes.

LM: Let’s get back to your student days and Syracuse.
RT: After my master’s recital, I decided to stay on at Syracuse and work on a Ph.D. in humanities, which was the nearest thing they offered that had to do with arts and music. But I did not like it. There was no actual music, no practicing, no lessons. So, when Kirk Ridge, who was chairman of the school of music, contacted me to teach piano full-time for the spring semester 1963, as a temporary replacement, I jumped at the chance.
That semester, when I wasn’t teaching one of my 36 piano students, I was practicing and playing recitals. I had seen an ad in The Diapason announcing the Boston Symphony and AGO organ competition, so decided to enter. Even after two years with Arthur Poister, I still had thoughts that I did not measure up to others, and I did not think I stood a snowball’s chance in a hot place of placing in the Boston competition. However, I made a tape and sent it in. In the meantime, I had also decided to apply to the University of Michigan to work on a doctorate with Marilyn Mason, so I flew to Ann Arbor to audition for her.

LM: What was your first impression of Marilyn Mason?
RT: I liked her! When I arrived at Hill Auditorium, she was practicing the Schoenberg. We went to one of the side rooms off the stage, and I auditioned for her on a 3-rank Möller. She was very nice, personable, and encouraging.
After my audition, I went back to Syracuse and received a letter from the Boston AGO saying I was a semi-finalist. I thought there was some mistake and even called the man who had written the letter and asked him if it were a mistake. He assured me it was not. The semi-finals were held in April at the Arlington Street Church on a Whiteford Aeolian-Skinner. They kept us all in the basement apart from each other, and I have no idea who the other contestants were. Two others and I were selected as the finalists.
For the finals, which were open to the public and held at Symphony Hall in May, we each had to play thirty minutes. I had gotten there four days early to practice. The combination action on the Symphony Hall organ was very unreliable, and there was an enormous setterboard in the back of the console. Even after setting pistons, some of the generals were undependable. During my practice time, I learned which ones were reliable and which ones to avoid. I never saw any evidence of either of the other two finalists practicing. We did not have scheduled practice times, and every time I walked in, I was able to get to the organ.
There was a big crowd there for the finals, and the hall was set up with round tables for the Boston Pops. We were allowed five minutes to walk onstage informally and set our pistons before playing, then had to leave the stage and reenter formally to applause. I played from memory, and all I could think was, “If I can just make it through this without making a complete fool of myself . . . ”
Afterwards, we three finalists went down into the audience and mingled. I kept myself in close proximity to the other two so I could go up and congratulate the winner. A woman came out on stage and said, “Here’s the news you’ve all been waiting for: the winner is Robert Lloyd Town.” The other two finalists looked at each other in disappointment, turned around, and left. Lawrence and Ruth Barrett Phelps both came up to me, and that was the beginning of my very long and valuable friendship with him. Larry later gave us much help on our new hall and Marcussen organ here.
As the winner, I was given a full-length recital at Symphony Hall that next February. The previous day, a blizzard paralyzed the entire city. Harry Kraut, who managed the Boston Symphony, called my hotel room and said, “Can you come back and play for us in April?” Rubenstein was to have performed with the Symphony that evening, and instead, they held it as an open rehearsal for anyone who could get there. They paid for me to come back in April to play my winner’s recital on the Symphony Hall recital series. I had heard Catharine Crozier play on that series the previous year, and stepped in on her practice, and went to lunch with them—the Gleasons.

LM: How did Catharine Crozier and Harold Gleason interact with each other in a social setting?
RT: They were not very affectionate. Just before she went in to play a recital once here in Wichita, I saw him take her hand and give it a squeeze. That is the only sign of affection I ever saw between the two of them. Mr. Gleason had a great sense of humor. He liked stories—tawdry stories; the more so, the more he liked them. She would turn and look the other way. They were both here in 1973 for a day of masterclasses and a recital. It had just been announced that Mildred Andrews was to be married. We were driving along in my car, and I told them the news. After a moment of silence, Harold said, from the back seat, “Well, I guess she didn’t want to die wondering.”
If I could characterize their relationship, it was very much one of teacher and performer. He was an invaluable coach—another set of ears to tell her how it really sounded. As time went on, she relied on recording herself over and over, and kept a tape recorder on the bench at all times, even recording small passages to play back to herself.

LM: You were around the Duruflés a lot, too. Did they have a similar relationship?
RT: No. Although they were 19 years apart, they interacted warmly as man and wife. She was a very loving and devoted wife to her great organist-composer husband, with little to no thought of herself. That tells you right there of the difference between the Gleasons and the Duruflés. After the accident in 1975, until his death in 1986, she went across the street to play for church, but abandoned all teaching and concertizing just to take care of him. I had a letter from her in 1984 saying he could do nothing for himself, and she had to bathe him, get him in and out of bed, and everything else. She was as devoted to him as anyone could ever be to another.
When they were here in 1969, I was dean of the Wichita AGO and responsible for showing them around, and we became good friends. She was cute and unpretentious. Over lunch, I told her I had heard about the tremendous standing ovation she had received at St. Thomas Church, October 1968, for her performance of the Liszt “Ad nos,” to which she replied, “Ah, but that was not for me, but was for my husband, who was more busy than me, pushing and pulling the stops—and for Liszt.”
The Duruflés’ manager, Lilian Murtagh, only charged us $700, and they did not come over here to make money, but for sightseeing, enjoying the people and the organs. When the place went wild after their recital, she came back out and played the D’Aquin “Cuckoo,” followed by their cute routine of taking bows: they would go into the sacristy, then he would push her back out and close the door. She would shrug, then bow so nicely. Then she would go in and they would both seem to come back out together, but she would run back in and close the door. He’d look at the door, then turn and bow. She then played the Vierne Impromptu and Dupré’s Second Sketch, during which, with the octave trills and the octaves in the pedals, I thought the organ was just going to collapse. The audience would not let her go, so she came back and played the theme and four or five variations from Variations on a Noël.
For their masterclass the next day, we arranged for them to play and discuss music. Mildred Andrews sent her entire organ class. He played the Franck A-major Fantasy and then his own Veni Creator, in which he had some registration problems, so Madame Duruflé moved him over and played it herself. She had played Tournemire’s Victimae the previous night, so she played the Ave Maris Stella, followed by the Duruflé Scherzo. He discussed each piece very nicely through a translator. I was sitting about five feet from the console when he approached me and whispered, “Would you like to terminate the class with the Liszt?” Of course, I said “Yes.” He turned to her and said, “The Liszt.” “Ah, but I am not prepared!” She set up a few pistons, and, I’m here to tell you that I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t witnessed it with my own ears and eyes. Her performance was amazing. Afterwards I asked her where else she would be playing the Liszt on the tour. She said, “Nowhere. Perhaps next spring.”
After the class, I took them out to the university to see the mighty 18-rank Casavant in the chapel. They wanted me to play, since it was my post, then they came up to the console. I asked if she would like to play. “Oh yes, with pleasure.” She sat right down, pulled some stops, and tore right into the Sinfonia from Cantata 146, transcribed by Marcel Dupré, from memory, of course. It was played with the refinement and finesse as if she had been practicing it on that organ every day of her life.
We had been talking about the French system of assigning letter names to notes, and she tried to explain it to me, although I did not understand. She figured out the notes for “T-O-W-N” and improvised a fugue on it. When she finished, she said, “It was too academic.” So she improvised another one!

