In the Wind. . .

Teachers

Elizabeth Swist was my first piano teacher. I was six years old. She lived with her mother, and their house smelled like boiled cabbages. It was about a mile walk—I know that for sure because I have driven the route watching my odometer a couple times. My lessons included the Hanon piano method and little novelty pieces that I played as loud and fast as I could; spinning wheels were a common theme in the music. My mother likes to tell how I came home from my first lesson, ran to our piano, played middle C and shouted, “I knew it. Middle C on Miss Swist’s (say it three times fast) piano is higher than ours.” Mother says she complained to the tuner, “I just paid $25,” but the tuner said I was right. It was an old second-hand upright, and he had not been able to bring it up to pitch. She tells that story every chance she gets; some of it might be true.

Miss Swist got married and moved into a house a little closer to ours that did not smell like cabbages. Mrs. Holderied, née Swist, helped me out of the beginner’s novelties into real music like Bach minuets and Clementi sonatas.

We moved from Westwood, Massachusetts, to nearby Winchester when I was ten, and I took up lessons with Edith Bolster, an elderly woman who lived in an apartment with two pianos. I do not remember meeting her partner, but I got an occasional glimpse of her lurking about. Ms. Bolster introduced me to Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and the expressive qualities of the piano, and she encouraged me to play in recitals arranged by the various local piano teachers.

I was twelve when I had my first organ lessons with Alastair Cassels-Brown at Saint John’s Chapel of the Episcopal Theological School (later Episcopal Divinity School, now defunct) outside Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My father was the professor of homiletics there. The organ was built by Walter Holtkamp, Sr., in 1956, with three manuals including one of the earliest Rückpositiv divisions in the United States. I often rode my bike the eight miles over busy commuting roads through Somerville and Cambridge to get to my lessons. Dr. Cassels-Brown had been associate organist at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City during Alec Wyton’s tenure there. He seemed worldly to me and shared insights into the structure of music beyond stringing series of notes together.

I was a middle-schooler when Dr. Cassels-Brown showed me the Fibonacci series, how that sequence of numbers fit into the natural world and governed some of the flowing beauty of music. He also taught me to compare the characteristics of music of a given era between different nationalities—for example, eighteenth-century France and Germany—and how the different styles of composition reflected different types of organ building. He was a gentle, soft-spoken man, and I guess he was a thoughtful, conservative player. Sometimes, he asked me to sit with him during special services, turning pages and witnessing what went into structuring a worship service from an organ console.

After a couple years, Dr. Cassels-Brown recommended I shift to studying with John Skelton, organist of the First Congregational Church in Winchester, just a couple blocks from where we lived. The church had a brand-new, three-manual Fisk organ, and I was fortunate to have generous practice privileges there. Mr. Skelton had studied with Yuko Hayashi at the New England Conservatory and with Anton Heiller in Vienna, and was well connected with the exciting organ scene in Boston in the early 1970s. There were several young “boutique” organ companies in the area rejuvenating the concept of the mechanical-action pipe organ, and John made sure I got to hear recitals and attend workshop open houses, drawing me into that crowd as a young teenager. I remember an after-concert dinner at the Wursthaus (a long-gone favorite haunt of organists in Harvard Square) after an organ recital, at which someone pointed out that there were nine organists present who played for churches that had Fisk organs.

John Skelton understood and nourished my fascination with pipe organ tone, discussing the functions and construction of the various stops and allowing me to register the pieces I was learning. I loved listening to the organ’s voices as I chose them.

The harpsichord builder Carl Fudge was organist of my home church, the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, where my father was rector. He led the junior choir, which was where I was first exposed to church music, and as my voice changed, I moved to the senior choir. Carl was supportive of my early studies and took me to organ recitals. I am especially grateful that I heard E. Power Biggs play on the Flentrop organ at the “Museum Formerly Known as Busch-Reisinger.” What a thrill it was to hear him play Charles Ives’s Variations on “America” as an encore following a recital of Baroque music.

Organbuilder George Bozeman was another mentor during my teenage years. His wife Pat sang in the choir at Epiphany, and together they took me around the circuit to concerts, workshops (George worked for the Noack Organ Company at the time), and social events. I worked in George’s new shop, Bozeman-Gibson & Company, during the summers of 1975 and 1976, after my freshman and sophomore years at Oberlin, my first real experiences as a newbie organbuilder.

Burton Cowgill was the music director at Winchester High School where I was put to work accompanying everything and everybody. I bet a lot of readers grew up as workhorse accompanists. As chorus director, Mr. Cowgill led us through a huge amount of sacred music, something that would likely get him in trouble today. The greatest hits of Vivaldi, Pergolesi, and Gabrieli, among others, helped further my interest in that rich repertory. I accompanied rehearsals of the Madrigal Singers and hundreds of hours with productions of musicals (Oklahoma and Little Mary Sunshine). Mr. Cowgill encouraged me out from behind the piano, out of my comfort zone, to sing solos in a cappella pieces (“Fare thee well, my dear, I must be gone, and leave thee for a while. . . .”).

Twenty years later, I was privileged to lead the music for Mr. Cowgill’s memorial service at the church where he had been director of music. The church’s choir was augmented by a couple dozen of his former students, including several members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and we offered some of the classics he had taught us (“I got a robe up in-a the Kingdom, ain’a that Good News”).

Leaving the nest

I started at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in the fall of 1974 with Haskell Thomson as my organ teacher. I had been a big fish in the little pond that was Winchester, Massachusetts, and quickly learned that I was not going to be such a big guy in Lake Oberlin. Mr. Thomson was a very tall man, impressive in the confines of the teaching studio. He did a lumbering dance, swinging his arms with the arc of the musical phrase, chanting, “and then to here, and then to there, and turn around and go to here.” He wanted the music to sweep purposefully to points of arrival, and he loved the motion of music. I especially remember learning Bach’s Fugue in E-flat, BWV 522ii (“Saint Anne”), for my senior recital, making those soaring passages of sixteenth notes in measure 100 fly with the encouragement of Mr. Thomson’s swooping about the studio.

Oberlin’s semester system leaves the month of January open for independent study, still known as “winter term projects.” Mr. Thomson organized a beauty for a group of us, a month of intensive eurythmics with the Dalcroze disciple, Inda Howland. She was elderly, and she had retired from regular teaching at Oberlin but came back for this special month. She wore long, colorful scarves and beads and carried a little drum so there was always a beat. We bounced and tossed balls and pranced about at her direction, and that month’s workshop gave me more insight into the motion and direction of music than any other period in my education. Twenty years later, I engaged a eurythmics instructor to work with the choir I was leading at our season-opening retreat on Cape Cod.

Halfway through my sophomore year, I started working with John Leek, the school’s organ and harpsichord technician. In addition to his work at the school, John had a growing business maintaining organs in the area, and I went off with him three days a week for the rest of my Oberlin career. This did not please Mr. Thomson, because it cut deeply into my practice and study time on campus, but John was teaching me to tune and how the actions worked in a wide variety of organs. I knew I wanted to spend a large part of my life working as an organbuilder, and this was my start.

I have written often about working with John and about John as a teacher. He was an old-world craftsman who had apprenticed in the Netherlands in a cabinet shop as a child and with an organbuilder as a teenager and married the daughter of the shop foreman. He had come to the United States in the 1960s to work for Walter Holtkamp and saw the job posting for Oberlin’s organ technician when working on campus for Holtkamp. We had tons of fun and countless adventures together, and by the time I left his shop, I had a foundation as a woodworker, a mechanical troubleshooter, and a tuner. I had participated in building three or four new harpsichords, two new mechanical-action pipe organs, and I knew how to releather regulators, pitman windchests, and countless other specialized pneumatic actions.

You’re in the big time now.

In the spring of my freshman year, I was hired as director of music at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Ohio, a large, multi-racial congregation at East Seventy-Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue with a four-manual Austin organ and a volunteer choir with a couple paid singers. I had several simple church jobs while I was in middle school and high school, but this was a big church in a big city, and the job came with some responsibilities beyond plodding through choir rehearsals and Sunday morning services. Roger Shoup was the pastor at Calvary, a big bear of a man who had been associate pastor there through the integration of the formerly all-white congregation. Roger was a devoted and prolific pipe smoker, and his vast collection of carefully seasoned pipes was on display in his office. When a well-meaning cleaning staff carried them all to the kitchen for washing in soap and water, Roger managed to keep his cool. (Keep away from my iron skillets.)

Roger was a great champion of my early ambition, making sure that there was money available to hire musicians (typically my pals from Oberlin) for special performances and for expanding the number of regular paid singers, again drawing from my classmates. He had the treasurer teach me how to create and manage a budget, counseled me on how to get along with the variety of personalities in that big rollicking diverse place, and let me know when my naiveté got in the way of my creativity. I count Roger among my most important teachers. He helped me grow up.

I have named eleven of my teachers, and I have skipped over dozens who had important roles in my education. Those eleven were all one-on-one teachers or mentors. Each had different methods of teaching and different ways of being. Some were quiet and encouraging, some were demanding, purposefully driving me to be better. They each gave me part of who I am as a musician, craftsman, consultant, and entrepreneur, and I am grateful to them all.

The art of the question

Charles Fisk (1925–1983) was one of the pioneering organbuilders active in the Boston area when I was a teenager, and there was so much excitement about the resurgence of tracker organs. In the early days of C. B. Fisk, Inc., in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the company worked in a long, low building that had been a rope walk for the fishing industry. The people who worked with Charlie in the 1970s and 1980s knew him as a Socratic teacher, the eponymous style of teaching by asking questions. He gave design problems to small groups of his employees and guided them to solutions with questions. Robert Cornell, who worked in the rope walk in those days, told me that Charlie would look at a solution and say, “That’s good. Is there another way to do it?” Over the years, I have talked with several people who worked closely with Charlie who remember fondly his unique and gentle approach to teaching. Encouraging his people to participate in design and problem solving was his way of ensuring that his company would outlast him. Bob Cornell supposed that was because Charlie knew his would not be a long life. He died of cancer in 1983.

On the bridge

I am thinking so much about teachers and teaching because recently a friend and I were privileged to witness a bit of Socratic teaching. This being our first summer without a sailboat, Wendy and I had promised each other we would look for a special experience on the water, and in early September, along with our old sailing friends Bill and Marlene, we went on a cruise in Alaska’s Inside Passage. We were on a small ship, about 250-feet long with only fifty cabins, operated in affiliation with National Geographic. There were fewer than 100 passengers and about seventy crew members including nine naturalists who guided hikes and Zodiac (small inflatable motorboats) excursions and gave evening talks about the geography, flora, and fauna of the area.

The captain had an “open bridge” policy, allowing passengers to visit the bridge without appointment unless there was complicated maneuvering going on. Bill and I spent a lot of time there, chatting with the captain and the chief mate, a young woman who had graduated from California Maritime Academy, a brilliant ship handler and authority figure, and on the last afternoon, approaching cocktail hour, Bill and I were on the bridge as the captain was teaching a young third mate how to drop anchor. “What are we doing?,” asked the captain. “Dropping anchor,” answered the mate. “What do we need?” “A place to drop the anchor.” The captain led the mate through establishing an anchor field on the chart plotter (the electronic chart on the sweeping dashboard), identifying an area a half-mile in diameter with a relatively flat, muddy bottom (it’s hard to anchor in rocks), far enough ahead that the ship could be slowed enough in time. We were traveling at 7-1⁄2 knots,¹ and the anchor field was five miles away.

The captain asked, “What should you do?” “Slow down.” “Right. Be sure you maintain just enough speed to steer when you’re ready to drop.” The mate eased back on the two three-inch throttle levers, and the engine RPM dropped from 1,100 to 890. Captain: “You have an anchor field, and you’re slowing down. What do you need now?” Mate: “Anchor watch” (the crew members whose job it is to operate the windlass that manages the heavy anchor chain). Captain: “Where are they?” Mate: “Off duty.” Captain raises an eyebrow. Mate says, “I’ll call the anchor watch.” Keys microphone, “Anchor watch to your bow station.”

The mate adjusted the throttle every few minutes, and the ship continued to slow to a little over one knot. As the ship’s image crept into the red circle on the chart that marked the anchor field, it slipped a little to starboard (to the right). Captain: “What do you see?” Mate: “We’re drifting to starboard.” Captain: “How do you respond?” Mate: “We’re in the middle of the anchor field, dropping anchor.” Captain does thumbs up with both hands.

Bill and I were surprised that the captain allowed us to stay on the bridge. I am sure he knew that we would be interested to watch the process, but I do not know if the mate had been prepared to receive his lesson with an audience. He sure was concentrating hard—it took more than a half hour for him to slow the ship enough to drop the anchor. The captain quipped that it was like watching paint dry.

Watching this, I tried to picture Charlie Fisk leaning on a drafting table, asking questions of his eager students. I thought of organ lessons when a question inspired a realization. And I imagined that third mate as a captain, twenty years hence, teaching his third mate how to drop an anchor in Sitka Bay, Alaska. As we traveled home the next day, Bill and I agreed that we had witnessed something special, a high point of our exotic trip. For some of us, how we get there is as interesting and thought provoking as being there.

Notes

1. A knot is a measure of speed, one nautical mile per hour. (It is not correct to say “knots per hour.”) A nautical mile is one minute of latitude, which equals 1,852 meters or about 6,000 feet.

Robert McCormick has been organist and choirmaster of Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia, since 2016. Previously he held similar positions at Saint Paul’s Church, K Street, in Washington, D.C., and at Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City. He is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series (Matthew Glandorf) may be found in the May 2022 issue, pages 20–21; Part 2 (Mary Beth Bennett) in the September 2022 issue, pages 12–13; and Part 3 (Jason Roberts) in the July 2023 issue, pages 16–17.

Introduction

We continue our series focusing on American organist-improvisers with a name familiar to many—Dorothy Papadakos. I first met Dorothy more than two decades ago, when I was director of music at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Times Square, New York City, and she was cathedral organist of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The first time I ever heard Dorothy play live was at the seating of the Right Reverend Mark Sisk as Fifteenth Bishop of New York in 2001. Dorothy began the first hymn on the celebrated State Trumpet, and off we went. “We’re about to have church,” I thought, and we certainly did. It was a marvelous and memorable liturgy, hardly least due to Dorothy’s glorious playing.

