In the wind . . .

On the road again . . .

What do you get when you play a country song backwards?

—You get your dog back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back . . .

I worked in the shop of Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, between 1984 and 1987 with an assortment of coworkers. There was a minister from an obscure sect who spent lunch and coffee breaks reading the King James Bible, a motorcycle mechanic who had run the service department of a Honda dealership, a carpenter who had worked on large construction projects, two conservatory organ major graduates, Dan Angerstein, and his sister, Linda, both educated and cultured people.

There were frequent discussions about what would play on the radio. I preferred solid classical music, a couple co-workers were rock-n-roll devotees, and the minister had cassettes of treacly inspirational music. Country-Western music was a frequent compromise. Jack, the motorcycle guy, was exceptionally quick witted. Hardly a day passed without some hilarious quip floating across from his workstation, and I was deep in the thrall of puns, a habit that my family still shouts about, but I believe secretly envies.¹ We had a blast making up new lyrics to songs like All the Girls I’ve Loved Before (Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesia), Better Keep Your Hands Off My Potential New Boyfriend (Dolly Parton), and Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life (Bobby Bare). Oh boy, those were the days.

Willie Nelson provided another favorite: “On the road again. Just can’t wait to get on the road again. The life I love is making music with my friends, and I can’t wait to get on the road again.” That one really resonated for me, because since my first days in an organ shop in the summer of 1975, I’ve loved the part of organ building that takes you out of town, loading an organ into trucks and setting off for adventure, camaraderie, mishaps, and triumphs.  

There was the delivery of an organ to the chapel of an exclusive island summer community that required three trips on the little ferry to transport the organ across the water.

There was the installation in the chapel of Salvation Army headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, where the client was providing meals for us. Breakfast and lunch in the headquarters’ dining room with the chapter officers, served by ex-con chef Vinnie were fine, but dinner in the line at the Men’s Service Center was a lot more colorful.

There was the trip from Oberlin, Ohio, to Oakland, California, to deliver a new harpsichord, where the client’s surgeon husband lectured us about smoking and brought home a smoker’s lung in a glass jar to make his point.²

I’ve driven dozens of rental trucks across the country, one of which wound up on its side. I’ve been with hundreds of people experiencing the excitement of the delivery of their new organ, squealing with delight as the blower went on for the first time and the first pipes sounded. I’ve sat in the pews on the first Sunday after the organ case was erected, watching the reactions of the parishioners as they saw it for the first time. One little girl announced at the top of her voice, “I liked the old one better.” I’ve attended the weddings of the daughters of members of the organ committee, and I’ve ridden an elephant in a jungle in Thailand.

But my trips to Madagascar were as good as adventure gets for an organ guy. In these pages last month, I shared the history of the Hook & Hastings Company, the venerable Boston firm that produced more than 2,600 organs under several different names over a span of a hundred years, and started the tale of my trips to the land of the lemurs. Take a look back at the June issue of The Diapason and reread the last eight (or so) paragraphs.

Zina Andrianarivelo, Madagascar’s ambassador to the United Nations, called me in the spring of 2008. Of course, I thought, you’re Madagascar’s ambassador to the United Nations. I get calls like this all the time. The ambassador attends the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, and the organist there told him about the Organ Clearing House. He asked if we could meet.  

Over a well-oiled lunch in an Italian restaurant near the United Nations headquarters, he told me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Madagascar, the FJKM (which is associated with the Presbyterian Church of the USA), was in the middle of an important anniversary celebration, and he had just been in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, for the opening event. The church’s national Vice-President, Marc Ravalomanana, who also served as the President of the Federation of Madagascar, was delivering a sermon to a full congregation in the city’s central church. From the pulpit, he pointed to the ambassador and said, “Mr. Ambassador, I want you to go back to America and find an organ for this church.”

In the middle of the 19th century there was an evil Malagasy (pronounced Malagash) queen who was cured of a horrible disease by healers in her palace. In gratitude, she outlawed Christianity, and 150,000 Christians were put to death during her rule. Her successor invited Christian missionaries back into the country, and four stone churches were built in Antananarivo during the 1860s commemorating four early instances of Christian martyrdom. Each bears the name Tranovato, which means stone house. So for example, FJKM Tranovato Ambonin’ Ampararinina is the Stone Church of the Hurling Cliff. Tranovato Faravohitra commemorates a martyr who was burned alive. The two sites are a couple miles apart. Legend has it that on the days of the two martyrdoms, a rainbow connected the two sites.

President Ravolamanana grew up in the rural village of Imerinkasinana, about an hour drive from Antananarivo (colloquially contracted to Tananriv, or simply, Tana). As a teenager, he delivered yogurt by bicycle. As a young man, he made a fortune developing a system for delivering dairy products all around the country without refrigeration. And he used that fortune to build a conglomerate of construction companies, television stations, and newspapers; he was one of the wealthiest men in the country. The church had advocated his candidacy, and in turn, he was donating huge sums for the construction of new church buildings and the repair and renovation of older buildings, and he was interested in importing a fleet of organs.

The ambassador would be traveling to Madagascar in June to participate in an international conference arranged by the president to increase international trade, aimed at improving the life conditions and styles of the poorest Malagasy people. That would be an ideal time for me to visit the country. All arrangements would be taken care of. All I would have to do was get on an airplane.

I went to Madagascar’s mission at the United Nations to get a diplomatic visa. At the advice of the State Department, I went to a travel health clinic where I was vaccinated against seven nasty diseases. I was told not to eat raw vegetables if I didn’t know how they had been handled. I was given medicine to fight dysentery and to prevent malaria. And I was told not to drink tap water, including ice cubes.

Madgascar was a French colony until 1960, so Air France has scheduled departures from Paris to Tana, but they don’t schedule return flights until they could fill a plane. Mine would be a one-way ticket. I got on the plane knowing I’d arrive in Tana around 1:00 a.m., but I didn’t know who would meet me, I didn’t know where I’d be staying, and I didn’t know what I’d be doing once I got there. 

When we landed at Ivato International Airport, there were three snazzy young men in white shirts with presidential IDs; one was holding a card with my name. They showed me into a VIP lounge and offered me a drink (gin and tonic). It only took a couple minutes off the plane for me to have my first Malagasy ice cubes. They drove me to the Carlton Hotel in Antananarivo, where the president’s name was on my reservation. There was a gift basket and a bottle of wine in my room.

So far, so good. I woke early and went to the hotel dining room for breakfast, wondering what the day would bring. While I was eating, another guy with an ID tag came to my table to tell me that my driver was waiting outside. He took me to Tranovato Faravohitra and there was Zina to greet me, along with a group of church officials he had gathered. They had planned an itinerary that had me visiting 15 churches—some which needed organs, and some which had organs in need of repair. One of these people would be my guide, making the schedule and making contacts with the churches. Richard, who had picked me up at the hotel, would be my driver, and Adolha Vonialitahina would be my translator. I had an entourage.

That evening, Zina took me to the annual awards banquet of the Rotary Club, held in a rural country club, about an hour away from the city. Small talk continued as we found our assigned tables and were ushered to a buffet dinner loaded with things I didn’t recognize. Just as I picked up a plate and started surveying the choices, the lights went out.

In the course of a week, I visited 12 churches. One was under construction, the gift of the president, and there were chickens running around the site. One chicken wound up in a pot and became lunch for the workers—no refrigerator, no problem. Several of the churches had organs. One was a terrible junker with no nameplate, but I had to admire the organist who had figured out how to keep it working. I offered to do some tuning. The organist held notes, and it was fun to watch his face light up as each pipe came into tune. I gave Adolha a quick lesson for holding notes, and invited the organist up on the walkboard. I showed him how to use the tuning iron, and he got the knack of it right away.  

We arrived at another church where there was a simple organ façade. I opened the fallboard to reveal the classic Cavaillé-Coll logo and burst into tears. I had travelled 8,700 miles to find a Cavaillé-Coll organ in an East African island nation. It didn’t look like much, and there were a lot of dead notes, but it had that sound.

As I cavorted around town, Zina was working on getting an appointment for us to talk with President Ravolamanana. A couple times were set and changed, and finally Zina took me to the presidential palace. As I sat in a waiting room while Zina met alone with the president, I thought of Alan Laufman, the founder of the Organ Clearing House. “Alan would have loved this!”

It may have seemed surreal, but it was real. I sat with President Ravalomanana for about 45 minutes. I shared some highlights of my studies with him, and promised a report on all the churches I had visited. He asked if we could bring an organ for Tranovato Farovohitra in time for the anniversary celebration in November, and made it clear he would like to follow up with more projects later.  

Bringing a pipe organ from the United States to Madagascar with five months notice seemed like a tall order, but we had a four-rank Hook & Hastings organ³ in Boston that would be easy to move. We would consider it a temporary installation and move it to a smaller church later. The president’s office arranged for a shipping container. There would be plenty of extra space, so a clothing drive was organized, and I lined up donations of surplus pianos to be delivered to churches and an orphanage I had visited.