LM: A few minutes ago, you mentioned Mildred Andrews. Were you close?
RT: I loved Mildred Andrews as an “adopted” student, and we became close after she came to Wichita in 1976 to give a day of masterclasses for the AGO. Afterwards, I received a note from her saying she had conducted masterclasses from north to south, east to west, in thirty-five states, and that my students were the best she had ever heard. That sealed our friendship. Although I did not realize at the time how much proper attire meant to her, my students had shown up dressed for the occasion.
At the University of Oklahoma, Mildred Andrews had a strict dress code: the girls showed up in a dress, or they would not have a lesson; the boys showed up in shirt, tie, and jacket—no moustache or beard. I know of one occasion where a student showed up in the wrong attire, and Miss Andrews drove her back to the dormitory to change, then back to Holmberg Hall for what remained of her lesson time. There was never a “Well, it’s all right this time.” When she attended organ conventions, she would show up wearing one outfit in the morning, another in the afternoon, and in the evening, a third, usually full-length.
I was up for a promotion in 1976, and again in 1978, and she wrote wonderful letters of recommendation, saying things like, “I wouldn’t just promote him; I would do everything in my power to keep him.”
She was a character. One year an organist we were planning on having play for us in Wichita played a recital in Norman, so one of my students and I drove down to hear her. Mildred Andrews and Mary Ruth McCulley sat behind us for the recital. When the organist came out, Miss Andrews tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Tell her when she comes to Wichita not to wear that dress. It looks like something you’d wear for Halloween.” The recital opened with the Chorale and Variations from the Mendelssohn Sixth, and it did not go well at all. Mildred Andrews did not like Mendelssohn in the first place, and tapped me on the shoulder again, and said, “And for heaven’s sake, when she comes to Wichita, tell her to play something she knows!”

LM: Did Mildred Andrews study with Marcel Dupré?
RT: Yes, at Fontainebleau. She used his organ method and used the Dupré editions. She had studied at Oklahoma University for her bachelor’s, went to Michigan for her master’s, then back to OU to teach.

LM: What was the secret to her success?
RT: If there is a key word to Mildred Andrews’s success in teaching, it was determination—devoted determination. She would not rest, she would not stop, until she had solved a student’s technical problem, and was always looking for more effective fingering and pedaling, many times arriving at unorthodox solutions. She was devoted to her students, although there were some who did not get along with her, and did not like her.
She was very organized and demanding, outspoken and even brutal—even towards her peers. In 1971, the Duruflés gave a recital and masterclass at Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa, and I drove down to hear them. For the masterclass, that huge choir loft was full of listeners. Madame Duruflé played the Prelude and Fugue on the Name of ALAIN, and Maurice Duruflé asked “Are there questions?” Mildred Andrews shot back with “Yes! I’ve been timing this performance on my metronome, and have just found her playing a tempo other than is indicated in the score.” Madame Duruflé replied, “I played it as I felt it.” Maurice Duruflé backed up his wife and said he agreed with her performance. Mildred Andrews would not stop there and said to Madame Duruflé, “Well, I would like to know the correct metronome marking so that my students can play it the way YOU ‘feel it.’” I heard her do that numerous times. She would stand up to her peers as well as her students. That was a side of Mildred Andrews that I prefer not to think of. But, as a teacher, she was devoted and determined in every way.

LM: We keep getting sidetracked by all these hair-raising stories! Can we go back and talk about your days as a student at University of Michigan and your time with Marilyn Mason?
RT: I loved being with Marilyn Mason—dearly loved her. I had and still hold the greatest admiration for her. She was very good to me at all times and in all ways. Jim Bain was close to her, too. The three of us used to have our own little parties together. He and I called her “The Madame.” One morning, at an unthinkably early hour, we knew she was going to be leaving from the Detroit airport to play a recital, so we got ourselves up and to the airport and waited for her arrival so we could surprise her, which we did, and had a little party right there at the gate, then saw her off.
One year Marilyn arranged for Leo Sowerby to visit for an organ conference. He had been teaching at a summer camp in Put-in-Bay, across from Port Clinton. We had two days of recitals scheduled at Hill Auditorium, one of which included Marilyn playing his Pageant. We drove down to Port Clinton and took a little commuter plane over to the island to pick him up. The plane looked as if it could fall apart at any moment. Marilyn got in, looked around, and made the sign of the cross. We drove Sowerby up to Ann Arbor and had a dinner with martinis at my apartment in Huron Towers. Marilyn made lasagna at her house and brought it over. After we had had sufficient martinis, Sowerby told us about a nun who had been taking composition lessons with him. She brought in the exposition of her composition to him, and it had a series of parallel fifths in it. He explained to her that, in the style she was writing, parallel fifths were not appropriate any more than in music of the 18th century, and they should be rewritten and corrected. When she came back the next week for her lesson, she had added more to it but had done nothing to correct the parallel fifths. He pointed them out again and tried to explain to her more clearly why they needed to be changed, asking her to please correct them. She came back the third week, and the composition had been extended further, but nothing had been done about the parallel fifths. Sowerby became impatient and spoke to her about it, whereupon she burst out, “Dr. Sowerby, I don’t care anything about your [language unbefitting a nun deleted] parallel fifths,” and walked out!

LM: Was he laughing when he told that?
RT: No. He said it matter-of-factly.

LM: When did you come to Wichita?
RT: In the spring of ’65, the dean of Wichita State University asked the dean of Michigan’s school of music, James Wallace, for a recommendation for an organist. I was ready for a break from school, so applied for the job, and was asked to come to Chicago, to the Sherman House Hotel, for an interview with the dean. We spoke for about an hour, and it was a very pleasant conversation. He built the school of music here—Walter J. Duerksen. As we wound down, we shook hands, and he very nicely said, “I can’t say for sure, but I feel nearly sure you are going to be the choice. You will hear from us within a couple of days.” Sure enough, his secretary sent me a contract. I was twenty-seven, and ready to get out on my own and make a living, although I did plan to finish my degree at Michigan in summer sessions.
My first fall here, I had seventeen students: six were master’s students, and I inherited a graduate teaching assistant and five beginners, and had a graduate organ class, plus two undergraduate classes. That next summer, I had so many students wanting to continue lessons that I felt duty-bound to stay here and teach. I ended up teaching every summer session, with the exception of 1969, until the 1990s, and never went back to Michigan to complete my degree.
When I came here, there were two organs on campus—a seven-rank Möller, and the Casavant in the chapel. An eight-rank Reuter was added in 1970.