Dorothy surely must be one of the most multifaceted and versatile persons in our profession: she is not only an organist, but also a jazz musician, musical theater composer, and author. She also may well be one of the warmest and most joyful among us. In addition to interviewing Dorothy via email, I have just had the privilege of seeing her for the first time in over a decade over lunch in Philadelphia, alongside her delightful husband, Tracy McCullen, and marvelous fellow organist Peter Richard Conte. After an extraordinary shared meal, two hours later, I walked back to my church refreshed and full of Dorothy’s infectious happiness.

Writing this article, seeing Dorothy in person, and pondering her inspiring responses reminded me yet again of music’s power to stir, heal, and renew. Dorothy is a wonderful example of a life devoted to making the world a better place through the art of music. How many people has she inspired through her musical gifts? (Countless numbers, of course.) Case in point: I have been prompted again to seek to rediscover and recapture a sense of childlike joy and awe in music making. Like many of us, especially being an absolute perfectionist, I spend much of my time focused on the minutiae of music making. Without question, for any of us to practice our art at the highest levels, we must do this. Yet it is so easy to lose sight of the ultimate purpose of music making as a result, for our perspectives to become skewed.

In a church context, the goal of music is to glorify God and to inspire the people who hear it. How many times have I finished a service unable to think of anything other than whether or not I played a difficult passage cleanly enough, or why did I take such-and-such a turn in an improvisation when another would have been better, or whether the choir tuned as well as they could in a particular motet, only to have a congregant share heartfelt appreciation for the beauty of the music offered? (The answer, of course, is virtually all the time!)

Improvisation is perhaps the most personal way to make music. With that in mind, let us now hear directly from Dorothy Papadakos herself.

Discussion

When, how, and why did you start playing by ear and inventing your own music? Did it coincide with your early music training?

If it had not been for a fourth-grade crush, music and I may have never met! I was nine years old in Reno/Tahoe, Nevada, “going steady” with a boy taking piano lessons. Our mothers decided it would be cute if we played duets together, so they started me with his piano teacher, Loren McNabb, a hefty Scottish jazzman with a white goatee who moonlighted playing Reno’s nightclub circuit. To my surprise, I took to the piano instantly. I love math and science, and this was ultimate math and science to me. I enjoyed experiencing how my brain and fingers learned more and more technical pieces. And I loved the feel in my little hands of playing scales, amazed at what my fingers could do, especially when I stopped thinking about them and let them do their thing skiing up and down the keyboard like natural athletes!

After each half-hour lesson I begged Mr. McNabb to play me “his music:” Ellington, Gershwin, Porter, Broadway. Two years in, at age eleven, I went on strike! I refused to practice “that boring classical music” and insisted he teach me “his music:” jazz! I wanted to read lead sheets and chord changes. They were the gateway to a mysterious world, to musical freedom. Mr. McNabb complained to my mom about her problem child; she told him to teach me whatever I wanted if it kept me practicing! (Go, Mom!) I took to jazz like a bird to the air. In just a few years I could read any lead sheet and was playing jazz gigs for local events by age fifteen.

Enter the men who changed my early life and music forever: Liberace and blind British jazz pianist George Shearing. I got to meet Liberace several times backstage at John Ascuaga’s Nugget when he performed in Reno, because my mom knew him from her Hollywood days. I assiduously copied Liberace’s recordings note-for-note to learn his style and to get inside his stunning technique. (How did he do it with all those rings on?) Then the George Shearing Quartet came to town and blew this kid “outta da water!” His album Light, Airy, and Swinging changed my ears and tonal imagination. I knew then and there all I wanted to do was to improvise and compose “cool jazz.”

Tell us more about how you employed improvisation in childhood.

Those first jazz gigs at around age fifteen were for fashion shows in Reno and some Reno High School theater work. Then a turning point came: Trinity Episcopal Church in Reno (now Trinity Cathedral) asked me to join their folk ensemble since I’d been taking guitar lessons and sang in their youth choir. The next thing I knew, I was lead vocalist and guitarist of the ten-piece band playing the 9:00 a.m. service! This was the era of Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, and 1970s folk and pop. It was musical heaven for me, until my dear Mr. McNabb died suddenly. I was 16, devastated, lost, a ship without a rudder. My mother tried everything to find me a new teacher. Of course, no one could measure up. She even took me to the University of Nevada-Reno’s head piano professor for whom I improvised on Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady. Mom and I were so proud of my audition; I nailed every note and nuance! But this piano professor just shook his head, clicking his tongue saying, “It’s too bad she doesn’t play classical.” Mom, furious, grabbed me by my arm saying, “Come on, Dorothy Jean! We’re getting out of here!”

That next Sunday in church my ears heard the organ as if for the first time (a three-manual 1967 Allen). That’s when I approached Mr. James Poulton, Trinity’s wonderful 11:00 a.m. organist and choirmaster, who agreed to give me organ lessons. As with the piano, I’d never given the organ a moment’s thought, but I was so lost without Mr. McNabb, I thought, “Why not organ? It’s a stack of synthesizers!” (Yes, that’s how my sixteen-year-old brain saw the organ.) I now know that if it weren’t for death and grief, the organ and I may have never met—and fallen in love. My scientific mind went crazy for the stops, pistons, 32′ pitches, pedals, the whole tonal palette. I felt like a one-woman orchestra!

I noticed, too, I could “noodle” around on the organ, but no one else I knew noodled (in public), so I assumed this was simply not done. My first organ piece with Mr. Poulton was the famous (attributed to) Bach Toccata in D Minor, every sixteenth note’s fingerings and meticulous counting penciled in. To this day, I still use that really worn-out original score at my Phantom of the Opera (1929) silent film performances (my show opener to set the mood) to remember where I come from. And, of course, I now play the Toccata like the improvisation it’s meant to be!

As a child, did you understand the music theory behind what you were doing, or did that understanding catch up later?

Yes, oh yes, I was very fortunate that both Mr. McNabb and my next mentor, Don Rae, the great jazz pianist/arranger for the legendary Las Vegas comedy team Gaylord and Holiday, insisted I master jazz harmony, voicings, and scales, and listen to classical composers to learn how they put harmonies together. They instilled in me the fierce mental discipline that I rely on today. Once I discovered major and minor ninths, thirteenths, and Burt Bacharach, I was hooked. But when I discovered how just one harmonic shift, or one simple, sexy jazz chord could change the key and slip my improv into a brand-new musical world, it ignited the composer in me.

At age eleven, I learned the circle of fifths and how to read complex charts. It was fun, hard work yet easy to memorize, and it laid the groundwork for reading figured bass when I started playing Baroque continuo. I spent thousands of hours at my stepfather’s Steinway grand piano and couldn’t wait to get home from school to play through a new fake book or disco tunes Don Rae brought me. Don’s big improvisation game changer was teaching me the Blues. In losing Mr. McNabb, I understood gut-wrenching loss and grief, but I didn’t know how to get there musically, how to turn anguish into beauty. Don had me prepare a new improvisation weekly by memory in all twenty-four keys, major and minor, over twenty weeks, on anything I wanted. I remember that first time I played one of my improvs for him, it was about four minutes long. Nervous as I was, I let myself go in it. When I finished, he was silent. I turned and saw him, his jaw open. I remember it so well. That’s when he knew I had a gift; me, I wasn’t so sure. I thought I was a copycat, just imitating Duke Ellington and George Shearing. I still didn’t feel original or unique because I worked so hard to emulate others.

I must add here a pivotal moment almost every successful person I’ve met has experienced. It happened at the end of my freshman year at the University of Nevada, Reno. Remember the piano professor my mother stormed out on? They assigned him to teach me organ! Oh no! He was no organist, and I knew this would be bad. At our last lesson he dismissed me in no uncertain terms: “Missy, I suggest you give this up. You don’t have what it takes to make it in music.” In that instant I thought of Liberace, George Shearing, Mr. McNabb, Don Rae, Duke Ellington, my improvs. (I also thought of words that are unprintable here!) He was wrong, and I knew it. But what was I to do, having been told, “Don’t come back”? Well, the gods were listening!

Was there a watershed moment that inspired you to become a professional organist and church musician?

Yes! Enter Saint Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue, New York City, and Robert K. Kennedy, organist and master of the choirs at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, Long Island. One springtime Sunday morning in Reno before church I serendipitously caught the TV broadcast of the 9:00 a.m. contemporary service at Saint Bartholomew’s with guitars, drums, organ, handbells, a big choir, and congregation singing amazing jazz church music!

I froze, mesmerized in total disbelief. Oh, the joy in their music! I knew I was meant to be there. I packed up and drove across the country to live with my dad in Saint James, Long Island, and started commuting on Sunday mornings to St. Bart’s as a choir member and guitarist in the 9:00 a.m. band. At the same time, I began organ lessons as a sophomore at SUNY Stony Brook traveling to Garden City to work with the brilliant, warm, and wonderful Kennedy, who gave me the “You get serious or else!” talk. He whipped me into shape like a real organ teacher. The Bach-Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor always makes me think of Robert. I credit him with helping me decide to become a professional organist and believing I could do it if I gave everything to my craft. So I did­—everything. I dove into repertoire and completely forgot about jazz and improv. I told myself they were no longer of any use. At this point I still had no idea anyone improvised on the organ, even though Robert was teaching at the same time his astonishing protégé Peter Richard Conte, my dear friend and improvisation colleague!

Beyond Robert Kennedy, who were your principal teachers and influences in organ and organ improvisation? How did you learn from them?

At Saint Bartholomew’s I met the great conductor and organist Dr. Dennis Keene, who was at the time St. Bart’s assistant organist, while finishing his doctoral degree at Juilliard. Dennis would become pivotal in my organ education.

St. Bart’s by now had hired me as their Christian education secretary, and one night working late I heard Dennis practicing two pieces on St. Bart’s glorious Aeolian-Skinner organ: Messiaen’s Le Banquet Céleste and Duruflé’s Scherzo. I stopped my work. I quietly snuck out to a partially opened chancel door and listened and watched him play in that sparkling, golden Byzantine mosaic space.

Le Banquet Céleste brought tears to my eyes. What on earth was this exquisitely inexpressible music? And this playful scherzo! Who on earth wrote this jewel of pure spontaneous magic? Both were jazz but not jazz; earthly yet other-worldly. Duruflé and Messiaen became my repertoire gurus. Soon Dennis was teaching me French Romantic and contemporary repertoire on the organ in St. Bart’s side chapel. (Organist Jack Ossewaarde prohibited anyone but Dennis and him from touching the great organ, especially newbies like me!) When Dennis became organist and choirmaster downtown at the Church of the Ascension, our work continued, and he trained me up for Juilliard and Eastman auditions. Those years studying with Dennis and the thousands of painstaking hours of blood, sweat, and tears formed my technique into what it is today. I have Dennis to thank for not letting me get away with anything less than excellence. And he gave me a front row seat as organ-page-turner at some of the finest choral and orchestral concerts in the world presented by his Ascension Music. I have lifelong gratitude for all he gave me, especially the privilege of hosting Madame Duruflé in my cathedral apartment (because Je parle français) for a week at Saint John the Divine— wow—il n’y a rien à dire! (There are no words!) She and I remained dear friends for many years after and shared unforgettable visits in France. Now there was une grande improvisatrice! And with such petite hands!

May I digress and share with you the thrill of a lifetime? On a visit to Marie-Madeleine’s lovely stone house in Cavaillon in Provence where she was on holiday with her dear sister Elianne, we were having tea in her living room when I commented on the lovely old brown upright piano against the far wall, a candle mounted on each end, fine lace lying across the top. She told me, “That’s where Maurice composed his Messe Cum Jubilo.” I started to cry as I so love that gorgeous work. I can still feel that hot Provence August afternoon with her and smell the fragrance of her giant rosemary bushes infusing that cool stone living room.

While studying with Dennis, I won the New York City AGO organ competition, and to my joy and astonishment got into Juilliard for fall 1983 to pursue my dream of studying Messiaen’s works with Messiaen’s protégé, the sublime artist Dr. Jon Gillock. What a world Jon brought me into; what an extraordinary friendship we built. Messiaen’s harmonies, registrations, birdsongs, and Hindu rhythms blew my mind. Through all this, improvisation took a back seat until three things happened at once: first, Dennis gave me Marcel Dupré’s two improvisation books; second, I began studying improvisation at Juilliard with my dear friend and colleague, the legendary improviser “Uncle” Gerre Hancock at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (that’s an article all its own!); and third, I heard Paul Halley’s iconic improvisation album Nightwatch on the great organ at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where he was organist and choirmaster.

If there was a seminal person, moment, place, and organ in my improvisation career, this was it: Paul Halley at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and the mind-blowing Aeolian-Skinner Opus 150-A, “Miss Scarlett,” housed in the cathedral’s astounding eight-second acoustic (now nine seconds since the 2001 post-fire restoration!). Paul Halley’s organ improvs exploded my mind, ears, and musical imagination. In his playing I heard jazz improvisation like nothing I’d ever heard; he used the organ in ways I never imagined possible, especially the strings. I memorized Paul’s album, tried to replicate his sophisticated progressions, his sonic palette, his tricks with acoustics. I worked my butt off learning this extraordinary new thing: jazz-infused improvisation on a pipe organ, wonder of wonders! My four improvisers (two hands, two feet) found their home. This is when I made the commitment to find my voice and forge my own style.

My “second childhood,” as I call my twenty-three years at Saint John the Divine, began prior to my Juilliard studies, as a Barnard College junior in 1980. One autumn Friday I was unexpectedly called in as a last-minute sub to play for the cathedral’s weekend sleepover-in-the-crypt youth program, Nightwatch. It went so well that I was invited back on many Friday nights when Paul Halley was on tour with the Paul Winter Consort. Nightwatch and I would continue together for the next nine years, and it became my weekly “improv lab” to try out new ideas! Can I even begin to describe what it was like to be in that vast, dark cathedral on those marvelous cold winter Friday and Saturday nights, improvising in the dark and speaking to thousands of kids visiting from across the country about the great organ, showing off its cool sounds and taking them on a grand sonic ride they still to this day write to me about?

While at Juilliard in 1983, I found my courage to write Paul Halley asking if he’d consider taking me on as an improv student, knowing he didn’t teach because of his heavy touring and cathedral schedule. But, oh my goodness, he asked me to come in and play for him! He’d heard about my subbing at Nightwatch, and I’ll always remember that audition: afternoon light in the great organ loft, me seated on the bench, terrified in awe to be in Paul’s presence as he opened the hymnal to a Gregorian chant, one I would soon come to cherish, Conditor alme siderum.