I rented a truck and gathered the pianos in Maine. Approaching the New Hampshire border, I had to stop in a weigh station. The trooper in the booth asked, “What are you carrying?” “Pianos.” “Where are you taking them?” I couldn’t resist. “Madagascar.” “Pull over.” The state police went over my truck and papers with a fine-tooth comb. Thankfully, Ryder had not omitted any of the required safety equipment.

A few months later, my colleague Amory Atkins and I flew to Tana. Because the streets of Tana are steep and narrow and festooned with thousands of low-hanging wires, the container could not be trucked directly to the church. Instead, it would be delivered to a presidential campus on the outskirts of the city. The Malagasy Army would provide a flat-bed truck and the manpower to transfer the load. An Army colonel would make the arrangements.

There was a snafu with the container. President Ravolamanana had recently implemented some new import restrictions. His container was in violation and was being held at the dock. The colonel hinted that the president “had to play by his own rules.” It took a couple days to sort that out. When the container finally arrived, we transferred it to the Army’s truck. Amory was brilliant as a platoon leader!  

When we arrived at the church, we learned that steel supports were being added to the structure of the balcony, so there would be further delay. The steel workers were barefooted (a couple were wearing flip-flops), and they were using rechargeable cutting tools. It was obviously going to take a long time. Amory and I tried to help; the cordless tools we had were better than theirs! Finally, we let the colonel know that we wouldn’t have time to install the organ before the anniversary service if we couldn’t start in 36 hours. A couple hours later, a team of real steel workers arrived, equipped with acetylene torches, welding gear, and steel-toed boots. Problem solved. (They were from one of the president’s construction companies.)

The church was full. The regular organist played on a Hammond. The congregation sang hymns. The president preached from the same pulpit where he directed the ambassador eight months earlier. During the sermon, he introduced me and asked me to play. When I finished, he thanked me and said, “It’s good—but we’re going to do better. We’re bringing a larger organ next year.” I thought having the president announce that in public was a great way to seal the next project.

But I was wrong. The following January, Zina and I planned to meet for lunch to discuss the next step. He called to cancel. He sounded panicky. He told me to visit the website, France 24 (International News Headlines). President Ravalomanana was being ousted in a coup d’etat led by high-ranking army officers (I’ve wondered if it was “my” colonel) and Andry Rajoelina, a 27 year-old former disc jockey who was mayor of Antananarivo. So that was that.

I’m sorry that we didn’t get to fulfill the grandiose plans. It would have been fun to help raise the standards of music in the Malagasy Church. I have no idea if the organ we brought is still working or being used. But we sure did have an adventure. The next time an ambassador calls, I’ll know what to do.

Notes

1. I was building tower crowns for a large organ case, which included a run of dental moldings, crenelations that ran between a couple rows of ogees. It was a trick to lay them out so the gaps were symmetrical across mitered joints. I stood staring at a joint I was prepared to cut, ruler and pencil in hand, when Dan walked by and asked what I was doing. I replied, “I’m in a trance of dental meditation.”

2. I quit smoking cigarettes on New Year’s Eve, 1981, three months before my son Michael was born.

3. Hook & Hastings #2369 (1915). One manual: 8′ Open Diapason, 8′ Gedeckt, 8′ Dolce, 4′ Flute Harmonic.

Frank Hastings, of the Weston Hastings

For the past 25 years or so, I’ve been caring for a lovely little organ in a Lutheran church in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was built by the Hook & Hastings Company in 1927, their Opus 2542. Originally, there were three stops on the Great (Diapason, Dulciana, Trumpet), five on the Swell (Stopped Diapason, Salicional, Voix Celeste, 4′ Orchestral Flute, Oboe), and a Pedal 16′ Bourdon. The Bourdon has a dual-pressure stop action and two drawknobs. When you draw 16′ Bourdon you get the same 4-inch pressure as the Swell and Great; when you draw 16′ Lieblich Gedeckt, you get 3-inch pressure, and the pipes speak more softly. If you don’t know any better and draw them both, the organ is smart enough to simply use the standard pressure.

Three ranks were added to the Great in the 1950s—a 4′ Octave, and a Quint and Super Octave that draw on one knob as Mixture II. A set of chimes was added at the same time. The additions were not made with particular historic sensitivity: they’re a little brighter than the rest of the organ. It’s fun to play using just the original stops to understand best what the builder had in mind. There’s a Tremolo for the Swell, plenty of couplers and combination settings, and a handsome little drawknob console. The entire organ is enclosed in a single expression chamber.

Such a simple little organ, so why all the fuss?  

A grand tradition

Elias and George Greenleaf Hook founded their famous organbuilding firm in 1827 in Salem, Massachusetts. The first organ they built is preserved in the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem. The company moved to Boston in 1831, occupying a site near the present North Station. It took about 18 years for the Hook brothers to produce their first 100 organs. In 1854, the firm moved again to Tremont Street to the neighborhood now occupied by Northeastern University. By that time, E. & G. G. Hook employed more than 200 workers and built 20 organs the year they moved. 

Francis (Frank) Hastings was born in 1836, apprenticed with a toolmaker, and joined the firm of E. & G. G. Hook as a draftsman at the age of 19. He quickly proved himself a valuable employee and gained experience in all departments of the factory.

In 1870, E. & G. G. Hook produced 54 organs. Nine of those were three-manual instruments, including the 45-rank organ built for the First Unitarian Church of Woburn, Massachusetts, now located in the Church of the Holy Cross in Berlin, Germany. In 1870, George Hook was 63, Elias was 65, and the brothers were planning their retirement. They took Frank Hastings into partnership and changed the name of the company to E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings. George and Elias Hook died in 1880 and 1881, respectively. Frank Hastings purchased their shares in the company, and the name was changed to Hook & Hastings.

Frank Hastings had grown up in Weston, Massachusetts, now an affluent suburb to the west of Boston. But in the 1830s and 40s, Weston was rolling farmland with few trees and no hint of proximity to the city, excepting the Fitchburg (later Boston & Maine) Railroad that passed through town. Frank’s grandfather, Jonas, worked as a boot-maker and farmer; his father, Francis, had continued that work. Frank was born in the house Jonas had built on North Avenue in 1823. Frank may have loved living in the country, but he hated making boots and farming as much as he hated school, so he dropped out at the age of 14 and found work in Boston. Although he had worked in the city most of his life, he dreamed of moving the Hook & Hastings factory to Weston.  

This was more than a bucolic or nostalgic urge. The 1880s were the dawn of labor unrest, and many American companies were struggling to control their work forces. This led to the founding of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, the same year that an anarchist exploded a bomb in Chicago’s Haymarket. In 1892, there was a highly publicized violent strike at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead steel mill near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And in 1895, striking workers at the Pullman railcar factory in Chicago were confronted by the Illinois National Guard—30 people were killed and 57 injured. 

Frank Hastings conceived that he might avoid such unrest within his company if he went out of his way to provide comfortable living and working conditions for his employees and their families. So in 1884, three years after the deaths of the Hook brothers, he purchased five acres of land from the family homestead, and built a gabled, Shingle-style house, directly across the road from his parents. In 1886, he purchased the remaining 45 acres of the family property, along with the 150-acre Warren farm on nearby Lexington Street. The new factory was completed in 1889, and the company was moved.

The new factory was located adjacent to Fitchburg Railroad tracks, and Mr. Hastings arranged for a whistle stop and later the small Hastings station, making it possible for his workers to commute easily from Boston. The Hastings stop is still active as a whistle stop in Boston’s commuter rail system. The proximity of the railroad allowed for efficient delivery of materials to the factory and shipment of completed organs to customers.

To accommodate his work force, Frank Hastings built cottages on his properties for workers to rent. He made inexpensive mortgages available so workers could build their own houses, stipulating that the houses must be worth at least $1,000, because if a house was too cheap, the owner wouldn’t maintain it faithfully. Hastings Hall was constructed to serve as a community center, theater, and recreation hall. Across from his house he built a caretaker’s cottage for the employee who oversaw the maintenance of gardens, lawns, and all the buildings.

In 1890, the population of Weston was around 1,600, and Hook & Hastings was by far its largest employer and industry. The Weston Historical Society has records of company parties that included dinners “under the tent,” “games and rambles,” badminton tournaments, speeches, and contests. Newspapers reported that a community of self-respecting mechanics sprang up around the factory. In 1890, the Boston Herald reported that “every man feels he has a friend in his employer. If there is any trouble coming, if there is sickness in the family, the one to whom they turn for help, for sympathy, for comfort, is the head of the concern. He knows personally every man in his employ.” Settled in the new factory, the company built 26 organs in 1890.

We know little about Frank Hastings’ first wife. Their son, Francis Warren Hastings, was an officer in the company; but his health deteriorated, and he moved to Bermuda in 1895. In 1897, Hastings hired Arthur Leslie Coburn (brother of the schoolteacher Anna Coburn, who taught at the nearby District School #4) as factory superintendent and secretary of the corporation. Frank’s first wife died during this period, and in 1899 Frank married Arthur’s sister, Anna. How’s that for a harmonious working situation?