LM: Was there any talk of a concert instrument at that time?
RT: No. However, it soon became apparent that we needed one. During a period of ten to twelve years beginning in the 1970s, we had numerous finalists and winners of prestigious national competitions. Two students won Fulbrights. University administrators realized there should be some place for these people to play on campus other than the chapel. The Dean of Students, Jim Rhadigan, said to me one day, “We’ve got to have a new organ and a new hall for these kids!” and an organ recital hall was soon added to a list of university capital needs.
At this point, I should introduce Gladys Wiedemann, one of Wichita’s leading philanthropists. She belonged to a club called “Mink or Sink,” obviously for wealthy ladies, and belonged to another club called “The Organaires.” The Organaires had about twenty members who were wealthy dowagers with electronic organs in their homes. They met monthly at a different member’s home, and everyone in attendance had to sit down at that particular organ and render a selection following a very extravagant lunch. Mrs. Wiedemann had a concert-model Hammond in her home.
In 1973, the organ students and I decided to sponsor the Gleasons in a summer workshop and recital. We took out an ad in the AGO magazine, which was called “MUSIC” at that time, and I started calling people for contributions for Catharine’s recital fee. Some friends in town suggested I call Gladys Wiedemann. So, I got up the nerve and called her. Right away, she said, “Well, would $100 help you out?” The following year we sponsored Marilyn Mason, and she gave another $100. Two months later, I received a letter from Mrs. Wiedemann saying she was going to have a Christmas party for the Organaires at the Wichita Country Club, and wanted to know if I would play a program for her party on an appropriate electronic. In gratitude for what she had already done for us, I wrote back to her immediately that I would be happy to play the program gratis. We went to dinner to discuss the details of this party for the Organaires, and that was the beginning of our friendship.
I played for her party, and she invited officials from the university. She also hired a dance band, Doris Bus and Her Dance Band, and Mrs. Wiedemann danced up a storm. The next day, she called the head of the endowment association at the university, and told him she would like to make a contribution to the university. He suggested she establish an organ scholarship, and that was exactly what she wanted to hear.
In 1979, an organ recital hall was added to the long list of capital needs for the university. By 1981, it was on a priority list of five years. I thought I should acquaint myself with all the organ builders in order to be prepared to make a serious recommendation, so in the summer of 1981 I went on a European organ study tour led by Earl Miller. We visited organs in the Netherlands, and I saw and heard a Marcussen organ at St. Laurance Church in Rotterdam, where there are three Marcussens. Larry Phelps had been telling me all along, “Marcussen is the only way to go.” The following summer, I returned to hear other instruments and went to Freiburg Cathedral for a recital. The Marcussen there, in the “swallow’s nest,” is only two manuals, but we all agreed that night if we could get an organ even half as good, we wanted it. That recital was the defining moment.
Gladys Wiedemann was a woman of unimpeachable integrity. She discussed money and business matters with me as long as they did not concern me. Very rarely, however, did she mention the purchase of an organ. But, when she encountered the president of the university at social functions, she would tell him she was going to do her part when there was a building to put it in. And she considered her “part” to be one-fifth of the cost of the organ, $100,000, with four other donors giving a like amount.
The central administration asked me for a report on my students for a proposal to be submitted to Mrs. Wiedemann. As March neared in 1983, I learned the president was going to meet with Mrs. Wiedemann in her Florida home to propose that she donate $500,000 for the organ. They got along well in business matters, and I felt very comfortable letting him meet her. She had already made sizable contributions to the university through him. Unfortunately, the meeting did not go well, and he came back without an agreement for more than the $100,000 she had initially offered. So he asked me to meet with her over spring break, which put me in a very uncomfortable position.
Mrs. Wiedemann received me warmly, as if she were glad to see me. I had been fretting on the plane down and all day Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday about how I was going to bring up the subject of the organ. After dinner, she rounded the corner from the dining room to the living room and, with a decidedly unpleasant look on her face and the proposal in her hand, said, “Well, I suppose while you’re here you’ll want to talk something about this organ.” I was not prepared for her to bring it up, so had not prepared a response. All I could think of was, “Well, I would like to tell you something about the builder we have in mind.” She said, “Oh?” in an immediately relaxed and interested way. I did not say a thing about money, or her part in it. She sat down visibly relaxed and said, “Tell me something about these people.”
She did seem interested in what I had to say about Marcussen, and at one point she said, “Maybe I could give an organ sometime, to my church or even to WSU,” then, “Maybe I should make a trip over and see where these organs are built sometime,” and, finally, “You know, in two weeks I’ll be back in Wichita. Would you be willing to come to my house and meet with my financial advisor and tell him everything you have just told me?”
The next month, Mrs. Wiedemann called to schedule a meeting. The last student I had that day was a devout Catholic, and she brought me a scapular and told me to put it in my pocket, saying it would help. I still have it. I was received nicely and I made my pitch for the Marcussen organ. Her financial advisor seemed interested, as did she. We were in session for two hours. As the advisor got up to leave, she said to him, very upbeat, “Well, are we going to be able to do it?” Not wanting to say anything in front of me, he replied, “I will be back on Friday, and we can discuss this and other matters at that time.” She said, “Gee, I hope so!” As soon as he was out the door, she said, “You know, you make a good presentation. You ought to be the dean.”
When she finally called me the next Tuesday, she was very foxy. Supposedly she had called to talk about humorous little things that had happened at one of her clubs. After a few minutes, she said, “Well, you have to be on your way to teach, so I’ll get off the phone. We’ll talk another time.” And, just as I was about to put down the phone, she said, “OH! Yes, by the way, I suppose I should tell you I have just called up Clark Ahlberg (WSU president) and asked him to write up a pledge for $500,000 for the organ.”
At the end of the school year, I went to Denmark to visit Marcussen, and we talked about the stoplist, which had already been in the works for two years. My most notable advisor through its design was Lawrence Phelps.
After several hair-raising setbacks, we signed the contract for the organ in December of ’83, when everything seemed like it was on solid ground, until October of ’84, when the contractors’ bids on the building came in, and every one of them, even the lowest bid, exceeded the amount of money we had to spend on the building by over $100,000. I attended the meeting, and there wasn’t one of them that was even in sight of the money we had.
From 1934 to ’54, a wonderful man by the name of Sam Bloomfield and his wife lived in Wichita. He was the first airplane builder in Wichita, which is now known as the air capital of the world, and had countless patents on aeronautical devices he invented, as well as other inventions. The Bloomfields moved to California in 1954. They had been very active in the arts in Wichita, and our dean, Gordon Terwilliger, had known them both personally. So, he called up Rie Bloomfield (her name was Henrietta) and explained that the hall was in jeopardy. The good Mrs. Bloomfield came through with $150,000, which put us over the top. Construction on the hall was begun in December of ’84, and the organ was declared finished on July 9, 1986. A 5-rank Phelps practice organ was installed in my new studio.
For the inaugural series, we had Gillian Weir, Dennis Bergin, François-Henri Houbart, and Catharine Crozier, and I gave the last one in April, 1987. President Ahlberg named the hall for Gladys Wiedemann, and at the dedication ceremony for the hall and organ, she was so overcome with emotion that she just sat there and wept before the ceremony ever began. The following season I was allowed $3,000 for the University Organ Series, as it was called. It did not go very far, but we had Madame Duruflé in 1992, and Olivier Latry in 1993.
In 1994 the aforementioned Rie Bloomfield endowed the organ series in her name, which has allowed me to have four to five major recitals per season. Catharine Crozier recorded the Rorem works in 1988, and inquired about playing a vespers series here. She played again in 1989, and weekly vespers recitals in 1993, ’97, and ’99. She recorded works by Franck for Delos in 1997. The Marcussen organ here became her favorite, and she said there was not one organ in Europe or in the United States that she liked better. In twenty years, most of the world’s major organists have performed here, and many have remarked about this marvelous instrument. After forty-one years of teaching, I played a final series of vespers recitals in March, 2006, and a Robert Town Finale recital in May. The organ professorship became an endowed faculty of distinction chair in my honor in 2005.

Neal Campbell holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Manhattan School of Music, is a former member of the AGO National Council, and is the Director of Music and Organist of St. Luke’s Parish, Darien, Connecticut.