I don’t remember what I improvised; I do remember thinking I made a total hash of it! I finished, waited in silence, then turned. Paul was relaxed, leaning back, arms stretched wide along the organ loft railing. With that great smile of his, he nodded saying, “Yes, I’ll work with you.” I thought I would die. My spontaneous squeal of joy echoed through the cathedral! What a privilege to become Paul’s improvisation protégé. And what a challenge: I never worked so hard in my life, never felt such a drive to excel, to prove myself and to achieve my dream of becoming a great improviser. And in all those years of study, Paul never charged me for a lesson.

In January 1984 Paul asked me to substitute for him in my first ever Paul Winter Consort gig at the Princeton University Chapel on their colossal organ. Thus began my nearly forty-year friendship and life-changing work with my dear friend and musical guru Paul Winter. Here was an entire band of world-class improvisers who welcomed me with open arms. And who knew one could improvise with humpback whales, timber wolves, or canyon wrens? Again my sonic world exploded! In 1986 Paul Halley named me cathedral organ scholar and trained me up on how to devise choral accompaniments and hymns in the English Cathedral style. In 1987 he and the dean appointed me cathedral assistant organist and then in 1990, when Paul left the cathedral, I was appointed cathedral organist. I remember once asking Paul why he hired me, and I’ve never forgotten his answer: “Because you’re great with kids (the Cathedral Choristers), you’re an accomplished woman organist (an endangered species in 1980s New York), and you read Samba charts (unheard of for an organist!).” Wow. There it was: all my years of improvisation and jazz landed me the coolest job on planet Earth.

A funny side note to this: at Juilliard my dear teacher Dr. Jon Gillock fully supported my improvisation work with Paul Halley. Jon deeply revered the great French organ improvisers and wanted me to give my improv and repertoire studies equal effort like the French do. But Juilliard found out and threatened to expel me for studying with a teacher outside the school, even though I had Dr. Gillock’s blessing. So, I assured the powers-that-be that I would stop—and of course, I didn’t! Never in a million years could I have imagined when I graduated from Juilliard with my master’s degree in organ at age twenty-five that in four short years I would be appointed the first woman cathedral organist at Saint John the Divine, because of my improv chops!

How does improvising in concert settings differ to you from liturgical settings?

There is quite a difference for me, like two alternate sonic worlds with very separate harmonic languages, techniques, themes, timings, feeling, purpose, audience, energetic intent, all of it. In accompanying silent films, my job (as I learned in reading my hero Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography) is to provide the emotional subtext of every scene: to improvise music that provides the emotional counterpoint to the action to enhance, not compete with, its drama, comedy, and conflict, and also to prepare the audience for what’s coming in the next scene. The music is the narrator. It must be subtle yet blunt, amorphous yet cued, often with specific timed “hits” (like a crash or surprise), and it is very much about surrendering to the three-way micro-millisecond relationship between oneself, the audience, and the actors. It’s a powerful and very real energetic triangle, and when you give yourself over to it, that’s when the magic happens, when the audience gets lost in the film and forgets you’re there.

In liturgical settings it’s all about surrender, again, but this time it’s surrender to what is ineffable, wonder-filled, and sacred inside each person in a holy gathering. Here we are, friends and strangers gathered in worship in a once-in-a-lifetime gathering that’ll never be repeated in all of time, with all our burdens, sorrows, challenges, and joys. I’ve found that yearning is at the core of everyone’s worship—our deep yearning for divine intervention, divine comfort, for the sublime, for answers, transformation, the soul aching to be heard and held. Organ music can express and even meet this yearning like nothing else. Whether it helps people cry and release, or is a cradle of peace, or uplifts them in an ecstatic experience of the divine, it is a sacred honor and opportunity we organists are entrusted with.

The very first thing I do in any performance is “take the temperature” of the room. Even thirty feet up and three hundred feet away hidden in a cathedral organ loft, you can feel a congregation’s mood. It’s hard to describe, but it’s palpable. It’s a vibration that imbues the space. I use this as the starting point of my prelude improv, the launch of any Sunday morning’s spiritual journey in which we organists are the first soul to express our yearning. Gradually the congregation joins us in hymn singing, joins the clergy in prayer, and together we go on the journey.

My musical goal in any liturgy is to shift the mood from what it was at the start to something entirely new and different by the end. My liturgical harmonic language is completely different and more contemporary than my silent film language. Silent films tend to dictate what harmonies and progressions work so you don’t “take the audience out of the film.” In a liturgy, I find there’s room for broader expression and risk-taking, especially in a big acoustic on a big instrument with lots of toys onboard. My liturgical improvs are infused with jazz and French Romantic harmonic worlds and massive rhythm. I’m talking massive; rhythm is everything! It’s the heartbeat of any improvisation, loud or soft, fast or slow.

Paul Halley taught me this. It’s what thrills and soars and tingles and creates awe. You could vamp on plain old C major with a killer rhythmic pattern, a few textural shifts, a 32′ Bombarde, and it’ll make your congregation stomp and cheer! I aim for one thing in my liturgical improvs: to continually lift up, even in somber Lenten modal mysterious improvs. I constantly let myself let go—this keeps the journey lifting and wondering (versus wandering!) for whomever I’m playing. If I’m surprised, they’ll be surprised; if I’m moved, they’ll be moved. I tell my students that improv is sheer blind trust; it’s surrender to divine channeling. It’s losing one’s conscious thought, so time stands still and you can’t remember what you played. And that’s when they really go on the ride with you. That’s when you come out of it thinking, “Wow, what just happened?” That’s when your congregation knows you gave yourself to them. I never, ever forget this maxim: “You can’t fool an audience.” They just somehow know if you’re holding back or are bored, scared, unprepared, not into it, or not giving your all—they know when there’s no lift off!

Do you consider yourself to have your own distinct musical language? Is there anything distinctly “American” about your improvising?

My musical passion is world music. I love combining ethnic sounds, especially Greek, Brazilian, Celtic, Middle Eastern, and Asian. I love stretching where the organ can go, seeing what part of the world it can travel to through a culture’s musical voice. That’s what I loved at Saint John the Divine in those golden years under the visionary leadership of our global-minded dean, the Very Reverend James Parks Morton. One minute I’d be playing Tibetan music for the Dalai Lama, then Eritrean hymns at a Coptic funeral, then Sakura for a Japanese tea ceremony, then “Hava Nagila” at a Jewish-Christian wedding, then New York, New York on the State Trumpet celebrating a Yankees-Mets Subway Series! If you see our magnificent country as the great melting pot of immigrants, then yes, my improvs and compositions are highly “American” in that I embrace all our ethnic styles. In terms of my own style, I don’t know how to describe it. I just know it as me and that it’s ever evolving. I’m often told by people, “Oh, Dorothy, I just knew when I walked in it was you playing—I’d know that sound anywhere!” I always wonder to myself, which sound(s) gave me away?

Tell us more about your jazz background and how it informs your improvising at the organ.

In addition to what I described above, I’d add two things: the legendary jazz pianist Lyle Mays of the Pat Metheny Group, with whom I had the tremendous privilege of studying jazz composition, told me, “Dorothy, if I ever hear you cadenced with plain old V–I, I’ll call the jazz police!” And Lyle also said, “The greatest musicians on the planet are jazz players. They can improvise in any style because they get inside the style, they don’t just copy it.” I’ve bided by Lyle’s words throughout my career.

Do you ever imitate specific composers or historical styles?

Oh yes, of course! We all stand on the shoulders of those who’ve come before us, and we borrow from our contemporaries, too. No musicians, especially improvisers, are creative islands unto themselves. Day and night we unconsciously take in shards of music, hooks, and tunes we’re not aware of. They lodge and cook in our musical psyche, then days later pop out in a gig or writing session, and we’re like, “Whoa, where’d that come from?” I borrow rhythmic hooks from Bartók, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Ravel; toccata patterns from Cochereau, Vierne, and Dupré; and every day I listen on BBC Radio 1 to the hottest pop, chill, dance, and cutting-edge tracks. I relax to Indian ragas and cook to electronic soundscape artists like Aurah. It all informs my improvs, my music theater scores, my organ and choral works. In fact, I’m listening to Aurah while writing this: it’s “I Decree Peace” on their Etherea Borealis album. Check it out!

How does improvisation differ from composing to you? Do you prefer one or the other?

To me improvisation is spontaneous composition, and composition is repeated improvisation until you find something you want to save and write down. They are equal in fertility and joy to me. I’d say the great gift that improvisation brings to a composer is to know if you don’t like something you wrote, you can improvise a hundred other ideas to replace it with! Composer-improvisers trust the unlimited flowing fountain of ideas inside of them. It’s unfailing, and the perfect idea is always just an improv away. Improvisation is ultimately just about trusting the unknown yet to be revealed in you. Each of us is a creative giant we have this lifetime to get to know, so from me to you I say, “Go for it, and rock da house!”

Reflection

I hope readers are as fascinated and stirred by Dorothy’s words as I am. She reminds us, if I may use a tired cliché, not to neglect the trees (as Dorothy clearly has done her homework, thoroughly learning music theory and technique, inside and out), but truly to see and appreciate the whole forest. I’m not sure about each of you, but that’s a reminder I needed at this moment. May each of us heed Dorothy’s advice to “go for it.” ν

Dorothy Papadakos’s website: dorothypapadakos.com

Experience Dorothy’s artistry at our website: thediapason.com/videos/dorothy-papadakos-plays-phantom-opera

At the Three Choirs Festival, Hereford Cathedral, England

Lorraine Brugh is currently resident director of Valparaiso University’s Study Centre in Cambridge, England. She is professor of music and the Frederick J. Kruse Organ Fellow at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana.

The Three Choirs Festival celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2015. With a brief hiatus during each world war, this is the longest-running non-competitive classical music festival in the world. The festival is so named for the three cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester, and Hereford. For more information, see Lorraine Brugh’s article on the 2018 festival at Hereford Cathedral in the February issue of The Diapason, pages 20–21. The festival included a recital by Olivier Latry on the cathedral organ.

This interview took place in the Hereford Cathedral gardens after Latry’s early morning practice time. His program for July 31, 2018, included: Prelude and Fugue in E-flat, BWV 552, Johann Sebastian Bach; Choral No. 2 in B Minor, César Franck; Clair de lune, Claude Debussy, transcribed Alexandre Cellier; Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, opus 7, number 3, Marcel Dupré; Postlude pour l’office des Complies, Jehan Alain; Evocation, Thierry Escaich; improvisation on a submitted theme.

Lorraine Brugh: I came in this morning to hear you practice a bit. It sounded wonderful. Is the organ tuned above 440?

Olivier Latry: Yes, a bit. It is always the case in summer when the temperature is high.

I am curious about your recital. Is this the first time you played at the Three Choirs Festival?

No, I was here fifteen years ago for the festival, so this is my second time. I have played recitals on all three of the cathedral organs, but only once before at the festival.

Your program tomorrow includes the Franck Choral in B Minor, a favorite of mine.

Yes, it works very well on this organ.

I’m curious about the Debussy transcription. How did that become an organ piece? It is your transcription?

The piece was originally transcribed for the organ by Alexandre Cellier, a contemporary of Debussy’s. In fact it was normal at that time, when a piece was composed, to make transcriptions of these new works to other instruments. It helped the publisher to sell more copies of the music. Many publishers did that. There are other Debussy pieces that were published that way. Vierne did the same thing with Rachmaninov. With transcriptions we often have to adjust the music. I don’t think it’s a problem to transcribe a transcription, since it was already on the way toward that.

I’d like to hear about Gaston Litaize as a teacher, and the way you have followed him in his footsteps.

Let me say first why I went to Litaize because it is important. I grew up in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the north of France. I began to study the organ in 1974.

The year after, a new organ had just been built for the cathedral there, a very nice instrument by Schwenkedel in the German style. There were a lot of concerts there at that time.

We heard all the great organists. Pierre Cochereau came to play, Philippe Lefebvre, Litaize. Among them it was Litaize who impressed me the most. He had a way of playing the organ that was viril. (He looks up the word in a French dictionary.) In English it is virile, manly. (Latry makes a growl like a lion.)

I was so impressed because the organ sounded like I hadn’t heard it before. We knew that the organ wasn’t the master, he was the master. He played his own music, Franck on this German instrument, the Prelude and Fugue in D Major by Bach, and Clérambault. It was really great. Then I decided I wanted to study with that man at the Academy of Saint-Maur. He was very nervous, much like his playing in fact. Never relaxing, always speaking with a very big voice as well. He was impressive.

For my first lesson at the Academy of Saint-Maur, I was 16 and went on the train with my parents. He was not there that day. He had me play for his assistant. Then the next day he called me and said gruffly, “I heard that you are very good. We will meet next week, and you can play for me.”

So I went there, and he asked me to prepare the first movement of the [Bach] first trio sonata. I said OK, but I thought it wasn’t enough. He didn’t know anything about me so I prepared the whole trio, and then I also played the Bach B-minor Prelude and Fugue.

He first gave me a musicianship test, to see what I could hear, what kinds of chords he played. It wasn’t a problem to do that, it was almost like a game! Then, during the Bach, he made me play an articulation I didn’t like. I didn’t know what to say. I wondered if I should say I don’t like that, or just say yes. I said, “I don’t really like that. Would it be possible to do something else?” He said gruffly, “Ah, very good! Yes, of course, you can do that.” He was so happy because I had my own way.

That was taking a risk.

Of course, especially since it was the first time I played for him. From that day, really, it was very nice, because Litaize could teach his students at different levels. For those who didn’t know anything or have their own musical personality, he would say, “No, do it like this . . . that,” making everything very precise. When someone had enough of their own ideas, then he said they could do it on their own, which was very good. In some ways he taught me many things.

I remember some very nice teaching on the Franck Second Choral. It was just wonderful. The French Classical literature was also very nice. Then we became closer. The second year I went to Paris. I lived with a friend of Litaize who had an organ in his home. Litaize didn’t want to go back home during his two days of teaching in Paris, so he also stayed in that home. He spent all evening speaking about music, listening to music, which for me was very nice. I heard a lot of stories from the 1930s; it was great, great, great. He was also very nice to all of his students. He arranged concerts for his students, and he set up invitations for us to play recitals. The first concert I gave in Holland was because of him. He just gave my name, and that was it. The same thing happened in Germany, and that was very funny.

