In the wind...

John Bishop

The secret of life

Donald Hall is an American writer. Because he’s Wendy’s client, I’ve met him several times. He was born in 1928 and last saw a barber or handled a razor at least ten years ago. He published an essay in the June 12, 2013, issue of The New Yorker with the title “Three Beards,” in which he chronicled his long relationship with facial hair. It begins:

 

In my life I have grown three beards, covering many of my adult faces. My present beard is monumental, and I intend to carry it to my grave. (I must avoid chemotherapy.)

 

It concludes: 

 

As I decline more swiftly toward the grave I have made certain that everyone knows—my children know, Linda knows, my undertaker knows—that no posthumous razor may scrape my blue face.

 

In 2011, Wendy accompanied Hall to the White House, where President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Arts. (That’s the same day she chatted with Van Cliburn, as noted in the May 2014 installment of this column.) The neatly trimmed and dapper President met the self-styled Methuselah. 

Donald Hall lives in the New Hampshire farmhouse that was built by his grandfather, whom he helped harvesting hay. Today, hay is harvested by powerful and intricate machines that spit out neatly tied bales in the wake of a tractor. (Hay bales are legitimately held together with baling wire.) Donald Hall, then a child, and his grandfather did it with scythes, pitchforks, and horse-drawn carts. And that’s the way he writes—the old-fashioned way.

He has published dozens of books of poetry, and dozens more of non-fiction, memoirs, and collections of essays. He has written hundreds of articles of literary criticism and countless essays for many publications. And his lifelong collection of thousands of letters to and from other literary and artistic giants will be the grist of many future dissertations. He writes in longhand and dictates into a tape recorder, and leaves a briefcase on his front porch every morning for his typist who lives across the road, who in turn leaves a corresponding case of typed manuscripts.

When we were first dating, Wendy shared Donald Hall’s memoir Life Work with me (Beacon Press, 1993). At 124 pages, it’s an easy read, but when he describes his process, you feel obligated to read it again, and then again. He writes drafts. There were fifty-five drafts of that essay about beards, and there are hundreds of drafts for some of his poems. He started working on his poem Another Elegy in 1982, and put it away, disgusted, in 1988 after more than five hundred drafts. He numbers the drafts. In 1992, he picked it up again, wrote thirty more drafts, then showed it to his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, “who remembered the old one; her response encouraged me.” As he brought it toward conclusion, he woke many days before the alarm, jumping out of bed to start writing, but reminding himself that “You felt like this, about this same poem, a hundred times between 1982 and 1988.”

In Life Work, Donald Hall writes about his grandparents’ work ethics, about baseball players’ dedication to their work, and of course about his own routine, but he makes it clear that hates the phrase “work ethic.” Shortly after leaving the security of a professorship at the University of Michigan to move to the farm with Jane to support himself with his own writing, he attended his Harvard class (1951) reunion where he found himself complimented over and over about his self-discipline. He responded, “If I loved chocolate to distraction, would you call me self-disciplined for eating a pound of Hershey’s Kisses before breakfast?” He simply loves the process of moving words about, mining the English language, dog-earing his beloved Oxford English Dictionary—no matter what it takes to get it right to his own ears.

One of the principal characters in Life Work is the British sculptor Henry Moore. They met in 1959 when Hall was commissioned to write a magazine piece about Moore, and Hall was moved and inspired by Moore’s approach to his work. There was always a sketchpad at hand, there were studios scattered about the property allowing work at different stages to proceed concurrently, and when in his seventies, Moore built a new studio next to the house allowing him to spend another hour at work after dinner. The last time they were together, when Moore was eighty, Hall asked him, “What is the secret of life?” Moore’s response:

“The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your entire life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do!”

 

Wrapped around a monument

Last week, the Parisian organist Daniel Roth played a recital at Church of the Resurrection in New York where a couple years ago, the Organ Clearing House renovated, expanded, and installed a Casavant organ built in 1915. It was a treat and a thrill to be around him for a couple days as he prepared and presented his program, and I particularly enjoyed a conversation in which he gave some deeper insight into the heritage of the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Sulpice in Paris, where he has been titulaire since 1985. His three immediate predecessors were Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, Marcel Dupré, and Charles-Marie Widor—four tenures that span nearly a hundred-fifty years. 

Those four organists are identified by their relationships with that organ. Their improvisations and compositions have been inspired by its beautiful tones and enabled by the ingenious mechanical registration devices built in 1862, maintained to this day in their original condition. Roth confirmed the legend that Widor’s original appointment was temporary, and though it was never officially renewed or confirmed, he held the position for sixty-seven years. I’ve known this tidbit for years, but Daniel Roth shared some skinny.

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll was a tireless champion of his own work. He was disappointed in the general level of organ playing in Paris in the late 1860s, but was enthralled by performances by Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, the professor of organ at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, who first played recitals in Paris during a tour in 1850. Widor was born in Lyon into a family of organbuilders and Cavaillé-Coll was a family friend. It was he who arranged for Widor to study with Lemmens, and the twenty-five year old Widor was Cavaillé-Coll’s candidate for the vacant position at St. Sulpice.

As a reflection of the political and even racial tensions leading up to the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Widor’s detractors competing for the important position claimed he played like a German! (Quelle horreur!) The rector compromised by appointing Widor for one year.

Hundreds of American organists have been treated to Daniel Roth’s hospitality at the console of that landmark organ, hearing his improvisations and compositions, and his interpretations of the immense body of music produced by his predecessors. My conversations with him last week reminded me of that quote from Henry Moore. When a great musician spends a lifetime with a great organ, does that qualify as something to which you devote your life, but cannot possibly do?

Opera vitae

The mid-twentieth century renaissance in American organbuilding has given us a bevy of small companies building organs under the name of their founders. Among these, C. B. Fisk, Inc. is notable, in that the legendary Charlie Fisk passed away relatively young, and the work of his company has been continued by his co-workers—dare I say disciples? But when I think of names like Wolff, Wilhelm, Noack, Brombaugh, and the double-teaming Taylor & Boody, I think of these men, now elderly, retired, or deceased, who have had long careers personally producing many instruments with the help of their small and talented staffs. I think Fritz Noack is in the lead. His company was founded in 1960 and has completed nearly 160 organs. Nice work, Fritz, quite a fleet. Imagine seeing them all in a row. 

Considering all the effort and expertise involved in selling, planning, designing, building, and installing a pipe organ, I marvel at what Fritz and his colleagues have accomplished personally, with a lot of help from their friends. That’s work to which you devote your life, but cannot possibly do.

 

What was the question?

An old family friend is an expert in “heat transfer”—how heat moves from one mass to another, from a mass to a gas, or any other way heat moves around. One evening sitting with drinks in my parents’ living room and staring at the burning fireplace, I asked him, “Just what is fire?” He told me that it’s a chemical reaction. Yes, but what is it? I never did get an answer I could understand. I think he thought I was a bit of a prig, and I think I was asking a question that couldn’t be answered.

The more you know about the organbuilding trade, the more you realize you don’t know. Building pipe organs is a profession that remains mysterious to its most experienced practitioners. How does that air get from one place to another inside the organ? How does that thin sheet of pressurized air passing through the mouth of an organ pipe turn into musical tone? And how do those tones blend so beautifully with each other? How do we move such volumes of air silently? We have answers that refer to the laws of physics, but like my question about fire, they seem unanswerable. I’ve come to think that all you can do is know the questions and keep working to achieve better understanding of how to answer them. It’s work to which you devote your life, but cannot possibly do.

 

Go Daddy, go.

My father passed away at home on April 8, about six weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday. He was born four years before Donald Hall. He had a stroke a few months before from which he had largely recovered, although the gorgeous handwriting for which he was well known was gone. A vicious headache, which may have been another stroke, was our signal that the end was near. His doctor helped us establish home hospice care, and after about a week of comforting medication and declining consciousness he was gone. My three siblings and I, and our spouses, managed to gather during that week along with lots of the grandchildren. My brother Mark and his wife Sarah, my wife Wendy, and my mother Betsy were with Dad at his moment of death. Coincidentally, I was at work in St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston, where my parents were married almost fifty-nine years ago.

The Rev. John J. Bishop was ordained an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1952, and all the parishes he served were in that diocese. Everyone called him Jack. He served as rector of churches in Somerville and Westwood before he was called to be rector of the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, where he served from 1966 until his retirement in 1989. That was when my parents moved to the newly renovated and expanded family summer home on Cape Cod. After that retirement, he served as interim rector at churches in Dedham, Woods Hole, Falmouth, Provincetown, and Belmont. In December of 2012, the Parish of the Epiphany hosted a celebratory Eucharist honoring the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination.

My father grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a member of Christ Church, which is now the Cathedral of the Diocese of Southern Ohio. Our grand colleague and mentor Gerre Hancock was organist and choirmaster there in the 1960s. Dad had recordings of that church’s Boar’s Head Festival led by Gerre Hancock—the first improvisations I ever heard. As he grew up in Ohio in the 1920s and ’30s, some of the liberal causes for which he was later known hadn’t been contemplated, but before he was finished, my father had championed civil rights, social justice, the ordination of women, and
same-sex marriages.

The Rev. Jeanne Sprout was the first woman to be ordained in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Her ordination in 1977 happened at the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester as she joined the staff there. And Dad chaired the steering committee that nominated Barbara Harris as the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. As interim rector in Provincetown, he blessed same-sex unions many years before the ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that made them legal as marriages ten years ago. During his adolescence in Ohio and while serving in the United States Army during World War II, he would never have imagined such a thing.

At the height of the Vietnam War, the parish’s associate rector Michael Jupin participated in a widely reported protest on the steps of Boston’s Arlington Street Church, placing his draft card in an offering plate in the hands of William Sloane Coffin, pastor of New York’s Riverside Church, and activist and pediatrician Benjamin Spock. This created a firestorm in the then conservative parish (Winchester was cited as the town where the politics met the zip code: Zero-1890). The wardens approached my father, demanding to know “how to get rid of Jupin,” as important pledge-units left the parish in droves. Dad’s immediate answer was, “you get rid of the rector.” He told us later about that crisis in his career and the life of that church, how he sat alone in his car weeping, wondering what to do, and how he sought the council of his bishop, who encouraged him to “stand in the midst of those people and lead.”

Through all of that, Dad remained devoted to the traditions and liturgy of the Anglican Communion. He was a strong supporter of the music of the church, and during his tenures, the parishes in Westwood and Winchester both purchased organs from Charles Fisk. I remember the thrill of using my newly acquired adult voice, singing in harmony accompanied by orchestra as the adult choir presented Bach’s Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme. 

Dad understood the importance of the “theater” of liturgy. My childhood friends who were acolytes laugh today about how they were terrified of “blowing it” around Rev. Bishop. He needed it to be right. He led worship and celebrated the Eucharist with enthusiasm and joy—his “church voice” was nothing like his everyday voice. The crisp cadence and musical intonation of his delivery of the Prayers of Consecration are still in my ears, and remain my ideal. He really celebrated communion.

I’ve spent many days working as an organbuilder in churches of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Often, when I’m introduced to a rector, I’ve heard, “There’s a priest in this diocese with that name,” followed by unsolicited tributes. It’s been wonderful to hear accounts of my father’s work from so many different sources. I’m grateful for Dad’s encouragement and inspiration.

 

What a weekend.

Today is Monday. Dad’s memorial service was Saturday. There were four bishops and twenty priests in robes up front and the pews were full of family, friends, and parishioners from across the diocese and around the world, and plenty more priests. In a piece included in the leaflet for Dad’s memorial service, I wrote, “The definition is ‘Great excitement for or interest in a cause.’ It’s from the Greek root, enthousiasmos, which came from the adjective entheos, ‘having God within.’ Enthusiasm.” That is the way he lived his life, inspiring people, encouraging them to think and grow, and sharing his love for the church, for better or for worse.

That’s work to which you devote your life, but cannot possibly do.

Of course I’m sad. Of course I miss him. But when a man lives such a long and productive life, has nearly sixty years of marriage, sees four children grow up, knows ten adult grandchildren, and with our grandson Ben, knew his first great-grandchild, we can only be grateful.

Yesterday, we interred Dad’s ashes. There were about thirty of us at the end of the boardwalk over the marshes that led to Dad’s favorite Cape Cod swimming hole. As the last of the ashes sprinkled into the water I blurted out, “Go daddy, go.” ν

John Bishop

Once you’ve seen the best, there’s only the rest.

So many things, so many concepts, so many ideas today are labeled “the best” or “the greatest” that I sometimes wonder if we can still recognize real greatness. We speak in superlatives as if there was no other class. “This is the best cheese I’ve ever tasted,” lasts only until tomorrow when I get lucky enough to have a bite of something different. “Oh my God, it was the best movie ever.” And get the emphasis of punctuation: “Oh. My. God.” You set yourself up as the authority, as if no other opinion has value. Invoking the Deity is a tactic for substantiating overstatement.