Charles Dodsley Walker turns 90 years old on March 16. In his long and varied career, he has collaborated with many of the legendary figures in the organ and choral music world and is himself one of the key players in the golden era of New York church music. His career began when he entered the Choir School at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine at age ten. His education continued at Trinity School in New York, Trinity College in Hartford, and—following service in the United States Navy—at Harvard University.
He held positions at the American Cathedral in Paris, St. Thomas Chapel and the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York, Lake Delaware Boys Camp, the Berkshire Choral Institute, Trinity School and the Chapin School in New York, Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music, Manhattan School of Music, and New York University. He is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists and is the founding director of the Canterbury Choral Society, which he began in 1952 at the Church of Heavenly Rest—a position he still holds, preparing and conducting three concerts per season.
In what others would call their retirement years, Charlie Walker has served at Trinity Church in Southport, Connecticut, and since 2007 he has worked alongside me at St. Luke’s Parish in Darien, Connecticut. In the summer of 2009, Charlie and I sat down in my office over several days and began a series of conversations, not unlike those that are typical between us on any given day—only this time the digital recorder was on. They were conversations between friendly colleagues, and I have tried to keep the conversational tone in the edited transcript that follows.

Neal Campbell: I first knew your name as president of the American Guild of Organists; when were you president of the AGO?
Charles Dodsley Walker: 1971–75.

NC: And you were active in the Guild before that?
CDW: I joined the Guild [Hartford Chapter, 1937] in order to take the Associateship exam while I was at Trinity College. I was pleased when the Headquarters Chapter had a dinner in 1939 honoring the recipients of the certificates, and they sat me next to Ernest M. Skinner, who proceeded to regale me with limericks. He used to come around the Cathedral quite often when I was a little boy chorister just to see how his organ was doing.

NC: What other offices did you hold in the Guild?
CDW: When I came back from France in January 1951 to be the organist at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, I immediately connected up with the Headquarters Chapter of the Guild, and that’s where S. Lewis Elmer comes into the picture. He lived near the church and he was most interested in me as the new 31-year-old organist of the church. He was very friendly and seemed to want to get me into the leadership of the Guild. When the national librarian, Harold Fitter, resigned, there was a vacancy, so he appointed me National Librarian. And then another vacancy occurred, and I was appointed National Registrar. The next thing I knew I was National Secretary—for ten years.

NC: What were the biggest things you had to work on immediately when you were elected, do you recall?
CDW: At the time I was elected, there were two important groups in the Guild wanting to secede. One was a tri-cities chapter in California. They had been so upset about the perceived (and actual) running of the Guild from New York City, that they had managed to get a Californian, Gene Driskill, elected to the council—this was during Alec [Wyton]’s regime—and his chapter paid his travel expenses so he could come and be a member of the council.

NC: Up to that time the council was all New York organists, wasn’t it?
CDW: Almost, yes. And then the Twin Cities Chapter wanted to secede too. So I felt that it was our job to address this issue by really revolutionizing the setup of the whole organization as regards the board of directors, which is the National Council. At the time there were fifteen regional chairmen who were simply appointed by S. Lewis Elmer. We reduced that to nine regions, which it still is, and figured out a way for each region to elect its own representatives. That’s been amended and changed since then, of course, but it’s basically the same system we have in place now.

NC: You’re a native New Yorker, aren’t you?
CDW: Yes. Born right in the city . . .

NC: But your folks moved to New Jersey shortly after that?
CDW: Yes, Glen Ridge.

NC: And you and I share that connection with Christ Church in Glen Ridge, where you were baptized.
CDW: Right. I also have a musical connection with it, because as a child I sang for a couple of summers in the choir there. And, just last night I came across two 3 x 5 cards signed by the organist at the time, Herbert Kellner.

NC: This is before Buck Coursen, my predecessor? [The Rev. Wallace M. Coursen, Jr., F.A.G.O., organist of the church 1936–80]
CDW: Yes. Anyway, it was Mr. Kellner authorizing this Master Charles Walker to play the organ on Fridays for one hour and a half . . . and the other 3 x 5 card allowed me to play there for one hour on Tuesday and one hour on Friday . . . or something like that, during the summer. That was around 1934 or 1935.

NC: Was this likely the first organ you heard, at Christ Church?
CDW: Yes, it was. My first memory of it is that the swell shades were visible to the entire congregation. They were sort of dark brown, but you could see them opening and closing, and Mr. Kellner liked to use them, and they were opening and closing a lot. So I was quite fascinated with that. [Laughing]

NC: What was the organ, do you remember? The present organ is a Möller from about 1953.
CDW: I have no idea, but by 1934, when I had practice privileges, they had obviously bought a used four-manual console—they didn’t have anywhere near a four-manual organ there, but I just loved it! It had the reed stops lettered in red, and I thought that was very impressive, and it did have a Tuba! [More laughter]

NC: What led you to seek application to the Cathedral Choir School?
CDW: My next elder brother, Marriott . . .

NC: You were the youngest of three brothers?
CDW: Yes. Marriott liked music a lot and played the trumpet. We had friends in Montclair who had a boy in the school. So Marriott went over to see about entering the school, but he was already twelve or thirteen, and they just said, “you’re too old.” So then along came Charles, and I was very interested in going to that school. It’s hard to answer exactly why my parents were interested in sending me to the school, except they thought I was musical and that I would enjoy it.

NC: It was a boarding school?
CDW: Yes. People did ask “why do you want to send your boy to boarding school?” I suppose they still ask that today, for example at St. Thomas. You have to take a boy away from his Mama!

NC: At the Choir School, it was Miles Farrow who admitted you. What sort of musician was he?
CDW: I don’t know. I was only ten, and I admired him very much. I can still distinctly remember the way he harmonized the descending major scale when we warmed up. There are different ways of harmonizing it—or not harmonizing it! He did a I chord, then a V chord, then a vi chord, then a iii chord, then a ii-6 chord, and a I-6/4, then a V and then a I. That’s the way he did it, every time! I happen to like to do it different ways rather than always the same way, but that’s the way he did it.

NC: So it wasn’t too long after that that Norman Coke-Jephcott came along?
CDW: Right. But then there was an interim when, among others, Channing Lefebvre was the chief substitute. He was at Trinity Wall Street, but I seem to remember him coming up for Evensong.

NC: When you look back on your career as a choirboy, do you think of Coke-Jephcott as your teacher?
CDW: Oh, yes! Cokey came in 1932, and almost immediately I started lessons with him.

NC: Organ lessons?
CDW: Yes, organ, and harmony and counterpoint. He required that you have a weekly lesson in harmony and counterpoint as well as an organ lesson. John Baldwin was his student about this time.

NC: What were the daily rehearsals like? Were they just learning music?
CDW: Yes, but with quite a bit of emphasis on tone quality.

NC: Did they sing Evensong everyday, or most days?
CDW: Not all 40 boys—maybe half a dozen or so would sing in St. James Chapel as I recall, and I’m not sure it was everyday.

NC: On Sunday mornings, was it Eucharist or Morning Prayer?
CDW: I think they did Morning Prayer followed by the Eucharist. I remember that they intoned the entire prayer of consecration and the pitch would go up and down. And I had extremely good sense of pitch in those days and could tell if the celebrant was flatting or sharping.

NC: But the choir sang morning and evening service on Sundays?
CDW: Oh, yeah!

NC: Did you ever join with any of the other boy choirs in New York?
CDW: Aside from our basketball league with St. Thomas and Grace Church, the only other time we were on the same program was Wednesdays in Holy Week for the Bach St. Matthew Passion with the choir of St. Bartholomew’s Church and the boys of St. Thomas Choir. The Cathedral Choir—the whole choir—sang second chorus. As you know, there are double choruses. And that was the first time I ever saw T. Tertius Noble in action.