He said he had accepted an invitation to play in the cathedral in Regensburg, but he didn’t want to go there. He said to me, “Here is my program. You practice my program, and three weeks before the concert I will tell the people that I am ill and I can’t go there. Then I will give your name, and you will play it.”

Can we talk about Notre-Dame? You became one of the titulars early in your life. Can you speak about how the position is for you?

It’s just the center of my life (laughs) although I am not there very often. The three of us titular organists rotate, playing once every three weeks.

I see that you are on to play this weekend.

Yes. We make the schedule at least three or four years in advance; we are currently scheduled until 2022, so we know when we are free. If we need to be away, it is no problem to switch with a colleague.

Notre-Dame is the center of my life for several reasons. First, as you said, I began there early in my life, and it was quite unexpected.

Wasn’t it a competition for that position?

No, there was not a competition for that position. When Cochereau died, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald at St. Sulpice died almost a half year before Cochereau, so that meant that both big instruments had a vacancy for the titular organist at about the same time.

Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, made a rule for hiring the organists for the entire Archdiocese of Paris. We young organists all competed for that, to create a list for the Archdiocese of Paris. This is what the competition was for. I just applied, and was thinking, because I was the second assistant to François-Henri Houbart at La Madeleine, that perhaps there might be another opening there. I played some of the Masses there, and I thought François might move to Notre-Dame. He was one of the best organists in Paris. He first applied and then pulled out. He felt it was better for him to stay at La Madeleine than to be one of four organists at Notre-Dame.

In fact, I didn’t know that, but I suspected that many of the finest organists would apply for Notre-Dame, and that would create vacancies in other parishes. But a few weeks before the competition, I just got a letter saying I was chosen for the competition for Notre-Dame. I was surprised and wondered why. I think it was because I had already been a finalist twice for the Chartres competition, so I was already known by some of the organ world. In addition there was a scandal related to the second competition. In fact I was more known for not winning the prize than had I won the prize. Many people as well as the newspapers were on my side. They all reported that I didn’t win the prize, so everyone was talking about it.

That’s a good way to get famous if it works.

In fact, it was normal, well, not normal, but at least it happened many times in those years that competitions were contested. The Rostropovich competition, the Besançon conductors’ competition, which happened at exactly the same time, also the Chopin Competition, where Martha Argerich left the jury, because Ivo Pogorelich was kicked out.

Was it politics?

We never know. I was also known by the clergy because I was teaching at the Catholic Institute of Paris, so that’s probably why I went on the list for Notre-Dame.

I was so sure that I would not be chosen that I was totally relaxed. I just played. I almost never improvised at that time. The first time I improvised three hours in a row in my life was at Notre-Dame for the rehearsal for the competition. It was very funny. And it worked!

Evidently! That’s a good way to enter something, though, when you don’t think you have a chance.

It was not difficult afterwards, because I was ready technically, but I was only twenty-three. I had a lot of repertoire, but I wasn’t fully mature. With Litaize I played at least thirty to forty minutes of new music every week. I just wanted to spend my time learning repertoire.

Did he require that?

No, I just wanted to spend my time learning repertoire. I could learn pretty fast. It is how I was trained. If you are trained to learn fast, you can learn even faster. I remember, once on a Monday I started the Diptyque by Messiaen, and I spent nine hours that day, and I played it the next day for a lesson. I couldn’t do that now.

Do you think you have some unusual kind of memory or is that just how you were trained?

It is my training. I don’t have a photographic memory; that is actually my weakest kind of memory. Even so, visual memory would be the last kind I would use. When I see someone just use their visual memory it makes me nervous. I would use more tactile memory.

We call that muscle memory.

The best is always intellectual memory. I’ll come back to that.

When I began at Notre-Dame it was difficult because I was not ready for that kind of exposure to the public. When I played a concert before, perhaps forty a year or so, I had between eighty and two hundred people at a concert. Then, from one day to the next, it was never less than two hundred, and usually more. And why? I don’t play better or worse than yesterday, so why is it like this now? That is the first point.

The second point is that I discovered that people can be very tough. Many critics I had for a recording I made early attacked me for no reason. Just because I was there at Notre-Dame, I was the target. That was really difficult for the first two years, and then afterwards I was OK, I just said, ‘let’s go.’ Before that I was on my way to resigning. Some friends had said to me if I didn’t feel comfortable there, if I needed to protect myself more, perhaps I shouldn’t stay there. These were not organists who wanted to be there, they were just friends. Then I realized that I am an organist at Notre-Dame. I can’t leave it now. So I just changed my mind, and that was that. It was very hard.

Can we talk about your teaching and how much you do at the Conservatoire?

In fact, I started at Rheims, and then Saint Maur where I succeeded Litaize, and remained there for five years. Then I was approached by the Conservatoire in 1995. It was very funny because before that, I was assistant to Michel Chapuis. When he was retiring, the director of the Conservatoire asked if I would like to be one of the teachers. He wanted to divide the organ class in three different ways. One teacher would teach ancient music, i.e., the music up to Bach; another would teach Bach and after, including contemporary music; the third position would be for improvisation. He wanted me to be the teacher for Bach and contemporary music.

I said I wasn’t sure I wanted something like this because I like to teach every style of music. I don’t think it’s good to have some sort of specialization like that. One really needs to have a general approach to literature. He said that it was my choice, but think about it, and that if I didn’t want to do that, it was my decision. I was quite depressed about this and called my good friend Michel Bouvard. I said I had to tell him something, I was just asked to teach at the Conservatoire de Paris, and he let me speak.

Bouvard told me that he agreed with my approach not to specialize, and he said what he liked in music is what is common in all music. He let me speak for ten minutes, and then he said that the director had called him also. I didn’t know that! He wanted him to teach the early music part, and he would refuse because he didn’t want to do that. So we both refused. Then, finally, we decided to have an organ class with two teachers teaching all the literature.

The students can go to either teacher. It’s very nice, because it’s a different approach for the students. It is sometimes difficult for them, because Bouvard and I are never in agreement about interpretation. Often we have a student for one year, and then we switch, but it can be less, sometimes months or even one lesson. In fact, when they have the same piece with both teachers it is very funny because I might say, “Why do you do it like this?” and “It’s not right, you should do it like this.” And the same goes for Bouvard. The student wonders what they should do. It can be disturbing for the student in the beginning because they have to find their way, their own way. The only time we ask them to do something really as we want is when we both agree. Then they better do that.

It is very effective because we are friends, and don’t always agree, but we never fight, even over these twenty-three years. It is also a good thing for the students to see that we can disagree about some things. It is also good for the general idea of the organ world. It is not that we are only critical of one another. In fact since we have made these changes at the Conservatoire, other areas, the oboes, for example, have started sharing students. The best would be when the pianists will share students, but, for that, we will probably have to wait another hundred years.

It is nice because Bouvard and I have the same goal with the music but we always take it in different ways. We have a lot of discussion; we write and call each other five or six times a week and discuss and argue about musical points. We have long discussions.

That’s nice for the students, too, that they can see you dealing with each other in mutual respect.

Yes, I agree. Especially in Paris, where there are so many instruments and that long tradition of fine organists, it is important for the students to see and hear as many of the Parisian organists as possible, to meet them, hear their improvisations, like Thierry Escaich, as I did when I was a student. I went to Notre-Dame, to Madeleine, to Trinité. We encourage them to do that, too. Beyond that, though, we set up some exchange for the students to perform concerts, or to be an organist-in-residence. We have an exchange at the castle in Versailles. Not bad, eh?

Not bad at all!

Each student will play once on their weekly concert there in the French Classic tradition. For that they have five hours of rehearsal on the castle organ. The castle is closed, and they have the keys to the castle in their pocket. Can you imagine having that as a student?

It’s like heaven!

Yes, I think that too. This is one of the things that we do. We also have an exchange with the concert hall in Sapporo, Japan. We send a student there every year. They do teaching, playing concerts in the concert hall.

We have an exchange with the Catholic Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana. We send a student there the first Sunday in Advent, and they are in residence until the Sunday after Easter. They are playing for the choir there, also for Masses.

So they’re there for Mardi Gras. That’s rather dangerous.

(Laughter)

The Conservatoire makes the arrangements for this, but it is our decision to have this kind of exchange. We could just give our lessons, and that would be it. That is all that is required. We feel that it is so important for the students that we want them to have these experiences.

We also have now at Versailles a student in residence for a year there, and also at Notre-Dame. They play for the choir and other things. It would be like an organ scholar in the UK. They might accompany the choir, work with singers, do improvisations in the Mass, maybe play for Mass on the choir organ, anything that the professional organist would do.

At the Conservatoire we are trying to expand the students’ repertoire for the master’s students. They have to play fifty minutes of ‘virtuoso’ music the first year. This is music of their choice and proof that they can handle that. Then they play twenty minutes of music on the German Baroque organ, twenty minutes on the historical Italian organ from 1702 at the Conservatoire, then twenty minutes of French Classic music on the Versailles organ, to see how they react to different repertoire. Then for the master’s degree program they can choose the organ they want to play in Paris. They could say they’d like to play Vierne, Alain, or Florentz at Notre-Dame, or Messiaen at La Trinité, or Franck Three Chorals at St. Clothilde, or a Mass by Couperin at St. Gervais, and we arrange that.

I studied a few lessons with Chapuis one summer in Paris.

One really needs the instruments to do that.

And the teacher. He was wonderful.

Yes, he was. I also had lessons with him, together with the musicologist, Jean Saint-Arroman. Jean is still alive, in his eighties. He wrote a dictionary for French Classical music from 1651 to 1789. It is really incredible because so much information is there. Each time we have a question we just call him. Even when I would have a fight with Mr. Bouvard, we could call him up, and he would settle it! We will have a great project on the music by Raison next term at the Conservatoire, with all the approaches (old fingerings, story, religious and political context, figured bass, etc.) ending with two concerts.

I know one of the things you are interested in is new music.

Well, yes and no. What I love is music that is expressive, that brings something in an emotional way. So it could be something different for each piece of music. For instance, music can be angry. I don’t play music for that only. (laughs) I think sharing those emotions is important. It is also sharing in a spiritual way. Being an artist and an organist, I think we have that privilege to connect the emotional and the spiritual more than other instruments, even more than a pianist.

I like contemporary music that touches me. I play a lot of this music. Sometimes I just play it once, some I hope to play many times. The French composers like Thierry Escaich and Jean-Louis Florentz are so emotional. I also play a lot of music for organ and orchestra. It is a way to connect the organ to the real world of music. Otherwise the organ is always a satellite, only found in a church.

Those concerti help more people to be connected to the organ. I played a new piece by Michael Gandolfi for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I performed a piece by Gerald Levinson at the 2006 dedication of a new organ in Philadelphia.

In Montreal, we first premiered a piece by Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer. This piece was also performed in London and in Los Angeles under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen. It is important to me to have that kind of relation with orchestras and other musicians. I will play the Third Concerto by Thierry Escaich in Dresden, and then in 2020, I will play the Pascal Dusapin Concerto.

What is your relationship to the Dresden Philharmonie?

I have a position in residence there for two years, ending in June 2019. This allows us to do things we would never do otherwise. We will play a concert with the brass ensemble, Phil Blech of the Vienna Philharmonic, and they play wonderfully. We will also perform the same concert at the Musikverein in Vienna. Concert halls are important because some people don’t want to go into a church. Hearing an organ concert in a concert hall shouldn’t be a problem. In Paris we fight a lot to have organs in the concert halls. I just did a recording of transcriptions on the new organ at the Paris Philharmonie. It is an incredible organ. The CD Voyages is now available.

What would you like to say to American organists? Most of the readers are practicing organists or organ enthusiasts.

It is difficult to know, but what I would say is just hope and try to do our best. We need to convince people that the organ can really add to our life in many ways. I don’t know how it is in the United States with the relation to the clergy, but it can be complicated. I would say, at Notre-Dame, I only play the organ. I don’t have anything to do with the administration, with anything about running the cathedral. The organ is high, far away from everything. We are there, and if we don’t want to see the clergy, we can do that. It is better, though, to have a closer relationship.

The musicians go for an aperitif with the clergy after the Sunday Masses and we are all together. It is rather funny, because we talk about little details, and we can banter back and forth. We have mutual respect for each other, which allows us an easy rapport. It is a sort of communion between the priest, the choir, and the musicians. We rarely play written literature during the ritual action in the service. We cannot make the priest wait for two minutes because our chorale isn’t finished.

You time the organ music to the liturgical action?

Yes, so, for that, we usually improvise, and it is much better. We can improvise in the style of what we heard, in imitation of a motet by the choir, or the sermon. Sometimes the clergy react to what we do. After a prelude or a sermon, the priest might say he heard something from the organ and responds in the moment.

So the priests assume there is a dialogue going on with the music?

Yes, of course. It works both ways. It is not possible to do something against one another. We can do everything. The music isn’t something to just make people quiet; it can make them cry or be angry. Usually after the sermon we do something soft, on the Voix céleste or something similar. However it is not a problem to improvise for two minutes on the full organ, even clusters, if it is a response to what the priest said. We have never heard a priest comment that it is too loud. This can only happen with a kind of relationship that allows everything to be open for discussion.

We have an organ that has a lot of possibilities. We have to exploit all those possibilities rather than follow a prescribed response just because it’s the middle of the Mass. The context is not always the same. It is our job to create the atmosphere for the service.

One of my favorite times is the introit for the 10 a.m. Gregorian Mass. 11:30 is the polyphonic Mass, which is especially for tourists, and the evening Mass is the cardinal Mass, most like a parish Mass. Notre Dame is not a parish, but that is when the local people come. From the introit of the first Mass we have Gregorian texts and their interpretations. I read the texts before the improvisation. The texts will be the source for a ten-minute improvisation. It is like a symphonic poem. We can bring people to the subject of the day.

Let’s talk about memorization, because it is so important how to learn to learn. We try to do this with memorization, especially at the Conservatoire, because people are scared. We say that a memory slip is like playing a wrong note. Don’t be scared if you get lost. If you know how to come back to the music and learn the technique to do so, you won’t have a problem. It is also a question of confidence. If you are confident, there is no problem.