Warren Hastings died of consumption in Bermuda in 1903, and Arthur Coburn became the president of the company. In 1904, the first full year of Coburn’s presidency, the Hook & Hastings Company built 39 organs.  

Frank Hastings died in 1916 at the age of 80, 61 years after he joined E. &
G. G. Hook, and 27 years after moving the company to Weston. Arthur Coburn had assimilated enough of Frank Hastings’ philosophy that the company continued to produce organs with exceptional artistic content for about fifteen more years. But the pace was diminishing. In 1916, the year of Frank’s death, the 89-year-old company produced only 19 organs. That same year, the 10-year-old Ernest M. Skinner Company built 23 instruments.

Ernest Skinner brought formidable competition to the marketplace. At the turn of the 20th century he was young, ambitious, and a brilliant mechanic and inventor with deep musical intuition. He had a knack for providing his organs with snazzy new mechanical accessories and innovative tonal resources. In the first years of the century, his fledgling company produced instruments that were admired by the best musicians, and he quickly developed an impressive roster of clients. The meteoric rise of the Skinner firm coincided with the decline of Hook & Hastings.

After Arthur Coburn’s death in 1931, the company continued for a few years, but the quality of the instruments declined dramatically, and the output dwindled to four instruments in 1934, and four more in 1935. Anna Hastings had retained ownership of the company after Frank’s death, and as she watched the decline, she said that her husband had always put quality before price, and when organbuilders started talking about price first, it was time to stop. A contract was signed with the Mystic Building Wrecking Company of Chelsea, Massachusetts, the company’s buildings were demolished, and the corporation was dissolved in April of 1937.

Under the names of E. & G. G. Hook, E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, Hook & Hastings, and The Hook and Hastings Company, 2,614 pipe organs were built over a span of 110 years. They were located in 47 states and as far away as Quebec, London, Dresden, and Chihuahua, Mexico. Organs were installed in two churches in Honolulu, one in 1875, and another in 1893. Often, when I’m sitting at my desk talking on the phone, my correspondent and I exchange photos and documents by e-mail or text. It’s surreal to be talking with someone in Australia, and having a message arrive in a few seconds. In 1876, a railroad train crossed the continental United States in 83 hours, setting a new record. Those Honolulu organs must have left Weston by rail, traveling to San Francisco where they were transferred to ships for the 2,100-mile voyage to Hawaii. It would have taken weeks to send proposals and drawings back and forth, to exchange signed copies of contracts and receive funds. Did Hook & Hastings send a crew to install an organ, or were there locals available on the island?

Why the fuss?

Remember that neat little organ in Waltham I mentioned earlier? It’s The Hook & Hastings Company Opus 2542, and it’s located about two miles from the site of the Hook & Hastings factory in Weston. It was built in 1927, four years before Arthur Coburn passed away, one of 11 instruments built that year. That organ would have been delivered on a small truck, taking less than half an hour to travel from factory to church. Maybe Anna Hastings and her brother Arthur went to hear it since it was so close to home.

The factory building is long gone, but Frank Hastings’ house is still there. The homestead across the street where Frank was born is still there, as are about a dozen of the houses built by the factory workers using mortgages provided by the company. After tuning in Waltham, it’s fun to take a spin past all that. Just after you pass Frank’s house at 190 North Street, turn left onto Viles Street. The first right off Viles is Hastings Road. The railroad tracks that passed the factory are a few hundred feet further down Viles Street.

What a heritage. Today, Hastings is a leafy, upscale neighborhood, where the heaviest traffic is landscapers’ trucks. I pull off to the side of the road and imagine the bustle of a 280-foot-long wood factory with scores of skilled workers creating hundreds of beautiful pipe organs. In the early days of the factory, there would have been plenty of horse-and-dray traffic delivering materials, and hauling finished organs for local delivery. The company opus list shows nearly 600 organs delivered to churches in Massachusetts, more than 90 in Boston alone! In the 1890s, the factory shipped around 50 organs each year. Roughly once a week, an instrument would be loaded onto wagons or railroad cars. Thousands of ranks of pipes, millions of action parts, and tons and tons of windchests, reservoirs, blowers, consoles, casework, and building frames left Weston each year.

Hook & Hastings to the land of the lemurs

In 1915, one year before Frank Hastings died, the company built a one-manual organ (Opus 2369) with six ranks for the Church of the Sacred Heart in Greenville, New Hampshire. It was moved by the Organ Clearing House to St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1995, where it was installed for temporary use while George Bozeman & Company were preparing the installation of a larger organ. When that organ was installed in 1996, the Hook & Hastings was moved to an upstairs parish hall, where it sat, little used.  

In March of 2008, I received a phone call from Zina Andrianarivelo, Madagascar’s ambassador to the United Nations. I thought, of course you’re the ambassador from Madagascar. What ensued was a lifetime adventure. The Protestant (Presbyterian) churches in the capital city, Antananarivo, were preparing for the 140th anniversary of three acts of martyrdom, when an evil pagan Malagash queen ordered the murder of Christian missionaries. Three church buildings were established on those sites. One of those churches, located on the edge of a dramatic cliff was named Ampamarinana, which translates as “the Church of the Hurling Cliff.”

The nation’s president, Marc Ravalomanana, was also the vice-president of the National Church. He had charged the ambassador with “going back to the United States and finding a pipe organ for this church.” Skepticism satisfied, I went to New York (I lived in Boston at the time) and met with Mr. Andrianarivelo—I figured that I was the only organbuilder working at the United Nations that day.

Zina (we were on first-name terms right away) told me a little about the history of the churches, and the president’s desire to import organs to several churches. The priority would be the main central church, Faravohitra, where the anniversary service was planned for early November. Could we start with that one? It’s a pretty tall order to move and install an organ internationally in five months, but I thought of the one-manual Hook & Hastings in Charlestown, and suggested that we could relocate it quickly for temporary installation. We could bring a larger organ later, and move Opus 2369 to another smaller church.

Zina arranged for my visa, I followed the advice of the State Department concerning vaccinations (they warned me to be sure of the source of water I drank, including ice cubes), and received my airline ticket—my one-way airline ticket. Madagascar was formerly a French colony, so it’s serviced by Air France. They schedule weekly flights from Paris to Antananarivo (which is colloquially shortened to Tanariv, or simply, Tana), but they don’t schedule return flights until there are enough passengers on a list to fill a plane. I’m a stickler about travel arrangements, always being sure I have reservation numbers, flight information, accommodations, and addresses. Zina assured me there would be nothing to worry about.

I flew from New York to Paris, and then to Tana on a flight that would arrive there after midnight. I didn’t know who would meet me. I didn’t know how I would get from the airport to the city, 20 kilometers away. I didn’t know where I’d be staying, or how I would get around the city. And I didn’t know when I’d be going home. But I got on the plane for the 12-hour flight. Zina said it would be OK.

In next month’s column, I’ll tell my Malagash tales.

I offer thanks to Pamela Fox of the Weston Historical Society for providing photographs and facts, and for reading an early draft of this essay. Her command of this history and cheerful contributions have added much to my telling of this tale.

Part 1 of this interview was published in the March 2010 issue of The Diapason. Charles Dodsley Walker celebrated his 90th birthday on March 16. 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. Part I ended with Mr. Walker about to leave for France to serve as organist at the American Cathedral in Paris.

NC: So, you’re in Paris.
CDW: Yes, I’d longed to go to France; this was my first time there. I’d been to a French-speaking country during the war—Algeria, on the way to Sicily. At Trinity College, I had immersed myself in the study of the French language and culture, and this was a dream come true.
I lived in the deanery—a lovely three-story stone building separated from the cathedral by a garden. The church sexton was a man named Lucien; he was also a master chef, and he did a lot of things beside dust the church pews off, I’ll tell you that! I lived there on the top floor of the deanery, and he would come up and wake me up in the morning with a plate of what he called paingrillé, which was a word I hadn’t learned in my study in French, but it turns out it was actually two words, pain and grillé—toast.

NC: Quite a few well-known American organists have held that post, haven’t they?
CDW: Yes, Robert Owen preceded me and Donald Wilkins followed me. They were great years over there, especially if you were a Francophile.