NC: What was he like in those days?
CDW: I would say “avuncular” would be the word. He seemed (at least on those occasions) a nice fatherly presence.

NC: And these were at the cathedral?
CDW: Oh, no—at St. Bartholomew’s, played by David McK. Williams, astonishingly! I was bowled over by his accompaniment. The thing I remember most vividly is the movement toward the end of Part I—where you have the soprano and alto duet and the chorus interjects fortissimo “Leave him, leave him, bind him not” and he socked the crescendo pedal and then, boom, he would close it. It just seemed to me to be flawless. He was amazing.

NC: They did this every year, didn’t they?
CDW: Every single year. In fact, after my voice changed I did it a couple of times as an alto, just because I wanted to participate in it.

NC: Did Dr. Williams direct you all? What was his personality like?
CDW: He was magisterial, he was definitely in command. Everybody paid close attention.

NC: Was the idea of doing all these organ accompaniments what inspired you to start the Canterbury Choral Society?
CDW: Well, when I was only 15 or 16, I thought that’s just the way it is in church—you do it with the organ. I realized what I had been missing (it must have been in 1939 or 1940) when I heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra do Brahms’ Requiem not in a church, but in a concert hall. With all due respect for the organ, that music as orchestrated by Brahms was a wonderful musical experience! I thought to myself “boy, I would like to have a big chorus and do that kind of stuff!”

NC: So after the cathedral you went to Trinity School. Did they have an organ there?
CDW: They had one of Ernest Skinner’s early organs. It was built, I believe, before 1910, a two-manual. [Opus 141, 1907]

NC: In the school auditorium or in the chapel?
CDW: The chapel. I also went to the Cathedral Choir School and to Trinity College—all of these were Episcopal schools! They all had compulsory chapel services, which none of them have any more.

NC: Your parents were obviously Episcopalians.
CDW: Both my parents were cradle Episcopalians. In fact, my grandmother taught Sunday School in Dakota Territory before North and South Dakota were separated. And I have the melodeon that she played when she was teaching Sunday School.

NC: Did you continue to study organ through high school at Trinity?
CDW: Yes. When I went to Trinity School, I continued organ and I practiced all the time after school. Trinity is exactly one mile south of the cathedral, in the same block. I would go to school and then I’d practice at the cathedral, and then go and do my homework.

NC: Did Cokey prepare you for the AGO exams specifically?
CDW: No, [Clarence] Watters did. You see, I had four years with Cokey and four years with Watters. That’s what my organ instruction was—two years in the choir school and two years at Trinity School. Then I went to college. It was Channing Lefebvre who sent me to Trinity College in Hartford. My father said, “You know the organist at Trinity Church. Let’s go ask for his advice.” And I’m glad he did. We wanted a liberal arts college with strong organ, not a conservatory, and Trinity was perfect.

NC: You must have seen the cathedral nave being built.
CDW: Yes, we sang for the dedication of the Pilgrim Pavement—the great slabs of stone with the medallions in it. We also sang at the dedication of the great bronze doors, which are very impressive portals for the cathedral.
The nave was being constructed when I was a choirboy. There were elevators outside going up and down the scaffolding. The nave actually opened several years later—around 1940, I believe.

NC: Did you have a church job at this time?
CDW: No, just Trinity School with its daily chapel.

NC: Did you list preludes and postludes?
CDW: Just preludes, I think. Still, a lot of repertoire for a high school kid.

NC: So when was your first church job, in college?
CDW: Yes. That was a wonderful thing. In my freshman year, the adjunct professor of German at Trinity College, named Kendrick Grobel, who also had a doctorate in theology from Marburg, asked Clarence Watters to recommend someone to be organist of the church of which he was the pastor. He also had a bachelor of music degree, and was a tenor—and Clarence recommended me. I went out there and played a recital in the spring of 1937 at the age of 17 for this church—Stafford Springs Congregational Church, Stafford Springs, Connecticut—halfway between Hartford and Worcester. This was the first time I ever played for money. They took up a collection and I got $14—quite a lot of money! So they offered me the job at $10 a Sunday, and that, too, was a lot of money. That was the most felicitous thing that could happen to a 17-year-old. I also made some money in a dance band on Saturday night, so I was doing OK. And I was able without any trouble at all to convince my father to buy me a car. As soon as I was 17, I had a Ford convertible, a seven-year-old Model A.

NC: What kind of background did you already have under your belt when you went to Trinity College?
CDW: Well, Cokey was very thorough; I was really lucky. First of all, he was on the exam committee of the AGO forever. He was a Fellow of the AGO and of the Royal College of Organists, and all that. He played accurately and well, but I was also lucky to study with Clarence Watters—which was very different. Clarence was really a brilliant virtuoso. And this is not to play down Coke-Jephcott, who was a wonderful improviser, very fine. And he played Bach very accurately—he just didn’t have the sort of brilliance that Clarence had. Cokey was a very colorful service player and used the organ wonderfully.

NC: Did he do most of the playing, or did he have an assistant?
CDW: Soon after Coke-Jephcott came to the cathedral, Thomas Matthews came to be his assistant. Cokey had been organist at Grace Church in Utica, taught Tom there, and brought Tom to the cathedral when I was 12 and he was 17. He was a very good organist, and I admired him and I loved to turn pages for him—we were really close considering I was 12 and he was 17.

NC: How did they divide up the service? With the vast spaces, did one play and the other conduct as is the style now, or did Cokey play and conduct from the console?
CDW: There was a little of each. Cokey probably played about half the time. I do remember distinctly Tommy playing Brahms’s How lovely, so I guess Coke wanted to get out front and conduct that. I have a funny feeling they used the vox and strings liberally! He had been a bandmaster in the army in England, so I guess he knew how to conduct, although I never saw him conduct an orchestra.

NC: Did they ever use brass in the cathedral services?
CDW: I don’t recall that they did. They used the Tuba Mirabilis though, by golly! You don’t need brass instruments with that! [Hearty laughter]
Anyway . . . getting back to Coke’s teaching . . . he wasn’t a stolid Englishman, but he was solid and he was punctilious about fingering Bach correctly and not allowing me to get away with anything. I remember playing the Bach Toccata in C for Paul Callaway when I was 15 and I had that well under my fingers. Paul was at St. Mark’s in Grand Rapids about that time, and my uncle was in his choir in Grand Rapids. My father was from Grand Rapids.

NC: Had you known of Clarence Watters prior to your study with him?
CDW: I hadn’t known of him until my father and I visited Channing Lefebvre to consult about college.
They had a wonderful Skinner organ in the chapel at Trinity College, one of the first on which Donald Harrison and Ernest Skinner collaborated. It might amuse you to know that at this time I didn’t know what a mixture stop was! There was one on the cathedral organ—it was there on the stop knob, along with Stentorphone and some other interesting stop names! But it wasn’t until I got up to Hartford and worked with Watters that I learned what mixtures were all about. It was a whole different experience.
It was a fine organ. It had a wonderful 32′ Open Wood, the low twelve pipes of which were lined up in a straight row against the back wall of the chapel. I was in heaven there; I was one of the assistant chapel organists, along with two others. At the cathedral, it had been a very rare privilege to play the big organ, as I had my lessons on one of the chapel organs. But here at Trinity College, I could just go in and play the big four-manual organ whenever I wanted to.

NC: What possessed Watters to get the present organ?
CDW: I’m not sure, but Don Harrison had died and Clarence admired Dick Piper, the tonal director of the Austin firm, which was right there in Hartford. I think he got a donor and was able to create the exact organ he wanted. It is very French, and wonderful!