It is like riding a bike. One must know first how to memorize the technical way. For me the best way to memorize is to have all the connections together. Memorization is like a wall. When you see a wall, one sees that the stones are never the same size. In fact, the actual musical notes are one level of the stones. Another level is the harmony, another is the fingerings, and then the movements, the music. All combined makes the big wall. Then, if there is one step missing you are still OK. If you have too many holes, then the wall falls down. So it is important to be sure that everything is in place.

One must know what is the fingering there, without moving the fingers. Be able to copy the music down like it is in the score, to make sure it is the same as the score. What I do for the students, because they are so scared, is I say “stop” while they are playing. I ask if they know where they are, and ask them to pick up the music two bars later.

Then, finally I’d like to finish by talking about memorization with Litaize. We attended each other’s lessons with him because we were all friends. He didn’t require it but we wanted to. We were there at the same time. I listened to the lessons, and it was very nice. When he wanted to make an example to people, he could play, at the right tempo, the place in the music he wanted to demonstrate. It was like he had a film of the music going on in his mind, and he could play anywhere he wished. I do that with the students, and it is so effective. It is even better with a trio sonata. I ask the student to play, and then I turn one manual off and have them continue. This teaches them that they can go anywhere.

They have learned the music deeply.

Yes. Once you have the music in your head, then it is easy to practice all the time. You don’t need an organ to practice. Of course, you have to learn the notes on a piano or organ. Once it’s in your head you can practice while you’re walking, in the shower, sleeping. One can practice twenty-four hours a day.

It’s time we bring this to a close, and I think our readers will be interested in hearing what you have said today. I appreciate the time you have taken today to meet me the day before your recital. I look forward to hearing your recital tomorrow. Best wishes.

Thank you very much.

Editor’s note: On Monday, April 15, the world watched as Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris suffered a catastrophic fire that has damaged much of the historic building. Some of the edifice and its pipe organs have survived in a state that continues to be assessed for eventual restoration.

Mr. Latry recorded a compact disc on the cathedral organ in January, the last CD recorded before the fire. Released by La Dolce Vita, Bach to the Future features the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. For information, readers may visit: www.ladolcevita.com. The disc is also available from www.amazon.com, and other resources.

Various news media sources of the world have reported that numerous donations have been made already to rebuild the cathedral. However, Mr. Latry has pointed out that a very different and very real problem exists as the 67 employees of the cathedral are now without an income. Those who wish to make a contribution to the rebuilding of the cathedral and to assist those who work at the cathedral may visit: https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/participate-in-the-reconstruction-of-th…

Photo caption: Olivier Latry and Lorraine Brugh (photo credit: Gary Brugh)

Passing eras

My mother’s grandmother died in Boston in 1959 when I was three years old. I have a dim memory of her and of sitting in the kitchen of her apartment in Boston’s Back Bay at the time of her death, where I was served Cheerios with blue milk, food coloring added by her maid. Granny Reynolds was born in 1867 and remembered her grandmother who was born in 1779. As I grew up, my grandfather made a point of reminding my parents and me of that to keep the milky memory alive. Now, in my early sixties in 2020, I can claim to remember a family member who remembers a family member born during the Revolutionary War. Mozart was twenty-three years old.

Jason McKown (1906–1989) was an old Skinner man. I met him in 1987 when I was engaged to care for the Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner organs at Trinity Church, Copley Square, in Boston (a few blocks from Granny Reynolds’s apartment), where Jason had been organ curator for fifty years. He was eighty-one years old and spry as a cat, easily negotiating the tall ladders and narrow walkboards, but he was eager to retire so he introduced me to another of his clients, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, home to the monumental Aeolian-Skinner organ with over two-hundred-forty ranks.

Jason had been caring for that organ since it was installed in 1952, and in order to ensure a smooth transition after I was appointed, the church retained Jason for six months to help me learn the ropes. And some ropes they were. Forty-one ranks of reeds (including a full-length 32′ Kontrafagott and 51⁄3′ Quinte Trompette in the Swell), over a hundred ranks of mixtures (including some harmonic doozies with 7ths and 9ths), and nearly fifty independent ranks in the Pedal. It is a model of engineering, three stories tall and three chambers wide behind an acre of gold-leafed façade pipes. Jason patiently shared his approach to the instrument, its strengths and weaknesses, and the history of repairs and adjustments. We were together at the organ all day every Wednesday for those six months, with Jason leading me around as he offered his hints and insights. After more than sixty years as a tuner, he was an accomplished keyholder.

Shortly before I started at The Mother Church, Ronald Poll of Salt Lake City had been contracted to install a solid-state switching and combination action supplied by Solid State Logic. Ron was the brother of Robert Poll, curator of the huge Aeolian-Skinner organ at the Mormon Tabernacle, and had just completed a similar project there. As Ron started installing the hardware at the various switching stations throughout the organ, I was still maintaining the extensive electro-pneumatic electrical system for its last few months of operation, and I quickly became familiar with one of the weaknesses Jason had mentioned. The machine-formed silver contacts in the vertical gang switches were breaking and falling like pine needles in the forest. There were scores of those switches operating windchest cutouts, single ranks with independent actions, couplers, offset bass chests, and the scores of magical effects found in a huge organ.

When the contacts were manufactured, the bends were formed too crisply, and the wires broke at the bends, with new failures appearing every week. What happened when they fell? They got tangled in the contacts below them and caused cluster-ciphers of five or six notes, terrible interruptions to the marvelous playing of Dr. Thomas Richner, organist of the church, known to generations of students and admirers as Uncle T. “Peepee” (he called everyone Peepee), he’d say, “there’s a little problem in the Pedal Ophicleide.” Some little problem, when a half-dozen notes sounded as one in a stop like that! One afternoon, I was pointing out to Jason how the rows of transistors on the big switching panels compared to the rows of contacts I was so busy repairing. He shook his head and said quietly, “this is for you young guys.”

During those months, as Jason and I shared lunches and coffee breaks, he told stories from his past. He remembered seeing the 32′ Double Open Wood Diapason from the Hutchings organ in Boston’s Symphony Hall, across Massachusetts Avenue from The Mother Church, chain-sawed into pieces and stacked on the sidewalk to make way for the new Aeolian-Skinner organ (Opus 1134, 1947). He remembered talking with Marcel Dupré as the great French organist prepared a recital at King’s Chapel in Boston (Aeolian-Skinner Opus 170-A, 1946), asking how often the Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Sulpice was tuned. “Not until the next cleaning.” Jason was a direct connection between Marcel Dupré and me.

Jason recommended me to a dozen or so other churches, one of which was especially meaningful. The Congregational Church of West Medford, Massachusetts, was home to Skinner Organ Company’s Opus 692 (1928), a lovely instrument with fourteen ranks. Jason was twenty-two years old when he worked on that installation, under the personal supervision of his employer, Ernest Skinner. The organ was fifty-nine years old when I became the second technician to care for it. Jason was a direct connection between Mr. Skinner and me.

Jason McKown and his wife Ruth were devoted members of Centre Methodist Church in Malden, Massachusetts, where the Bauhaus sanctuary housed a 1973 three-manual Casavant with a harsh angular case design. Jason did not much like that organ, but he maintained it until the end of his life with all the care and skill he gave to his favorite Skinner organs. In those days I drove an eight-passenger van; I ferried a carload of people from The Mother Church to attend his funeral in 1989.

Centre Methodist Church closed in 2007. The Organ Clearing House sold and moved the Casavant organ to Salisbury Presbyterian Church in Midlothian, Virginia. A new case was designed and built by QLF Organ Components, a subsidiary of Lively-Fulcher Organbuilders. Jason was not generous with his comments about the original Casavant case design. I think he would have liked the new one.

Chapters

My friendship with Jason spans eras. I was in my early thirties when I knew him, and over thirty years after his death, I value that he was my personal connection to Ernest Skinner. I admire his longevity, diligence, and devotion to the organs in his care, and I was influenced by his respect especially for Mr. Skinner’s genius. Though he knew it was too late for him to learn about solid-state organ controls, he was open to the new technology being installed in The Mother Church organ. Stories like the destruction of the old Symphony Hall organ told of how he had witnessed deep change in the name of progress.

When Jason first worked at The Mother Church, the fifteen-acre site included the Original Edifice (1894), the first church building built by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science; “The Extension,” the marvelous domed wedding cake of a building (1906) that seats 3,000; and the Publishing Society, home of the renowned international newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. The site was transformed in 1971 with the construction of the new Christian Science Plaza with three new significant buildings, including a twenty-six-story administration building and a seven-hundred-foot reflecting pool, and the entire plaza was paved with bricks. Jason had been friends with the man whose life work was the creation and care of an extensive rose garden next to the church along Huntington Avenue. When the plaza was built, the rose garden was destroyed. Jason told sweetly of the heartbreak of his friend seeing his life’s work disappear.

Progress

I am a loyal fan of Patrick O’Brian’s marvelous series of novels about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. I have audio recordings of all twenty-one books and often listen to passages in my workshop or as I drive. Captain Jack Aubrey, one of the central characters, is a skillful and courageous frigate captain, and his friend Stephen Maturin is a physician who travels on Jack’s ships as surgeon, which serves as cover for his central activity as a member of Naval Intelligence. Jack plays the violin, well enough to tackle the Bach Chaconne in D Minor, and Stephen plays the cello. As they sail around the world, they play the classics together deep into the night. Jack distinguished between his sea-going fiddle and the precious Amati that he kept at home. One night as they were tuning their strings, Jack’s steward Killick griped to the steward’s mate, “Scrape, scrape, screech, screech, and never a tune you can sing to, not if you were drunk as Davie’s sow.” Those stories are rife with adventure and intrigue. O’Brian was a devoted student of that history, writing dialogue using two-hundred-year-old figures of speech, and for this enthusiastic sailor, he accurately and dramatically describes the act and art of sailing big ships. 

As the wars dragged on toward 1815, steam-powered ships were being introduced. It was easy for Jack to understand the advantages of steam power, allowing a ship to sail directly into the wind or without any wind at all. Guns could be mounted facing straight forward and backward, while sailing ships were encumbered by sails and rigging in both those directions and limited to firing broadsides. If your ship had steam power, you had an immense advantage over sail; if you were sailing and encountered an enemy in a steamship, you were in grave peril. Nonetheless, one tradition-bound and slightly drunken admiral lamented loudly about the Navy contemplating losing its skillful sailors to “a hoard of mechanics.”

Steam locomotives powered railroads from the early nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth. Diesel powered (and diesel-electric) locomotives were first introduced around 1930. By around 1950, diesel locomotives were more powerful, more economical to maintain and operate, and safer than those powered by steam, and steam locomotives became a thing of the past. Many engineers revered the elegance of steam machinery and regretted their demise, but today with few exceptions, steam locomotives are limited to historical exhibits and attractions, and a troupe of hobbyist organbuilders I know.

Friends of ours have a huge old iron cook stove in their kitchen. Susan is a virtuoso with the cooktop lids, lifting them as she converses to drop in a log or two. She manages different levels of heat from one side to another and has pots of savory smelling stuff simmering away. The hulking thing sure does make the kitchen toasty warm on a cold night, but she uses the modern gas cooktop mounted in the counter for most of the cooking. Her curmudgeonly husband Barnaby thinks food tastes better from the wood stove, but he does not cook, ever, and Susan has her way. “Barnaby, have another bourbon.”

Charles-Marie Widor was organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris for sixty-three years. Something like halfway through his tenure the first electric blower was installed on the Cavaillé-Coll organ. By then he had written the ten organ symphonies that are the backbone of his output, played for thousands of Masses, hundreds of concerts, hundreds of funerals, weddings, and festivals. He must have spent thousands of additional hours at the organ practicing and teaching. Through all of that, the hundred-stop organ was pumped by human power. What a liberation it must have been for him to climb the steps to the organ loft, switch on the power, and play to an empty church using all the wind he wanted.

There are a number of modern mechanical-action organs built under classic inspiration that are pumped by reconstructions of ancient human-powered systems, and in the late 1990s I restored an organ built in 1868 by E. & G. G. Hook (when my great-grandmother was one year old), including restoring the hand pumping system. Yuko Hayashi, the revered long-time professor of organ at the New England Conservatory of Music, brought her organ classes to that church so they could experience hand-powered organ wind, comparing both sources of wind playing the same passage of music. It is a fascinating study, helping us to understand just how music sounded when played centuries ago, but I doubt many of us would forsake the convenience and stability of the electric blower.

The passage of steam-powered ships and locomotives, Susan and Barnaby’s woodstove, and Widor’s hand-pumped organ are all examples of innovations replacing “the old way.” Many pipe organ professionals and enthusiasts are admirers of the old way. “If God intended us to have more than four general pistons, Mr. Skinner would have given us five.” But today’s conversation is not about venerable electro-pneumatic organs being replaced by modern trackers, and it’s not about historic tracker organs being replaced by modern electro-pneumatic instruments. It’s about the future of the organ, the future of all organs.

We can’t save them all.

In the 1920s, American pipe organ builders were producing twenty-five hundred new organs each year. Suburban churches had sixty voice choirs and sixty-stop organs, and a thousand place settings of monogrammed china. Those churches now have dwindling congregations, staggering fuel bills, and leaky roofs. In a world weakened by epidemic, smaller, weaker parishes are struggling like never before, and pipe organs are coming on the market like fireworks on the fourth of July. Hundreds of organs, many of them priceless historic artifacts, are glutting a market in which churches choose between pipe organs, electronic instruments, or no organ-based music at all.

My desk at the Organ Clearing House is proof of that. My inbox is full of pleas to “save this beautiful organ.” We can place only a fraction of the available instruments, and it is hard to justify encouraging a church to purchase an organ of poor quality and doubtful musical interest when so many wonderful organs are available. Once it was hard for me to condemn an organ to the knacker’s yard, but I have gotten over it. I know that there is a finite amount of money spent in the United States each year on pipe organs, and it feels like smart duty to see that as little as possible is spent on lesser organs. If we are going to have fewer organs, they might as well be the best.

An unwanted pipe organ is among the greatest of white elephants. This applies to instruments of high pedigree and important historical value as much as to small, simple, ordinary instruments. When progress means that a building has to go, whatever is inside goes with it. If it is a historical home with a beautiful organ, when time’s up, time’s up. If it is a spectacular church building, ravaged by time and weather and failing budgets, whatever is inside goes with it.