“Of all time” is a common lead-in for overstatement. “He was the best quarterback of all time.” “She was the best actress of all time.” Maybe, but most of the time, I doubt it. You could make a perfectly legitimate claim a little less sweeping by starting with “I think,” as in, “I think that was a great play.” Fair enough; I’ll buy that. I think it was a great play, too, but neither of us are qualified to continue with “of all time.” “I really enjoyed that play,” isn’t forceful enough, somehow.

The search for “the best” or “the most” is a universal mantra, accompanied on television by triumphant music and the forceful voice of a male announcer. Anthony Bourdain travels the world looking for the most unusual meal. ABC Sports searches for the most dangerous ski slope. Sports Illustrated searches for the best swimsuit model. Stand them next to each other and they all look just fine.

Having worked as an organbuilder and an organist for more than forty years, I understand how people unfamiliar with the field are surprised and even baffled when they encounter it. The third or fourth exchange when you’re meeting someone for the first time at a party is “What do you do for a living?” “I’m a pipe organ builder.” “A pipe organ builder? I didn’t know there were any of you left.”

Once we get past a few pleasantries, an inevitable question is, “What’s the best organ in the world?” That’s a better question than asking after the biggest organ, which is easier to answer but usually leads to sniggering.

§

Wow! What is the best organ in the world? How in the world can I answer? Is it up to me to judge? What are the criteria? What are the variables? Can I break it into subsets like the best German organ, the best French organ, the best tracker-action organ? Do we need to know the best, or can we be happy with a list of “great” organs?

 

To be the best, must it be the biggest?

The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ is the largest “fully operational” organ in the world. According to the website of the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, it has six manuals, 463 ranks, and 28,677 pipes. This compares to the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ in Atlantic City (not fully operational, but restoration work is under way), with seven manuals, 449 ranks, and 33,114 pipes. So if you’re counting by ranks, Wanamaker wins by 14, and if you’re counting by pipes, Atlantic City wins by 4,437 (the size of an organ with more than 70 ranks!).

When I was a naïve and budding organ-guy, deep in the thrall of the tracker-action revival in Boston in the 1970s, I knew vaguely about the Wanamaker organ, touted as the largest organ in the world. I understood that it was in poor condition—that a lot of it was unplayable. Hmmph, I thought in my infancy. What can being the largest have to do with being any good? It would be years before I actually saw, heard, and experienced the Wanamaker. By the time I made its acquaintance, enormous effort had been put toward bringing that massive instrument into good condition. And now I marvel at its artistic content every time I visit, which is ever more often.

I don’t know if it’s the best, but it sure is wonderful. A tour with curator Curt Mangel is a privileged walk through countless rooms crammed with pipes. Any tuner would quail at the parades of reeds and dozens of pairs of celestes. What a responsibility. And to witness Grand Court Organist Peter Richard Conte doing his thing (you really have to see it to believe what you’re hearing) is to witness a marriage of man and machine unparalleled in the human experience. Oops, I guess unparalleled is a superlative.

 

…Oldest?

Am I up to date? Is the little abbey organ built around 1390 in Sion, Switzerland, really the oldest in the world? E. Power Biggs taught me that with his 1967 recording, Historic Organs of Switzerland. I still have those bold tones and archaic tuning in my ears. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) wrote The Canterbury Tales around 1390. In one of those delightful narratives, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, the main character was

 

A widow, poor and somewhat advanced in years, [who] dwelt once in a little cottage . . . By managing carefully what God sent, she provided for herself and her three daughters . . . her only treatment was a temperate diet, with exercise and heart’s content. The gout never kept her from dancing, nor did the apoplexy bother her head . . . She had a yard enclosed all around with sticks and a dry ditch, and in it she had a cock called Chanticleer. In all the land there was no match for his crowing; his voice was merrier than the merry organ that goes in the church on mass-days . . . *

 

Remember the wonderful carol with the refrain “O the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer, the playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the Kwah!” Chaucer must have been referring to contemporary British organs, so we can assume a burgeoning pipe organ industry as Europe shook itself free of the Dark Ages. An organ built in 1390 that we can still play today? What a fabulous icon of human history. It has been rebuilt and expanded several times—its history seems to read “every hundred years or so, whether it needs it or not . . . ” What a treat to play on a musical instrument that’s 624 years old! Who cares if it’s any good?

 

…Most majestic?

One of the most familiar images of the pipe organ world is the lion-topped façade of the 1738 organ built by Christian Müller in St. Bavo Church in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The top of the case is nearly a hundred feet above the floor of the church, and the sounds of the organ are as vital, energetic, and expressive as any modern instrument. There’s a legend saying that Mozart played on this organ, and there are dozens of modern recordings available. The instrument is the centerpiece of the International Summer Academy for Organists, founded in 1955, and continuing today as a seminal educational experience for hundreds of musicians.

With just over 5,000 pipes, the Haarlem organ must have been one of the largest in the world when it was built, but today it represents only the difference in size between the Wanamaker and Atlantic City organs!

Studying the intricate details of the design and construction of this organ, it’s hard to believe that such a thing could have been built using available technology from the early eighteenth century. Think of the state of high culture in America at that time—what the fanciest colonial architecture was like. This organ is high on the list of doozies in the organ world. Does that make it best?

 

…Most influential?

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll completed the rebuilding and expansion of the organ at St. Sulpice in Paris in 1862. With five manuals and a hundred stops it was one of the largest organs in the world at that time. And with its myriad complex mechanical innovations, it was an eloquent statement of technology of the day. Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré combined their careers to serve this church for 101 years. The organ alone as a mechanical entity must be considered among the most elegant, expressive, and fiery instruments ever built. But when combined with its illustrious players—including present organists Daniel Roth and Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin—it’s hard to imagine another church balcony that has housed and launched more extraordinary music. 

Widor (1844–1937) was born to a family of organbuilders. Cavaillé-Coll was a family friend who arranged for Widor to study with Jacques Nicolas Lemmens in Brussels. How many of us have played Lemmens’ Fanfare how many times? Maybe it’s unfair to use one piece to stand for a musician’s life work, but it’s a long way in sophistication from that Fanfare to Widor’s Symphonie Gothique or Symphonie Romane. Along with his organ symphonies, Widor produced dozens of orchestral works including symphonies and piano concertos, chamber music, piano music, and choral works. He was a prolific teacher whose students included Charles Tournemire, Louis Vierne, Darius Milhaud, and Alexander Schreiner. Widor’s lifelong relationship with the St. Sulpice organ must be one of the most important between musician and instrument in the history of music. 

Marcel Dupré (1886–1971) was also deeply influenced by Cavaillé-Coll’s masterpiece, and how many modern organists still living can claim to be his students and therefore students of that organ, whether in private lessons or master class. He died when I was in high school, and I never met him or heard him play. But I know he taught Jehan and Marie-Claire Alain, Jeanne Demessieux, Jean Guillou, Jean Langlais, and Olivier Messiaen. His weekly organ improvisations were legendary, raising the church of St. Sulpice to the level of organists’ pilgrimage—a tradition that remains more than forty years after his death. To this day, a knowing worshipper can quickly pick out the visiting organists, quivering and weeping in their seats.

 

…Most melodious?

Charles Brenton Fisk, aka Charlie, was a pioneer in the mid-twentieth century renaissance of classical styles of organ building. I was fortunate as a teenager growing up in Winchester, Massachusetts, to live within two blocks in opposite directions of two new Fisk organs. And I was fortunate to know Charlie at least a little. Charlie Fisk’s organs are lively and interesting. Many are controversial, especially because of their sonic power. His thrilling Opus 82, installed in Christ United Methodist Church in Greensborough, North Carolina, must be one of the most powerful organs ever built, stop-for-stop.

Fisk’s Opus 55 is a modest three-manual organ of twenty-nine stops, built in 1971. It has a lovely case that includes architectural elements from a much older case by Boston organbuilder Thomas Appleton. It’s housed in a stately 1806 building in Boston’s West End. While its size, scope, and surroundings are nice enough, it would be an unremarkable organ except that it’s widely considered to be one of the finest organs in the world. Its solo voices and choruses combine proud fundamental tone with limpid harmonic structure to produce strikingly beautiful organ tone. 

Yuko Hayashi, the brilliant twentieth-century teacher of hundreds of important modern organists, became organist at Old West in 1973, at the suggestion of Charles Fisk. Yuko had been teaching organ at the New England Conservatory of Music since 1960 and was well known for her lyrical playing. Shortly after she started playing there, she brought the NEC organ class there for lessons, and from then until her retirement in 2001 many hundreds of our finest organists studied with Yuko on the organ at Old West Church. Since it was built, it has been one of the most heavily used organs in the country. Yuko once told me she believed that the organ sounded better the more it was played—that the passage of air through the pipes makes the pipes sound better. How’s that for spiritual?

 

…Most incensed?

According to Google Maps, the Church of the Advent in Boston is six-tenths of a mile from Old West Church. The Aeolian-Skinner organ at Church of the Advent, a product of the firm’s G. Donald Harrison era, is just as modest and ordinary on paper as the Fisk at Old West. It has fifty-seven stops on three manuals, and is installed in a chamber above the chancel that also speaks into the nave. Modest and ordinary, maybe, but there’s just something about it. Worshipping there with the inspired musical leadership that has always been a hallmark of the place is a Magical Mystery Tour. It would be a challenge to find another organ of this scale that could equal the seamless crescendos and decrescendos that accompany the singing of the choir. It would be a challenge to find another organ of this scale that could play so much of the organ repertory so effectively. In the intense and incensed smoke-filled room that is the Advent’s sanctuary, the architectural borders between instrument and building are as elusive as the musical borders between organ pipes and acoustics. It’s otherworldly.

If Old West Church is a mecca for beautiful organ tone, Church of the Advent is a mecca for the effect of a pipe organ on deep and sophisticated liturgically grounded worship. And you can walk from one to the other in just fifteen minutes.

 

…Most seminal?

I’m stuck in a rut along the Charles River in Boston, which is just a long block from Church of the Advent. (By the way, the home of Joseph Whiteford, president of Aeolian-Skinner from 1956 until 1965, faces the Charles from one of the little neighborhoods near “The Advent.” It’s the one with the tapered front door!) From there it would take about an hour and a half to walk, but only ten minutes to drive to Adolphus Busch Hall, formerly known as the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and familiarly known to generations of organists and Harvard students as “The Busch.” Aeolian-Skinner had installed an experimental organ there in 1937, one that included classically inspired principal choruses, from which E. Power Biggs played many live radio broadcasts. Mr. Biggs commissioned the landmark Flentrop organ with his own money in 1958 and placed it on loan to Harvard University. He paid personally for its tuning and maintenance for the rest of his life and bequeathed the organ to the university after his death.

Like the organs at “Old West” and “The Advent,” the Flentrop in “The Busch” is of modest proportions—three manuals and twenty-seven stops. But simply to mention the extraordinary series of recordings Biggs made on that organ, E. Power Biggs Plays Bach Organ Favorites, is to acknowledge its importance. It still stands as the best-selling series of solo classical music recordings, an accurate and indisputable superlative. And while those performances are still controversial icons of the “organ wars,” his snappy and peppy readings of those classic pieces brought excellent playing of excellent organ music to the ears of millions around the world. Many of us were hearing “chiff” for the first time. To some it was clear and rhythmic, to others it sounded like hitting xylophone bars. Bach’s Jig Fugue brings popping popcorn to mind. The organ is fifty-six years old, and I love taking visiting friends to see it. They melt in its presence. 

 

…Most nostalgic?

I think that all of us who care about playing the organ have a favorite or two, and I, for one, have a list of organs I’ve loved since I was a kid. There are a couple in Yarmouthport on Cape Cod that I played (and practiced on) for hundreds of teenage summertime hours. There are a couple beauties by
E. & G.G. Hook that were within walking distance of my youthful home. And there are some, even those that fail to stand out as excellent examples of the art, where I had important experiences both personal and musical, where I heard great musicians play for the first time, where important milestones of my personal life and professional career are marked.

In fact, some of the worst organs I’ve seen have had the most impact on me, helping me understand in their negativity why excellence is so important.

Please don’t ask me to name the best organ in the world. If I’m lucky, I haven’t heard about it yet. And the organ to die for? It will be played at my funeral. Any takers? ν

 

Postscript:

While I’m always interested in good organs anywhere, in this writing I’ve focused on instruments that I think have served as more than just good organs. Each has had a special and wide influence on many musicians, and each has played a particular role in the history of our instrument. Organists go out of their way to experience them. When we think of the modern pipe organ, we can picture dozens, if not hundreds, of various forms, and each of these pivotal organs have played a part in that development. I’ve written this off the top of my head without research, so the list is in no way complete. I’m interested to hear from readers their suggestions of additions to this list. Please write me at [email protected] to share your thoughts.