NC: Did you keep up with Clarence over the years?
CDW: Oh, yes! Very much so. In fact I had him play at Heavenly Rest a lot.

NC: Didn’t you say that he was also a candidate at Heavenly Rest when you got it?
CDW: Yes. [Laughing] I had written him from Paris asking him to write a letter of recommendation for me when I applied for the position. You see, I had some pretty good connections by then, like Frank Sayre [the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr.] from my Cambridge days and Canon West at the cathedral, and Clarence, too. So I asked him to write, and he wrote back saying “Charlie, I’d be glad to, except that I, too, have applied for the position.” That’s absolutely true.

NC: Tell me more about Watters as a teacher.
CDW: Ah, yes. Well, first of all, it was a revelation to find out about the whole idea of mixtures and mutations. Somehow or another I had not learned this from Cokey. Cokey was absolutely wonderful, but . . . I didn’t learn anything about French Trompettes and that sort of sound. I was used to Cornopeans, and so on. Watters, a pupil of Marcel Dupré, acquainted me with the French tonal qualities of an organ. In a word, Clarence was like a French organist as a teacher.

NC: He was already recognized as a master organist by that time wasn’t he, and he was pretty young?
CDW: Yes. He was in his 30s . . . [pausing to calculate] . . . and of course he had studied with Dupré and lived in Paris. Repertoire: again, very French oriented. And I think this is good. I am glad to have had the English orientation of Coke-Jephcott. And his improvisations reeked of Elgar! You know, the pomp and circumstance aspect of cathedral improvisation was his specialty. Whereas, of course, Watters reeked of the French school.

NC: Was Clarence a good improviser?
CDW: Yes, very! I remember once Dr. Ogilby [the Trinity College president] put a sign up on the bulletin board in his own hand saying that “this Sunday there will be an improvisation for three organs: CW, RBO, CW”—meaning Clarence Watters, Remsen B. Ogilby, and the other CW referring to me. Dr. Ogilby had been a chaplain in World War II and he had a portable organ—you know one of those things that unfold, a harmonium—and he set that up in the middle of the chapel. There is a small two-manual practice organ in the crypt that was for me to play, and Clarence of course played the big organ. Ogilby played a hymn, which he could manage—he actually played the organ and carillon pretty well—and I would do a little improvisation on it from the chapel, which would come rolling up the stone staircase from the crypt, and then Clarence would play something more elaborate on the Aeolian-Skinner organ. Then, we repeated the sequence, and finally Clarence would play an improvisation on both of the hymns together! It was really very clever.
The thing about that story is that this was Ogilby’s idea! He said “let’s do it” and he wrote the notice about it. Not many college presidents I know of would have that kind of imagination!

NC: Did Clarence improvise in the formal style?
CDW: Yes, he could improvise a fugue. And he played all the extant works of Dupré including the preludes and fugues, the Variations sur un Noël, and the Symphonie-Passion; the Stations of the Cross was a specialty of his. He played them extraordinarily well. He played everything from memory, and he insisted that I play from memory. I wasn’t disciplined enough to apply that to everything I learned, but what I played for him I played from memory.

NC: Did Cokey play from memory?
CDW: I don’t believe so. But Clarence had a huge and amazing memorized repertoire.

NC: Who had he studied with? We associate him with Dupré, but he must have started somewhere else.
CDW: He grew up in East Orange, part of that New Jersey tradition we were talking about. [Looking up Watters biography1] He was born in 1902 and studied with Mark Andrews. He was also the organist of Christ’s Church in Rye, New York, and Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh. And from 1952–76 he was at St. John’s in West Hartford, while he was at Trinity College 1932–67 as head of the music department.

NC: You told me that he was the whole music department at Trinity, and he directed the Glee Club?
CDW: Yes. And this was good, because prior to that I just knew what we had done at the cathedral, but Clarence taught a lot of the choral and orchestral repertoire, which I didn’t know at all before that. In the Glee Club, he did very good repertoire. I knew for the first time Monteverdi—something from Orfeo, which we sang in Italian. And good folk-song arrangements, and Brahms songs. The college was all men at the time, so we did TTBB arrangements.
When I went there at age 16, he immediately appointed me accompanist of the Glee Club: this was good for me musically and socially. At Trinity, the Glee Club went off to all the girls’ schools and did joint concerts so we could do SATB music—and we had dances—that sort of thing, which I liked. And after I got my car for the Stafford Springs job, I had a friend who was adept at chasing girls, so he took me on as an apprentice. [Much laughter] That was also something I gave thanks for . . . all the way through high school I was so busy learning to be an organist that I was sheltered.

NC: Were there any other organ students in your class at Trinity?
CDW: Yes, my fellow assistant organist at the college was Ralph Grover, and he had been in the choir at St. Paul’s in Flatbush, Brooklyn, under Ralph Harris, who was a well-known and respected organist of that era.

NC: What did you study during your first year with Clarence? Did he give you Dupré to begin with?
CDW: Well, the first thing he did, which sort of annoyed me to be honest with you—and I don’t advise this—he decided to re-teach me some Bach works I had learned with Cokey, such as the Toccata in C and trio sonatas.
That reminds me of an interesting story. There was a Miss Kostikyan, who taught piano to boys in the Cathedral Choir School. (This was during the Depression, and I didn’t think to ask my father for lessons, and it wasn’t until Cokey suggested it to my father that he sprang for organ lessons.) One day I was practicing on the two-manual organ in St. Ansgarius’ Chapel, and Miss Kostikyan came in with this young man, and she said, “Charles, I want you to meet Virgil Fox,” and I said, “Oh, glad to meet you, Virgil.” He was maybe 20 or 21. I got off the bench (Miss Kostikyan had told me he was an organist) and asked if he wanted to play. And he said “I want to play the big organ.” I told him I couldn’t authorize him to play the big organ, so he deigned to play the chapel organ saying “you can’t make music on a little thing like this.” But he played very well and that was my introduction to Virgil Fox.
Of course I met him many times later. After he left Riverside, I allowed him to give lessons at Heavenly Rest. And he was on the AGO national council during part of the time I was—he was not notable for his regularity of attendance at meetings! Nor was Biggs. I also have a letter from Biggs apologizing for having problems attending council meetings!
When the Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall organ was dedicated, Biggs, Fox, and Crozier played the opening. And Biggs, I swear, he played like an automaton. There was no feeling, or brilliance, or anything else. Virgil . . . well he played it damn well, or course, but tastelessly. Crozier, to me, was perfection, and far beyond these other two in musicianship, and technique, too. I just thought she was wonderful. This was in the early 60s.

NC: Anything else about Watters before we go on? He was really instrumental in introducing the music of Dupré to this country.
CDW: Well he would talk for hours about Dupré, not only music, but about marvelous dinners with seven different kinds of wine, and that sort of thing. He and his wife Midge socialized with Marcel and Jeanette Dupré and were really good friends.
He was also a bug on fingering—my impression is that Dupré taught Clarence his approach, and then Watters taught me Dupré’s approach. During lessons, Clarence would write out for me, in detail, all of the fingerings of the complicated stuff.

NC: Did he insist that you play things his way?
CDW: I don’t know—I just didn’t have any reason to challenge anything he taught. He was very confident of his gifts. There is a picture of him sitting at the organ in one of the college yearbooks, with the caption Optimus Sum, so everyone got the idea! [Huge amounts of laughter]
You know he played the dedicatory recital on the big Skinner at the Memorial Church at Harvard. That gives you an idea of his renown at the time.