If you learn that a church in your neighborhood is planning to close, encourage them to think right away of the artifacts that should be saved. Pipe organs, stained-glass windows, and liturgical furnishings can all be preserved and relocated, but it takes time. If my first contact about an available organ is from the real-estate developer who bought the building and plans to gut the interior in two weeks, there is no hope. As it takes years for a church to decide to commission a new organ, it takes years for a congregation to embrace the idea of disbanding. Plan ahead.

Most importantly, we must care for our profession. Colleague organbuilders and organists must project their work in the music of the church as a rich gift. We have received our talents as gifts. It is our responsibility to nurture those talents and share them with the people in our churches, those in the pews, and those around the table at weekly staff meetings. Make them love what you do. I am tired of seeing memes showing the Dowager Countess of Grantham with pursed lips, saying that people who think the organ is too loud “don’t have any taste.” I am tired of seeing images of gag stop knobs engraved with “Rector Ejector,” or “Cut Pulpit Mic.” They may be good for a smirk between organists, but they imply an underlying disrespect that is not good for our future.

An organist accepting a new position “if there will be a new organ” is an affront to church music. Maybe the place should have a new organ, but that should be the collective decision of a generous and worshipful community with the support and encouragement of the musicians, not an arrogant demand. You likely know more about church music than those around you, but with your help, they can love it as much as you do. That is what honors the links between you and the centuries-old procession of brilliance which is the heritage of our music and our instruments. That’s our future.

Photo: 1952 Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1203, The Mother Church Extension, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts (photo credit: William T. Van Pelt)

Someone had to do the dishes.

Wendy and I are empty nesters with four grown children between us, three of whom have families with children—our sixth grandchild is due in February. One of those families, with girls ages one and five, was with us last weekend for a rollicking visit. After a raucous and hilarious dinner, the evening before they left (grandpa’s grilled chicken legs with Za’atar were a big hit), mother, father, and grandmother went upstairs to supervise bath time, while I tackled the dishes. I connected my iPad to the Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and started a favorite recording of mine, Joan Lippincott playing Bach sinfonias with orchestra (Gothic Records) on the beautiful organ with two manuals and twenty-nine stops built by Paul Fritts & Company (Opus 20) in the chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary. Joan presents a variety of Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685–1750) instrumental movements with organ obbligato and orchestra imaginatively arranged into three-movement concertos.

The cheerful music filled the room as I loaded the dishwasher and packed leftovers (there would be a great lunch the next day), and I marveled anew at the mystery that is our music. These pieces were all written in Leipzig in 1726. Bach was in his early forties and at the top of his game, composing, arranging, rehearsing, and performing a new cantata every week. He played the elaborate organ parts on the three-manual organs in the churches of Saint Thomas and Saint Nicholas in Leipzig, miracle instruments that were the most complex devices of their day.

Organbuilders make intricate charts showing the math involved in making organ pipes with diameters halving at something like every seventeen notes resulting in parabolic lines of the tops of the pipes—all that mathematical precision was developed by Bach’s organbuilders and those who preceded them over the centuries. Eighteenth-century craftsmen made the grids for slider windchests, keyboards, casework, stop actions, key actions, and hand-pumped wind systems using hand tools to transform trees into the intricate and precise pieces and parts that make up any pipe organ. We marvel at all that today, the brilliant sounds and sophisticated tuning systems of instruments made with modern power tools. Bach played on organs with 16′ choruses, complex mixtures, and colorful reeds. The longest days for the people pumping the organ bellows must have been when the tuners were at work. It takes hours to tune a six- or seven-rank mixture with the stable and consistent air pressure from a modern organ blower. I can imagine the organ tuner in Leipzig in 1726 hollering at the pumping assistant to keep the pressure steady, hour after hour.

Put yourself in a pew as an eighteenth-century churchgoer, hearing the “world premiere” of a new Bach cantata every week. Maybe you recognized each as an astounding achievement, but maybe it never occurred to you that it was something special, that generations of succeeding musicians would admire and perform that music. Not to compare myself to Bach, but the oft-repeated comment in the narthex, “The music was great, as always,” seemed sometimes to ring a little false. Did parishioners at the Thomaskirche take their organist for granted?

We listen to performances and recordings of today’s finest players who set high standards of virtuosic musicianship. I wonder what Bach’s music sounded like as he played and conducted it. Were the violinists, oboists, bassoonists, and harpsichordists of Leipzig all brilliant players with pedagogy and techniques like what we are used to, or were they groups of local yokels aswim in the fantastic other-worldly, never-before-seen technical demands of the music of the local master?

Think of the coloratura fireworks of Bach’s Cantata 51, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen. It is a lifetime achievement for a modern soprano to tackle and master that heap of notes. Was there a parishioner in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche who could toss it off? Maybe she had a couple kids who sang in the choir. I wonder if she had a day job. And do not forget the trumpet part in that piece—the high tessitura with patterns of repeated sixteenth notes to be played on a valveless eighteenth-century trumpet. Was that trumpet player a shopkeeper in real life? Maybe a cop, because he must have been able to whistle like crazy with that embouchure in his face.

There must have been local recognition that something special was going on. How else could the music produced by the local organist of a single church have been preserved and reproduced for the ages?

What were they really like?

Fifty years after Bach wrote those organ sinfonias, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–1791) creative genius was defining the identity of the recently invented fortepiano. His sonatas and concertos were central to the introduction of the instrument into the musical mainstream. Most of Mozart’s music was performed in private salons and small public halls—at the time of his death in 1796, there were not many concert halls with more than 500 seats. I wonder what those evenings were like. Were people smoking and drinking while Mozart played? Were they talking? Was the piano well in tune? Were servants milling about offering snacks? The 1984 movie Amadeus portrayed Mozart as bawdy, rude, even vulgar. Do we suppose this was based on fact or legend? He was destitute toward the end of his life. Did he show up to play in a fancy drawing room wearing torn and dirty clothes? Did he stuff his pockets with those snacks because he did not have food at home? Did people forgive his unpleasant mannerisms because his music was sublime?

A generation after Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) helped transform the piano into a larger-scale concert instrument. As his keyboard technique was growing, he demanded more from the instruments on which he played, breaking strings and grousing about weak tone, once complaining to a piano technician that the instrument “sounded like a harp.” Nannette Streicher (1769–1822) and her brother inherited their father’s piano factory, and while the brother ran the business office, Nannette reengineered their pianos to keep up with the expectations of the burgeoning virtuosity of the day.¹ Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785–1849) was reportedly the first artist to play lightning-fast passages of octaves in both hands, that technique that dazzles and confounds many organists. I can imagine the reaction of the piano technician witnessing that power on an early-nineteenth-century keyboard for the first time.

Nannette Streicher increased the range of the piano, adding octaves at each end of the keyboard. She increased the scale and tension of the strings, beefing up the internal structure to withstand the added pressure, and she developed a new form of keyboard action to propel the dampers toward the strings with greater force. She also built an 800-seat concert hall adjacent to the factory where Beethoven and other virtuosos performed, an important part of the passage from salon musicales toward what we know today as large public performances.

Nannette’s profound contributions to the development of the piano coincided with Beethoven’s advancing the art of playing and writing for the piano. I love imagining their interchanges. Did Beethoven visit her in the factory, looking over prototypes for new designs? It would have been fun to be a fly on the wall. Besides their professional relationship, Nannette was devoted to Beethoven personally, helping him organize his notoriously sloppy household and managing his scraggly finances. We read that he could be irascible, maybe nasty sometimes, but I suppose Nannette was patient and gentle with him. She was the epitome of the full-service piano technician, and she was a brilliant engineer in an age when women were seldom recognized for their professional acumen.

Warm in their PJs, and sent off to bed

Continuing with my after-dinner chores, I put on another of my favorite recordings, Camille Saint-Saëns’ (1835–1921) Second Piano Concerto in G Minor played by Jean-Philippe Collard with André Previn conducting. The second movement, “Allegro Scherzando,” gives insight into the witty, impish side of Saint-Saëns’ personality as it shifts back and forth between different themes and styles with moments of campy “boom-a-chick” rhythmic accompaniments. Remember, this is the guy who included a parody of pianists in Carnival of the Animals, poking fun at the drudgery of practicing scales. He plays another joke in Carnival, offering the nimble and subtle melodies of the “Scherzo” from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Berlioz’s Dance of the Sylphes to be tromped on by the elephantine double basses of the orchestra.

There is a wonderful photograph of Saint-Saëns wearing a voluptuous pair of pajamas, standing on an elaborate carpet and surrounded by ornate decorations, including a bronze statue on a table behind him—it looks as though it might be Rodin. (You can easily find the photo by googling “Saint-Saëns pajamas.”) He is looking sideways out of his eyes, maybe a little suspiciously, as if he is surprised to be caught in his PJs. In his memoir, Recollections (Belwin-Mills, 1972), organist Marcel Dupré shares a few anecdotes about his personal encounters with Saint-Saëns, remembering him as kind and gentle. Studying the many photos and listening to his music, I imagine him as a lot of fun. There is a twinkle in his eye and a twinkle to his music that suggests he knew a good joke when he heard one.

Thinking of the parishioner at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and wondering if she took for granted the world-altering music she heard every week reminds me of an anecdote told by Clyde Holloway during his tenure as professor at Indiana University as he took a group of students on a study trip to Paris. While the students were in the thrall of Marcel Dupré’s (1886–1971) brilliant improvisation, dazzled by the thrill of it, he noticed a woman sitting in a corner pew with her hands covering her ears. Curious, he went to her and asked if the music was bothering her. “Yes, it’s horrible, and it’s like this every week.”

Bath time is over, and the grown-ups are back in the kitchen for a nightcap and some more chat before bed. I’ll turn the music down now, but it has been fun wondering about the lives and personalities of some of my musical heroes as I cleaned up after dinner. I continue reflecting on the magic that is music. The arranging of musical notes in a certain order, the creation of harmonies by stacking notes above each other, and the progression of harmonies that propel a piece of music toward its conclusion seem other-worldly. The wide variety of instruments we have developed over centuries allows us to bring music to reality in time and space. It is easy to be baffled by the complexity of the organ, but consider the violin, a pound of carefully shaped wood and tensioned strings that can fill a concert hall with sound. Whose idea was all that? We might pay $5,000,000 for a forty-ton organ ($125,000 a ton) while a high-end violin can cost $15,000,000 ($937,500 an ounce). Which is the better value?

I recall my idol, Pythagoras, passing by a blacksmith shop on the Greek Island of Samos around 400 BC, noticing extra tones in the sounds of the anvils, what we know as overtones. His observation led to harmony and melody and the limitless collection of musical timbres we treasure today. But it was flawed mortals­­—Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, and Dupré—who imagined the music and wrote it down for us to bring back to life.

Well done, good and faithful servant

Brian Jones, long-time director of music and organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts, and conductor of the Dedham (Massachusetts) Choral Society, passed away on November 17, 2023, from complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was eighty years old. When I was finishing high school, my father took me to meet Brian for advice about where I should continue my organ playing education. Brian was a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and that is where I went. I was seventeen and he was thirty.

Brian was appointed to his position at Trinity in 1984 and served there until 2004 when he received his appointment as Emeritus Director of Music and Organist. During his tenure, the Trinity Choir achieved national recognition through the release of five recordings including the fabulously successful Candlelight Carols that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and raised the annual Christmas carol service at Trinity to a “must go, standing room only” celebration.

Brian’s twenty-seven-year tenure with the Dedham Choral Society saw the group’s membership increase from twenty-five to 150 singers. Their venues advanced from local church sanctuaries to performances of works like Verdi’s Requiem with full orchestra in Boston’s Symphony Hall. His giant personality and infectious love of music drew people to choirs he led and concerts he presented.

I worked with Brian at Trinity as organ curator for more than ten years starting in 1987. A large part of that work was tuning from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. each Friday in preparation for the regular noontime organ recital. I would typically stay for the concert so I could join in the rollicking post-concert lunches at House of Siam, a superb Thai restaurant across Copley Square. Brian was the raconteur at those lunches, regaling the extended table with endless stories, sometimes bawdy, always hilarious. There were many scores of lunches, and I met countless brilliant and fascinating people. “Fridays at Trinity” was a rich education for me about the world of the organ, and Brian was the Dean, leading the laughter.

There were recording sessions scheduled for the wee hours to minimize the intrusion of city noises, and I was always present to correct short-term lapses in tuning or mechanical mishaps. One night, we were interrupted by an immense grating noise from outside just as Brian was starting a take. A machine with a toothed wheel twelve feet in diameter was gnawing a trench in Clarendon Street, and the recording engineer had enough cash in his pocket to convince the crew to keep quiet for the next hours.

The beautiful recording Carols for Choirs was originally produced in-house and was such a success that it would be rerecorded professionally for wider distribution. To make compact discs available for sale before the Christmas shopping season, the recording sessions were in July. It was horribly hot, and the sessions were in the middle of the night. The organ’s many reeds were built and voiced for sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, but as the church had no air conditioning, the sultry summer heat brought temperatures to the high nineties in the higher reaches of the organ, and it was not possible to raise the pitch of the reeds enough to match the pitch of the flues. Brian and I had some difficult conversations as I explained the permanent damage that might be caused to the historic, iconic organ pipes, and we experimented with altered registrations to find lovely sounds that were not compromised by the fractured off-season tuning. As the sessions progressed, I lay on the pews, dressed in shorts and t-shirt soaked with perspiration, listening to that superb choir singing the best music of Christmas in July, a treasured absurd memory in the life of an organ tuner.

In December of 2012 I brought a New York colleague to Boston to show him some of the city’s great organs, and we had dinner with Brian in a restaurant on Boylston Street. That afternoon I heard from my son that his wife had gone into labor with our first grandchild, and during the meal I received updates by text message. Ben was born as we were having our last sips as Brian shared stories about his grandchildren.

I am grateful to Brian for encouraging me to study at Oberlin, and I am grateful to him for all the shared experiences at Trinity Church. His friendship and influence were an important part of my appreciation and understanding of the music of the church, and his contributions to American church music seem endless. Rest well, good friend.

Notes

1. I wrote in more depth about Nannette Streicher in the February 2021 issue of The Diapason, pages 10–11. 

Lorraine Brugh is senior research professor of music at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana. Richard Webster is interim director of music at Saint Paul’s Choir School and Church, Harvard Square, Boston, Massachusetts, and music director of Chicago’s Bach Week Festival.