NC: What were services like at the American Cathedral? They were in English, I assume?
CDW: Yes, they were just as if you were here in the States. Everything was in English, we chanted the canticles and so forth.
One of the things I tried to do was to get more Americans in the choir. I had a lot of French opera singers already in there. They’d sing [mimicking the French pronunciation of English] oly, oly, oly, looord Gott uf osts, aven ant urse are fuel of zei gloory, so I was trying to get more Americans, and Janet [Hayes, later Mrs. CDW] was part of that campaign after we married.
One day after service, a little man came up to talk to me and said, “I am Pierre Duvauchelle and I am the conductor of the Paris Chamber Orchestra. You have a beautiful acoustic here in the cathedral.” Well, he wanted to do a series of three or four concerts at the cathedral. And I thought quickly and said, “I will see to it that you may have the use of the cathedral, heated and lighted, for the first three concerts, and then for the fourth concert I want to conduct your orchestra and do a concert with my chorus and your orchestra.” All my life I’d wanted to do works for chorus and orchestra. Many of the orchestra players were members of Lamoreux Orchestra, which was an important orchestra in Paris. So we did the Palestrina Missa Brevis unaccompanied, of course, and then his orchestra joined us for the Bach Magnificat. It was recorded on acetate discs, which I still have, and it was broadcast over the Radiodiffusion Française.
I must have met Langlais by then, because I remember that he came to that concert and complimented me on the Palestrina. He also brought along a friend, a pupil I think, named Pierre Cochereau, whom I met for the first time.
Not too long after I arrived, the dean gave me a new job, in addition to the cathedral, as director of the American Students’ and Artists’ Center on the Left Bank—a beautiful building on what had been Chateaubriand’s estate. The place had been closed up because the Germans had taken it over during the war.

NC: So this was an umbrella of the cathedral or part of its ministry?
CDW: Yes, exactly, to students in Paris. On the first floor it had a theater with a balcony. It didn’t have a very big stage, more of a lecturers’ stage than a theater stage. And there was a big lounge, and a billiard room. On the second floor they had a library and on the opposite wing was the director’s apartment. I had administrative charge of the operations of the center.

NC: And that’s where you lived?
CDW: That’s where we lived—I was married by then. The apartment provided for the director was very comfortable. The building was designed by prize-winning architect Welles Bosworth, who had been J. D. Rockefeller’s architect in charge of restoring Reims Cathedral. He also designed all those buildings for MIT along the Charles River that have those rotundas. And several former Harvard students were over there—Robert Middleton, Noel Lee, Douglas Allanbrook. Leon Fleisher was there at the time, also.

NC: Those were pretty heady years to be in Paris; you must have met many well-known persons?
CDW: Yes, including Poulenc, and notably Nadia Boulanger, whom I had known from her time in Cambridge while I was at Harvard. A lot of people were studying with her in Paris in those days. Janet studied with her. She was Nadia’s favorite singer, and everyone said she sang French songs better than the French did.

NC: Boulanger didn’t teach voice, did she?
CDW: No, she had been a very close friend of Fauré, and coached singers working on his songs. She didn’t exactly teach vocal technique. She said some things I don’t agree with. For instance, she would say—I forget exactly how she put it, but something like “Oh, you don’t have to sing those songs in a sexy way.” Well, many of Fauré’s songs are incredibly sexy and you do need to bring that across. Her forte was teaching composition.
One thing that Nadia did that was influential was that every Wednesday she had a salon—a sort of open house—and young people who liked to trail on the footsteps of the stars would pop in on Wednesday afternoons.
Actually, you were supposed to know her to show up at these. Well, one of the times I was there, Robert Shaw, who I guess had heard of these, showed up, and apparently he didn’t know her. I was sitting there with several others, and the doorbell rang, and Nadia asked if I would answer the door, and when I did, it was Robert Shaw. I brought him in, introduced him, and Nadia was sitting there like a grand dame, which she was!
So, he sat down and the rest of that afternoon the conversation was all about how difficult it was to find a garage to park your car in Paris. There wasn’t a word about Fauré and his use of modality or anything musical like that! This is what was going on, and she was just being friendly, and I don’t recall her addressing a word to Bob Shaw. Nothing! It was funny.

NC: Poulenc?
CDW: For some reason, I remember having dinner with him at an outdoor restaurant on one of those avenues that lead up to the Opéra. He hadn’t even written his now-famous Gloria at this time. He gave quite a few small concerts with singers. There was this singer named Pierre Bernac, and Poulenc would accompany him. I’d run into them a couple of times and we were just friendly.

NC: Ned Rorem must have been around in those days.
CDW: Yes, Janet did a concert with him at the American Embassy; he accompanied her. One of the things Boulanger did was to act as a resource to the American ambassador in Paris in providing Franco-American musicians for concerts of the Cultural Relations of the American Embassy. And on this concert Janet sang some of Ned’s songs.
Janet had gone to the New England Conservatory on the recommendation of Eleanor Steber, and she won the Frank Huntington Beebe award for study abroad, which is what brought her to Paris. She knew Ned at the New England Conservatory and he dedicated a piece to her—A Sermon on Miracles, which we performed in his presence at the Church of the Heavenly Rest many years later, in 1973.
We also toured throughout Germany during the summers of 1950, ’51, and ’52 under the auspices of the United States Department of State as part of a cultural exchange program established after the war. The state department wanted to present our musicians so the German people wouldn’t think we were all barbarians. That was the whole point. There were American artists, poets, authors, and musicians presenting their work all over Germany. We performed in forty different cities in West Germany during those summers, playing a lot of American music, including works by Sowerby, Piston, Bingham, Pinkham, Lukas Foss, and Rorem—that was part of the propaganda to show the Germans that we had composers and performers, and that we cared about these things.
While we were there we crossed paths with Daniel Pinkham and a young violinist named Robert Brink, who were touring doing the same thing.

NC: There must have been many Americans with whom you rendezvoused in Paris?
CDW: Yes. Clarence Dickinson and Seth Bingham paid courtesy calls at the cathedral. Thornton Wilder was a member of the bridal party for a wedding I was playing, and I was introduced to him as if I were being introduced to the next-door neighbor. A lot of people found their way to the American Cathedral.

NC: Edouard Nies-Berger?
CDW: Yes, he visited at the cathedral and at the Students’ and Artists’ Center. He was a very friendly man. I also met Hugh Giles over there. I’d only spent a year in New York before coming to Paris, so I hadn’t met many of the big name organists until they came through Paris.

NC: Tell me about the organ recital series you organized at the American Cathedral.
CDW: When I got there I found out what a wonderful organ it was. It had been a big three-manual Cavaillé-Coll. In 1930 it was enlarged, and a fourth manual added. It was one of the very few organs in France at that time with capture combination action. Leaving all that aside, it was a real Cavaillé-Coll, with wonderful reeds and an abundance of everything you wanted. The Solo division was not so big. It was built by Maison Pleyel, successors to Cavaillé-Coll, and they had been sent to Ernest Skinner in America in order to learn from him. The result was that it was a rather typical E. M. Skinner Solo division. It had nice strings, a French Horn, one of the few in France, a Tuba Mirabilis, and a Philomela which was huge! No chorus reeds, but, of course, there were 16, 8, and 4 reeds on the Great.
Anyway, I saw this organ and thought it would be nice to have a recital series. So I told the dean I’d like to invite a bunch of famous French organists to play on this organ, and he said “Fine, go ahead.” I wish I could remember the fee we paid them, but it was ridiculously small. I think it was 10,000 francs, which was about $30.
So, I picked up the phone—believe it or not—and called Marcel Dupré, whom I had met through Clarence Watters in this country. He was the only one I knew, and I didn’t call him Marcel, either! It was “Maître, would you be willing to play on a series on this organ? I want to help raise the reputation of the American Cathedral as an artistic center in Paris.” He agreed and I thanked him, and put the phone down. Then I called André Marchal, and repeated my story, saying that Dupré had agreed to play, and would you do it, and he said yes. Of course, if Dupré hadn’t agreed to do it, it might have been a different story. I didn’t know Marchal from a hole in the ground! It was the same with Langlais, Messiaen, and Duruflé. These names were legend, even back then.
Then I called up Mlle. Boulanger, telling her that I had asked each of these eminent organists to conclude with an improvisation, and asked her to submit the themes for each of these players. I must have caught her at a weak moment and she agreed. As it turns out, I had to chase her up each week to get the themes in time for the recital. It wasn’t that she gave me all five at once in advance.

NC: Was that part of the promotional packaging of the series, that she would be supplying the themes?
CDW: It wasn’t on the advertising, but on the program I inserted a little slip sheet stating that the themes for each of the improvisations had been kindly submitted by Nadia Boulanger. The recitals were a week apart in Lent, and there were big crowds and wide newspaper coverage.

NC: How did the organ in the American Cathedral stack up in comparison with the famous Paris organs?
CDW: Well, for one thing, it was in better tune than any of the others, and that was because of the Germans. They had taken over the cathedral and used it as their army church. Say what you will about their politics, but by golly if they were going to have a Wehrmachtskirche, it was going to have an organ that was in tune. So the organ was in great shape when I got there. It was amazing.