NC: Well, that’s a nice introduction into your Harvard years. You must have known that organ?
CDW: I only know it because I remember Archibald T. Davison. He was the organist and choirmaster as well as the director of the famous Harvard Glee Club. I had met him previously, so I went up to him at the chapel and he was playing this big organ, but I never played it. I wasn’t an organ student at Harvard.

NC: It’s while you were at Harvard that you were assistant organist at Christ Church in Harvard Square?
CDW: Yes, under Bill Rand [W. Judson Rand] whose first name was actually Wilberforce, and I occasionally called him that! Incidentally, E. Power Biggs had previously been organist of the church.

NC: What was Frank Sayre’s connection in the chronology?
CDW: He had just graduated from Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge and was an assistant at Christ Church, was learning to chant the service, and our paths just crossed. His brother Woodrow Wilson Sayre was also around. They were each grandsons of Woodrow Wilson. Frank and I corresponded throughout the war when he was a Navy chaplain. He later invited me to play at Washington Cathedral after he became dean.
The organ in Christ Church was a new four-manual Aeolian-Skinner [Opus 1007], although the fourth manual was prepared for. The church had terrible acoustics, but the organ was good and was used as the first of Aeolian-Skinner’s demonstration recordings, before the King of Instruments series.

NC: Yes, it’s recently been re-released by JAV, I think. That’s where you met G. Donald Harrison?
CDW: Yes. Don seemed sort of lonely—his wife lived in New York—and he and Bill Rand were great friends and I tagged along, all the time. They each loved to drink and talk, and I was just a kid, but he was so nice to me. There were all these bawdy limericks! And I’ve got lots of letters from him.
After the war, I got appointed to St. Thomas Chapel (during the war my father bought a nice piece of land on Ridgewood Avenue in Glen Ridge), and I conceived the idea that I would like to have an organ studio and be a big fat organ teacher in Glen Ridge together with my New York job. And I talked to Don about this—how to get an organ for this studio. Gosh, I learned a lot about organs from hanging out with Bill and Don putting the organ in Christ Church.
I invited Don to dinner to show him my ideas, with the idea of building an organ along the lines of his specification in the Harvard Dictionary.2 I suggested a couple of changes and he was always willing to consider my ideas.

NC: What was Don like in these social settings?
CDW: It was mostly he and Bill, who was a real extrovert, bantering back and forth. What I remember most was that it was limerick after limerick, and usually pretty bawdy!

NC: Did you get to any of the Boston churches?
CDW: Oh yes, Carl McKinley, Everett Titcomb, Francis Snow . . . and I was active in the Guild.

NC: Was George Faxon around in those days?
CDW: Yes. And Bill Zeuch,3 who had been one of the interim organists at St. John the Divine, along with Channing before Cokey. I’d known him as a choirboy, called him Mr. Zeuch, but had no idea he was involved with Aeolian-Skinner until I met him during these Harvard years.

NC: Biggs?
CDW: Yes. Bill Rand for some reason had a key to the Busch-Reisinger Museum, his choir sang there from time to time, and Bill and I went in one night. The organ was playing, and it was Biggs practicing for his CBS Sunday morning broadcast. (I later played a recital there, and Don Harrison praised my playing, which was a huge compliment.)
Anyway, we came in to use the organ late one night, and found Jimmy Biggs practicing, and his first wife, Colette—who was French and had a very fiery temperament—was yelling at him about his playing “non, non Jeemee, not like zeehs!” She was really letting him have it. As you know, that marriage did not last, and he later married this nice lady, Peggy.

NC: Daniel Pinkham must have been around then.
CDW: Yes, he was an undergraduate. We became friendly. He had a harpsichord in his room in Harvard yard. He pronounced it hopsycawd! We actually played a duet recital at Christ Church, including the Soler that you and I played recently. Anyway, later, when I lived in Paris, I found out that Janet [Janet Hayes, later Mrs. CDW] had been his soloist when she was at New England Conservatory.

NC: Let’s talk about the Lake Delaware Boys Camp, since they just celebrated their 100th anniversary, which was written up in the New York Times [Sunday, July 26, 2009]. You applied once and were turned down because you were too young?
CDW: That’s right. The director of the camp asked Channing [Lefebvre] if he knew of an organist, and he recommended me. I went and saw the director, and he said that I appeared to be qualified, but that they couldn’t possibly use someone who was the same age as the campers. At that time the campers’ age range went up to 17. So I tucked my tail between my legs and went off to college. After I graduated from college, I came back and proclaimed, “I am now twenty years old and how about putting me on your staff.” So they did and therein hangs the tale. That was 1940 and I played my last service there in 1990!

NC: You were there for 50 years!?
CDW: Not every year of the 50. I was in the war and in Europe, but I was there for most of it.

NC: That’s an unusual combination—camp and church.
CDW: The unique quality of the camp is that it’s designed as a military organization, and they have military drills and carry little fake rifles and do all sorts of military maneuvers. Then on top of that they have this very elaborate, Anglo-Catholic ritual. And the campers were taken from the strain of society that needs help, although the majority are born and brought up Episcopalian. My son and my nephew went there. Quite a few of them are clergy children. They all are taught to genuflect at the Incarnatus of the creed. Now they may be Baptist, or Pentecostal—God knows what, but boy, you genuflect at the Incarnatus! And they have the Angelus three times a day—whatever anyone is doing, the chapel bell starts going morning, noon and night and everything stops and everybody stands very quiet. Some of them recite the “Hail Mary.”

NC: They had chapel, or Mass everyday?
CDW: Mass everyday.

NC: What was the organ?
CDW: Well, that was one of the most interesting things about it. It was an 1877 two-manual tracker by Hilborne L. Roosevelt that had been ordered by Commodore Elbridge T. Gerry to be installed in his mansion on the estate. He also had a mansion on Fifth Avenue, the land of which is still owned by the Gerrys, on top of which stands the Pierre Hotel. It was Commodore Gerry’s son, Robert Livingston Gerry and his wife Cornelia Harriman Gerry, who founded the camp.
Gerry was the commodore of the New York Yacht Club and had the biggest yacht in the city—it was 190 feet long. Incidentally, I just found out an interesting thing about his yacht—it had a full set of Eucharistic vestments as part of its equipment. He was a very devoted high churchman!

NC: What parish did he attend?
CDW: They were closely connected with the Church of the Resurrection, and he actually built the Church of St. Edward the Martyr on East 109th Street, which is where the camp’s New York headquarters was for many decades. In fact that is where I was interviewed for the job.
In 1886 it was decided that the organ wasn’t big enough, so he had Roosevelt add a choir organ, which had among other things a 16-foot reed on it. It was a Bassoon (I think), a free reed. What is most notable about the organ is that it has never in the slightest way been electrified.

NC: Even to this day?
CDW: Yes, even to this day, oh yeah! It has three large bellows that are attached to a crankshaft with a very large wheel, the rim of which has a handle that is eighteen inches long. You could put two boys alongside it. The effort required depends on how loudly the organist is playing—if the organist is playing loudly, the thing has to be pumped quite vigorously; if it’s being played for meditative music during communion, the kids found that they could sit right on the window sill right by this big flywheel and put their feet on the handle and just rock it back and forth. There’s an air gauge, which has a green light at the end of it, and an amber light part way down, and a red one further down, and the bottom of it has a huge skull and bones!