Thank you for reading.

* Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Translation by Gerard NeCastro, published as “eChaucer” by the University of Maine at Machias: http://machias.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/translation/ct/21npt.html.

Photo credits: William T. Van Pelt, except as noted. 

Lorenz Maycher

Note: All letters, photos, articles, and other memorabilia used here are from the personal library of Dr. Alexander Boggs Ryan, housed at Trinity Episcopal Church, Longview, Texas, and Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas. The letters were first publicly presented at the Gregg County Historical Society, Longview, Texas, by David Ford during the 2012 East Texas Pipe Organ Festival. All spelling and punctuation has been retained as found in the original letters.

 

Introduction

Marcel Dupré and Alexander Boggs Ryan—By one who knew them both

Marcel Dupré (1886–1971) had many American pupils, notable among whom were Emory Gallup, Carl Weinrich, Clarence Watters, and Dora Poteet. Although the foregoing were better suited to his approach than some others, there is no doubt that Clarence Watters and Dora Poteet were shining examples of his tradition and that they in turn passed this legacy on to their pupils in a way that insured reverence and respect.

Alexander Boggs Ryan (1928–1979) possessed an enviable and, in some ways, unique musical pedigree. Quite apart from his excellent piano background and well before he came to Dupré, he had received the Great Tradition (the Parisian organ school’s “apostolic succession”: Bach to Kittel to Rinck to Hesse to Lemmens to Guilmant & Widor and their pupils) from Dora Poteet Barclay. Helen Hewitt, one of Lynnwood Farnam’s pupils at the Curtis Institute, would become another early influence. (Although Farnam lacked a direct connection to the Parisian organ tradition, he was on intimate terms with many of its great lights. Farnam was in and out of many famous organ lofts and established bonds with Albert Dupré, Henri Mulet, and Charles Tournemire among others. He and the Duprés often met at Claude Johnson’s country house. As is well known, Vierne’s Sixth Symphony is dedicated to him.)

When Boggs arrived in Paris in 1952, Marcel Dupré was in the final years of his professorship at the Conservatoire. In previous decades his organ class included a glittering roll-call of greats, from Olivier Messiaen to Jeanne Demessieux, to name only two. In the immediate post-war period alone there had been, among the women, Françoise Renet, Marie-Madeleine Chevalier, and the fabulous Suzanne Chaisemartin; among the men, Pierre Labric, Jean Costa, and the unforgettable Pierre Cochereau. Beginning in 1954, Dupré would place the organ class in the hands of his faithful Rolande Falcinelli and assume the title of director of that august institution.

Much nonsense has been written and muttered-about concerning the so-called Olympian aloofness of Marcel Dupré but the facts, as well as the testimonies of his pupils, tell a very different story. It is true that the moment he began playing, one felt strongly the presence of an artistic giant—a god of music. In that respect his playing was quite unlike any other of my acquaintance. Privately, he was the most affectionate and loving master that one could possibly imagine, full of fatherly care for every aspect of one’s life and thought. High standards and unremitting work were necessary but he inspired and guided with a unique, genial humor and sweetness.

Boggs, I believe, was an almost ideal subject for study with Dupré. With his superb pianism (very important to the master) and his familiarity with the Parisian organ school, he was able to imbibe the maximum benefit from study in Meudon. Boggs’ fine Southern manners would have been appreciated by the Dupré family. In addition, he brought Dupré repertoire that would not have been part of the usual conservatory organ class drill (i.e., the Reubke Sonata). The notoriously miserable organ in the Salle d’Orgue had recently been replaced by a new, electric-action instrument. Dupré was able to provide this venue for Boggs’ début in 1953.

As a fitting coda to his years of study, Boggs earned his DMA at Ann Arbor in 1963. He studied with Helen Hewitt’s classmate, Robert Noehren, another member of Farnam’s celebrated Curtis organ class.* Marilyn Mason was also an influence, with her connection to Palmer Christian, a sometime pupil of both Straube and Guilmant.

Alexander Boggs Ryan had an acute sense that this great cloud of witnesses had contributed in many and various ways to his musical footprint. In my opinion, his best years as a player were, roughly speaking, a ten-year period from 1954 to 1964. Everything that he played seemed to contain a leading soprano line and cantabile legato, including Reger, a composer that benefited greatly from his relaxed, lyric approach. 

—Karl Watson

Staten Island, New York 

 

*In the years before his early death, Lynnwood Farnam taught the first organ class at the then newly founded Curtis Institute of Music. The members of the class were Lawrence Apgar, Robert Cato, Helen Hewitt, Alexander McCurdy, Robert Noehren, and Carl Weinrich. 

 

Letters

CONSERVATOIRE NATIONAL
DE MUSIQUE

PARIS, le 22 February 1955

14, RUE DE MADRID, 8E

LABORDE 20-80

LE DIRECTEUR

I have pleasure to state that Mr. Alexander Boggs Ryan who has studied organ with me during a year has proved a most interesting and satisfactory student. Through steady and intelligent work he has made continued progress. He has a fine brilliant technique and undeniable musical gifts.

He has been through an exhaustive repertory of classical and modern works with me and given a fine organ recital which has won him applause in the organ hall of the National Conservatory of music in Paris. Serious and earnest in his work, of perfect good-breeding, I am confident he will fulfil with distinction any post he may be entrusted with.

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

November 12th 1961

My dear friend,

I returned from concerts in Germany last night and found your good letter for which many thanks. I was glad to hear your news about your work and activities.

I am sending you the photos dedicated. When I have a little time, I will look up whether I have the signature of Philipp and Widor, but I am leaving to-night for a concert tour in England and have still much work on hand.

The concert for Liszt’s commemoration was not a recital, but a concert with orchestra at Palais de Chaillot. Two transcriptions of mine for organ and orchestra were performed, with myself at the organ and the Pasdeloup orchestra: Fantasy on “ad nos” and the transcription of the piano work “St. Francois de Paule marchant sur les flots.” Both had a great success.

Yes, the long-playing record of Dora Poteet was sent to me. Her death has been a great sorrow for us. She was such a remarkable artist and a fine woman.

I also have the photo taken at St. Sulpice with Widor, Philipp and myself, but thank you all the same for your
kind thought.

I certainly was most happy about the wonderful reception I had in Detroit and it was so good to see again so many old students such as yourself and so many friends who had come from quite a distance.

With affectionate thoughts from Madame Dupré and myself and best wishes for continued success,

Yours ever,

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

March 27, 1962

My dear friend,

Many thanks for your letter. It was kind of you to write about the article on Alexandre Guilmant.

Thanks for the interesting programs you sent me and for the French program for your third recital.

I congratulate you on your recent fine appointment at Western Michigan University and am very happy to see that your hard work and talent are being acknowledged. I shall always be interested in the progress of your musical career.

The centenary of the organ of Saint-Sulpice will be commemorated on May 3rd. It was dedicated on April 29, 1862 by César Franck, Guilmant and Saint-Saens. So, I shall play some of their music, also my Passion-Symphony etc. The organ is always magnificent.

With warmest regards,

Sincerely,

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

April 25, 1962

My dear friend,

Many thanks for your kind letter, for the interesting programs you gave in New-York and for the photo at the organ in Detroit. I am returning the other two which I have inscribed according to your wish.

With every good wish,

Cordially,

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

P. S. In 1956, I recorded several works for the Westminster Co. on the St. Sulpice organ, among which my “Stations of the Cross.” I know the Company has had financial difficulties, and I have, of course, never got any royalties, but this is not what I am concerned about. I have written to them to inquire whether my “Stations of the Cross” were available, but they never replied. The recording of that big work means a lot to me and I should be more than sorry if my work came to nothing.

Do you know anything about it or could you kindly make some inquiries? Many thanks in advance.

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

May 10th 1962

My dear friend,

Many thanks for your letters and for the information about the Westminster Co. and their successor. I am writing to them.

How kind of you to have got my “Stations of the Cross” as a gift to me. I shall let you know when the record comes. I have the two other records.

I am sending you the program of the St. Sulpice organ centenary. The concert was a tremendous success. Thousands packed the church and the organ sounded more gloriously than ever.

Concerning the rebuild of Notre-Dame, the rebuild is not completed yet. The new console has been connected with the organ, but the combinations are not ready yet, nor the new stops. So, at the present moment, but for the new console, the organ is as it was.

As for Saint-Sulpice, I keep my own beautiful console and organ as they are, as they were when I started playing there as Widor’s assistant over fifty years ago.

I am sorry not to be able to send you a program of the bi-centennial of Liszt, but I have none left.

With kindest regards and best wishes,

Yours cordially,

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

October 14, 1962

My dear friend,

I am just back from Holland, where I gave four recitals during the week and find your letter, for which I thank you. I am delighted to hear you are doing so well both in your teaching and concerts. Thanks for the interesting clippings you sent.

I am glad to hear you will play at Rockefeller Chapel, Chicago during Lent. Such a magnificent organ! I shall think of you playing my “Stations.”

As regards the Variations of the Symphonie Gothique, it was Widor’s wish that one of them, the Canon in trio form, should be omitted. He considered it as too scholastic, so I always complied with his wish.

When I write to Marriott, I will certainly put in a good word about you.

You inquire about my activities? The next will be the performance of my Oratorio, “La France au Calvaire,” for choir, soloists, organ and orchestra, at Palais de Chaillot on November 4th at the Pasdeloup concerts.

Then I am leaving for Switzerland on November 10th. I have another busy year ahead. A new organ work of mine will be released this month.

We both keep in the best of health.

With every good wish,

Cordially,

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

§

 

Tuesday, 12 February 1963

Dear M. Dupré:

This is my first communication to you in 1963, and I trust that this finds you and Mme. Dupré feeling well and busily engaged in activities that you both love so much.

We have had a terrible winter so far: much more snow than in former record years. I’m not used to it, of course, originating from Texas, but am confronted with the facts at hand.

I hope to finish my Doctorate at the University of Michigan by June. I’m working on my third and final recital, which will be all French. It includes some of your “Stations” as well as your “Noel Variations.” In addition, I’m preparing a document on all three recitals, which will contain program notes and an analysis of some 30 works.

Is M. Legouix (the second-hand music dealer) still alive? The reason I ask is that, when I studied with you ten years ago, I bought a considerable amount of music from him in rare editions—mostly German publications that had long been out of print. At that time I studied the Reubke “Sonata” with you, which I performed at the Conservatoire. I tried to locate an “original” of that work, originally published by J. Schuberth & Co., Leipzig. This organ-work was not among Legouix’s holdings at the time, although he promised to get me a copy. I have never heard from him since.

Now, the point is this: I would like, if possible, to get these compositions from Legouix. They are all works by Julius Reubke, and would be helpful in the preparation of my document. They include piano works, also. They are the following, and I’d appreciate your giving M. Legouix a call on the phone in order that he might make some inquiries for me. For this favor, I’d be
most appreciative:

Titles, as they appear in German:

Organ: 1) Sonate in c moll. Der 94ste Psalm. J. Schuberth

Piano: 2) Sonate in c moll. Der 94ste Psalm. Edition Cotta

(transcribed for piano by August Stradal, Stuttgart, 1926)

Piano: 3) Sonate in B moll. J. Schuberth

Piano: 4) Scherzo (not certain of publisher, probably J. Schuberth)

The above enumeration indicates one copy of each, as to get will take some work on the part of M. Legouix.

Cher maître, I realize that you are a busy man. If you do not have time to attend to this for me, just send me the address of M. Legouix. I don’t have it, or would write to him direct.

Am off for recitals in Chicago, Wichita (Kansas), Columbus (Ohio), and New York City during March and April. Wish me luck.

Sincerely,

(signed) Alexander Boggs Ryan

 

P. S. I forgot to tell you. My information states that Stradal also made an organ edition of the Reubke “Sonata,” in which he made some corrections (notes) indicated by Liszt. This was also Edition Cotta, and I’m interested in this, too. So tell Legouix about it. Thanks.

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

March 18th, 1963

My dear friend,

I apologize for this belated answer to your letter, but we have been away a good deal.

We found Legouix address, which is:

4 Rue CHAUVEAU-LAGARDE

8e

Madame Dupré called at the shop this afternoon and was received by Madame Legouix from whom she heard that her husband died seven years ago accidentally. But she is carrying on his work with some help. She could not tell me whether she had the works you ask for, but is going to make some research and let me know. She took my phone number and has your list of works in hand.