NC: Did you have an opportunity to hear any of these organists in their own churches?
CDW: Very little. Duruflé, for example, at St.-Etienne-du-Mont didn’t have the organ; it was down. I don’t think he had any organ to play. With all my duties, I didn’t get to other churches very often. In retrospect, I certainly wish I could have heard more. I did go to Ste. Clotilde from time to time, because I was very close to Langlais.
One thing that might be of interest is my impressions of these great men as they came to the cathedral to practice. For one thing, I was . . . skeptical is too strong a word, but I was not convinced that every note that Messiaen wrote down was for real, or whether he was trying for effect in one way or the other. But of all those organists, Messiaen was the one who practiced the longest; he actually got me in there and asked me to play some passages (and I’d never even played any of his music, but he wanted to hear what it sounded like out in the church). And before he came to practice he said, “you know, I want to have some time there pour choisir mes couleurs, to choose my colors.” And he went way up in my estimation. But he was the most concerned that it be a good recital.
The main thing I remember about Duruflé was that he arrived at the appointed time outside the cathedral riding a bicycle.

NC: How did you happen to go back to New York?
CDW: One of the real reasons I wanted to come back was, as you can imagine, that I was so busy being the director of the Center—I think we had five or six hundred members. It wasn’t a musical job at all, but it was my full-time job, and the cathedral position was secondary.
So when I found out that Heavenly Rest had an opening, I made every effort to look into it. It was the Rev. Richard R. P. Coombs, who had been a tenor in my choir in Cambridge and who had gone to seminary during the war, and who had told me of the opening at the Paris Cathedral—he was now the curate at Heavenly Rest and told me of the vacancy there.

NC: So he had a hand in your going to Paris and in your coming back to New York?
CDW: He did!

NC: What sort of process did you have to go through when you applied for the job?
CDW: I simply wrote to anybody who was anybody who knew my work—Frank Sayre [the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr.], Eddie West at the Cathedral [Canon Edward N. West, later Sub-Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York]—I mean personal friends who were in a position to be helpful and who knew my work.

NC: What was the musical tradition at Heavenly Rest as you found it?
CDW: For one thing, there was an assistant organist I inherited, so that made a smooth transition. I had never heard a service there previously, but my impression was that it was pretty run of the mill. They did have a men and boys choir, but with some female ringers in it. One of my so-called claims to being a candidate was that I was considered experienced at dealing with boys. And I built up that choir a lot, until, one fine day when every one of the best boys I had, every one of them—let’s say there were thirty kids, and the eight best ones either went off to prep school or their voices changed. And with what I had left, I felt I really couldn’t do the repertoire, so I wrote the vestry saying I thought we needed to strengthen the women’s sections, and from that time you really couldn’t say it was a boy choir.
Still, we continued to have a boy choir as a separate choir, and we did lots of things, including several television performances: one with Victor Borge, on a program at Christmas time—just because it was Christmas time and I had a boys’ choir.
Talk about TV—I did later do a program with CCS with Robert Merrill on “I’ve Got a Secret,” and the secret was the star, it was his birthday. So, in the course of the show, they had a barbershop quartet sing “Happy Birthday” to him. Then they laughed and scratched for a while, then a larger group came in and they sang “Happy Birthday” to him. And they laughed and scratched and did some more things. Meanwhile, there was a stage at the other end of the studio with the curtains closed, and at the given point, the curtains were opened and there were one hundred members of the Canterbury Choral Society and Robert Merrill in the middle of them to put the finishing touches of “Happy Birthday” in a paraphrase of a Mozart opera chorus, as I recall. That was a lot of fun.

NC: What was the organ like at Heavenly Rest as you found it?
CDW: It was a 1929 Austin, and it had either three or four 8-foot diapasons on the Great and they were all leather lipped. It was a big four-manual organ, with a typical complement of stops on each division, except it only had about four ranks in the Pedal! It did have a drawknob console. Anyway, it was like a whole set of foghorns.

NC: It must have been quite a difference from the Cavaillé-Coll at the Paris Cathedral?
CDW: It sure was! I had correspondence with G. Donald Harrison about ways to improve the organ, and he suggested ways to brighten up the Great reeds, which Austin revoiced to have a little more overtone interest, a little more French sound. Of course I later had Austin completely renovate the organ.

NC: I’m eager to hear you talk about the beginnings of the Canterbury Choral Society.
CDW: Well, one day the rector came to me and said, “Charlie, all the big churches have Evensong on Sunday afternoons at 4:00. The Cathedral has Evensong, St. Thomas has Evensong, St. Bartholomew’s has Evensong. What’s the matter with us? Let’s have some Evensong services.” So I said, “Well, you know we have a paid choir, you’re talking about some serious changes in the budget.” He said, “Just get a bunch of volunteers.” [Huge laughter from each of us.] And so I said, “Yes, sir.” So I talked to some of the paid singers and asked if they would volunteer to start this Evensong choir and they said they would.

NC: Did he have in mind doing this every Sunday?
CDW: I think he did, but we started out doing them just in Advent.

NC: Did he have any idea what he was asking for, do you think?
CDW: No!

NC: Was this typical of his approach to work?
CDW: No, he was really a fine man and smart, but he just had this idea and hadn’t really thought it out. I can imagine that from other clergy I’ve known! [More laughter.] Anyway, some of the members in the choir were personal friends by this time and said that they would try it for a while, and so forth. And one of the vestrymen was a former member of the Harvard Glee Club, and he said he would be glad to volunteer to sing bass. He had a daughter who taught at the Chapin School, and he talked her into getting friends of hers from Chapin to come sing in this volunteer Evensong choir.
So, I said we were going to do a chorus from Messiah on each of the first three Sundays in Advent, and on the fourth Sunday we would get some instruments and do the entire first part of Messiah. It was quite successful; we had between thirty and forty singers, and the soloists were professionals from the church choir. In every case, the choir outnumbered the congregation. So the rector said, “OK, we’re not the Cathedral, we’re not St. Bartholomew’s, we’re not St. Thomas, nobody’s coming to our Evensongs, so let’s forget it.”
Then, when I told the chorus that they were no longer needed, they said “We like singing here and want to keep coming.” This was Advent of 1951, after I arrived in January.
So, I asked, “How would you like to sing Brahms’ Requiem?” And they said, “Wonderful.” And more people joined. So we put on the Brahms in the spring of 1952. We billed ourselves as the Oratorio Choir of the Church of the Heavenly Rest.
The concert was a success. We had harp and timpani in addition to the organ accompaniment, which was played by my assistant, Marion Engle. Anyway, after we did this successfully, we had a meeting and everyone wanted this organization to be permanent. So I said, “Well, we’ve got to have a name for ourselves, how about the Carnegie Hill Choral Society?” You know that part of Manhattan is called Carnegie Hill, the Carnegie mansion is across the street from the church. They felt that it sounded too much like Carnegie Hall Choral Society, and so forth, and someone suggested Canterbury Choral Society. We were Anglican, after all, even though this was to be a community chorus, and so the name chosen was Canterbury Choral Society.
At this time it was rare to have an orchestra in church. I think Trinity Church may have had one on Ascension Day, and St. Mary the Virgin from time to time. But the norm was to do oratorios with organ accompaniment, and there were organists who did it very well—I’ve mentioned David McK. Williams. But performing these works with the instrumentation as envisioned by the composer was something I really wanted to do. Of course this took money, so we set up a system of membership—friends, sponsors, and so forth. For the first season of this new plan, we had two sponsors at $25 each, and one was my father!

NC: Was this under the aegis of the church?
CDW: It was a choir of the church, but membership was open to anyone who could pass the audition. I handled it as a choir of the church, in that the professional singers of the church choir were required to sing in it, and the assistant organist was the accompanist. But a big part of my time in those days was spent raising money for this new organization.

NC: From a practical point of view, this must have doubled your work load: a big additional choir and fundraising duties. Did the church recognize this in any way, such as a salary raise?
CDW: It was more work, but not more compensation. I was making $4,000 a year, and I don’t think they raised that in my first decade at the church. But I loved what I was doing, and I had a nice school job. From 1952–61 I was director of music at Kew-Forest School out on Long Island in Forest Hills. Up until then, I really had been living from hand to mouth. The school had a Hammond organ, and the headmaster loved organ music and was thrilled to have someone on his staff who knew about the organ. I was involved in the Guild more and more at that time, and he would excuse me from staff meetings and classes when Guild duties conflicted. His name was Dr. James L. Dixon, and he was a lovely person to work for. I distinctly remember the job paid $3,400. Well, to jump from $4,000 to $7,400—it was just wonderful! Of course, it was hard working two jobs.
By the way, it so happens that one of my students there was Donald Trump. He was one of these kids who needed personal attention. There would be twenty kids in the room and you’d have to focus on him. He could sing all right, but he was difficult.
The next big thing that happened is that Eleanor Steber came into the picture. She was a big star at the Met by this time, but we had known her previously and we were together at a dinner party one night. After dinner and much of our host’s fine Perrier Jouet champagne, I went up to her and said, “Eleanor, my choral society is going to be singing the Brahms Requiem with orchestra in about a month and a half and I don’t have a soprano soloist yet; will you do it?” And she said, “Brahms Requiem, I love that work—sure, I’ll do it.” For $100, by the way! [Laughing.] She sang for me once again and I paid her $100, and she sent it back! She wasn’t interested in the money, she was a good friend. I mean, she was a big star at the Met by this time, singing all the Mozart operas, Rosenkavalier, and so forth. She also had a radio program. This was in 1955 and she was really famous.
So, having secured Eleanor Steber to sing the soprano solo, I pulled out the same technique I had used in Paris! I picked up the phone and called John Brownlee, one of the leading baritones at the Met who worked with Eleanor all the time, especially in Mozart operas. And I said, “Mr. Brownlee, I’m doing the Brahms Requiem, isn’t it a wonderful work?” “Oh, yes it’s a wonderful work,” he replied in his deep voice. And I continued, “Eleanor Steber is going to be my soprano and I need a really good baritone. Would you do it?” [Laughing] He was an Australian, did you know that?

NC: I did not know that.
CDW: So he said [Imitating an Australian accent] “Well, if Eleanor is going to do it, of course I’ll do it. Count me in.” So, that really packed the house. This was our third season, March 1955. I was just lucky to have an “in” with a couple of these prominent people.
And then, I’d call up people I didn’t know who were at the Met, and just asked them. I had Jean Kraft as my alto, and Shirley Love, Ara Berberian—he was an old friend. I gave him his first paid date in New York.

NC: In a nutshell, it sounds like the Canterbury Choral Society took off right from the start.
CDW: Yes, it really did. The next thing we had Eleanor for was the Mozart C-minor Mass. She was soprano I and Phyllis Curtin was soprano II. Mack Harrell was the bass, and David Lloyd was the tenor.

NC: I sense that the social aspect of CCS is important now. Was it always?
CDW: I think it was. And I think that perhaps is the thing that differentiates it from many other choral groups. They love to party. And they love to sing.

NC: I know that you later presented the Mahler Eighth Symphony at regular intervals, but prior to that, what were some of the early high points?
CDW: We did the Berlioz Te Deum at the Cathedral [of St. John the Divine] and that was tremendous. I struck up a friendship with Hugh Ross, who was a leading musician of the city for years. He was the director of the Schola Cantorum, which did all of the choral work with the New York Philharmonic; he taught at Spence School and Hewitt School, and his kids, David and Grace, sang in my choir. It was he who put the idea in my head that there are lots of important choral works that feature children’s choirs, and encouraged me to do that. So, for this Berlioz we had scores and scores of children in the chorus, from Brearley School chorus—this was in 1968 and I was already teaching at the Chapin School, so we had the Chapin Chorus, and others . . . lots of children.

NC: What prompted you to have the concert at the cathedral, as opposed to Heavenly Rest? Space?
CDW: In addition to that, we were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and I took the position that we ought to observe the occasion at the cathedral church.

NC: Was this the first time CCS had held a concert off the campus of Heavenly Rest?
CDW: [Thinking for a while.] No. Nineteen fifty-nine was the 200th anniversary of Handel’s death, so all the musicians of New York collaborated in a citywide Handel festival. I decided to do Handel’s Samson. We did that at St. Thomas Church, since it was in Mid-town nearer where the other concerts were held. Ara Berberian sang the bass lead. We also had a choir of girls, because in Samson, Delilah has an entourage that in the score is called “Delilah’s Virgins,” but I called them, to be discreet, “Delilah’s Handmaidens.” [Much laughter.] Anyway, it was broadcast by the Voice of America all over the world. I got a tape of it later. So that was a big event, in 1959.
And then our appearances on television . . . I guess it was in the 1950s that we did the most TV dates.

NC: Was there someone at the church in broadcasting who facilitated these appearances?
CDW: As a matter of fact, yes. The father of two of my choirboys—one of whom was Philip Morehead, who later became the director of the Chicago Lyric Opera Chorus—was related to the director of the CBS studio orchestra, so I did have an entree through him. And some good-looking gal in CCS was the casting director of “I’ve Got a Secret.” That’s how we got on that show with Robert Merrill.

NC: You worked with a lot of well-known soloists over the years. At the risk of appearing to be name dropping, who among them stands out?
CDW: Well, in addition to Eleanor Steber and John Brownlee whom I mentioned . . . Adele Addison who sang a lot; people like Robert Shaw used her.
Donald Gramm was a star at the Met, and he sang a lot for us, particularly the Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs, I remember. He was just one of those people I was fortunate enough to be able to call and ask, “Are you available on May 14?,” and he would if he could.
Louise Natale was the soloist at Riverside Church for Richard Weagley, and she was really wonderful. I remember particularly a Haydn Creation she did—a very good, really top-notch singer, and very funny and down to earth. I think her husband was a firefighter in Nutley, New Jersey, or someplace like that.
And I’ve mentioned Ara Berberian. He had been a lawyer, and he was in the Army Chorus in Washington. He sang in the Heavenly Rest choir for a while when he first came to New York,
The first time I did the Verdi Requiem, I had Ellen Faull as the soprano. The mezzo was Rosalind Elias, who was a big star at the Met and a friend of Janet’s from New England Conservatory. I then found out that these two were part of a road company that would travel around the country giving concerts. And the other two were Gabor Corelli, another Met singer, and Louis Sgarro, whom I remember particularly as being mentioned by the announcers at the Met broadcasts. So I thought it was really something to have four well-known Metropolitan Opera stars to sing my Verdi Requiem! And we packed them in.
We did the Bloch Sacred Service, and Arthur Wolfson, the cantor of Temple Emanu-El, sang the part of the cantor. We did it again with Howard Nevison, who was an excellent cantor at Emanu-El after Wolfson.
Seth McCoy . . . he sang with us several times . . .

NC: Was that ever an issue at Heavenly Rest in those days? The racial thing?
CDW: Yes . . . yes it was. You know there’s a kook in every crowd, and . . . you remember Richard Neel who sings in CCS?

NC: Yes.
CDW: He went to some advanced-type school, his mother was quite a liberal thinker for that era . . .

NC: She was the famous artist, Alice Neel?
CDW: Yes. Richard and his brother sang in my boy choir, and we encouraged the boys to bring in friends. The choir up to that point was lily white, and Richard brought in this African-American boy; I auditioned him, and he was good! So I took him into the choir. I later got a phone call—I remember the unpleasant tone of the voice—from the mother of one of the other boys in the choir saying, “you took a black boy into the choir without consulting with us.” And I said, “Yes, I did!”

NC: Did it ever go further than that? To the rector or vestry?
CDW: No, but can you imagine the nerve of that woman? I think I did tell the rector about it and he said that I should ignore that telephone call.

NC: You talked once about Thomas Beveridge; can you tell me a little more about him?
CDW: Tom was in my choir at the age of nine, and he was an ideal chorister in every way, bright and talented. I was honored that his father, Lowell Beveridge—one of the most distinguished members of our profession—was encouraging his boy to be in my choir. For many years I didn’t see Tom, but he later became a singer, and I hired him for a performance. His father, Lowell Beveridge, was the director of music at St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University, which used to be a big job. Searle Wright was his successor. Lowell went from there to Virginia Theological Seminary.

NC: We haven’t talked a lot about church life at Heavenly Rest. What were services like?
CDW: They were sort of middle-to-low church—Morning Prayer and all that. And they had lots of extremely fancy weddings, sometimes in questionable taste. The one I remember most clearly was a bride who came up to me and said, “I’ve been to some of your concerts and I know you know how to conduct an orchestra.” I said, “Sure.” She said, “I’d like to have an orchestra at my wedding,” and requested that we do the Siegfried Idyll—you know, the piece that Wagner composed for his wife on Christmas morning. So I had to have a pretty big orchestra.

NC: Talk about the Blue Hill Troupe that you directed for a long time.
CDW: This is a wonderful organization that does Gilbert and Sullivan operas. During my time, we did every one of the thirteen operas at least twice, with full pit orchestra and staging, which I liked a lot. I became the director in 1955 and stayed for thirty-five years.

NC: When you left Heavenly Rest, did that alter the life of CCS?
CDW: Musically it didn’t affect it at all. We had to go through all the legalities of making it an independent non-profit organization, separate from the church. We still had most of our concerts at the church, where I now had the title of Organist and Choirmaster Emeritus. The church gave us an office and storage space for music. But we did have to find the money to pay the professional singers and the accompanist, and we paid the church for using the facilities.

NC: So as a result you had to have some fundraisers.
CDW: Yes, you’re leading up to the Mahler! I first became aware of the Mahler Eighth Symphony when I was AGO president. I went into the office one day (this was back when the offices were at 630 Fifth Avenue across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral) and picked up a copy of Cathedral Age [magazine of Washington National Cathedral] and read about Paul Callaway doing the Mahler at Washington Cathedral; I salivated at the idea of this huge choral work, and just wondered if we could pull this off.
So, first we programmed Part I, which is only 25 minutes long, and paired it with Jean Kraft singing the Kindertotenlieder. I arranged for hundreds of kids from various schools and churches to sing the Knabenchor and we put this on at Heavenly Rest. By then we had the tradition of doing a concert every five years at either Philharmonic Hall [later named Avery Fisher Hall] or Carnegie Hall. So the next fifth-year anniversary was in 1977. We already had Part I under our belts, so we took the bit in our teeth and hired Philharmonic Hall, and I got hold of hundreds of kids, eight soloists, and the huge orchestra. I went into it with fear and trepidation, but we pulled it off. We packed the place and did it again in ’82. Then I decided to do it in Carnegie Hall in ’87, then in ’92, ’97, ’02, and of course in ’07 when St. Luke’s participated with us.
And we made enough money on those concerts to cover the annual deficits for the next five years. We’re in a little downturn right now in this economy and need to do a bit more fundraising, but that has been the pattern. But it’s remarkable—it actually makes money! Everybody loses money on a big production like that, but we charge the market price for tickets, and have good, loyal financial backing from our friends and patrons.

NC: After Heavenly Rest, you took up a new job, didn’t you?
CDW: Yes, for almost twenty years I was at Trinity Church in Southport, Connecticut, where there already existed the Trinity Chorale, a choral society. We did concerts there, and they joined with CCS on occasions, as well.
Incidentally, Lise and I were married there in the context of the regular Sunday morning service, which is sort of unusual. [Janet Hayes Walker died in 1997.] We had a full choir, and it was really wonderful. That was on January 14, 2001. I had met Lise Phillips as a singer in CCS. The wedding was a big community affair. Everyone in the church was invited to the wedding and to the reception, which was arranged by CCS. And quite a few members of Canterbury came out to Connecticut, sat up in the gallery and sang along with the church choir.

NC: What do you admire about church music or church life in general these days—what’s changed for the better since the early days of your career?
CDW: [Longer pause than usual.]

NC: Maybe nothing! [Both laughing.]
CDW: No, that’s a good question, one that makes you think. I think of my first teacher as being an exemplary practitioner of the art of church music, as an organist, as a choirmaster, and as a teacher—Coke-Jephcott. He was a hard-working, dedicated musician in the service of the church. He was a real inspiration.

NC: I know that by nature you are an optimistic person not inclined to the negative, but from your perspective, what could be better these days?
CDW: I do think it is regrettable—this tendency on the part of some, to make musical choices reflecting the tastes of people with no musical background at all, with the result that music of inferior quality has, in many places, risen into such prominence in church life; whereas music of good quality could be lifting up the noble and worthy aspects of worship to their rightful place.

NC: You’ve never really retired, have you?
CDW: No! I just love doing what I do, playing, conducting, teaching. I would feel strange not doing it, but guess you can’t do it forever. I’m just very glad to be here.

NC: As you reflect on your long career, for what would you like most to be remembered?
CDW: I feel that being a good church musician, doing your job from Sunday to Sunday, is a very worthy thing, and if you have the good fortune to be able to develop more elaborate musical programs—that’s good, too. But our job as church musicians is to provide, with the resources available, the best possible music for our church, week by week. I like that. 

Did you say millions?
It’s like making sausages. You might enjoy the finished product but you don’t want to know what went into it. Each month I sit to write, often after the official deadline has passed. If I’m lucky, I start with an idea that I’ve been chewing on for the past couple days. I’ve written a few notes on the index cards I keep in my briefcase and car, maybe I’ve even recorded a couple audio notes on my cell phone as I walk the trails in the park next door. The paragraphs are flowing before I get to my desk.
More usually, I sit down and stare at a blank screen waiting for inspiration. I play a recording of organ music, trusting that I’ll agree or disagree with something I hear or that the music will bring up a thought that I can spin into an essay. I type the usual heading, and there I sit. It’s like staring at your closet wondering what to wear to dinner. If only that shirt was clean I’d be all set. I fidget. I clean my glasses, I clean the screen of my laptop, I organize the piles of paper on the desk, allowing myself to be distracted by details I’d better get done first. I change the recording and try again. (Some of you have gotten e-mails from me commenting on your recordings—e-mails written as I get traction on my subject du jour (I don’t know the French word for month!)
When I have finished writing a column, re-read it several times, and shared it with my editor-wife for her observations and input, I attach the Word.doc to an e-mail addressed to my friend Jerome Butera, tireless editor of this journal, and press <send>. Often I hear from Jerome within minutes—there’s never any waiting before I know his reaction.
E.B. White was a celebrated writer for The New Yorker magazine and award-winning writer of children’s books (Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web). Shortly after his second marriage to Katherine Sergeant Angell in 1929 (an editor at The New Yorker) he moved his family from Manhattan to a farmstead in rural Maine and continued his weekly writing for the magazine. Let me be quick to say I draw no personal comparisons to Mr. White, whose writing I admire and enjoy enough to justify periodic re-reading. But I can imagine the anguish and insecurity he felt waiting the days and weeks it took for the 1929-style U.S. postal service to get his manuscripts to New York and his editor’s responses back to Brooklin, Maine. (I know he had those feelings because he wrote about them—thank you, Jerome, for your dependable quick responses.)
Once a piece is in the hands of the editor, a new set of anxieties crops up. You know the thing about a tree falling in the forest—if there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Of course, we know it does—a sound wave is a physical thing that results from a transmission of energy, whether it’s a tree falling or air blowing through an organ pipe. You can’t stop physics. But it works as a rhetorical question: if no one reads what I’ve written, there’s no exchange of information. So once I’ve pressed <send> I wonder where my thoughts will wind up.

§

In mid-April this year when I wrote for the June issue of The Diapason, Wendy and I were fresh from Easter services at St. Thomas’ Church in New York. I was the one in the congregation scribbling notes on the bulletin and I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I could hardly wait to get home—but wait I did, because after a Midtown lunch we had matinee tickets for a play at the Manhattan Theater Club on East 55th Street in which the son of good friends was a cast member.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I wrote about the majesty and beauty of festival worship in that great church, about the brilliance of John Scott, St. Thomas’ organist and director of music, and about the public appeal from rector and organist for funding to support the commissioning of a (very costly) new organ. I wrote about how organs are likely to be replaced as styles change, even as organists succeed one another, and how the other artwork (reredos, windows, etc.) in places like St. Thomas’ Church is seldom changed.
This is one time that the tree made noise when it fell. Even before I received my mailed copy of the June issue, I had received e-mails and phone calls from friends commenting on what I had written, and in the next weeks Jerome forwarded two thoughtful letters he received from readers of The Diapason. Several important points were raised, and I thought it would be worthwhile to respond directly by way of continuing the conversation.
First, your assignment: re-read this column in the June 2011 issue of The Diapason.
Arthur LaMirande, concert organist from New York City, wrote:

It is with interest that I have read “In the wind . . . ” by John Bishop (The Diapason, June 2011). In particular: his remarks with regard to the Arents Memorial organ at St. Thomas Church, New York City.
Opines he: “We scarcely bat an eye before proposing the replacement of a pipe organ.”
Is he serious? He goes on to say: “Across the country, thousands of churches originally equipped with perfectly good pipe organs have discarded and replaced them with instruments more in tune with current trends, more in sync with the style and preferences [italics mine] of current musicians…”
He continues: “Over the decades of service that is the life of a great organ . . . ” [italics mine].
Now, Mr. Bishop surely must be aware that there are hundreds of organs in Europe that are fully functioning and that have been in existence and in use for centuries! (Never mind mere decades!) Even the organ at Notre Dame, Paris, which has been rebuilt several times, contains pipes that go back to the 18th century.

I don’t think I was opining, rather simply reporting. Plenty of perfectly good pipe organs have been replaced at the urging of a newly hired organist or because the church across the green got a new and larger instrument. It’s true, Europe is rich with hundreds of venerable instruments, and we can celebrate that their artistic content and historic value is recognized, allowing them to stay in situ and in service. And there are many wonderful historic instruments in this country that have survived the ravages of innovation and fad. Equally, I know many churches where early organs by E. & G.G. Hook were replaced by new-fangled Skinners in the 1920s that were in turn replaced by “revivalist” tracker-action organs in the 1970s—a new organ every fifty years whether you need it or not. When I was starting my career, an older colleague gave me this sage advice: never build an organ for a wealthy church. You’ll put your heart into your magnum opus and they’ll replace it during your lifetime.
States Mr. LaMirande:

On May 1st this year, I gave a recital on the Arents Memorial organ at St. Thomas Church. The major work on that program was the rarely performed Chaconne by Franz Schmidt . . . For an organ that “is on the verge of catastrophic collapse” [from the brochure passed out at St. Thomas Church to which Mr. Bishop makes allusion], it seemed to work extraordinarily well for me. With the exception of one cipher on a (non-essential) stop during rehearsal, I had no problems whatever with this organ. It succeeded in doing everything that I demanded of it. And that for a massive work calling for numerous changes of registration!

We might take exception to the phrase catastrophic collapse as used by St. Thomas’ Church. After all, assuming the organ hasn’t collapsed physically into the chancel wiping out the altos in the choir, what’s the big deal if an organ ciphers? (Organists: sorry to say, but there is no such thing as an organ that will never cipher.) Mr. LaMirande experienced a cipher while practicing for his recital, usual enough for any instrument. And if an organ ciphers during worship in a suburban parish church, we might shrug and chuckle, climb the ladder to pull the pipe, and go on with the show.

Keep your pants on.
I’ve found a delightful video on YouTube showing a significant wedding faux pas in which the best man’s pants fall down just as the couple starts to exchange their vows. As you might expect, the groom found that to be pretty funny—hilarious, in fact. The bride joined in, and the church was full of real, honest laughter for quite a while. The minister was a trooper, acknowledging the humor of the situation. You can find the video at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26a8JITwImQ&gt;. You’ll love it. It’s easy to say “things happen” and enjoy the moment. There’s a nice-looking pipe organ in the church. If any of you recognize it, let me know.
But we have a fresh international example of worship and religious festival in which one would not chuckle at the slightest glitch. On April 29 many (most?) of us watched Will and Kate’s wedding. Lovely couple, weren’t they? Her dress and hair were just right. He had a nice twinkle in his eye, and I enjoyed his little quips to his brother and his new father-in-law. Good thing Prince Harry’s pants didn’t fall down. The television coverage allowed us glimpses into the personal level of the occasion. But this was a big occasion. Heads of state were omitted from the guest list because of ongoing political and military circumstances. The dignity of the nation’s royal family was on display at a time when many Brits are wondering about its future. Heaven only knows how much money was spent. If you include all that was spent by the news media in the weeks leading up to the wedding, the total certainly surpassed the gross national product of many countries. As far as we can tell, it went without a hitch. And the pressure on the staff and officials of Westminster Abbey was made obvious in another wonderful moment immortalized on YouTube when a verger expressed his relief by turning cartwheels across the nave when the whole thing was over. I know I’m giving you a lot of research to do, but don’t miss this one either: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Obpxf_pd8&gt;.

Off with his head.
The four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ in Westminster Abbey has 84 stops and was installed in 1937 for the coronation of King George VI. How’s that for pressure on the organbuilder—miss that deadline and you’re in the dungeon. Had that organ ciphered during Will and Kate’s wedding, it would have been reported all over the world. Imagine that service grinding to a halt while some technician raced to the chamber. Seventy-five chefs at Buckingham Palace would have panicked. Think of the soufflés. The Queen’s lunch would be in ruins. I wonder what Katie Couric and Barbara Walters would have said. The pipe organ universal would have a big black eye. And it would not have been a non-essential stop. There can be no doubt that it would have been the 32-foot Double Ophicleide or the Tuba Mirabilis. Vox Angelicas don’t cipher when the pressure is on, and if it had during all that hoopla no one would have noticed. There’s an apocryphal story about a team of voicers (I think they worked for Skinner) finishing an organ. The man at the console shouted, “Is the Vox Angelica on?” From the chamber, “Yes!” “Make it softer.”
While it may be okay for an organ to cipher or a participant’s pants to fall down somewhere else, it is not okay at Westminster Abbey. And St. Thomas’ Church shoulders a similar responsibility for dignity, grandeur, eloquence, and perfection, inasmuch as perfection is humanly possible. The much-altered Aeolian-Skinner organ there is not the artistic equal of the famed and fabled St. Thomas’ Choir, and while the brilliant musicians who play on it don’t miss a beat, we can only imagine what it will be like to experience worship there when the new organ is complete. The musicians there can almost taste it. And the responsibility born by the leadership and membership of that church is heightened by the simple fact that in an age when a pipe organ of average size installed in a “usual” church can cost more than a million dollars, an instrument for such a place as St. Thomas’ absolutely costs many millions.
Samuel Baker of Alexandria, Virginia wrote:

In the June issue, John Bishop suggests that perfectly good pipe organs are discarded and replaced with instruments more in tune with current trends and more in sync with the style and preferences of current musicians because pipe organs are in motion, whereas windows and statues are not replaced because they are static; physically they stay still.
Despite Bishop’s claim that seldom if ever are original design elements integral to the style of the building itself subject to change because they are considered old fashioned, many examples are easily found in my neck of the woods of Federal-style churches being “Victorian-ized” or Victorian-style churches receiving neo-whatever treatments.
And certainly organs are replaced because styles of organbuilding and preferences of musicians change but, rather than ascribe the reason that windows and statues are safe but organs are not to the premise that one is in motion and the other isn’t, I would propose that many more pipe organs are replaced because they were poorly designed, built with sub-standard materials, received little or no voicing, and were wholly unsatisfactory installations in the first place. The same fate awaits stationary items of poor quality and artistic merit with equity.
I agree fully with everything Mr. Baker says here. I appreciate his interest in including these thoughts in this debate. I’ve been in and out of hundreds of church buildings (actually probably thousands, but that sounds specious) and I’ve seen countless examples of beautiful liturgical and architectural appointments that have been discarded in favor of newer, lesser “looks,” and I’ve seen less-than-thrilling original equipment replaced to great benefit. However, what I wrote (page 12, fourth column, second paragraph) is, “But seldom, if ever, do we hear of a place like St. Thomas’ Church replacing their windows or reredos.” The key word is “like.”
I wrote, “Just imagine the stunned silence in the vestry meeting when the rector proposes the replacement of the reredos.” The allusion is to the vestry and rector at St. Thomas’ Church, not the Second Congregational Church in Newcastle, Maine. On Easter Monday I was writing with tongue in cheek—but it’s fun to revisit the image. I don’t know any of them personally, and I haven’t been in their meeting rooms, but I imagine it would be an august group of accomplished, insightful, and influential people sitting at an elegant table in a grand room. And they would be stunned. Images of that reredos have been published on calendars, record jackets (remember those old black LPs?), CD jewel-cases, postcards, and publicity photos for generations. The choir, resplendent in scarlet and white, stands in the chancel with that heap of saints in the background. Replace the reredos? No, Father. It’s staying.
The Aeolian-Skinner organ was famously revised by G. Donald Harrison in 1956, converting the 1913 four-manual E. M. Skinner instrument (91 stops) from symphonic to neo-classical in style. Harrison was personally working on the project, hurrying toward completion in time for the AGO national convention that year. Taxi drivers were on strike and Harrison had to walk many blocks in city heat to get home. He died of a heart attack on the evening of June 14 (93 days after I was born) while watching Victor Borge on television. The organ has subsequently been revised several times. It’s 98 years since Ernest Skinner finished the organ, which has now been altered just about every generation with diminishing degrees of success.

When there’s so much need in the world . . .
Mr. LaMirande’s letter ends:

Incidentally, I can’t resist pointing out that while St. Thomas Church is prepared to spend the extraordinary sum of $8 million the homeless and destitute are ensconced on the front steps of this church every night of the week! . . . How many homeless and destitute could be fed, clothed, and housed for that $8 million?

This is one of the most difficult questions we face as we propose, plan, and create pipe organs for our churches. Of course, it’s the mission of the church to care for homeless, destitute people—to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It’s also the mission of the church to provide and present worship experiences at every level. The Royal Wedding was cause for national and international celebration, but Oliver Twist and his cronies still haunt the back streets of London. Without the church’s need for illustration of religious texts, tenets, and principles, we would not have the sculpture or painting of Michelangelo, the organ music of Bach, the choral music of Mozart and Haydn, or the Gothic cathedrals. If it had developed at all, without the influence and resources of the church, the pipe organ would be a wholly different entity. And the majesty of our great churches as they serve as figureheads and examples for all worshipful expression supports and inspires the work of the church at all levels and in all places. Those who toil in suburban and rural vineyards travel to the big city to experience “big city” worship in “big city” buildings, just as we marvel in the great museums, theaters, orchestras, and other institutions that can only be supported in a city like New York. I care a lot about the homeless and I try to do all I can to support them, but I don’t go to St. Thomas’ Church to hear a sub-standard organ any more than I want to see plastic flowers on the altar in front of that reredos.
All this talk about expensive art leads us to the world of philanthropy. Any church that plans to acquire a new pipe organ will rely on the availability of a few large gifts to make it happen. I’ve long assumed and often witnessed that those individuals who are capable of making a major gift in support of an organ project do so because of their personal interests. But I’ve been privileged to witness another level of philanthropy that has informed and affected me deeply. Wendy served on the board of a major university for nearly twenty years. During that tenure we became friends with a lovely couple of immense wealth. They are dedicated to philanthropy—she focuses on social and humanitarian projects and he supports the arts. Their names are at the top of donor lists for every show in town. Several years ago during dinner at our house, the husband told us how a repertory theater company had approached him asking for a significant grant to support the production of a controversial play that tackled some of our thorniest social issues. He disagreed with a lot of the content and was uncomfortable with most of it, but he thought it was his responsibility to make the gift anyway. He said something to the effect of, “I knew if I gave them the money I’d have to go see the play.”
I was impressed and moved by this story, and in the years since I’ve often reflected on the nature of philanthropy and how much we all benefit from it. Whether it’s a church organ, a statue in the park honoring a public servant, an academic building, or a shelter for the homeless, the world relies on philanthropy. The trick is to be sure that all the bases are covered. 

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.

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.