NC: For when it’s empty?
CDW: That means the organist has no air at all and you are in trouble! Anyway, it’s a wonderful organ. I made a recording in 1960 that has a lot of solos in it . . . at least three or four different boys sang, one of whom was nine years old and later killed in Vietnam. Really sad.
And there have been a lot of good organists associated with the camp. Clement Campbell, who was also organist at Resurrection [in New York] back in the 20s and 30s, was organist and choir director at the camp. One of the things that pleases me about the camp was that—even though I did not usually give organ lessons up there—I in one case gave the first organ lessons to this young 16-year-old who was quite a good pianist who went on to become organist of Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago: Eddie Mondello. He was a marvelous soprano for me and was interested in the organ, and I started him off.
Back to my musical duties at the camp. I trained the kids and played. But I didn’t select the music, because they are still doing the music they did back in 1909: Caleb Simper’s Mass and Will C. McFarlane’s Magnificat.

NC: You were into your first year at Harvard when the war intervened. What about your Harvard years after the war,4 and your teachers there?
CDW: Walter Piston, whom I had for most of my courses—harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and orchestration—was great at all those things. And Archibald T. Davidson, with whom I studied choral conducting, and choral composition. My other teacher was Tillman Merritt, who is not terribly well known now. He taught 16th-century harmony, as well as a course on Stravinsky and Hindemith, who were the latest things at that time—really cutting edge.

NC: What was Piston like? He’s probably the most famous.
CDW: He was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. He had a very quiet way about him and he would come up with funny things. When a student would be up at the blackboard writing something, he would use some phrase like “that’s a somewhat infelicitous situation there, we have a parallel octaves between the alto and the bass in that progression.” He was very quiet about it. We all loved him. He was a very fine teacher. When I went there before the war, I don’t believe his book was out, which is now a standard textbook at colleges all over the place.5 But, we learned harmony according to that.
And in fugue, he was always quoting André Gedalge. I believe Gedalge’s book is now available.6 In those days, I think he was the only one in the country who knew about Gedalge. I remember what little fugal study I had previous to Piston was with Coke-Jephcott, using a textbook by James Higg.

NC: Any memorable fellow students with whom you went to Harvard?
CDW: Yes, Robert Middleton, who later taught at Vassar. Dan Pinkham was way behind me because he was a freshman when I was a graduate student.

NC: Then you went to the war and came back and finished your Harvard master’s degree; did you then go back to New York for a couple of years?
CDW: Yes, the same month I got my master’s from Harvard I got the F.A.G.O. too! Boy, what a sigh of relief I had!

NC: Did you continue to coach with Clarence Watters on the organ tests as part of the scheme?
CDW: Yes, I think the main piece was the Dupré G-minor Prelude and Fugue, so I went down to Hartford and took a few lessons with Clarence.

NC: Do you recall where the F.A.G.O. exam was held, what organ you played?
CDW: Yes, I came down and took it in New York. It was on the old Synod Hall organ at St. John the Divine. [Skinner Opus 204, 1913]

NC: Who were the examiners?
CDW: Harold Friedell, who was chairman of the examination committee, Seth Bingham, J. Lawrence Erb from Connecticut College, Philip James, and Norman Coke-Jephcott.

NC: So you got your master’s degree and F.A.G.O., and then you took the job in New York. Where was this?
CDW: St. Thomas Chapel. The vicar at St. Thomas Chapel had gone to Trinity College and he knew Watters. He came up to Cambridge and auditioned the service I played unbeknownst to me.

NC: Was it a boys’ choir at St. Thomas Chapel in those days?
CDW: Yes, it was. But it had a few women helping them out. I think I increased the size of the boys’ choir at least 300%, maybe more. I was an eager beaver back then. I would chauffeur the kids around town. Thomas Beveridge and Charles Wuorinen were each choirboys of mine, and they were both very bright and very good musicians.
They had an E. M. Skinner organ [Opus 598, 1926], and the console was in the chancel and the organ was up in the rear balcony, with a small accompaniment division up front. It was still a chapel of St. Thomas Church in those days. Now it’s All Saints Church on East 60th Street.
Anyway, I was in the Harvard Club (I was single, just out of Harvard and the dues were then quite low), taking my ease one day, when a man walked in who had been a tenor in my choir at Christ Church in Cambridge when he was at Harvard. While I was off at the war, he was off at seminary.
He walked into the club, his collar was on backward . . . it was the Rev. Richard R. P. Coombs. He later became the dean at the cathedral in Spokane. We sat down and talked and he said, “I was just offered the job of Canon of the American Cathedral in Paris,” and I said “You took it, of course,” and he said, “No, I like it where I am, but the dean is looking for an organist.” He told me that the dean was in New York at the moment, and I went to see him that very night at his hotel. I told the dean I majored in French and was crazy about French organs and French organ music. And by golly, I got the job. What a piece of luck!

NC: Sounds like you were pretty well set in New York, with a church and the school, but this lured you away?
CDW: Yes, I was well set. I was making more than the vicar of the St. Thomas Chapel and he couldn’t stand it!

NC: How did that happen?
CDW: Well, as a matter of fact, this will be amusing to anybody living in 2010. When I landed this wonderful job at St. Thomas Chapel, the salary was $2,000 a year, and when I landed this wonderful job at Trinity School as the director of music, the salary was $2,500 a year. So I was getting $4,500 a year, and the vicar of the St. Thomas Chapel told me somewhat ruefully that he was getting $4,000 a year.

NC: So, your combined salary . . .
CDW: Yes, combined salary. That’s what we musicians do, you know—we take these teaching jobs . . .

NC: But even so, you wanted to go to Paris?
CDW: Oh, yes! And of course the salary there was less.

NC: So, you took a cut to go there.
CDW: Oh yes. I never regretted that, though.

NC: Tell the story of how you went to Paris traveling first class!
CDW: The dean, Dean Beekman, who was a large man and just a slight bit pompous, said after hiring me, “You know, you must come by boat and you must come on the United States Line. I have a friend who is important in that company. Just give him my name and he’ll take care of you.” So I called up this man whose name was Commander de Riesthal, and I said, “Dean Beekman told me to call you because I want to reserve passage on the SS America to leave New York on September 8.” And he asked, “What class do you want to travel?” And I answered, “What class does the dean travel?” “Why, first class, of course,” came the reply. And I said, “Well, I’ll go first class.”

NC: Did anybody question you about this? Was it okay with Dean Beekman?
CDW: I don’t know. But I thought to myself, gee, I don’t know how long I’m going to be away in Europe, and here I’ve got this wonderful cabin . . . I’ll just invite all my friends and have a party for my departure. So I did, and one of the people invited was Ellen Faull, a soprano, whose debut at the City Opera I had heard. Incidentally, since then she became the head voice teacher at Juilliard, a very good singer, and she sang a whole lot for me when I started the Canterbury Choral Society.
Anyway, she pranced into the party and said, “Oh Charlie, I just met the most wonderful girl whom I knew at Tanglewood this summer. I was walking down 57th Street and she was walking down 57th Street.” Ellen said, “I’m going to a party; a friend of mine is going off to Paris. You’re going to Paris, too, aren’t you, Janet? You should look this guy up because he’s going to be organist at the cathedral over there and you might get a job as soloist.” So when Ellen got to the party on the boat she gave me Janet’s number in Paris. I looked her up and the story is that I took her out, we went to Versailles in my new French Simca, and we got married a few months later in the American Cathedral.

To be continued.