So, as soon as I have some news, I will let you know.

Cordially yours,

(signed) Marcel Dupré

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

October 2, 1963

My dear friend,

As soon as your letter of August 7 arrived I wrote to Madame Legouix saying you had never heard from her and asking whether she had been able to find any of the rare editions you wanted.

Her reply to my letter came yesterday only. (She may have been away during the summer vacation.) A very short reply it was as you may see, at the back of the first letter you wrote in February. (“With my apologies for not finding this.” L. Legouix) I am sorry it will prove disappointing for you.

Our most sincere congratulations on your Doctor’s degree from the University of Michigan.

We were shocked to hear about Parvin Titus’ terrible accident but were somewhat relieved when we were told recently by Mr. Cunkle, the editor of “The Diapason,” that he was getting better. But his poor wife!

With affectionate regards from both,

(signed) J. Dupré

 

§

 

December 3, 1963

M. and Mme. Marcel Dupré

40, Boulevard Anatole France

Meudon, S.- et - O.

France

My dear friends :

It is with a sense of extreme regret that I have just read of the passing of your daughter, Marguerite, on October 26, 1963. I had no idea that she had been desperately ill, and there was no indication of this in Mme. Dupré’s letter of early October.

Herefore, please accept my sincerest sympathies in this your hour of extreme sorrow. Please convey to Marguerite’s husband and her children my heartfelt shock upon receiving this news.

I am looking forward to seeing you next summer, as I contemplate my first trip to Europe in ten years.

Very sincerely,

Dr. Alexander Boggs Ryan

Chairman of the Organ Dept.

Assistant Professor of Music

Western Michigan University

ABR/leh

 

P. S. In as much as Marguerite and the late Dora Poteet Barclay were close friends some twenty-five years ago, I shall inform Dora’s husband of this tragedy; for surely he will want to write to you.

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

OBS. 14-45

January 6, 1964

Dear friend,

Many thanks for your letter of sympathy in our great sorrow. We are heart-broken, for our beloved Marguerite always filled our lives with happiness. Life will never be the same again for us. But we have to go on for the dear children she has left us.

Mr. Dupré is very courageous, though, and has resumed all his duties. Music helps us and I am always looking forward to St. Sulpice on Sundays.

We are going next week to Frankfurt, where a group of organists is to give a concert of M. Dupré’s works, and the day before, he will be giving a recital of French music.

We have read the programs you sent us with great interest, always touched about your devotion to your master’s music.

Affectionately Yours,

J. Dupré

 

§

 

Mr. & Mme. Marcel Dupré

40, BOULEVARD ANATOLE 

FRANCE

MEUDON (S. &-O.)

Telephone 14-45

Observatoire

Undated handwritten notecard

Dear friend,

Many thanks for your nice card and for the interesting press notices. We are happy to know your concerts are so successful. We both keep well and Mr. Dupré is as busy as ever with concert playing, composition and teaching. He has made some new recordings for Philips recently—a disc of Bach Chorales.

 

§

 

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

92 – MEUDON

027-14-45

Friday 23 July 1971

My dear friend,

Your letter reached me this morning and I was profoundly moved by all you wrote from your heart. Yes, I have received letters and telegrams by hundreds from all over the world and am far from having answered them all. But yours, which came apart, gets this returned answer.

The sudden passing away of my beloved husband was a terrible shock. On Whit-Sunday, May 30th, he was playing his two masses at St. Sulpice, ending at 12 o’clock with an improvisation on the Easter Alleluia which a friend had requested, and a few hours later, at the end of the afternoon, all was over. After St. Sulpice, we had driven back home, had a quiet lunch together, then he read his Sunday paper and said suddenly: “I feel a little cold; I am going to lie down on my bed.” Shortly after, he lost consciousness and passed without any pain. When the Doctors arrived, there was nothing to be done; rupture of abdominal aneurism.

I am heart-broken. After our many years spent together in such close union, the loss of that wonderful companion, so great, but so simple, so kind, so loving is so hard to bear. 

But I thank God for his peaceful end, a blessing for him, this end he deserved after his great life of devotion to his art, to his students, to his friends, and his humanity. Everybody loved him. 

I try to get some strength from so many happy memories of our life, particularly from the very last ones. On April 22, he played for the last time in London, at the Albert Hall for the celebration of the centenary of the Hall in which he had given his first concert abroad in a concert hall fifty years before, in December 1920. He had such an ovation from the impressive crowd: 7000 people. We were both deeply moved. I am sorry I have no programs of the Albert Hall.

Then for his 85th birthday, there was a most moving evening at St. Sulpice: his oratorio “De Profundis” was sung during the first hour, then a big group of his former pupils at the Conservatoire where he had taught for 28 years, gathered around him in the centre of the church; Messiaen, Langlais, Cochereau, Mme. Durufle, etc., etc., read beautiful tributes before him.

A week later, on May 13th, Rolande Falcinelli who succeeded him as the head of the organ class when he was appointed Director of the Conservatoire gave a recital with his 2nd Symphony and he concluded the recital by a great improvisation.

The funeral took place at St. Sulpice on June 3rd, in the packed church. The service was so beautiful, with the Requiem Gregorian Mass which I had requested.

He was buried in our little cemetery in Meudon, a few minutes from our home, with our darling Marguerite. We both used to go to her grave every day. Now I go alone until I join them.

Marguerite was our only child. The girl you saw at the concert last year was a cousin from Rouen.

Now, I am trying to be courageous for my three grandchildren, all three students and who still need me. They are sweet kids and their grandfather loved them so.

With many thanks for your sympathy,

Sadly Yours,

J. Marcel-Dupré

 

P. S. I don’t get The Diapason and would be so grateful if you would send me a clipping of the article.

 

§

 

French Institute

(Institut de France)

Academy of Arts

(Académie des Beaux-Arts)

Funeral of Marcel Dupré,

Member of the Musical Composition division,

held in St. Sulpice Church

Paris, 3rd June 1971.

 

ORATIONS

By

M. Jacques Carlu,

President of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

And

M. Emmanuel Bondeville,

Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

 

Paris,

MCMLXXI

Institute publication

Printers to the Institute:

1971 No. 13

Firmin-Didot & Co.

Rue Jacob 56.

 

ORATION

by

M. Jacques Carlu

President of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

Madame,

My dear colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with deep emotion that I come here today, bringing in the name of the whole Académie des Beaux-Arts, a last farewell to our illustrious colleague and friend Marcel Dupré, who has been taken away so suddenly from the affectionate companionship of his family and his countless disciples and admirers.

On this sad day, it is not only the French Institute and our society which shares your mourning, Madame, but also the whole world of music or as one can truly put it, all the musicians in the world, for, in the unanimous opinion of his peers, Marcel Dupré must be classed in the first rank among musicians, composers and organists of all time.

Member of the music division of the Académie des Beaux-Arts 15 years, he was one of the most remarkable figures in its long history.

Without any doubt Dupré was a great artist, as his whole life and career bear witness, and his immense musical output will presently be described for us by his lifelong friend and companion, and fellow native of Rouen, our permanent secretary, the musician Emmanuel Bondeville, with all his wide knowledge and the brotherly affection he felt for the musician who has passed away.

But one didn’t have to be a musician to admire Marcel Dupré, for although not everyone is gifted with a good ear, you only needed to have a heart in order to love the man.

For among all those who in many countries have drawn near to Marcel Dupré, is there a single one who could forget the man, the friend, or the master? He was so innately good and infinitely gracious, always ready to share the fruits of his experience and his immense talent.

Whatever the circumstances he could never be selfish or insensible—his natural and unvarying kindliness would not allow it. So the great artist Marcel Dupré was surrounded by much admiration and loving respect among all the circles he frequented.

Rarely can France have possessed a better ambassador for the art and culture of our country, hence the warmth of the welcome which greeted him on his numerous tours abroad, especially in the United States.

Happily he is not dead altogether since a large part of himself will never pass away. Then Death, where is thy victory? For he will pass through this supreme test and emerge still greater; and the glorious reputation which he leaves us is as the sun shining from the world beyond the grave.

Thinking of the life of the soul in the kingdom of shade which is now his, where is the new Paul Valery who can describe for us in the style of “Eupalinos” the fascinating discussions which Marcel Dupré will be able to have with his well-loved J. S. Bach, and with all the giants of music whom he will meet in the Elysian Fields.

For us, it remains to measure the enormous void created by the disappearance of our dear and illustrious colleague. One can succeed to the post of a Marcel Dupré, but one can never replace him.

In this day of sadness, Madame, may I express to you and your children the deep and sorrowing sympathy felt by the members of the Academy of Arts, all of whom share your grief. But as the great Christian orator Massillon, who belonged to the Academy more than two centuries ago and whose statue stands before us in this Square of Saint-Sulpice, said in one of his famous sermons: “the feelings which a sudden death arouse in our hearts are feelings of a day of grief, as though death itself was a matter of a single day.”

Dear Marcel Dupré, our friend and colleague, you rest assured that our grief will be unending.

 

ORATION

pronounced by

M. Emmanuel BONDEVILLE

Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

Madame,

My dear Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

How can one call to mind the great figure of Marcel Dupré without recapitulating the main stages of the career which marked his astonishing and ineluctable ascendance?

He had this great privilege of the strong, of following with sureness the ordained path, climbing it with firm undeviating steps, and reaching the higher summits by an unbroken ascending curve.

He always remained close to his roots. The rue du Vert-Buisson, at Rouen, was an excellent musical centre. The province and regions provide generous facilities for the arts, for study, practice, and the faith which gives life meaning and nobility.

Albert Dupré, the organist of St. Ouen, which possesses one of the finest organs in France, used to run a choral society “Perfect Harmony” (L’Accord Parfait), which enabled the music-lovers of Rouen to become familiar with the masterpieces of music, notably the great works of Bach. His wife, Alice Dupré, a cellist, possessed a lively musical intelligence.

In such a home, an exceptionally gifted child found the most favourable climate possible for the flowering of his talents. Without having frequented that blessed dwelling, called simply “le Vert-Buisson” (the green bush)—the name of the street—by the people of Rouen, one could not possibly assess how much ardour, hard work, and faith, the love of a difficult art can muster in order to achieve the most important objectives, which are to arouse curiosity, to consolidate knowledge, and to create enthusiasm.

For his enlightened parents applied the utmost care in nourishing the talent of Marcel Dupré, which declared itself early. At the age of twelve, he performed the opening recital on the organ at the church of St. Vivien. He soon became a living legend for the young musicians of the town. My mother was always talking to me about him, with the ardour of an admiring music-lover, who hoped to inspire her young offspring at an early age with sound reasons for working, hoping, and admiring in his turn.

These reasons quickly multiplied. Recitals succeeded one another, keeping always the same high standard of perfection. Prizes accumulated, marking the fruits of a complete musical training, including as they did prizes for performance on the piano and the organ, and the Grand Prix de Rome for composition. At the same time, to hear Marcel Dupré praising the teaching of Guilmant and Widor, was a lesson in their contribution to music, but it was also a lesson in modesty, a spiritual quality which this great man never forsook.

In spite of these successes, which gave as much pleasure to those who loved him as they did to himself, an even higher summit was to be reached in 1920, when Marcel Dupré played in ten recitals the whole of the organ works of John Sebastian Bach, from memory.

This wasn’t merely a feat of stupendous prowess, but a manifestation of something even greater, for Marcel Dupré had performed these recitals with the meticulous care which he insisted on applying to every act, whether of interpretation or of creation. “Do you know,” said his father one day to me, “that before giving these recitals, Marcel consulted all the editions, and all the available manuscripts of the works of Bach, particularly those in the Berlin library?”

The news of these concerts was to spread like lightning. One of the most impressive figures of the art of sound had revealed himself.

At the same time, Marcel Dupré brought the art of improvisation to an undreamt of level of proficiency. Here, too, there was no room for mere facility. A rigorous mastery led to fullness of expression. Each work revealed the fathomless resources offered by a simple theme, but instead of this result being achieved by patient work at the desk, the edifice of sound sprang forth from an act of spontaneous creation.

It is true that the act of improvisation had had some impressive exponents. César Franck had made an unforgettable impression on those who heard his improvisations on the organ at St. Clothilde during the Magnificat.

Dupré’s teacher, Widor, was equally admired. But his pupil’s contribution gave the king of instruments a still greater primacy. Alone of instruments, the organ enables a single player to build a whole cathedral of sound on the spot, using a variety of tone colours to rival the orchestra. As he unceasingly developed his talent, Marcel Dupré attained a breadth of expression hitherto unknown.

His tours of America began at that time, and soon set the seal on his reputation as the premier French organist; he amazed his transatlantic audience by improvising a complete symphony in four movements for the first time in the history of organ music.

He knew fame. This manifested itself in many ways, sometimes the most unexpected and simple ways, which were all the more moving, like the time when a young Australian came to work in my family and asked, on her arrival, “Where can one hear the organist Marcel Dupré?”

The composer didn’t relinquish his work. Rarely can the improviser and the composer have been so perfectly matched as in the person of Marcel Dupré, for his spontaneous impulses, like his reflective and poignant meditations, were as perfect as the written composition.

To list his works, which ranged from the instrumental solo to the lyrical fresco, would take up the whole of this speech. In any case there is available for reference the very thorough bibliographical study by his learned pupil, Canon Robert Delestre. But, to continue along our path in the company of the Master, we can halt at the Preludes and Fugues, which, composed as early as 1912, represent an astonishing enrichment of organ technique.

Speaking of these works, Marcel Dupré, the innovator, fully master of his bold strokes of composition, said “All I did was to follow Bach’s example . . . There’s no place for academicism in fugue, whatever one may think.”

In subsequent works, the “Suite Bretonne,” the “Symphonie-Passion,” the “Chemin de la Croix,” he went on to develop more fully this rich style of composition, to cite a few examples, for his extremely orderly mind yet found room for bold experiment. A short time ago, reading through scores by young composers, he showed me the interest which lay in examining new techniques by listening for their structure, their quest for new sounds.

Very early, the main lines of his life were set. With what mastery he mapped out his route! He was never to deviate from the chosen path: he embellished it continually.

The former pupil of Diemer, of Guilmant, and of Widor was to become Professor of Organ at the Conservatoire and Director of the illustrious institution.

What were his merits as a teacher? We have no need to enumerate them. On the 7th May last, at St. Sulpice, after hearing his “De Profundis,” his former pupils paid him homage and their famous names show that the continuity of his work and mission are assured.

A few weeks ago, he went back to Rouen and visited again the house of his parents, “le Vert Buisson,” and played the organ at St Ouen.

The world’s most glittering successes had never altered his affection for those he always revered, his family. He always spoke of them with moving tenderness.

He was so discreet and secret in his inmost thoughts that, in order to know him well, one had to be favoured with his affection. How his face shone when he spoke of his family. He expressed himself then with a contained warmth which was stronger than loud bursts of sound, for this master of sound was also master of his heart. When he gave his affection, how comforting was his welcome! Whether it was in his joyful home at Saint-Valery-en-Caux or the great organ room at Meudon, his arms were wide open to welcome those who in their turn followed the same path. They knew, of course, that a superior being was receiving them. 

The rarest gifts were magnified by an uncompromising conscience, and a strict application to work, so as to achieve a constant elevation of talent and thought. Those of us who have sat next to him on the organ bench at St. Sulpice know what is genius.

His finest praise was spoken by his former pupil, now famous, Olivier Messiaen, who, speaking of his master, Marcel Dupré, called him “the modern Liszt.”

Liszt, the noblest figure in the history of music, a generous spirit and a discoverer of new sounds—he combined a stupendous virtuosity with compositions which broke new ground in their development of the resources of music. Let us keep in our minds this brief and complete tribute.

When his admirers mourn him all over the world, you, Madame, who have been his attentive and so much loved partner in life, will receive the greatest comfort from his hands. You know that his name will remain what he made it—that of one of the greatest of men.

40 BOULEVARD ANATOLE-FRANCE

92—MEUDON

027-14-45

May 26, 1972

Dear friend,

Many thanks for your good letter from Hamburg. I will be happy to see you during your short visit in Paris.

Will you come to Meudon on Monday May 29, about 3 p. m. You have got a train from Montparnasse station at 2:51 p.m.

Nearly a year has elapsed since my beloved husband left us. This month of May with all its last-memories of our life is so sad!

With affectionate wishes,

J. Marcel Dupré

 

Special thanks to Linda Ryan Thomas; to Trinity Episcopal Church, Longview, Texas, Bill Bane, organist-choirmaster; and to Kilgore College, Kilgore, Texas, Dr. William Holda, president, and Jeanne Johnson, chair of music and dance, for allowing access to Alexander Boggs Ryan’s complete personal library, and for granting permission to reprint these letters and memorabilia.

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas, and founding director of the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival. He is a frequent contributor to The Diapason, which has published his interviews with Thomas Richner, William Teague, Nora Williams, Albert Russell, and Robert Town, as well as his series of articles “From the Clarence Dickinson Collection.” Maycher is also director of the Vermont Organ Academy, a website promoting articles and recordings devoted to the Aeolian-Skinner legacy.

Karl Watson was a pupil of Alexander McCurdy at the Curtis Institute and, during 1970, of Marcel Dupré in Meudon. He has served both Protestant and Catholic churches on the East Coast. 

John Bishop

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a noise?

I am writing in the days just after Christmas, working through the end of a calendar year, a high point in the church year, and the juxtaposition of contrasting personal events with the peripatetic life of working in the Organ Clearing House. I’m home in Greenwich Village this morning, seven days after returning from an installation trip in northern Idaho, and six days after the funeral of a close friend. I’ve tuned seven organs since, and a few days ago we celebrated the first birthday of our first grandson.

Coolin, Idaho, is located in the north-pointing panhandle of Idaho. It’s about seventy-five miles northeast of Spokane, Washington. I googled to learn the population and found a figure of 168—but when I mentioned that to the owner of the brand-new twelve-room Coolin Motel, he said simply, “There aren’t that many people here.” It’s on the shore of Priest Lake, a popular center for water sports, so the population swells dramatically in the summer. And there are four or five hundred miles of snowmobile tracks in the county, so when there’s snow, there’s another population of noisy recreational vehicles. 

The newest fad among the show-machine crowds is something called a Mountain Horse—a conversion kit that transforms a mountain bike into a cross between a snowmobile and a jet-ski. They’re scary-looking machines with motorcycle engine, transmission, frame, seat, and handlebars, a spring-suspended rear track, and a ski in front. Enthusiasts roar through forests and across frozen lakes at high speeds, giving us one more literal definition for the term break-neck.

My colleague Amory Atkins and I were there to finish the installation of a Möller “Double Artiste” on a specially designed organ loft in an elaborate and beautiful new home on the shore of the lake. The house is built around a gorgeous Craftsman-style post and beam frame complete with dovetails and hard ash pins, and finished with chest-high wainscoating of dark-stained alder, complete with raised panels, applied to all the walls including mud room, stairwells, guest bedrooms, and the powder room off the kitchen. All of the interior doors are American black walnut—any organbuilder I know would be proud to produce joinery of that quality.

The center of the house is a two-and-a-half story great room into which the organ speaks from its perch. Sitting at the console, one looks ten miles across the lake, which is surrounded by dramatic hillsides of red cedar forests plunging to the shore.

The owner is a successful attorney who lives alone. As we have a place in semi-rural Maine where the closest visible houses are a half-mile away across a tidal river, I understand the pleasures of solitude in a beautiful place. But there I can hop in the car and drive ten minutes to town where there is a very good grocery store. In our village I can buy gas, booze, and clothing, or get a haircut. There are several dentists, a couple of opticians, and a 38-bed hospital. There’s a nice bookstore, a couple of pharmacies, two good hardware stores, churches (three with lovely historic pipe organs), a movie theater, and a couple good year-round restaurants. And, we have a wonderful circle of friends, all with interesting professional backgrounds, with whom we can gather in all types of weather.

Our client’s house is twenty-eight miles up a tiny county road from the center of Coolin. There is a real grocery store in Newport, Idaho—about thirty miles from Coolin on the road to Spokane. But for medical services, haircuts, and any sort of comprehensive shopping, he has to drive the full hundred miles to Spokane. While we were there, that twenty-eight mile road was sheer ice—a scary and lonely trek from a tiny village to a remote house. And by the way, going north from Coolin past the house, it’s about forty miles to Canada. We didn’t ask if there’s a circle of friends.

If a tree falls in the forest…

Driving on that endless secluded road, I was reminded of the classic query, “If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around, does it make a sound?”

This client was first in touch with us a couple years ago, sharing his plans for the house and asking about acquiring a pipe organ. Naively enough, I assumed that he had some past experience of playing the organ. Perhaps his childhood piano lessons morphed into organ lessons so he played for chapel services in prep school. But no! He doesn’t play the organ. He’s highly educated and has fantastic taste in music—during our stay he broadcast wonderful recordings through the house’s complex media system. When the organ came to life and I played Christmas carols, he stood next to me singing the tenor parts accurately, in tune, and with real phrasing. (I was at least partially right about the prep-school thing.) He explained that his daughters are musical, and told us of their real accomplishments. They would be visiting a couple times a year, and he expected they would enjoy playing the organ!

We have gone to a lot of trouble to install this organ. Joshua Wood and Terence Atkin delivered the organ by truck. The basic directions were to leave Boston driving west on Interstate 90, drive 2,750 miles, turn right at Coeur d’Alene (population 44,000), then go north 70 miles. We ate dreary meals five nights in a row at the Moose Knuckle Bar and Grill—the only place in Coolin open on weeknights. The Moose Knuckle menu includes pub food that can be prepared with fryolator and microwave. We drove that hazardous 56-mile round trip seven times. We tiptoed around the beautiful house, terrified that we would “ding” the woodwork.

But rather than the usual exercise of handing the organ over to an eager professional, I counseled this client that if the organ wasn’t played—and I mean, really played—a couple times a month, when summer comes and his daughters arrive, they will all be disappointed as the atrophied instrument wheezes back into service, full of ciphers and dead notes.

§ 

Wendy and I have enjoyed the close friendship of Jim and Lois for many years. Last spring they told us that Jim had been diagnosed with cancer, and through the summer he endured vicious sessions of chemotherapy. A complication developed in the early fall and he declined. The day before I left for Idaho, a mutual friend and I went to visit, and I knew I would not see him again. Sure enough, he died while I was away, and Amory and I returned home without finishing the project.

Jim and Lois were great “foodies” together. They were Italophiles, visiting Italy whenever they could—their last trip followed Jim’s diagnosis. Jim was a prolific organic gardener. To put his prowess in context, his wedding gift to us was a hundred pounds of fresh heirloom tomatoes that he sliced in our garage to be served at our wedding dinner. Jim and Lois befriended cooks, gardeners, and vintners in Italy, and brought those wares home in abundance. He sent me postcards of organs they happened on as they traveled.

We often cooked together, enjoying jointly prepared meals. And when Wendy and I went to their house for dinner, we loved sharing the most recent triumphs from Jim’s garden, wonderful unfamiliar wines, and not to escape mention, Lois is a terrific baker. It was strange standing in their kitchen this week with the bustle of family and friends all around without seeing Jim staking out his territory at the stove, cooking up something wonderful, and sharing tastes of exotic vegetables, “you gotta try this.”

§

The pipe organ is a public instrument. When an organbuilder conceives, designs, and builds an instrument, he intends from the beginning that it will be heard regularly by large groups of people. Attending a concert played on one of his instruments, he’s like an accomplished cook watching people eat food he has prepared. He has put a lot of thought and planning into it and he hopes they like it. He hopes they’ll enjoy familiar flavors, but be surprised and delighted by some unfamiliar ingredient or combination of flavors. He hopes they’ll go home talking about it. But above all he hopes they’ll show up to eat in the first place, and that they’ll come back often.

An orchestral instrument is a private tool used in public. The flautist selects and cares for his instrument as part of himself. He’s happy to take it from its case and share its sounds with an audience, and when the performance is over he packs it up and carries it home.

The pipe organ is standing in the venue before the musician arrives. If it’s the “house” musician returning to play for the hundredth or thousandth time, she mounts the bench with familiarity—the height and position are already set. She knows the strengths and weaknesses of the instrument. She knows how to balance its sounds with those of a large congregation singing with fervor, or with the solo voice of a young child. Like the glove-box of her car, the console is equipped with the pencils, Post-its, paperclips (don’t let them fall between the keys!), and often-played responses that are the tools of her trade.

When the day is done, the last Amen played, and the last listener departed, the organist turns off the blower and the lights, locks the door, and leaves the instrument alone in the room. There it gleams until the next person enters.

If it’s a guest organist, he climbs onto an unfamiliar bench, messes around with blocks to get the height right, tries a stop or two, tries a big full sound, and wonders how to balance with other musical tones he’s never heard. The organ may present itself to him as a willing partner or an obstinate beast. But whoever is playing, the organ is a public presence. Its monumentality complements the architectural and acoustic space it occupies. 

It’s strange to place an organ in a room where you know it will be rarely played and rarely heard. It’s like a cooking a meal that won’t be eaten.

§

Yesterday Wendy and I joined a big group of members of combined families to celebrate the first birthday of our first grandson. Benjamin is the first of his generation. He turned us into grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, and aunts all at once. He’s a delight with bright shiny eyes and a ready smile, and he’s freely willing to be passed around the room by adoring relatives. He started walking about six weeks ago at just the same moment he started falling down. We all had a blast celebrating with him, enjoying each other’s company, and sampling new foods.

Our daughter-in-law and her family are Brazilian, and Alessandra has recently earned American citizenship. Chris and Alex plan to raise Ben as bilingual. Both of them are great readers, and Ben has a wonderful start appreciating the world of books. As birthday presents were being opened, it was the books that captured his attention. He sat on the floor with a book on his lap, turning the pages and studying the pictures, murmuring little statements as he went. 

He also has an affinity for touch screens. When someone pulls a phone out of their pocket or purse—which is very often—he toddles over and cranes his neck to see the screen. His index finger is pointed and at the ready, and although he has no idea what he’s seeing, he has a lovely little touch as he swipes from screen to screen. One of the gifts he received was a mock tablet with a functioning touch screen. Alex remarked with glee that it would save her iPhone.

I wonder what kind of a world will greet Ben as he grows older. Wendy and I will make every effort to expose him to music, museums, theater, and other facets of the humanities and the world of culture. And I’m equally sure that other family members will introduce him to the magic of Brazilian culture. After all, they come from the land of Mardi Gras, the samba, the bossa nova, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Brazil is a land of infinite color and beauty, and while much of the country’s cultural heritage is different from ours, it’s rich and varied—a cornucopia of forms of expression. I trust that Ben will be the richer for his exposure to two languages, and two contrasting cultural heritages.

But what will the world be like when he’s in his fifties? Will concerts by symphony orchestras be accessible? Will live theater be a thing of the past? I hope I’ll have opportunities to share my work with pipe organs and church music with him. But I’ll not be around when he’s in his fifties. Will he remember the organ as the funny thing that Grandpa did? Today we can find cobblers who can stitch and glue a factory-made heel and sole set on a pair of shoes. But can we find a cobbler who can actually make a pair of shoes from scratch?

In his novel American Pastorale (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), Philip Roth tells of the industries in his home town, Newark, New Jersey:

The most important thing in making leather is water—skins spinning in big drums of water, drums spewing out befouled water, pipes gushing with cool and hot water, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. If there’s soft water, good water, you can make beer and you can make leather, and Newark made both—big breweries, big tanneries, and, for the immigrant, lots of wet, smelly, crushing work. (page 11)

Roth gives over eight pages to describing the process of making a pair of fine leather gloves by hand:

Close your hand, make a fist . . . feel how the glove expands where your hand expands and nicely adjusts to your size? That’s what the cutter does when he does his job right—no stretch left in the length, he’s pulled that all out at the table because you don’t want the fingers to stretch, but an exactly measured amount of hidden stretch left in the width. That stretch in the width is a precise calculation. (page 132)

Will Ben, who shows a nascent love of books at the age of one, enjoy the magic of devouring a book by Philip Roth—a real book with paper pages? And will he witness craftsmanship at the level that predicts confidently the amount of stretch in a hand-made glove—none the long way, and just right around the finger?

Together, Jim and Lois were enthusiastic supporters of the arts, giving to their favorite institutions at high levels, and I know Lois will continue that in her new life without Jim. We are grateful to people like them for helping to keep symphony orchestras, museums, and opera companies alive so people like Ben can experience them long after they are gone. Cultural institutions like these are for the public—for our common wealth.

It’s wonderful to witness a great orchestra presenting music of Mozart or Brahms. But enjoying the works of past centuries is not the only reason it’s important. The future of the arts, the humanities—of our entire cultural heritage—is based on our understanding of the past. Everything that is yet to come is based on the foundation of what has been. History informs the future. That means that Ben will thrive in a wider spectrum than we know today. Keep working hard. Our grandson depends on it. ν

John Bishop

To be the very best

I often remind myself (and you) of my start in church music. Dad, the Episcopal priest, the organist/choirmaster who was a harpsichord maker in real life, singing in the choir, and taking organ lessons . . . The culture of the music department of that wonderful church, charged with the excitement of the burgeoning movement of historically informed performance, and the revival of classic organbuilding, so active in the Boston area in the 1960s. I was hooked. I spent most of my after-school hours in local churches, practicing. I had paying jobs playing the organ in church from the age of thirteen, and I set my sights on attending the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin.  

In my early teenage years I spent one summer washing dishes (saving up my earnings to buy a Zuckermann harpsichord kit), then two summers working for a landscape company on Cape Cod, pushing lawnmowers around the estates of the rich and famous. I played the organ for a summer parish in our town on the Cape and spent most evenings there, practicing and messing around with the organ.

Since those three summers, everything I’ve done has been with the pipe organ. My sons were troubled by this when they got old enough to be wondering what they might do with their lives—“if Dad knew when he was fourteen, what am I supposed to do?”

I know many other musicians who came through high school knowing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. Those players who spend their adolescent years developing the techniques, embouchures, musculature (AKA chops) necessary for playing their instruments, hopefully nurtured by enlightened and caring teachers, have an incredible leg up. Just as it’s easiest to learn a second language as a toddler (my grandson Ben, at nearly two, has the advantage of parents speaking with him equally in English and Portuguese), the musician who reads music fluently and sets the foundation for a comfortable technique at a young age will have a big advantage later on.

Our system of higher education is set up that way. You’re not going to be accepted as an incoming student in a serious music school when you’re just out of high school unless you have some credible ability with your chosen instrument. I was pretty sure of my organ-playing prowess as an eighteen-year-old freshman entering Oberlin, and I learned a lot about that “big fish in a small pond” syndrome in my first days on campus. Everyone there had been a star in high school, and I was startled to learn that during those first days there was to be a “Freshman Orientation Concert” showcasing new students who had been singled out as exceptional. Funny, they didn’t ask me! The gauntlet was laid down that night.

In the first few days of classes, I learned a thing or two about teachers who expected a lot from their students. One stands out in my memory. Robert Melcher taught Music Theory, notably the cornerstone, two-semester course intended to ground freshmen in musical analysis and four-part harmony. And I mean ground freshmen. He ground up freshmen.

Melcher was a diminutive elderly man whose gait made his head arrive before the rest of him. My classmates reading this will snicker as they recall his tremulous little tenor voice singing symphonic melodies “on loo.” The opening cello melody of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony sticks out in my mind. Loooooo-Loo Loooooo-Loo Loo Loo Loo Looooooo-Loo Looooooo.

Robert Melcher sure did know music theory, and he was a relentless teacher. And he was as mean as a rooster with his tail on fire. Early on he set organists at ease, saying that we were “theory prone” because of the way we understood bass lines. Part of the curriculum included the notation of figured bass, right up our alley. Made us feel great, but must have been hard on the others. When he called on someone in class who couldn’t answer his question, he made them squirm. And he deliberately called on people when he knew they wouldn’t know the answer—and he gave them hell for not knowing.

In particular, he had it out for singers. He generalized, he profiled, and he terrorized them. It was horrible to watch. Today, fully forty years later, I’m grateful that he was my teacher. He gave me a firm foundation in that critical subject that I still value. But I’ll never forget him finishing one of those Loo-loo melodies and then whipping around to pounce on some unsuspecting daydreamer, humiliating them to the point of tears in front of their peers.

 

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

That’s the lead to an old joke—the punch line is “Practice.” I had it in mind that it came from the old comedian Henny Youngman.* When I googled, I found that there is controversy, even a few squabbles about who first came up with it. Candidates include Jack Benny, Jascha Heifetz, and Arthur Rubenstein. The Carnegie Hall website states that it was violinist Mischa Elman, grumbling to a pedestrian as he left a frustrating rehearsal, the story as told by Elman’s wife.

How is it that the promising young talent finds his way to the right instrument and, knowingly or not, devotes his life to it while still a teenager? What does it mean to forsake at least part of whatever constitutes a normal childhood to strive to excel in a chosen field? And what is the responsibility of the teacher to acknowledge the student’s sacrifice, to encourage his ambition, and to challenge him in a way that honors his talent without affecting his emotional wellbeing?

The new movie Whiplash tackles this conundrum in the brutal story of Terence Fletcher (played by J. K. Simmons), a brilliant but abusive teacher in an exclusive jazz school. He notices the exceptional talent of a first-year student, a drummer named Andrew Neyman (as played by Miles Teller). Fletcher sees greatness in Neyman and uses intense verbal, physical, and emotional abuse to encourage it. He even abuses Neyman’s fellow students, especially other drummers, in his effort to bring out Neyman’s innate greatness.  

In the course of the film we learn that one of Fletcher’s former “great” students had died young—Fletcher told the students in the band that it was a car accident, but we learned that it was, in fact, suicide, encouraged by Fletcher’s brutal methods. We see Andrew make a shy and embarrassed attempt to have a first girlfriend, whom he later enrages when he breaks off the relationship, predicting that he will ultimately be bitter because she’s holding him back from greatness. In Andrew’s eyes, it’s Nicole’s bad luck to simply be a liberal arts student without having declared a major—incomprehensible to him who has been driven to be the world’s greatest drummer since he was a little boy, as we see in his home-movie clips.

Andrew puts tremendous pressure on himself, practicing until blood pours from his blistered hands and defending his drive to greatness in the eyes of his doubting family. Having been awarded “the part” as the school’s premier ensemble participates in an important competition, Andrew wriggles badly injured out of an overturned wrecked car and sprints to the concert hall where he plays his heart out until he collapses. Fletcher rewards his effort by expelling him from the school.

Wendy and I saw Whiplash a few days after it was released. While I never experienced anything like the brutality of Fletcher’s philosophy of teaching, I left the theater with memories of conductors who pummeled me, of friends who gave up their musical passion in despair, and of students being humiliated in front of each other. A week later, I invited a friend who is a great performer to see the movie with me. The second viewing was harder for me to watch because knowing what was coming next in each scene, I was cringing in advance.

Late in the film, Fletcher is brazen as he talks about his methods. He refuses to apologize, even though we know that his style had led directly to the suicide of a student. For much of the film, it’s hard to tell who is the main character. Fletcher is an “equal opportunity” abuser who thinks nothing of shredding the hopes of a promising student in front of his peers. And Andrew is a vulnerable young man with exceptional talent. Part way through the film, Andrew throws in the towel. But his burning, bleeding desire to be the best hurtles him back into the fray.

 

The lowest common denominator

After seeing Whiplash twice, I’m fascinated by the dilemma of how one finds the balance between Fletcher’s manic desire to spot and encourage greatness and the physical and emotional limits that must be imposed on how teachers relate to their students. Fletcher does things that would have him in jail in a heartbeat if he had been teaching in a public high school. But he’s the leader of the award-winning premier ensemble in the rarified world of the highest levels of education in a splinter-thin pursuit. It’s a cutthroat atmosphere, and Fletcher teaches us the origin of that phrase.

I had the inverse experience when working as director of music at a suburban Congregational church. In staff meetings, the associate pastor was outspoken about being sure that the church treated people equally. Fair enough, as we’re taught that we’re all equal in the eyes of God. But I think she took that too far when she suggested that I should not single out children in the Youth Choir by giving them solos. I should think about how that would make others feel less significant. I was dumbfounded, but I was not found dumb, at least in sense of at a loss for words.

I told her that when I was a kid singing in the Youth Choir, I was given solos to sing. When I was a middle school and high school student, I got all the gigs playing the piano to accompany choruses. That’s why today I’m the director of music. Other kids who sang in that 1960s Youth Choir are now doctors, attorneys, scientists, professors, even priests. I know this because I was reunited with many of them at my father’s memorial service last spring. Wouldn’t I have failed as a mentor if I hadn’t encouraged the children with special talents? And doesn’t it work out that someone who is passed over for the solo on Sunday gets handed the ball in a Little League game?

There are ordinary lawyers and star lawyers, ordinary doctors and star doctors. They might be equal in the eyes of God, but I’ve been treated a couple times by ordinary, even mediocre doctors, and I’ll choose the star any time.

 

Walking the line

There’s a balance in this conundrum, a line that separates teaching methods that are too harsh and abusive from those that treat all levels of talent equally. Star students should rise to the top. Their teachers should expect the best from them. And the best teachers have both methods and instincts to encourage the students to do their best.

I know that many readers of The Diapason were exceptional students as they forged their way through adolescence, and that many were lonely and outcast because of their devotion to an art form that requires intense discipline. I recommend strongly that you see Whiplash. The film is intense, fast moving, startling, and sometimes scary. It tells the story of the value and the trials of working hard on a specialized education. And it ultimately shows the reward of real devotion to a challenging art.

§

In March of 2012, I had a bad fall at work. I was tuning in a lovely old Hutchings organ in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the support for a ladder gave way. I came down from about six feet up and landed flat on my back. Made some kind of noise. My colleague Joshua, sitting at the keyboards, whispered, “What was that?” The wind was knocked out of my lungs, and I had to lie still for a few moments before I could draw breath. I had a cracked vertebra and later had a wicked bout with sciatic pain as that critical nerve has received quite a tweak.

I cringe when I think about what might have happened. I was lucky. I can walk. I know that my right leg and foot are not the same—that sciatic nerve is something like the strings of a marionette—it holds you, and you don’t know anything about it until it goes funky, but I got off easy.

Ironically, a couple years earlier I had participated in a panel discussion at a convention of the American Institute of Organbuilders about organ maintenance, and one of the panelists had spoken at length about workplace safety.

It’s the middle of November as I write, and across the country and around the world, organ technicians are stocking their tool-bags and sharpening their tools, putting fresh batteries in flashlights, and making a round of phone calls and e-mails to clients as they schedule seasonal cold-weather tunings (please be sure the heat is up). As we fan out to do battle against ciphers, remove moths from shallots, adjust contacts, and set temperaments, we remember the hazards of the trade. All of the ladders and walkways in a hundred-year-old organ are a hundred years old. The organ in which I fell was built in the 1880s, around 130 years old.  

We climb off the ladder onto the walkboard and feel it sag under our weight. The walkboard is covered with dust and feels slick underfoot. We reach out to the sky-rack of the façade pipes to stabilize ourselves, and it moves sickeningly, the pipes rattling in their loose hooks.

After I fell, I singled out a half-dozen churches whose organs presented special hazards to technicians. I wrote to each of them, telling of my accident, and proposing the installation of new ladders, handrails, supports, and stabilizers. They all responded positively, and that work is now complete. It’s a pleasure to walk out on that precipice, holding on to a sturdy new steel railing. Somehow, it makes me hear better.

I encourage my colleague organ techs to identify those situations that are unsafe and propose remedies to your clients. We can have a new professional organization, the Society for Prevention of Injuries to Tuners (SPIT).

This is on my mind as my Facebook page is alive with posts from fellow tuners hitting the road, offering prayers and salutations. And it’s on my mind because of a dramatic event in New York City. Last week, the Freedom Tower at One World Trade Center was formally opened. Among the first tenants is Condé Nast, publisher of the popular magazines, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Built on the iconic site, it has 104 stories, and is 1776 feet tall. Freedom Tower, get it? 1776?  

Around 8:00 am on Wednesday, November 12, two window washers climbed into their scaffold—a mechanized walkway hung from davits on the roof of the building that lowers the workers down the side of the building. Something went wrong with the system of pulleys and lines, and the rig wound up hanging vertically at the 69th floor, rather than the more comforting horizontal. The workers were securely tethered to the machine, as was all their equipment. News reports mentioned liquids falling from the platform, which would be bad enough for someone on the sidewalk, but no buckets, squeegees, brushes, or whatever other gear they might have had on board fell.

Within about an hour, a special team from New York Fire Department was inside the building at that floor, cutting through three layers of special tough glass to make an opening that would allow the stranded window guys to climb to safety inside.

That site is sacred to us all, especially to those New Yorkers who witnessed the original calamity there. And the NYPD gained a special spot in the national consciousness through their heroic response to the disaster.

As I watched the drama unfold on television, I was struck by the remarkable preparation involved. Thinking back on it, of course the NYPD would have teams specially trained and equipped to deal with high-rise emergencies. There are a lot of tall buildings in this city. But it was very moving to watch the firefighters handling those sheets of glass a thousand feet above the sidewalks, leaning through the opening and helping those guys inside.

NYPD Battalion Chief Joseph Jardin was quoted saying, “It was a fairly straightforward operation.” Some teacher saw the good in him and encouraged him to be the best. 

 

* I was right remembering a story connecting Henny Youngman to Carnegie, but it was the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets in New York, around the corner from Carnegie Hall. It was a favorite “hangout” of Henny Youngman, and when owner/founder Leo Steiner died, Youngman eulogized him as the “deli lama.”

Steven Egler

On October 13, 2012, Robert Powell was interviewed as part of a weekend celebration of his music and in honor of his 80th birthday (July 22, 2012). Special thanks to First Congregational Church, Saginaw, Michigan, where the interview was conducted; recording technician Kenneth Wuepper of Saginaw; Dr. Richard Featheringham, Professor Emeritus in the School of Business, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, who transcribed the interview; Robert Barker, photographer; and Nicholas Schmelter, director of music at First Congregational Church.

The weekend included a recital October 13 at First Congregational Church, Saginaw, featuring Nicholas Schmelter  performing the first portion of the concert on the church’s chapel organ, Aeolian-Skinner Op. 1327 (1956), and the second portion on piano with flutist Katie Welnetz and soprano Rayechel Nieman.

A concert of choral and organ music on October 14 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Bay City, Michigan, featured the Exultate Deo Choral Ensemble, conducted by Robert Sabourin of Midland, Michigan. Steven Egler and Nicholas Schmelter were the organists, and flutists Robert Hart and Lauren Rongo performed on several compositions.

These events were co-sponsored by First Congregational Church, Saginaw; Trinity Episcopal Church, Bay City; and the Saginaw Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Robert Powell, born July 22, 1932, in Benoit, Mississippi, has approximately 300 compositions in print for organ, instrumental ensembles, handbells, choir, and flute and organ. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Louisiana State University and later a Master of Sacred Music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York as a student of Alec Wyton. From 1958–1960 he was Wyton’s assistant organist at St. John the Divine in upper Manhattan, and from 1960–1965 was organist-choirmaster at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Meridian, Mississippi. For three years (1965–1968), he served as director of music at St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, and then from 1968–2003 served as organist-choirmaster at Christ Episcopal Church, Greenville, South Carolina, until his retirement in 2003.

A longtime member of the Association of Anglican Musicians, Powell holds the Fellow and Choirmaster certificates of the American Guild of Organists, and is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), from which he has received the Standard Award for the past twenty years. His well-known and popular service for the Episcopal Eucharistic liturgy appears in The Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal Church.

He and his wife Nancy recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and are the parents of three, grandparents of four, and great-grandparents of one. Robert Powell was interviewed by Jason Overall shortly before his retirement (see The Diapason, November 2002).

Steven Egler: We are happy to have you with us this weekend for a late celebration of your 80th birthday and to enjoy your music.

Thank you. It’s a wonderful celebration for me.

You retired as organist-choirmaster at Christ Episcopal Church, Greenville, South Carolina, in 2003, but you are still playing. Is that correct?

That’s right. I’m playing in a small Methodist church. I started out to retire, and I managed three weeks. The first week I played for the Presbyterian church, and the second week I played for the Episcopal church I now attend. The third week I stayed home and wrote songs on Mary Baker Eddy texts for a lady who came later to Greenville as one of the actors in the Phantom of the Opera. She came over and we played through some songs. She gave us free tickets to Phantom of the Opera and took us backstage to show us how they made the boats go around and how the mechanics worked. That was enough retirement for me.

So it may be moot to ask if you miss being in church work, whether it’s full time or part time.

It’s different being in full-time church work. When I went to Christ Church, membership was about 1,500; when I left it was 4,000. There were lots of staff meetings and such. I felt like I never worked a day in my life, except at staff meetings. (laughter) Otherwise, I was writing, directing the choirs, and all that. I don’t miss it, but at the same time I do. I went straight into a small position where I don’t worry about choir members coming or going, and just play the organ—that is great fun. We have a good choir director, too; she and I are great friends. It’s five minutes from home, and they keep the church at 72 degrees all day and all night year round. 

We discussed that you were going to learn how to say “no” by the time you were 75. Have you learned how?

I have NOT learned how to say “no,” but it’s led to some interesting things. One time someone wanted me to write a setting of “Abide with Me” and to include the Agnus Dei. I didn’t think that the Agnus Dei had any relationship to “Abide with Me,” but I wrote it anyway and it was published.

Another instance was at the library snack shop. A man came over with a stack of papers. On the music paper he had written down a tune by Louis Bourgeois, and on the other stack a French poem he had translated and wanted me to set to the tune. This would have been a wonderful opportunity to say “no,” and I said “Ah,” but I did think that it would be a challenge. I set the text and it worked out because the poem was good. 

He told me exactly what to do. He wanted an introduction, a soprano solo in French, and then the choir—a tenor/bass choir—would sing in English; there would be an organ interlude, and the second verse would be sung by the choir in unison, and then the oboe and the organ would play. So I did all of those things and filled in the blanks. It was great fun.

If you had said “no,” it wouldn’t have happened.

No. On the other hand, people have come up with ideas for years, and I haven’t always agreed; but many projects have turned out to be blessings in disguise.

You just go forward and never stop composing.

Oh, yes. I go to the church in the morning and always write at the keyboard. I just write notes, so writing at the keyboard of an organ is the same as writing at the piano keyboard. I am not thinking that this will use a 16-foot stop here, a cromhorne or flute. I just push General 3 and hope for the best. (laughter)

You are still very prolific.

Some people don’t know when to put the pencil down! 

Austin Lovelace told me one time that this writing thing cycles. There are times when you are writing things and it is going really well. Sometimes you get to some part and you can’t do it; you go to sleep at night and the next day it’s already done because the subconscious takes care of it. 

Are you writing more music now?

That’s right. I have more time to write. I just go down to the church; I spend less time at it but write more. I am not as careful as Duruflé or someone like that would be. My teacher, Searle Wright, would say, “Write it down as fast as you possibly can and go back and correct it later.”

So I do it as fast as I possibly can and then I go back and correct my work. I have six publishers to submit music to. If they don’t want an anthem, I turn it into an organ piece and send it somewhere else. Sometimes that is accepted, so this recycling continues.

What are your current projects?

For the AGO Region IV Convention in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2013, I wrote a set of variations on “On This Day” (tune: Personent hodie). It’s a wild tune and was a challenge, but I managed to get six variations on the theme. It’s going to be played by Charles Tompkins: he suggested me for the commission. I’m also working on some pieces for GIA for brass and organ. 

How much does improvisation play into your composing?

A lot. John Ferguson told me one time what he does—I don’t know if he composes at the piano, but he must because he improvises and he writes his improvisations down. The hard thing about writing is getting an initial idea. John Rutter said that. Get the initial idea—a little motive—and improvise on a theme to get the initial idea and fill in the blanks. 

Improvisation has become more important both in organ playing in general and also in academia, where a certain amount of improvisation is expected.

Organists must improvise sooner or later. The wedding is going to start late and you have played all your music twice, the second time with different registrations, and the bride still hasn’t arrived, so you have to play something. You will feel better if you add something besides a C major chord, an F major chord, or a G major chord. In Searle Wright’s course, we had to learn how to improvise in different situations. It was fun and he was such a great teacher. He would use students’ names at graduations at Columbia at the cathedral [St. John the Divine] and he improvised on the names of three boys who had gotten doctorates: Cline, Davis, and Harrison. He would improvise on the syllables in their names. It was so clever, and then he’d throw in a fugue at the end. It was wonderful and so good. We were all pleased to be in his class.

Did those people know that was happening?

No, of course not. Only he knew it. It was so clever. I was fortunate to have such teachers in New York. I had Seth Bingham, too, after Harold Friedell died. Friedell played at St. Bartholomew’s Church and taught us all to improvise. Improvising is so important not just for weddings and funerals and things, but there are people who must have music to move from one place to another in the service—they must have some kind of walking music. You can just flop around or you can make some kind of form out of it. When the little kids come down for a kids’ sermon, then you can really have fun with that. It is always fun to create something on the spot.

I was very curious about your comment in The Diapason’s 2002 article concerning relationships.

If you have a good relationship with your choir, they will sing for you no matter what. Alec Wyton said that the choir director is 90 percent personality and 10 percent musical ability. So I have been fortunate in that I like the choir and the choir seems to like me, and we get along very well.

I was watching Bob Sabourin rehearse this morning—he is mentoring the entire choir, and thus they want to sing for him. He works them hard, which they should do; they don’t just chatter and carry on. They work hard because they want to, and come back because they like to. That’s the relationship that we organists and choir directors need with our choirs.

Now, in regard to the clergy, I have always had collegial relationships; I have always been able to say let’s have a cup of coffee and talk about something. I have always worked with good clergy who were very supportive. 

The church secretary/administrative assistant is absolutely wonderful. She’s from Mississippi like me and she will do things outside of her job description. In the Methodist church right now the minister, of course, and the secretary are Methodists, and the two Episcopalians are the choir director and the organist. We have a great relationship—all four of us—and we don’t have staff meetings.

That makes it even better.

You’re absolutely right. Sometimes the pastor, the choir, and organist can be very distant from everyone else. In the church where I am serving now, before the service starts we go down in the congregation and “play the crowd.” Then the minister gets up and says the announcements, the call to worship, and then I play the prelude, which means they have to listen.

That is a wonderful way to establish rapport with your church members. 

It works better in a small church. Going out into a church with 600 in the congregation—it’s hard to do that. But you can do it in small churches, where everybody knows each other. I am as fortunate as anybody could be. My advice to church musicians is to get to know everybody you can, work as hard as you can, and be cognizant of relationships with everybody in the parish—not just the choir.

I love the story about your playing too many verses of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

Bishop Pike was at St. John the Divine before he became a bishop. I played “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and played and played and lost my place and wasn’t looking, and I played 13 verses before I finally decided maybe I had better end. But I was forgiven. Then one time I played a hymn in the wrong place, and the clergyman whose name was Howard Johnson—a wonderful fellow—said when I told him this sad story, “The heavens didn’t fall.” 

And yet playing the text is important. I have students who come in and all the notes are just right, but they haven’t read any of the text and don’t know where to punctuate or breathe.

They’ll do something like “Thy kingdom come! On bended knee” (author: Frederick Hosmer). I don’t want the kingdom to come on bended knee particularly. My mentor told me to breathe with the congregation and to make them breathe and leave the same time between verses. I found the trick to that is to hold onto the last chord. When I let it go they know that I am trying to start. 

Tell us about your time with Alec Wyton.

We had Evensong every day except Monday, so I played the Evensong along with Morning Prayer. He wanted to make sure I knew how to play Anglican chant, so he didn’t play every service.  Of course, he conducted many services and I played a lot of them when he was conducting and that was a difficult task:  but he was down on the floor, and I was up in the loft. 

Let’s discuss teaching and mentoring.

I was fortunate to have people who saw something in me that I didn’t see.  The first one I had in high school was an organist named Walter Park. He was a wonderful fellow. He became the band director to just keep eating, but it didn’t suit him very well. He played in a small Episcopal church and I had a one-hour organ lesson every week. After the organ lesson, we would then have a three-hour composition lesson—all for the same price. I finally learned to write a little march like a Sousa march, and I used these ancient books that taught you voice leading. It was wonderful. Preston Ware Orem was the author of the book, Harmony Book for Beginners (1919). 

Mr. Park was a great person and encouraged me to write things, and I would bring them and we would look at them and talk about them. He made me feel that what I was doing was worthwhile. That is what mentors do. Later, of course, I studied with Alec Wyton who thought that I could be an assistant without falling completely to pieces. I told him at one time that I was scared of that place—blocks of stone! You know it scares you to death. There were other people who over the years were kind and helpful. But those two are the main ones.

So a teacher isn’t always a mentor?

These people and I were working together—we were learning the pieces together, writing the pieces together. I wrote the pieces and we would go over them. You might have done something here entirely different, let’s try that and see what happens—it was as if we were learning them together. That is true mentoring. It is difficult to be a mentor. I’m not that. It is probably easier for people who are full-time teachers.

I use the term “psyching out” the choir for a Sunday morning: that is mentoring. You are doing something that might be more difficult, and they’re hesitant about it.

They have the full confidence in you as the choir director. They will do their best, but they are not confident. One terrible thing happened during the Bach cantata “Praise Our God.” We were singing it in English and the choir got lost—completely lost in the final movement. Somewhere along the line a soprano came in and had the right place, and they all picked it up. I didn’t stop, I just kept on going. That kind of thing is challenging. Another time we did the St. John Passion with half the orchestra on this side and half the orchestra on the other side. Half the orchestra had gotten one-half beat behind the other half, and so we got through the first 26 pages and they had this extra beat. We started in for the da capo and we did it right the second time. I wasn’t going to stop!

What would you say afterward to your choir members when things didn’t go well?

I told them that it’s ok to make a mistake; I don’t dwell on it. “The heavens didn’t fall.” We have something else to do next week anyway. Don’t say too much about the mistakes. Think about the good things and move on.

What are your thoughts on the status of things in the church today?

I try to keep up with what is going on. There is some good writing among the church composers today, and I could name ten of them. One publisher told me a long time ago that they had put the music submissions in three piles: some of them they certainly don’t want, and the middle one could go either way. So much of that stuff is ok, and those tend to be both boring and exciting; and so choosing music is very difficult. 

What are their criteria for selecting music for publication?

I would say how they set the text, where the accents fall, and what kind of voicing they have. I can write for college choirs sometimes and make it interesting, but I don’t have a college choir to experiment with, and I never really had. I have always had between 15 and 20 people, so you write for what you have. Is the range bad or good, does it have an independent organ accompaniment?  

Publishers respond to various trends, and they are watching what happens.  Right now it seems that organ composers are writing music based upon gospel hymns. I have recently published three of my favorite gospel song arrangements. I enjoyed doing the gospel settings—I had fun with them.

It’s great to have them, and particularly the churches where they sing these hymns. To play “Sleepers Awake” is one thing, but not if they don’t know the hymn. They DO know “Fairest Lord Jesus,” “Open My Eyes That I May See,” and “Standing on the Promises,” and they can relate to these old favorites. Publishers may choose these arrangements in particular.

When you were in the Bronx, you had two anthems in the choir library.

On-the-job training. That’s what we would do, and Everett Hilty was the on-the-job supervisor [at Union Theological Seminary]. All I had was just one tenor, a few women, and a couple of basses. And the tenor anthem was “Seek Ye the Lord” by J. Rollins—one of the two anthems that I had. The other one was Wallingford Rieger’s “Easter Passacaglia,” which was for 16 parts. If they had had two sets of choirs, they couldn’t have sung that one. So in the end, I wrote two parts real quick. You know what sounds good and what doesn’t. You don’t have to make a canon of it, but you have to make the sound good.  

In the 2002 interview, you mentioned that a balance between “renewal” and “classical” music is more desirable. Can you elaborate?

We had that at Christ Church. They had everything—classical, Anglican; but the other service—the bigger one—had plenty of guitars, basses, flutes that would play during the communion or special occasions, offertory or something, and the rest of it would be traditional. We used Hyfrydol or some of the traditional hymns. I didn’t play for it since they didn’t use organ; they had a piano player. It worked out very well. 

That parish was large enough to accommodate different services.

A small parish would probably end up going one way or the other. We attended a service in a nearby city, and we expected it to be a traditional Episcopal service and it wasn’t. It was the guitars and a singer with a microphone up front. I think they had a string of eight guitars, too. Flashed the words on the screen. Some classical person might be turned off, but it didn’t turn me it off. It was a very devotional service, and there was nothing wrong with it. It was just unusual—going in expecting something and coming out having experienced something else.

I tried different things when I was a choir director. If I had to advise anybody, it would be to try different things. One time we had handbells, and we were going to do “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” The handbells and singers were going to come in and play something, and on the other side of the church they would come in from the other transept singing and playing the handbells. We were supposed to have been together all the time. Well, it didn’t work. Nobody was together. Handbells were playing, the people were singing, and there wasn’t much happening!

Then another time we had 40 in the choir and were going to do the Schütz Psalm 100. We had three choirs that were echoes—one choir and two echoes. The piece is wonderful, but I did it wrong. I put the main choir down front facing each other, and I put the first echo choir in the back, facing the congregation, and I put the third echo choir in the anteroom. We had loud, moderately loud, and soft, but we did it anyway.   

We experimented with Richard Felciano’s pieces, and they went very well. We had gospel choirs come in and sing with us, and we did all of this wonderful community stuff. It is good fun to try these different experiments and see what might happen. I had a brass group come in to play—half downstairs and half in the balcony and it did work. All these experiments worked out. Doing the same anthem six times a year: that’s not good fun.

Right now we’re in a situation where the congregation likes a wide variety of anthems—and sometimes you use the junior choir. We have a choir of 12 when they are all there—no tenors, and four good basses, and the sopranos are great. For a junior choir, you take an SATB anthem and make an SAB anthem out of it. You have to experiment; it is good training—you have eight people here in the choir and none of them tenors; what do you do? You can do all kinds of things.

One has to have an eye [and ear] for what will work.

You have to compose FOR them. Same thing as playing a descant in something; for instance, everybody knows Fairest Lord Jesus and it has a descant floating above, just for organ—that makes you sort of a minor composer compared to a major composer.

Regarding hymnals—you worked with the 1982 book for the Episcopal Church.

I thought The Hymnal 1940 was a treasure; Leo Sowerby was the general editor. The Hymnal 1982—my good friend Ray Glover was general editor—is very good. Other good influences upon the 1982 book were James Litton, David Hurd, and Marilyn Keiser, among others. Most of the hymns I find are very fine, including some of the hymns by Calvin Hampton. Some of the other denominational hymnals have included more Spanish hymns in their hymnals.

What do you have to say about that in terms of the future of hymnbooks?

We just don’t know what’s going to happen with the hymnbooks. It depends on how big your congregation is and if you have people from different cultures. I think there should be hymns for everybody—American hymns, Spanish hymns and Mexican hymns, Scandinavian hymns—because you never know when some enterprising organist will want to make them better known in their parish. I think they should be there.

Tell us about your involvement with organizations.

Oh, yes. I was with the Choristers Guild board for six years and that was a wonderful thing. I was on the AGO certification committee for four years and that was fun, too. There were some wonderful people there—Joyce Shupe Kull and Kathleen Thomerson—and I enjoyed meeting in New York at the AGO headquarters. I was involved with the orchestration portion of the exam.

I was on the National Council for six years (Councillor for Region V), and there were so many very good people who conducted the examinations. We divided the responsibilities according to our areas of expertise and discussed the questions/answers. 

You have been involved with the Association of Anglican Musicians.

They met in Greenville last year. I wrote them two anthems (published by Selah), and I was very pleased and excited. Some other people wrote music and then there was talk about professional concerns: problems that we all have, such as getting fired without due notice—to know what the people are doing about it; and they usually have very good sermons. Jeffrey Smith, the late Gerre Hancock, Marilyn Keiser, and others—always concerned with preserving good Episcopal church music. It is a great organization.

Tell me about your ASCAP award.

Alec Wyton asked if I wanted to be in ASCAP. They have a list of approved pieces for each composer—I have 170 pieces approved by ASCAP. When so many of my pieces are performed each year, I receive an award. They have given me the same award for the last 20 years.

Your biography mentions restoring a link to St. James. 

St. James, the oldest Episcopal church in the country, is in New London, Connecticut. They asked me to write a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis 35 years ago. As far as I know they never performed it. Then about five years ago a group of people called me up there, and they performed my music. It was great, but it has taken them 35 years. It was discovered in the church basement—when they were cleaning out the church basement, which they clean out once every 35 years! But they were kind enough to perform it, and they asked me to write another piece for them, so I ended up writing the Benedictus es, Domine. I set the text in English, and they said they took it to Bristol Cathedral in England. They are wonderful people out there and very good group of singers.

Tell us a little about your family.

I’m going to be a great-grandfather. Yes, we have three kids—one of them is still going to school, and he is about 50. The oldest one is married and has two children. She is a nurse practitioner in San Diego. My wife was a nurse, and my mother was a nurse. The granddaughter works in a hospital. You can’t be sick in our family with all those nurses. Of the three children, the youngest works for the patent office. They have sent him to Tokyo five times and to St. Petersburg and Moscow. He’s had a happy career. His wife works for a defense contractor, and they have two kids.

Would you change anything?

I would do it all over again. I can’t think of anything I would want to change. I would not go to staff meetings, if I didn’t have to.

How do you see your legacy as a church musician and as a composer? 

I don’t know what to say. I don’t think people should copy what I do specifically, because everybody has his/her own style—they should focus on what they are doing and hope that what they do will be memorable or useful to their generation and to following generations. You just don’t know what you have done that is going to be appreciated, such as with my communion service. I am pleased and flattered, and nothing can be better than to have your music sung. 

I hope that people who continue after me will write for real people. Craftsmanship is important, but music should be easy for real people to sing, not so complicated that only the collegiate choir can sing it. 

Erik Routley commented that he knew that there would be other hymnbooks and yet hoped they will keep a lot of the traditional material.

Traditional is good, and it fills that criteria—to be singable by real people, not just choirs. 

Congregations do not know how to read music that is going to jump a ninth or a seventh—not unless they are really lucky. You do want to make the congregation happy—they DO pay the salaries. Yet you don’t want to go overboard and dumb down to them; you want to meet them at their same level. You don’t want to take something like “Open My Eyes” and make a caricature of it. That is not a good thing. 

This has been a huge pleasure. I will look forward to the next major birthday.

That’s right. At 90 we’ll do this all over again!