The celebration

“These people will be your friends for life,” Karel Paukert pronounced to his organ class at Northwestern University in the mid-1970s. Looking around, we students likely smirked, unable to imagine this motley crew being lifelong friends. Almost exactly fifty years later, on November 17, 2023, many of those former students along with colleagues, family, and church members gathered to celebrate Karel’s life of teaching, leading, and performing.

Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, named Karel Paukert artist-in-residence on August 2, 2023. He has served at Saint Paul’s since 1979, first as organist and choirmaster, and now continues as organist for their Sunday early service. Most days he is there, practicing and working on a memoir he is writing at the request of two colleagues in the Czech Republic.

Kevin Jones, director of music at Saint Paul’s since June 2022 and a former student of Karel’s, organized an evening of celebration and tribute. Attended by more than 200 people, the evening opened with a recital by five of Karel’s former students. The rector, the Reverend Jeanne Leinbach, welcomed everyone to the recital. Performers were former students of Karel’s from Northwestern University—James Higdon, Richard Webster, and Lorraine Brugh—and the Cleveland Institute of Music—Brian Wilson and Kevin Jones. The recital displayed evidence of the wide range of Karel’s teaching and influence with works of Jehan Alain, Paul Hindemith, César Franck, Nicolas de Grigny, Richard Webster, Petr Eben, and Maurice Duruflé.

A gala reception followed the recital. Wine flowed freely, complemented by delicious canapés and desserts. The Reverend Leinbach again greeted and thanked all who came from near and far to attend. Lorraine Brugh, James Higdon, Richard Webster, and Kevin Jones all gave tributes, as well as a bit of roasting to Karel. Karel then closed the evening by recalling his love for Saint Paul’s and the staff and parishioners who continue to be a source of great love and support for him, his family, many of whom were in attendance, as were his former students. It was a grand evening of sharing across many decades and places where Karel continues to inspire with his music and wit. All shared admiration for his humanity. Indeed, we students had remained friends for life.

An interview

On November 17, before the festivities, Lorraine Brugh and Richard Webster interviewed Karel, focusing on his early life in Czechoslovakia (thereafter the Czech Republic and now Czechia), his escape to the West, and passion for lifelong teaching 
and learning.

Lorraine Brugh: You have been a lifelong mentor to so many students, including the two of us. Would you talk about that role and then tell us who your mentors were?

Karel Paukert: This is very interesting, because I never thought of you two as teenagers. I don’t think I treated you that way. You were both seventeen when you came to Northwestern. I simply saw two young people, extremely gifted; it was oozing from you. I was as excited as I used to be as a child when I was cultivating herbs and flowers. As a kid I loved to grow plants. This was fantastic for me.

I was first teaching young students as a young person myself when my teachers J. B. Krajs in Prague and then Gabriel Verschraegen in Ghent asked me to work with certain students while they were absent. I like to deal with people, especially young people. You two were very eager, like sponges. It was just a pleasure from the very beginning.

Richard Webster: It’s significant that you mention your love of people because many teachers don’t have that love as you do.

I really feel strongly about the role love plays in our lives. It surpasses language, racial, and geographical barriers. Also, good will. I felt it in abundance as soon as I left my oppressed native country and began my life in the West. It instantly changed me, and I became more trusting and harmonious within myself.

During my second week in Iceland, I was entrusted with the role of an oboe teacher in the music school. In my own mind I had no business being a teacher of oboe, but as a member of the Radio Orchestra and being one of the very few oboe players on the island, I fulfilled my task. My student Kjartan became the oboist of the Iceland Philharmonic a few years later.

I think that my positive instincts in that field are in my DNA, as most of my forefathers on one side of my family were teachers in the Sudetenland (frontiers drawn after the First World War in 1918–1919 and in 1938 appropriated by Adolf Hitler). Consequently, I have the need to share good things with other people.

LB: Which side of your family was that?

My father’s family. My grandfather just happened to come to my hometown Skuteč as the new postmaster. He married there. The object of his admiration was my grandmother Hedvika. He ate in a restaurant for ten years watching this young woman, the daughter of the owner, before he asked her to marry him. He had a dignity about him and thought we teenagers were rude for welcoming girls without shirts on, even though it was a hot summer. I was twelve, my brother eight, and he considered us loose, with no manners. He gave us an example of a time he was mortified when his teacher in elementary school took his class to the river and requested them to take their shirts off before swimming. His shyness did not allow him to do it. He was tearing up, sharing this episode with us. I would definitely say I got my love of teaching from his side.

LB: Can you talk about some of your mentors outside of your family?

There was a Catholic priest, Monsignor Jiri Sahula, who, though poor as a church mouse, had a great assortment of musical instruments. When I was about ten years old and was his acolyte for morning Mass in the local Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, he lent me books to read. They were way over my head, but I just perused them to please him and then brought them back. For a change he started to talk about the beauty and nobility of the church organ. That was before it began to mesmerize me. In the same context he talked about a composer, František Musil, a priest, who composed a beautiful sonata.

Many years later, when I played the sonata, I was often in tears, recalling Monsignor’s poverty and humility. You could see him from afar. He walked by our house to the next village, probably to visit ailing folks. Walking through the neighborhood, he would carry a huge leather bag, and village folks often offered him goods. “Just baked, Monsignor.” People loved him and took pleasure in feeding him.

Monsignor Sahula was well known as a published historian, rather conservative, but enlightened. It was moving to see him play a variety of instruments, including a musical saw, a zither, and a one-key flute. When I came home for a visit from the conservatory in Prague, he wanted us to make music together—violin and piano. I was pleased to oblige. Often it was painful because he did not practice and his intonation was painful. In the winter, around Christmas, his huge room with a high ceiling was atrociously cold. It was touching to see him tear up playing or talking about music. (I learned from him and others how much music moves people.) I loved those times with the Monsignor, nevertheless.

RW: Would you tell us about your teachers?

My organ teacher at the Prague Conservatory, Jan Bedřich Krajs, was the nephew of the composer and organ virtuoso, Bedřich Antonín Wiedermann. He was like a father to me, in part because he had the same kind of view on present-day government policy and was opposed to the Communists, as my father was.

Our discussions in the organ studio were without boundaries. At a certain point, perhaps in my second year, a recording line was installed, so that we could record our playing. That was a pretext, and what we did not think of was that they also could tape our conversations. We didn’t realize that when we talked politics, even students among ourselves, someone could record us, and they did. It was brought to the attention of the conservatory authorities, and they threatened to close the department if professor Krajs did not dismiss me.

I seemed to have been the chief culprit. My standing was magnified by an anonymous letter from my hometown Skuteč about my class origin: petit bourgeois. This indicated that I was not worthy to be part of the cadre, the working class in the new Socialist state, but should first prove myself in a factory.

Fortunately, the man who installed the telephone was our instructor of acoustics and the son of Comrade Prchal, a leader of the Revolutionary Movement of the Trade Unions (ROH). He was a friend of my teacher, who, among other maintenance tasks, oiled our organ motors. He asked Professor Krajs with urgency to dismiss me, to prevent the closing of the department of organ. On ideological grounds, Krajs said he was not going to do that. What followed was a search of the apartment of the Krajs family. Professor Krajs was a friend of Jan Masaryk, the son of the first president of the Czech Republic, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. He “died” in Czernin Palace [in Prague] in 1948, by suicide or was possibly thrown out of a window. To this day it isn’t certain how he died.

My father listened to Jan Masaryk and other Czech dissidents on regular shortwave radio transmissions from London on the BBC (London Calls) and from New York (Voice of America) during the War. Broadcasts were in the Czech language, received on our Telefunken radio. This was considered to be illegal activity and could be punishable by prison or even death, as the required orange tag on the dial indicated.

Before leaving the country, Masaryk left Professor Krajs his famous hat, books, letters, and other memorabilia. One day the secret police came to check his apartment, probably to look for objects that could compromise him so that they could take action against him. The Krajs family lived in Malá Strana, in a centuries-old house, below the Prague Castle in Thunovská Street. Upon hearing the doorbell, the professor peeked down from the upper floor and saw men in leather coats, a typical attire of the secret police. Before he opened the doors downstairs he took the things that might be compromising and threw them all into an oven, a ceramic stove that went up all the way to the ceiling in the large room, which housed a small two-manual organ. Unfortunately, later in the day when the professor was at the conservatory, Mrs. Krajs came back and lit a fire in the stove, not knowing what all the papers were about. She burned it all up. There were notes, letters, enough incriminating evidence that almost certainly would have resulted in incarceration.

The early 1950s were tough times after a few peaceful years following World War II. It was the “dictatorship of the working class on the way to Socialism and Communism.” In many ways it mirrored the German occupation and their beastly deeds.

RW: What year would this be?

It began after the February 1948 Revolution with the confiscation of properties of the rich and the nationalization of industry, and climaxed in the last years of Stalin. The years 1952 and 1953 were terrible, because any Soviet doctrine would be copied by the Czech Communists. It was the art and culture of social realism; everything had to be optimistic, with positive depictions of the Russians. Whatever it was, it had to be in agreement with the party line. This was the reign of Socialist realism. So we couldn’t play music that wasn’t relatable to the working classes, especially anything with religious titles. Music that named Jesus Christ or mentioned anything religious was prohibited, with a few exceptions. If a piece was called “Meditation” it might have passed the ideological control.

My colleague, Jan Hora, retired professor of the conservatory and the Academy of Musical Arts, often played in the concert halls of the Soviet Union. He said that there were never printed programs in the Soviet Union. The works would be announced from the stage so that any religious connotations would be erased.

Thanks to Jan I got to know Professor Verschraegen. Jan was my best friend from the conservatory years. He was a fine organist and was allowed to travel abroad. While still in school he won several competitions. In fact, Jan met Professor Verschraegen when he was taking part in the J. S. Bach competition in Ghent. He always brought back organ scores of contemporary composers published in the West. This was music that we never had access to in the “Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.” I was able to borrow and copy some of them.

I also told you about Paul Hindemith and copying his Sonata I. When he came to Prague, I asked him if he would be so kind as to sign it. That much I could say in German. He was very upset—I might say furious. I must have been in a tearful disposition, as his kind wife, Frau Gertrud, had mercy on me, took me by my hand, and invited me to sit with her in the loge at Smetana Hall during the second half of his rehearsal with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. After I explained to her in broken German our situation, vis-à-vis new music from the West, she took me after the rehearsal to the green room. I could tell that she was explaining the predicament of music students to Hindemith. He obviously changed his mind, because he did sign the sonata (“With thanks to the copyist”!!). He also requested my address, and during one of the ensuing summer months I got a package from Schott in Vienna, addressed to my parents’ house in Skuteč, with all three of his sonatas.

Back to Professor Verschraegen. It happened that he was allowed to concertize in the Czech Republic. I was in military service between 1957 and 1959 in Pisek and Tabor. It was in 1958 that I met him. Mr. Palasek, who was the minister at the prayer house of the Czech Brethren, had for our circumstances a nice, small two-manual organ, and allowed me to practice there whenever I had permission to leave the barracks. He told me about an upcoming Verschraegen concert there and asked if I could assist him during his recital.

There was a youngish lady named Vera who was translating for him. The two seemed to have been affectionate with each other. She was a Jew and had spent several war years in the concentration camp. I could tell because she had a tattoo on her arm.

Later in Ghent, I realized that her story fascinated Verschraegen from the very beginning, and he was attracted to her. She asked me if I liked his playing; I said, yes, very much, and she asked if I would like to study with him. She talked to Gabriel about me, and the next time he came to Prague I played for him. He came there to premiere his Concerto for Organ and Strings with the Prague Chamber Orchestra in the Rudolfinum.

He loved Prague and stayed for several days. I tried to communicate with him in my elementary German. He spoke his native Flemish, French, and German. Afterwards, Vera convinced me that I had to improve my German to communicate with him. I listened to her and took private German lessons, making fairly rapid progress.

The Pragokoncert housed him in the Hotel Alcron, a hotel for guests from the West. One evening he invited me there for supper. As we spoke a waiter came to us and silently pointed above his head, toward the chandelier. That indicated to me that there was a recording device. Fortunately, I had not said very much. But I was so grateful, so grateful to the waiter for warning us.

The next day, through the help of Vera, I got to play for him. Later when I was in Belgium, he told me I was like some other Czech organists, who were so rhythmically undisciplined. (He had heard them in various competitions as a juror.) He said I had to buy a metronome and reached immediately for his wallet to give me money, but I did have some money. After two lessons with him I did what he asked me to do—to write in all the fingerings and pedaling in Bach’s Toccata in F (BWV 540i). Thereafter, I passed his requirement.

RW: Just like you, he was very generous to his students.

Thank you. Anyway, so then after two or three lessons, he said that he would like me to teach his son, Dirk. “You can play as you want, but I want you to teach him to use the metronome and note the fingerings.” Obviously, he wanted me to instill discipline in him.

After that I didn’t get many lessons from him. He would listen to me and make a few, always helpful comments. We discussed interpretations away from the organ as well. He was a deep thinker and liked to talk a lot about himself and life in general. I lived nearby, and he would often ring my doorbell in the evening and ask if I wanted to have coffee or a beer chat. We might also meet in the square at a brasserie in front of the cathedral where I was playing weekday Masses, Sunday morning Masses, and other important offices. Or we would talk and walk through the old town. He would talk politics, the world, and Vera in Prague, and I would comment here and there. He loved his city and was a proud “Vlamink” (Flemish citizen).

RW: Last year you received an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Musical Arts in Prague, and a week thereafter the Prize of the Ministry of Culture. What was it like for you to be there and to receive the award?

It was like a dream. My entire U.S. family and Czech relatives came to support me. When I legally left Prague in 1961 I had a suitcase containing some music scores and my oboe for a one-year engagement in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. By not returning for the obligatory summer military training and disregarding all the letters from the Czech authorities, the military court issued me a ten-year prison term. I did not think that even a short visit would ever be a possibility.

I never thought I would be going back. But things changed. The Velvet Revolution was a miracle. I told you about my mother. When I took a train to Skuteč to say goodbye before leaving for Iceland and told her I might not be coming back, she was standing in front of the armoire and was so startled she dropped a mirror on the floor. “You cannot do it.” I didn’t even say goodbye to my father because he was working in an ammunition factory and could only come home on the weekend. I didn’t know myself if I could get to the point where I could divorce myself from my past and never be back again.

Playing in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in Reykjavik, existing modestly, I had saved some money, made some more in Oslo with the recording of Czech organ music in the cathedral in Oslo for the Norwegian Radio. I kept my savings in my shoes, believing that with a little bit of luck I could survive two to three months.

In Oslo I put my suitcase into a railway depot before embarking by autostop to the west coast. I splurged on a pair of blue jeans (my first ones), a small backpack, and a navy t-shirt. Then in the harbor I was trying to find work. I did find it on a packet boat servicing Kristiansand and Bergen. I meditated about my future under the starlit sky when the boat moored at night in one of the magic fjords. The sailors would leave me on the boat alone, sleep somewhere on the shore, and would come back in the morning. I was to clean the kitchen and the deck. After I was finished I watched the stars and made my plans. My kingdom was the deck of the smallish boat.

On the way to Prague in 2022 I was again replaying in my mind the circumstances of my leaving in 1961. It took me many months in Reykjavik to tackle the parting step with my past. The final decision, the realization that I had to leave my past in order to at least touch my dreams, was made during my journey in 1962, hitchhiking from Bergen back to Oslo. After a nap in a haystack in the Telemark region of Norway, awakened by the scent of hay and hearing singing from a beautifully carved chalet (there must have been more than a dozen of them, scattered in the valley), I made the decision to stay in the West. I bought a ticket to Ghent, checked my suitcase, boarded the train, and was on my way to Belgium.

In Sweden there was no passport control from Norway. When we reached Denmark, however, there was a casual passport control at the border to Germany. The officer selected me and said I needed a valid visa. I told him I had one. He stated I needed a visa for each country since my passport was from a Communist country. He said I had transgressed Scandinavian rules. I explained what I was contemplating—to ask for asylum. He said he would let me go to Germany, and there I would need to ask for asylum.

The German border police got me off the train. The realization came to me too late that my suitcase, a “Mitgepäck,” was going to Ghent. Out of fear that I could be apprehended, I had left in it the letters from Verschraegen that could prove he had invited me to come to study with him, plus anything else that would reveal my intentions not to return home. This was August, and I didn’t get to Ghent until November. Meanwhile, I had to exist. The Germans said it would be possible to stay in Germany because I was a musician. But I would have to change my name and go to a camp for refugees, because I didn’t want to become a German citizen.

I was sent back to Denmark on the next train. The same officer, Mr. Poulsen, waited for me at the Padborg station and brought me to a small police station directly in the railway station. There he interviewed me and wrote a protocol. I was jailed overnight and taken with two men, obviously criminals, to Copenhagen by rail and boats. Today the bridges make that part of the voyage a delight.

They brought me to the officer for refugees. I deposited my Czech passport and the return airline ticket to Prague. His office would help me apply for a visa to Belgium. In the meantime, I was required to find housing and periodically report to his office. I was terrified that I would not have enough money to stay in the city while I waited for the visa.

I wrote a desperate letter to a friend in Iceland, Didda Gudrum Kristinsdottir. She was a pianist who studied with Bruno Seidlhofer in Vienna and was at that time the best pianist in Iceland. I gave her the address of the rented room where she could write to me.

Instead of receiving a letter, one day a Danish woman came to my door, introduced herself as Hanne Poulsen, a friend of Didda from Vienna, where she had studied broadcasting. She already knew that I needed help here and offered me the use of her apartment. “I am leaving my apartment and going on vacation. I will be with my mother for six weeks. I would like you to use it.” I just couldn’t accept it. She said she would come in the afternoon and would show me Copenhagen. She drove me all around the city in her beautiful Saab. We ended in Nyhavn with a glass of delicious Tuborg beer. During our sightseeing I decided to accept her kind offer. That helped me to survive in Copenhagen because I had no job. For many years thereafter, whenever I would be nearby, I would meet her for dinner.

I would go to the Belgian embassy to check on my visa almost every day, wearing sunglasses so that I would not be recognized. That feeling of being pursued stayed with me for a long time. It finally disappeared in 1964, when I arrived in the United States.

During my waiting time for the visa I was able to take advantage of the musical life in Copenhagen. Tickets were inexpensive. In Tivoli, the famous amusement park, I heard amazing concerts of all sorts, including Danish avant-garde composers, conductor Zubin Mehta with the Tivoli orchestra, even a piano recital by the seventy-five-year-old Arthur Rubinstein.

One day, in a cafeteria, I met a young man who looked at me quizzically and addressed me in English. By that time I could speak some English. He was a Fulbright student from the USA, Raymond Harris, studying with Finn Viderø. I knew the name of his teacher as he was well known as a prophet, specializing in the works of Buxtehude. Mr. Viderø didn’t mind if I came to his lessons. I learned a lot by observing him and listening to the beautiful Marcussen organ on which he taught. I summoned the courage to visit other organ lofts and was received cordially. Many of the organists were also composers. I could not believe the clarity of those instruments!

Then one day at the Belgian embassy, a kind consular officer, a distinguished older Jewish woman told me, “Do not despair. It will happen.” It wasn’t happening fast enough. I was writing desperate letters to Verschraegen, “Please, please, Herr Professor.” I got no answer. He needed to attest that he was inviting me to Belgium. We had made the agreement in 1961 that he would send me a Christmas card with his signature and an asterisk if the invitation was still valid. Shortly thereafter I received it and still have it. It’s a Christmas card, more than half a century old, with a landscape painting of an old Flemish master, and on the reverse, his signature and the asterisk.

After coming to Ghent I found out that Professor Verschraegen traveled during the summer with the whole family in Europe and was also giving concerts. His mail was collected by one of the sextons, Roger Van de Wielle, a musicologist and author, who was also one of the organists.

LB: Tonight you will be honored for another award, artist-in-residence at Saint Paul’s. Share some of your thoughts about this celebration.

The rector, in her generosity, and Kevin Jones, director of music here, made it possible for me to stay on. I treasure the office I have, because I can hopefully finish my memoirs. I also have a resting place here in the columbarium for Noriko [Fujii-Paukert, Karel’s wife] and myself. She agreed to be buried with me.

Look at this beautiful space. I’m often here until 8:00 p.m. working on details of the remembrances, making sure all the details are correct. Sometimes I come to pleasant, even stunning discoveries. Today, for example, I was reading about two musicians who concertized at the Cleveland Museum of Art in their early careers, Christine Brandes and Joshua Bell. Christine, a sought-after soprano in early music, shone in several of our concerts thirty years ago, and Joshua, now a world-class violinist, was scheduled for one of our summer concerts when he was thirteen or fourteen. He was the first winner of the Stulberg International Competition for string players under age twenty.

This competition was founded by the friends of Julius Stulberg, professor of violin in Kalamazoo [Western Michigan University], a year after his death. It was a stroke of luck, and it happened because of my skiing accident. I found out about Joshua from my orthopedist, Dr. Stulberg, whose father was a German immigrant and the famed violinist. The good doctor, who apparently frequented our concerts, raved about Joshua and put me in contact with his mother. I was fortunate in that regard; so many good things happened to me.

LB: How did the invitation to write your memoir come about?

It was the editor of Prague Radio, Eva Ocisková, who recorded a series of talks for her program Pameti (“Memories”). It was a successful program in many installments on Radio Vltava Prague. From that she must have gleaned some inspiration and asked me to consider writing the story of my life. Her husband, my close friend, renowned organist Jaroslav Tůma, supported it.

LB: They are planning a publication in Czech?

Yes, and there is support for the Czech edition from official circles. What happens further, with the English edition, I don’t know as yet.

LB: What accomplishments are you most proud of, or satisfied with, in your long professional arc?

Well, here in the church I am pleased with the acquisition of instruments. We acquired an Italian organ by Gerhard Hradetzky, the Italian harpsichord by Matthias Giewisch, and the positiv of Vladimir Slajch. Of course, we have the iconic Holtkamp organ.

At the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) procurement was one of my chief preoccupations from the very beginning. I wanted to acquire instruments that would enable us to present a variety of musical styles. Those instruments included harpsichord copies for French, Italian, and German repertoire, an organ positiv, an original Broadwood fortepiano, a copy of Mozart’s Walter clavier, and a clavichord. We used them in the auditorium and in various galleries for concerts. This gave the musical arts also a visual artistic presentation. In both instances it required patience and perseverance to obtain the necessary funds from private individuals and foundations.

Unfortunately, the CMA instruments are now in storage and are not played. That situation pains me very much. Even more, the human capital we assembled through the many activities is no longer nourished by the CMA as it was for almost 100 years. You cannot measure such things with a yardstick, but you can see and feel the respect people paid to music over the years. I was not the first one. I simply continued in that trajectory of the first curators, following in the footsteps of my predecessor, Walter Blodgett.

There are many instrumentalists and composers who were studying here at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) and students at other institutions who, even now after many years have passed, acknowledge how much the CMA program enriched their professional lives through the concerts, listening to rehearsals, and meeting with the artists. We wanted it to be precisely that: a supplemental music laboratory for as many as possible. The young professionals who studied with Donald Erb at CIM got to meet William Bolcom, William Albright, Jacob Druckman, Messrs. Carter and Crumb, and dozens of others. Imagine the young organist to be a few steps away from such legends as Jean Langlais, Pierre Cochereau, Madame Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, or Yvonne Loriod. There is something sacred in meeting great artists.

It was the same with masterclasses. If we had harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt or Edith Picht-Axenfeld playing fortepiano, students would come from CIM, from Case Western, Cleveland State, or the Oberlin Conservatory, just to experience their artistry. It was the education tangent that I valued very much. What is heartwarming to me now are the occasional encounters with folks I meet in the street or a store, or musicians who participated in our endeavors, age-wise all over the spectrum, expressing gratitude for our musical mission.

LB: Was the new music direction your own, or had it been already established?

I was following Walter Blodgett. He was interested in new music. The CMA juried exhibitions of local artists. Walter complemented this with May festivals, mostly performances of new music. He had people like Karlheinz Stockhausen here before I came. I could not believe it.

So I felt very safe in pushing the envelope. Among others in programming music of different nations, I also wanted to promote Czech music. The general manager of CMA, Beverly Barksdale, previously assistant to George Szell, assured me that because Szell presented Czech music often [with the Cleveland Orchestra], programming Czech music would not be objectionable to Clevelanders. On the contrary, we would frequently combine resources from CMA, the choir from Saint Paul’s, as well as local instrumentalists, and present concerts in the CMA, the Bohemian National Hall, and elsewhere in the city. During the oppressive regime, ending with the Velvet Revolution (Prague, November and December 1989), local folks were unable to visit the homeland and enthusiastically supported our programs of Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček, and others.

RW: What are your regrets?

As humans we all sin. Perhaps I sinned more than others. Feeling guilty helped me do good things and helped me, in part, to overcome my guilt. I should have loved more. I should have spent more time with my family. I should have been more understanding of some of my students. I should have worked harder from the beginning.

RW: What advice do you have to young musicians, particularly organists, composers, and church musicians who are at the beginnings of their careers?

I just really think that, in today’s market, it is necessary to be multi-faceted, to be capable of stepping into diverse situations, in order to earn enough for the basic necessities. I am speaking now as the father of a family. The brilliant ones and those who are hard working will most likely make it. [Young musicians] do not need any advice from us. They just need to find a mentor and continue to love music and know what and why they are doing it.

LB: Well, there aren’t even enough church jobs to go around anymore.

I think you have to follow your call, whatever it is. My teacher at the conservatory, Mr. Krajs, said, when he taught me privately,

Darling, you are ready to take the exams at the conservatory. Think it over. You have to be sure you love music enough. You know how the government treats the church, and it may not change in your lifetime. You may have to play for free in the church, if they are even open, and be employed in a radio station as a sound engineer. But you play oboe; you will be okay.

The satisfaction of being a musician is enormous, especially in religious realms. I was fortunate to have a dream position at the museum (CMA), not in terms of financial rewards but in being an unofficial musical missionary in the city. To that end was added another dimension, serving people in the church, first [at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church] in Evanston and now in Cleveland Heights. I was fortunate to work under great rectors—in Evanston, Tom Ray, and in Cleveland Heights, Chave McCracken, Nick White, Alan Gates, Jeanne Leinbach, and a host of wonderful musical colleagues. I learned from all of them, and I am still learning.

RW: It’s a calling.

Yes.

Postscript by Karel Paukert

I wish Frank Cunkle were still alive. Thanks to him I made it all the way to the U.S. In 1963 Gabriel Verschraegen asked me to take care of an American music journalist, Mr. Cunkle, who was planning to visit the Festival of Flanders to see diverse organs and attend as many recitals as possible. I agreed to be his guide, not realizing that this encounter would change my life forever.

Frank was the editor of The Diapason, based in Chicago. As I quickly found out, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the U.S. organ scene. He let me know right away that he disliked certain organists, but did like very much the playing of Catharine Crozier and also Robert Noehren. I proudly told him that I met both in Haarlem and that they recommended me to come to the U.S. Frank did not promise me anything but indicated that he would contact a few acquaintances in churches and schools for a possible recital or a class on Czech organ music. It all became reality when I landed in Chicago on December 19, 1964. I was welcomed by Frank, organ builder John F. Shawhan, and two doctoral students at Northwestern University, Benn Gibson and James Leland. They brought me to Frank’s house (he did not drive) in Oak Park.

The Chicago Chapter of the American Guild of Organists invited me to play a recital for their midwinter conclave, undoubtedly, thanks to Frank’s recommendation. It was announced in the December 1964 issue of The Diapason.

In 1968 I returned to the Chicago area to teach at Northwestern University in Evanston and reconnected with Frank. Upon his retirement in 1970 he moved to our small house on Noyes Street and became a frequent babysitter of our children. He eventually fulfilled his plan to retire in Mexico. After he found the experience disappointing, he returned to the U.S. to live close to his sister in Chula Vista, California.

A child of the Great Depression, he was born in Arkansas and was accustomed to living frugally. In his younger years he earned his living in music as an organist, pianist, composer, and arranger. He possessed absolute pitch. His music education was broad. I am his grateful mentee, for imparting to me the skills of American life I would need for the rest of my life.

Special thanks to my friends, Lorraine and Richard, and also to Stephen Schnurr and The Diapason, for allowing me to share my memories.

Karel is currently receiving treatment at the University Hospital’s Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio.