A Conversation with Robert Town

An Interview with Nora Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A conversation with Steven Egler

Steven Egler is Professor of Music at Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1976. He was a student of Robert Glasgow from 1969 to 1981, during which time he completed the B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees at The University of Michigan. Egler is also Councillor for Region V of the AGO.

SE: Please comment about the Gleasons, their teaching, and working with both of them.

RG: They’re both gone now. Harold way back [1980] and Catharine more recently [2003].

SE: How did they compare as teachers?

RG: Quite different from one another. She was very exacting. He was, too, but he was older--a generation older. I didn’t study with her except for some special repertoire. He would suggest that I take a particular piece to Mrs. Gleason that she’d been playing, so I could see what she had to say about it. That was interesting. I studied with Catharine for the whole summer after I had already finished the degree.

But Harold was somebody with a certain presence, because there was a wonderful human mind, sense of humor, and many, many years of experience--and not just in organ. In fact, some of his instructions would be to listen to some orchestral piece because it had something to do with what I was working on; so I did exactly as he told me to do. He had studio class every week--small class, five students.

Catharine’s main influence was in her playing. She played through her recitals before every time that she went on a tour, which was three or four times a year. She would play the tour programs for us up there in [Organ Studio] 427. We could watch everything that she did. Technique was all there. Everything was PERFECT. It was a wonderful example. No frothing at the mouth. Very elegant. THAT was most instructive.

SE: And it was always from memory, right.

RG: Yes.

SE: That’s interesting to me, about memorizing. What about extemporization?

RG: I wouldn’t give you a dime for an organist who couldn’t extemporize a little bit, who has to have every note written down on a piece of paper before he can play anything, who can’t even touch the manuals without having the notes down on the page. I-IV-V-I, if nothing more than that.

But they don’t seem to stress that enough everywhere. I don’t see why they can’t do it. Just scared to death. Make music, as it were. You know what I mean? If you leave your scores at home, on Sunday, go make music. Maybe find a hymn tune and just play on your own. But you know, we’re afraid of it, even though we’ve got music in us and enough technique in our fingers--but of course that takes daily practice.

SE: You’re absolutely right!

RG: It’s partly about your early experiences as a child. There was nothing wrong with sitting down and playing on the keyboard without having anything on the music rack.

SE: Your first teaching position was as professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, from 1951-1962. It must have been very exciting to get a teaching position right after receiving your graduate degree from the Eastman School. Please describe how this appointment came about.

RG: The appointment was in May of that year, and I started teaching in September [1951]. I knew about the place because I knew of at least one student at Eastman from Jacksonville who had been a student of Ruth Melville Bellatti who was the teacher there before I was. There had been Eastman teachers there in the department of music.

The school was about to get a new four-manual Aeolian-Skinner organ in the chapel. It was a beautiful organ, and I was lucky to have it while I was there--the last 10 years that I was there.

I went back to play there, and they gave me an honorary doctorate [Doctor of Music]. [The recital and conferring of the degree took place on October 3, 1975.] It was a high point for me. That concert was the first concert on the Jacksonville/MacMurray Civic Music Series. They had all kinds of things, you know: orchestra, pianists, from all over--not just one area. They had a full house, as I recall. Do you remember Ruth Melville Bellatti?

SE: No. I only recall hearing the name.

RG: She was my predecessor there once removed. She was a classmate of Catharine [Crozier]. She was a superb player, and she was the one that really got the ball rolling on that new organ.

SE: Didn’t Harold Gleason design that organ?

RG: He had a lot to do with it. He made some suggestions.

SE: That would explain the connection to Eastman. 

RG: Many of the teachers had been from Eastman way back into the 1930s. Joe Clelland went there back in the 1930s and brought Ruth to the faculty. That was one of the best things they ever did. Then she got married to Walt Bellatti and started raising a family. That’s when they got Wilbur Sheridan for four years, and then just the time before the organ was to arrive, he left--went to a college in Washington state, and that’s how I got the position. I saw the new organ specification on paper and thought, “You’re leaving this?” Those were wonderful years. Catharine Crozier played the opening recital.

SE: Didn’t you direct the orchestra at MacMurray?

RG: That was the first year that I was there. The director/chairman called me in and asked, “Wouldn’t you like to conduct the orchestra?” “Sure, I can’t wait.” “Well, you’re the only one around here with any orchestral experience.” I said, “What, I haven’t had any orchestral experience.” “Yes, but you’ve PLAYED in one.” That means you are a conductor if you’ve played in an orchestra.

Well, such as it was. They had five violins, clarinet, bassoon, that was it. String bass, cello, and PIANO--fill in, you see. It was kind of pitiful there for a while, but I was game--I had no choice! They had to grab players anywhere you could find them--faculty, local residents, students--and nobody was any good. It was pretty bad, and I wasn’t much better.

We had a concert coming up right away--Christmas Vespers--and we had to get together right away. In the first place, I had to find something that I thought they could play amongst this VAST repertoire in their library. At the first rehearsal, about half of the instruments were there. The next week, it was just be another arrangement of people, sort of like pick-up. I thought that this was hopeless, so I told the pianist to play loud! We’ll have to have something to carry us through. That was my experience with that orchestra. 

I also taught counterpoint, which I wasn’t planning to do, but this other teacher had left. He was the string teacher and taught counterpoint.

SE: How were your organ students there that first year?

RG: The first year, I think that I had six, and I was lucky to have that many. They didn’t know me, and the organ was coming next year. Then I started playing over the radio every Sunday afternoon, and that got a lot of attention for that area. Then the students began piling in, and there were some very good ones.

One of the prides of that school was the chapel building, which is a handsome building, and the organ. In the meantime, they have acquired a new music and arts building.

SE: How did your appointment to The University of Michigan come about?

RG: It was late in the year and I had been out in Los Angeles to play for my first national convention of the AGO. Then I played for Clarence Mader at his church in Los Angeles that summer, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Wilshire Boulevard.

Marilyn Mason had played in Springfield, Illinois that spring, and I went over to hear her, and I met her afterwards. Then, in a few days’ time, she called and asked if I would like to be considered for a job at The University of Michigan. There were no vacancies then, but that summer--June--it opened up. So they called me up, flew me back. I met with the dean and the executive board, and was offered the position. Just like that!

SE: Who was the dean of the School of Music then?

RG: James Wallace--a grand guy. Just first rate. He was an ideal dean. The door was always open to students and faculty alike. He was not impressed with himself. His trump card: he was very humane. He would never miss a faculty recital. If there were two on the same night, he would go to the first half of one and the second half of the other. It was the same with some of the older students. He’d show up! 

SE: What have been any highlights of your years at Michigan?

RG: There have been many, such as receiving the Harold Haugh Award for Excellence in Teaching; I appreciated getting that award. And the Eastman School of Music Alumni Achievement Award.

In February 2002, Eastman and the Rochester Chapter of the American Guild of Organists (organized by Tom Trenney) invited me back to do a masterclass for their students. They wanted me to do a roundtable discussion with David Craighead (“Conversation with the Masters”), talking about the “old days.”

Right at the end of that, the Director of the School of Music, James Undercofler, surprised me and presented me with [that year’s] award for Distinguished Alumni Achievement. It was like a diploma, and he read off the citation. This was a surprise, a big surprise.

SE: How have organ teaching and playing evolved over the course of your 50-plus years of teaching? Compare your current students to former students.

RG: Students have changed in the 40 years I’ve been here. They’re not as open and natural. They’re more guarded--not all--more so than they used to be. They had more fun then. It’s all very serious now.

SE: How has the Organ Reform Movement affected organ building and performance?

RG: Well, the level of organ building and tonal design has improved somewhat; but I still enjoy a good E. M. Skinner with certain repertoire, and I have some students who feel that way. They are really fascinated with E. M. Skinner’s philosophy (if you want to use that word). I don’t find anything very charming in the neo-Baroque ideal. Cavaillé-Coll built organs according to his own ideal. He didn’t copy something from before. We wouldn’t have the great 19th-century heritage in France if he hadn’t followed his own creative urge.

SE: What advice would you give to young organists entering the profession today?

RG: Try to think of yourself as a musician first and don’t worry about what’s the latest thing. Follow your own musical instincts. I grew up playing on a flat, straight pedalboard in Oklahoma City, on the only mechanical action organ in town at that time, and I think that it’s still there. It never wore out. It was one of those Hinners--workhorse of an organ--and they just didn’t wear out. Like Austin--it doesn’t wear out.

SE: Can you say anything about your long-standing friendship/collegial relationship with Orpha Ochse?

RG: I first met Orpha when she was new at Eastman, as I was. I was sitting there (fourth floor), and she came up and asked me, “Does it make any difference which of these organs we can practice on?” I said, “No, as far as I know.” We just became friends. The organ department had a lot of new students that fall (1949), but of course, I’d been there since late June--taking lessons, practicing, working--and that’s when I got my church job, which was why I was there so early.

Her personality, sense of humor--very droll sense of humor--you’d think that she was dead serious about something, but she wasn’t. And she had this incredible ability to see into things--the phony side of things, which I appreciated very much, at that time especially.

SE: That must be an incredible thing to have a friend like Orpha over such a long period of time.

RG: Well she’s a rare bird, that’s one thing for sure, and she is also an extremely intelligent bird. She has an unbelievably sharp mind, and therefore it is fun, but you don’t fool her for a minute.

And her books are universally regarded and essential in any organist’s libary: The History of the Organ in the United States; Organists and Organ Playing in 19th-Century France and Belgium, a great resource; and more recently her books about the Austin and Murray Harris companies.

SE: What were some of your favorite organs to play throughout your career?

RG: The 1911 Austin at First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City.

The 1920 Kimball organ at the Shrine Auditorium, Masonic Temple, Oklahoma City.

The 1918 Kimball at First Church of Christ, Scientist, Oklahoma City.

At the Eastman School of Music, the 1936 G. Donald Harrison Aeolian-Skinner in Strong Auditorium. This was a totally different idea of organ design. I hear they’re going to restore it.

Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts, 1936 Aeolian-Skinner. It has some of the loveliest sounds that you will hear anywhere. It, along with the Groton School instrument (1935), represented Harrison’s new “American Classic” design.

High on this list would be Merner Chapel, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illlinois: 4-manual Aeolian-Skinner (1952).

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1934 Aeolian-Skinner. It has been through many transformations/revisions but is now restored (under the supervision of current organist and former student, Peter Stoltzfus).

Bridges Hall, Pomona College, Claremont, California, 2002 C.B. Fisk. I just heard this a few weeks ago, demonstrated beautifully by college organist Bill Peterson--such an organ and such playing!

SE: What various influences led you to devote your efforts to the romantic repertoire?

RG: I like the music! I loved the Franck D-minor Symphony and heard it performed before I actually played it in the high-school orchestra. The Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3--a recording that I had on 78 record--the reeds of that organ were compelling. I identified with the sounds of those instruments right away. I did not know much about Cavaillé-Coll, but I knew that I liked those sounds.

SE: Do you want to say anything about your performing career, Bob?

RG: Well, I enjoyed it while it lasted. I’m not performing any more. I have what is called atrial fibrillation. Have you heard of that? My heart doesn’t have any rhythm: it doesn’t know where the beat is. It goes crazy because you can’t get enough oxygen for it to operate correctly, so I’m taking all of this medication--I have been now for a couple or three years. It keeps me sort of on an even keel.

The last performance that I did, I almost couldn’t play. I’d been out to West Texas. What a trip--nightmare of a trip! Flying out there, changing in Houston, missing the connection, galloping through the terminal, then missing the connection, then pain all over every inch of my body. It was heart failure. The heart was trying to do the best that it could, but it couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know that at that time. 

I got to the church the next morning. The organ man was there and the organ wasn’t ready to play. He said that I’d have to come back later on in a couple of hours and that they needed more time. I never got to the organ until the night before the performance. It didn’t go very well. I was too tired, by the time I got to second half, I thought that the other pieces were ho-hum, ordinary. Then I thought that maybe this was the right time to “turn the corner.”

I then went to North Texas State University, Denton, Texas, which was presenting a conference on Cavaillé-Coll. I did a recital of that repertoire on that organ in the main hall, and that was hard to do, too. I was just exhausted, and I couldn’t get rested. I thought then, “Just cool it. You don’t need to do this the rest of your life.” The more that I thought that way, the more comfortable I felt.

I played Widor Seventh, complete, on the last part of the program. I got into the next-to-last movement (slow movement) and the organ ciphered, so I had to stop, of course. By this time, I was so dizzy that I didn’t know which way was up, so they came up to see about me. I told Jesse Eschbach, my former student, that I couldn’t go on and that he would have to help me out and that I couldn’t finish the recital. Meanwhile, the audience was wondering what was happening since I didn’t return. I was supposed to teach a performance class the next morning. I did get up and do that.

Then I went to Memphis. I got things worked out, but there was trouble with the organ and one of these impossible situations where the console is where you can’t get to it--you needed to be an acrobat! Nice acoustics, though. Nice organ--Schantz. So I didn’t go. I didn’t play. I cancelled out about an hour before curtain time--too dizzy!

They all seemed to understand when I told them what had happened. But that was the last time I attempted to play anywhere, and I thought then, “That’s it. I’ve done this now since I was that high, so that’s fine.” Having made that decision, I felt as if there was a big weight lifted off of my shoulders. But I’m sorry that I didn’t know more about it (my situation) before that performance because people were down there and waiting. So I got on the plane the next morning and flew back here, and that was it.

SE: So, what about retirement and the whole concept of retirement?

RG: The concept of retirement? Well, at The University of Michigan we have what they call a retirement furlough. It’s a nice deal. You have another year to do things that you want to do and get paid full salary. You teach as much as you want to or not at all. And they’ll furnish you with a studio or office.

SE: So, will you do that then?

RG: I’m going to stay right here for the time being--and then, we’ll see. I have no idea what I’m going to do after that. I think I’m going to get together all of my annotated copies of all the scores of Franck, some Widor, and some Sowerby, and get those out. That’ll take me the next 10 years!

SE: What about recording?

RG: The only thing that I regret is that I didn’t go on and record more than I did. I wish I had gone ahead and done all the Franck. I had that in mind, but I didn’t get to it soon enough. And I’m not too happy with what I did, although I’ve been told over and over again how wonderful it is, so I thought, “OK, if you think it’s so wonderful, I’ll shut up.”

That was a wonderful organ (All Saints’ Episcopal, Worcester, Massachusetts) for Franck, rather than packing up and going abroad. I didn’t want to do that. There’s a lot more to a “telling” performance than a particular organ. The particular organ does help, but I don’t think you have to have only THIS organ. If you do, you’re kind of stuck.

SE: Your legacy as a teacher and a performer are legendary, and you have been an inspiration to countless numbers of organists, myself included. What do you feel has been your greatest contribution to the organ world?

RG: Students (without hesitation), and I don’t hesitate a minute to say that, in spite of a few huge disappointments; yet some times I can’t stand them! But that’s more lasting. And maybe, to a certain extent, my performance, because you demonstrate what you’ve been teaching. One should be able to do that: put up or shut up. But I’ve done that over a period of how many years, so I didn’t feel too badly about realizing I couldn’t do it anymore or shouldn’t do it anymore.

RB: It’s like a chain of succession.

RG: Well, we now have the next generation of mine. I’ve been blessed the past 54 years with some extraordinarily talented students--almost too numerous to list here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 18, 1914-September 19, 2003

Catharine Crozier died on September 19, 2003, in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 89. A complete obituary appears in the November issue of The Diapason ("Nunc Dimittis," page 10). The following tributes are presented In Memoriam.

Catharine Crozier--Paragon of our profession

A fond remembrance by Thomas Harmon

Long before I saw her or heard her play, I heard the name Catharine Crozier spoken with reverence by my boyhood organ teachers. It was not until my undergraduate years at Washington University in the late 1950s that the long awaited opportunity presented itself when she came to St. Louis to play on the university's recital series in Graham Chapel. I shall never forget seeing her walk gracefully in her stunning floor length gown to the console, front and center on the chapel dais. A radiant smile on her face, she was truly a vision of elegance and beauty as she ascended to the bench, parting the skirt of her custom-made gown and draping it in a regal train over the back of the bench. Even before she raised her hands to sound the first notes, she had me mesmerized. I was in the presence of royalty, and, as the recital unfolded from memory, piece by piece, so perfectly juxtaposed, meticulously registered, beautifully articulated and flawlessly played, I knew that I was experiencing greatness. Little did I know, when I stepped up in awe to meet her and gush my admiration following the recital, that someday she and her renowned spouse Harold Gleason would become dear personal friends during their California years.

Many times over the next four decades I was treated to a Crozier recital, and my experience was always the same--programming that was on the cutting edge in exploring both early and new music, remarkable stylistic versatility that was always historically informed and up-to-date throughout her long recital and teaching career, meticulous registration with appropriately applied artistic restraint and impeccable technique. My first opportunity to hear Catharine after that unforgettable recital in Graham Chapel came more than a decade later, after she and Harold had moved to California and I had assumed the post of university organist at UCLA. One of my first actions in that post was to oversee restoration of the 4-manual, 80-rank Skinner organ in Royce Hall, designed by Harold in consultation with G. Donald Harrison. Harrison did the tonal finishing, and Gleason played the inaugural recital in September, 1930. Thus, I had many reasons for inviting Catharine to play at Royce Hall in January, 1972. My wife and I invited Catharine and Harold to be our houseguests during her recital visit, and we spent a memorable time together getting to know each other. They kept us laughing with their favorite form of humor, limericks, at which they were both virtuosi. Harold contributed greatly to my file on the Royce Hall organ with colorful stories of his California days and his interaction with UCLA, E. M. Skinner and G. Donald Harrison. (I was later to capture this on tape in an oral history interview that I did with him in another of the Gleasons' visits with us in 1978.) Catharine enjoyed our new Hradetzky house organ and revealed her ingratiating personality and clever wit, complemented by her delightful chuckle, as well as her appreciation of fine food and an occasional glass of sherry before dinner. Her Royce Hall recital was, of course, a triumph and a special moment for Harold to whom we paid tribute as the designer of the organ.

Sue and I later enjoyed being the Gleasons' guests in Rancho Bernardo, near San Diego, and later in their second California home in Claremont. Despite their success and fame, they lived a disciplined, unpretentious life, committed to artistic and scholarly excellence. It was in their Rancho Bernardo home that I saw and heard for the first time Catharine's harpsichord and cherished house organ by Laukhuff, with its 2-manual, custom-built Aeolian-Skinner console, on which she did much of her practicing and memorization throughout her career. The organ was designed to fit comfortably in a normal 8-foot ceiling height and to be easily movable, quite fortunately, since I believe it was purchased in their Eastman days, subsequently moved with them to Rollins College in Florida, then to four different locations in southern California and finally to Portland.

The year 1980 marked the 50th anniversary of UCLA's Royce Hall organ, and I invited Catharine to re-create Harold's 1930 dedication program, an invitation that she was pleased to accept. By this time we had become dear friends, and I revelled in hearing stories about Catharine's then forty years as a major recitalist. We discovered that we had a mutual love of trains, and she told enthusiastically of her train adventures all over the country as well as her spirit of adventure in exploring, usually on foot, each new town or city in which she performed. Catharine's recital at Royce Hall on June 6, 1980, was a very special event, indeed, and in retrospect was given further poignance and meaning by the fact that Harold Gleason passed away just three weeks later. Harold's funeral in the Claremont church that the Gleasons had attended offered yet another example of Catharine's very special qualities as a human being. Her presence that day was a role model of  deep spiritual faith, personal strength and acceptance, and her decision on the music for the service was communicated by the simple printed statement that the organ would be silent this day in respect for the loss of Dr. Gleason.

Another memorable recital occurred sometime in the early 1980s, when she performed Ned Rorem's complete Quaker Reader at Whittier College Chapel, including narration by Hollywood actor Peter Mark Richman.  Rorem, a great admirer of Catharine who was a champion of his and many other composers' new music, was present. If I had to rank them, I would say that the greatest Crozier performance that I have ever heard, perhaps the greatest organ recital that I have ever experienced, was her program for the 1987 Far West Regional Convention of the AGO in San Diego. Flawlessly performed by memory on the First Presbyterian Church's superb 4-manual Casavant organ were three 20th-century works: Ned Rorem's Views from the Oldest House, Norberto Guinaldo's Lauda Sion Salvatorem, and Leo Sowerby's Symphony in G Major (a Crozier signature piece throughout her long career). Following her performance, I told Catharine that I had never heard her play with such flair and depth of expression, and in an example of her keen wit, she replied that she was just now beginning to feel in control of the instrument. A day or so after the recital, dear Catharine accepted my invitation to have lunch with me and take a cruise aboard my boat at the harbor in Oceanside, and I shall always remember her boarding the boat like a seasoned yachtsman and her delight in the sea world around us. She loved adventure.

When I made my decision in 1983 to step down from my position as organist at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica to take on the job of Chair of the UCLA Music Department, I approached Catharine, who had moved to Whittier after Harold's death, about the possibility of her serving as interim organist at the church while a search was conducted for my successor. She indicated that she might like to do this, and the end result was her decision sometime later to accept the church's hopeful invitation to stay on as the regular organist. Fortunately, she accepted, moved to the Santa Monica area and delighted the congregation with her marvelous service playing for the next nine years. I was on hand to pinch hit for her when she was away playing recitals, but she proved to be dedicated to the position and seemed to thoroughly enjoy being back on the bench playing services regularly. The choir adored her (everyone did!) and many stayed in touch with her as personal friends after she moved to Portland in 1992. At that time, I had just stepped down from the chairmanship at UCLA and accepted the church's invitation to return for what turned out to be another nine years. While she was there, Catharine had overseen the installation of new swell reeds and a new great mixture, making the organ better than ever. Typical of her exemplary pedagogical approach to playing the organ, the organ copies of the hymnal and anthems were lightly marked in pencil with her fingerings, pedallings, registration and manual changes. I learned a lot from them and respectfully left the markings for my successors.

Late memories: her stunning 80th birthday recital at the Crystal Cathedral (how could anyone but Crozier play such a huge organ with such grace and control at the age of 80?); her 85th birthday recital at the First Congregational Church on the world's largest church organ (by this time she was handicapped by the loss of vision in one eye, but she had no trouble finding her way around the maze of that immense console and tossing off the Liszt BACH as though it were easy); and, finally, her "Life Experiences" presentation at the 2001 Northwest Regional Convention of the AGO in Eugene. I noted that she had grown quite frail, as John Strege and I called for her at her hotel room to escort her to the venue for her presentation, but her radiant smile and warm greeting were not frail. Her presentation was deeply moving to me and, I am sure, to everyone present. It was the last time I saw Catharine in person, although we spoke on the phone periodically after that. I shall miss her presence and her friendship but will be nurtured for the rest of my life by happy memories and her supreme example of excellence.         

A tribute to Catharine Crozier Gleason

by Karen McFarlane

To read Catharine Crozier's recital reviews is to realize what a superb artist we have lost. "Catharine Crozier . . . may be an honored veteran among organ players . . . but she can still run rings around much of her younger competition, not only in interpretive style but in sheer technique as well." (New York Times) "At home in any style, the versatile performer captured the excitement of an accelerating fugue by Schumann, tossed off a Hindemith sonata with neat non-sentimentality and made sparks fly in a fiery virtuoso finale by . . . Milos Sokola." (The Plain Dealer) " . . . she always got to the heart of the music." (Los Angeles Times) Through the observations of music critics, we have a picture of some of the recitals she played.

Those who were in her audiences during the course of her 62-year career saw a slender, elegant woman walk "onstage" and instantly communicate a commanding presence. By her demeanor, one knew even before a note was heard, that she was an authority; as she played, the depth and range of her artistry simply confirmed it. Her discipline, her attention to detail and her high intelligence were all part of a persona "programmed" for a successful life and career as performer and teacher. In thinking over the 38 years I knew Catharine, several adjectives come to mind: elegant, shy, witty, hard-working, thoughtful, warm and yet also reserved. She was comfortable with solitude. One did not "buddy up" with Catharine Crozier, yet she had close friendships in her life which she greatly prized.

I have clear memories of Catharine. First meeting her in 1965 during a sweltering summer in New York City, I was struck by how cool and unruffled she was by the heat, how as she taught students whose fingers were nearly sliding off the keys, she seemed unaffected by a similar human malady! In my mid-twenties I had the good fortune to share some delicious and entertaining meals with Catharine, her husband Harold Gleason, and Fred Swann, three people who from my perspective were on towering pedestals. It was the first time I realized that the finest artists tend to also be marvelous people, a truism I have been interested to observe ever since. Although I remained in a certain awe of Catharine all the years I knew her, I came to see her as a human being rather than as someone out of reach.

At the opening of the Tully Hall organ, where she shared the program with E. Power Biggs and Thomas Schippers, I was thrilled by Catharine's performance of the Barber Toccata Festiva, from the moment she walked onstage till the moment she left it. I remember being riveted by her performance at The Riverside Church of "Mary Dyer did hang as a flag" (Ned Rorem's Quaker Reader), as she fiercely portrayed that condemned woman's death. Then, on her 80th birthday she played a dazzling recital (all from memory except for one piece) at the Crystal Cathedral, closing with the Widor "Toccata" as her smashing encore. Considering that she had awakened the morning of the previous day in a swaying 20th-floor hotel room during the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, her performance was remarkable for its calm ease. She was always so well prepared and confident, that even an earthquake could not shake her performance.

One of my fondest memories is of the time Catharine, my husband Chick Holtkamp and I vacationed at Mohonk Mountain House. She would invite us to her room for sherry in the late afternoon and, beautifully attired, she would join us for dinner. Though she declined to go on strenuous hikes with us or swim in the lake, she treated us to a staid carriage ride, which was pleasantly old-world in its flavor. Her innate sense of formality in such a setting was utterly charming; she had a talent for quiet enjoyment in any place she inhabited.

I recall watching her teach a master class at Eastman during her late 80s, with her mind untouched by age in any negative way, her warmth toward the students genuine, her knowledge of the music complete. She was a total professional to the end of her life. I recall the time when I was astounded at hearing her play a certain wedding processional. When I expressed my amazement that "I never thought I would see the day when Catharine Crozier would play the Wedding March," she in turn surprised me by her retort, "It comes with the job!"

The last ten years of Catharine's life were among her happiest, mainly due to her appointment as Artist-in-Residence at Trinity Cathedral, Portland, Oregon. The high musical standards of Canon John Strege and his superb choir met her own on a happy level. I flew out to Portland on four occasions during her final decade, always dining with her in good restaurants (she had a fine time "researching" restaurants before choosing which ones we would go to) and of course going to church with her. Each time we would attend a service at Trinity Cathedral, she would lean over and quietly say "I just love it here!" The last time I heard her there in recital was the first day of April, 2001. She was, as ever, splendid.

In addition to Catharine Crozier's grace and intelligence, she was possessed of an optimistic nature. She was not immune to sadness, but she had that sturdy Oklahoma constitution that just goes forward in the face of any adversity. Even when she lost one eye in the last years of her life, she said "Well, I just go on." Indeed, after the loss of that eye, she played her 85th birthday recital at First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, to a packed church of admirers. Catharine had a funny story to relate about the eye trouble that caused her to stop driving. She started calling a local taxi company to take her to the cathedral to practice each day, then later back to her apartment. After about a week of this, the drivers stopped asking her destination and automatically took her to one place or the other! She was pleased at being such a celebrity among Portland's taxi drivers!

There are many good stories "out there" about Catharine. Upon her death, I received some touching e-mails from friends and admirers which related to first meeting her, first hearing her play, studying the organ with her, and so on. One man commented on the special quality of light which seemed to infuse her playing during her later years, and he was quite right. In the early part of her career she was well-known for her brilliant technique and effortless playing, but as she grew older she continued to build on that technique, bringing a complete artistry to her mature years. We are fortunate that she recorded several CDs during the last 20 or so years of her life, among them first-rate performances of Rorem and Sowerby. A supporter of the highest possible standards in musical performance, she remains an excellent model for today's young musicians to emulate. She would probably tell them to seek out a fine teacher, develop an infallible technique, practice diligently, learn your repertoire thoroughly, have a firm goal of becoming an artist, behave in a professional manner, and you will have a fine chance for a career. Catharine Crozier lived a full and interesting life. Her innate musical talent, her thoroughness in her work, and her consummate artistry gave us a person who was a living legend in the world of organ music. The immense regard her fellow artists the world over had for her is testimony to her great stature among them. On both a professional and personal level, our loss is deeply felt.  

Remembering Catharine Crozier

by Canon John Strege, Director of Cathedral Music, Trinity Cathedral, Portland, Oregon

Reflecting on Catharine Crozier's involvement at Trinity Cathedral as Artist-in-Residence these past ten years is a remembrance of graciousness, superb artistry, encouragement, and unbridled enthusiasm. When I was notified that Catharine was moving to Portland, the Dean of the Cathedral and I immediately wrote her asking if she would consider becoming Trinity's Artist-in-Residence. In what seemed like only hours, she quickly responded by saying that she would be most pleased to accept this position. So began my relationship with Catharine.

Catharine would practice most afternoons in preparation for occasional Sunday morning voluntaries, organ recitals, and in the first years, her out of town master classes and recitals. As we developed a friendship, I was always humbled by her enthusiasm for the music at Trinity. She embraced the magnificent Rosales organ, the liturgy, the Trinity Choir and Cathedral Chamber Singers, and the loving Trinity community.

In the later years, as we drove together, attended concerts, had lunches and dinners, I was privileged to sample her great sense of humor, her many opinions about legendary organists from the past, her reminiscences of her extraordinary career and life with Harold Gleason, and her timely words of encouragement for my work in the church. When I asked her if she could arrive a few minutes early for one of her practice sessions to hear an organ piece I was preparing, she responded with, "How about this afternoon?" With her generosity, these "brief" coaching sessions could last well over an hour. As I have frequently mentioned to my colleagues, having Catharine Crozier in the congregation on any given Sunday gave a new meaning to the preparation of organ voluntaries for the liturgy.

As Catharine lived out her final decade in our midst, her playing at Trinity evoked an unspeakable transcendence. Her life was lived in the realization of being in the moment, maintaining the integrity of purpose and spirit, and always looking ahead to new challenges and opportunities.

Of the many blessings in my life, I consider the opportunity of being with Catharine one of the greatest. I cherish our friendship and affection we had for each other. Her physical absence is a profound loss, but her spirit, musicianship and grace will remain with me for all time.              

Remembering Catharine Crozier

by Fred Swann

Many of us can identify a person who, by their influence and inspiration, has been paramount in the development of our lives and careers. Catharine Crozier was that person for me.

Although I had read about her and had heard one of her recordings, I didn't meet Catharine until the summer of 1949. I had just finished my freshman year at Northwestern University School of Music when she and her distinguished husband, Harold Gleason, came to teach and to lead a summer church music workshop at the university. I had been playing the organ since age 10 and intended to be "a good church organist," but that summer the Gleasons convinced me to commit to a career as an organist.

Catharine played a recital on the E. M. Skinner organ in St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Evanston as part of the conference. The combination of her incredible performance and that organ, one of Skinner's most remarkable and exceptional instruments, was so overwhelming that on that very evening my standards of musicianship and performance were set in stone for life. I became a Crozier "groupie"--wore out all her recordings as they came out, traveled huge distances to hear her recitals, and tried, pathetically as I look back, to emulate her playing style. In addition to the musical benefits, I was privileged to develop a cherished friendship that has lasted a lifetime.

That same summer I played the Langlais Te Deum for the Gleasons. It was then still new to most American organists, and even they had not heard it. It became one of "her pieces" and she would frequently remark about my bringing it to her attention. Despite her encouragement and interest in having me study with her at Eastman after completing degrees at Northwestern, I felt so inferior and in awe of her that I was terrified to take the Eastman audition. Fearing the humiliation of not being accepted, I chose to study at Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music in New York. Mrs. Gleason, as we called her then, became quite cross with me over this, but, as things sometimes happen, the decision to go to New York City turned out to be a fortuitous thing for my career and for our friendship.

Forgive me if I've written too much in attempting to establish the roots of my indebtedness with this wonderful lady and consummate musician. The stories and anecdotes would fill a large book, but here I want to pay homage to my mentor--for although I never formally studied with her, I have never stopped absorbing knowledge and inspiration from her.

You're reading a number of tributes in these pages, and very probably many of them have used the same words in describing Catharine. She could be stern in her expectations from students, but her compassion and humanity never stopped growing throughout her life. She was thoroughly professional and never failed to live up to the highest demands that she made upon herself. She was the personification of elegance in her playing, and just to watch her at the console was a lesson in grace and form. Posture, hand position, economy of movement and a complete involvement in the music all combined for incredible performances. She had a great thirst for continual learning that allowed her music making to remain fresh and vital whether she was playing one of the "old masters" or a contemporary work. She played in perfect style, and with the latest scholarship, everything she chose. She embraced new works of many composers, especially American. Her performances of these works was so compelling that she "sold" them to a profession and to audiences that were usually more ready to accept the latest from France and elsewhere.

A physically attractive woman who carried herself with poise and grace, she was a quiet person--but she never "missed a thing," had a wonderful, dry sense of humor, and an infectious laugh. She could often say more with a look than some people can with many words. She delighted in simple things, like being driven up and down Fifth Avenue in New York to look at all the lights at Christmas time. When young, she enjoyed fine food and fancy restaurants at times, but her own cooking abilities were limited. If she invited you to dinner the invitation often came with the question "Well, would you like the tuna casserole or the other one?"

Dr. Crozier kept performing until about a year before her death. People just wouldn't let her stop. I had to do some real arm twisting to convince her to play recitals on her 75th and 80th birthdays at the Crystal Cathedral, where I was in residence at the time. Each program was stunning despite her misgivings beforehand. When I greeted her as she left the console at the conclusion of her 80th birthday recital, she, having just finished a stellar performance of the Reubke Sonata on the 94th Psalm broke into a wide grin, cocked her head, snapped her fingers, and said "By crackey, I did it!" And she continued to "do it". Despite advancing age and physical handicaps that would cause most people to quit, she finally agreed after much cajoling to come to First Congregational in Los Angeles to play a recital on her 85th birthday--and what a wonderful time we had! Friends had come from literally around the country and even some from Europe. After that she slowed down gradually but still played Vesper recitals at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, on the great Rosales organ she loved and recorded on so magnificently.

Because of the wonderful friendships with the cathedral staff, especially Canon John Strege and Kevin Walsh, and the loving care she was given, she almost reached her 90th birthday in a very content existence. When a handful of us gathered near the organ console in early October for a private service of blessing and commitment of her ashes, there were tears and sadness--but also enormous thanksgiving for a life that brought so much joy and inspiration to untold thousands of people over her long and distinguished career. Her influence will live on for many generations to come.  She is now at peace.  May light perpetual shine upon her.      

Marcia Van Oyen is Minister of Music, Worship and Fine Arts at the First United Methodist Church of Plymouth, Michigan. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan, studying organ with Robert Glasgow.

For over half a century, Robert Glasgow (1925–2008) imparted his mastery of the pipe organ to generations of eager students, holding teaching positions at the University of Michigan (1962–2006) and MacMurray College (1951–1962). He was a combination of pedagogue, preacher, conductor, and touchstone for musical excellence, and always a wry commentator. Efforts to perfect technique were all channeled towards creating a performance that was infused with emotion, well proportioned and prepared, and as a result free to spin effortlessly into a polished, engaging performance.
He was no less a teacher when performing himself. During his peak performances, the music would float palpably in the air, waves of sound undulating through the auditorium as if they were alive. His performances were neither earth-bound nor encumbered with fussy articulations or gyrations at the console. His disciplined, quiet technique and painstaking orchestration of the organ’s voices rendered many memorable concerts.
On May 29, students, colleagues, and friends gathered at the Hill Auditorium on the University of Michigan campus for a tribute concert to honor Professor Glasgow’s legacy. Organized by Jeremy David Tarrant, the program included stunning performances by six former Glasgow students: Susan De Kam, Steven Egler, Peter Stoltzfus Berton, Charles Kennedy, Martin Jean, and Jeremy David Tarrant, as well as personal remembrances given by six speakers from various eras of Glasgow’s career: David Palmer, Marilyn Mason, Louis Nagel, William Aylesworth, Martin Jean, and Orpha Ochse.

David Palmer kicked off the evening with some introductory remarks: “As a teacher and mentor, here was one who tapped into the depths of music in an uncompromising and exhaustive way, whether teaching or performing. Who of us who were his students can forget lines such as ‘Why can’t organists join the musical human race?’ as he decried dull or faddish playing. ‘Don’t aim to just please organists in your playing.’ Or ‘Why, there’s nobody at home,’ as he tried stop after stop, searching for just the right sound. ‘Think of pinwheels,’ he said to me in Messaien’s Transports de Joie. ‘Think of a French sauce, as you play this, not just meat and potatoes,’ attempting to get us beyond the notes. Food was often a ready source of imagery for him. As I got closer to my own undergrad recital, and in his frustration in trying to get me out of my reserved personality, he blurted out, ‘Just play the hell out of it!’ Performers he idolized were not organists. He urged us to hear the likes of Artur Rubenstein, Pierre Fournier, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, and so on. And of course we heard them all, here in Hill Auditorium.
“Words of praise came only when truly deserved. The effective culmination after months of work, that is, knowing that one had achieved something close to his standard was life-affirming, and clearly relative to an objective personal standard. Easy approval was not Bob’s way, not only with his students, but especially with himself. Would that the reservations he had about his own playing had not prevented the world from having only one published recording of Franck, from All Saints in Worcester. Much of his hesitation probably came from the fact that he knew that no recording fully captures a live performance. And what performances he gave. I’ve said this before, but when Bob played, the audience reaction was akin to the frenzy that Horowitz used to generate. Bob reached any audience. One didn’t have to be an organist to be swept away. His first unveiling of the Liszt Ad Nos, in 1965 if I’m correct, remains one of the great concerts I’ve ever heard in my life. Franck, Tournemire, Vierne, Widor, Schumann, Sowerby, Bach—whatever music he played was revelatory.”

Susan De Kam followed Palmer’s remarks with an elegantly energetic rendering of the Prelude et Fugue sur le nom d’ALAIN by Duruflé. Throughout the evening, elements of Glasgow’s style were evident in the performances, but not slavishly so. He never sought to produce clones of himself, but rather sought to elicit the best from the musical personality and talent of each individual student. The variety of repertoire on the program demonstrates Glasgow’s versatility as a teacher, and his penchant for selecting repertoire matched to a student’s interests and abilities.

Marilyn Mason took the podium next. “I was responsible for hiring [Robert Glasgow]. When I had played in Pennsylvania, at a regional convention of the AGO, several of us had breakfast the next morning. I can remember it very clearly: Harold Gleason, Catharine Crozier, plus a few others who had joined us. We spoke of several things: of our views of organ playing, organbuilding, and specifically of Michigan. At that moment during that breakfast, I shared with Dr. Gleason that we were in the market for a third teacher. Both Bob Noehren and I were teaching here at Michigan. Without hesitation, Dr. Gleason spoke: ‘We have a recent graduate who is a splendid organist and I’m sure a good teacher. Just now he is teaching at MacMurray College in Illinois. He is a fine person and an excellent organist, and I know he will make his mark in the organ world.’ Indeed, of course he did. I came home and I talked to my Dean, Earl V. Moore, and his assistant, Jim Wallace. They were actually the search committee. Those were the days when you had two or three or one—no résumés needed, mostly a high recommendation from Harold Gleason. They were in favor. The next thing was the audition for Bob Glasgow, and the rest of it is history. Indeed he did make his mark, and fulfilled all of the Harold Gleason prophecy.
“When I saw in 2007 that the complete works of Vierne would be published in a new edition, I went to my good friend Charles Reynolds, who runs the music library and said, ‘We must get this. I want to order it and I want to give it to the University of Michigan in honor of Bob Glasgow.’ Bob knew about this. The publication wasn’t ready, but he saw the outline of what was in each volume. This is a beautiful edition. There are thirteen volumes, all the organ works of Vierne, edited by David Sanger.
“So we bought this for the University of Michigan in April 2008 and the bookplate on the inscription of each volume reads, ‘Given by Marilyn Mason in honor of her distinguished colleague, Professor Emeritus Robert Glasgow, University of Michigan, 1962–2005.’
“He was a treasured colleague of mine, and that sense of humor which he had always came to the fore. All of us have a sense of humor, but his was unique, very special. We should make a book of all those wonderful sayings.”

Steven Egler preceded his polished performance of A Triptych of Fugues by Gerald Near with brief explanatory remarks. “Lest the music of Gerald Near stick out like a sore thumb amidst all of this other great literature that Bob played and loved, I need to explain a couple of connections. This Triptych was Gerald Near’s third organ composition, composed for Bob in 1965, and premiered by him in Hill Auditorium January 30, 1966. Gerald Near was a student of both Marilyn and of Bob, while he was a master’s student in composition and conducting.”

Louis Nagel, professor of piano at the University of Michigan, offered these thoughts: “Grandeur and majesty are words that come to mind when I recall the performances I heard from Bob Glasgow. He and the organ were one and the same when he played, and his ability to tame this gargantuan instrument, to console the console if I may say it that way, was inspirational. I remember a particular performance in Hill Auditorium one summer. The temperature outside had risen that day to a hundred degrees, perhaps beyond. Inside Hill—this was before air-conditioning was installed—the temperature was considerably above that. Needless to say, the program included some demanding nineteenth-century works. I arrived in a short-sleeved shirt and casual pants. I even sat by a fan placed in front of an open door. Professor Glasgow walked out on the stage in full concert attire, sat himself at the keyboard, and proceeded to perform for over an hour with the greatest command and ease. After the concert, I went backstage and greeted him. He had hardly worked up a sweat, it seemed to me, despite the athleticism of his performance. (We pianists don’t have to use pedals that way. We have to watch [organists] to realize how comfortably we really have it.) ‘Aren’t you hot?’ I asked him incredulously. ‘No,’ he rather laconically replied. I must have looked disbelieving still, so he told me he grew up in Okalahoma where it routinely got that hot in the summertime in the shade, and this did not faze him at all. I congratulated him and retreated, chastened, but eternally admiring of his honesty and endurance.
“Bob was a very special colleague. I believe that he was as apolitical as he could be; at least he seemed that way as I knew him. Rarely did I have occasion to discuss school issues with him, or serve on any committee other than an occasional doctoral dissertation. I visited, at his invitation, a couple of organ juries, and he was deeply involved in the performances of the students taking their juries, not just his students, but all the students. He was a devoted and compassionate teacher, and I think his attitude made a major impression upon me. His fusion of teaching and performing as two sides of the same coin certainly influenced my own thinking on that subject.
“In preparing these comments, I listened twice to the CD we have in our library of Bob playing the works of César Franck. Franck, as we all know, worshipped at the altar of modulation. I am amused, in fact, when the title of the piece says Choral in E major or Cantabile in B major. For one phrase it is in E or B, and then goes on through 29 more tonalities. I was struck by the fact that Bob also modulated in his life, originally planning to be an architect. Had he changed keys fractionally as much as Franck, we’d probably not be gathered here today to recall his life as an organist. Fortunately, he did not modulate after arriving in the tonality of music, but remained firmly rooted in the parallel tonics of teaching and performing. And thus his long and honorable career here at the University of Michigan serves as a remarkable example to all of us of true dedication, collegiality, grandeur and majesty.” Peter Stoltzfus Berton then gave a focused, fervent performance of Franck’s Prière.

William Aylesworth, who had studied organ with Professor Glasgow at MacMurray College, shared a number of humorous anecdotes from his student days, beginning with his encounter with RG at registration, seated at an old-fashioned student desk: “I walked in to find a rather slender young man with reddish hair, who was nervously shuffling a stack of papers. He had several pens and pencils in one hand, which he kept dropping on the terrazzo floor. He would leap up to retrieve them, just spider-like, and just get going on something, then something else would fall, and it would happen all over again. Not that Bob was ever nervous, or anything like that.” He also recalled being presented with the fourth edition of the Gleason organ method at his first lesson, much of which at that time was hand-typed and hand-scripted. “This book far surpassed the significance of the Holy Scriptures in Bob’s estimation.”
“For us organ students [required attendance at Chapel services] was no hardship. Bob would begin by playing an opening voluntary. Can you imagine him doing a Psalm Prelude by Herbert Howells or the Frank Bridge Adagio in E, or I think he even used to play the Barber Adagio for Strings. To hear him, with his incomparable rhythmic sense giving out a hymn. No fancy harmonies behind it, mind you, but totally as is, as perfectly as anyone could imagine. And believe me, when he got through giving out that hymn, everybody was standing on their feet ready to sing. It was really something. Then there were his magnificent choir accompaniments—often a 17th- or 18th-century piece in Latin or perhaps an early 20th-century work. Some of the Latin titles were mercilessly parodied, which led to endless giggles, from Bob, too. [One of the pieces we performed] was Bach Cantata 140. Of course, being out in the sticks like we were, Bob was the orchestra. I remember the Messiah, Bach Magnificat, Brahms and Fauré Requiems, always accompanied by Bob at the wonderful Aeolian-Skinner. Now he took all of this very seriously, and his accompaniments were rhythmically vibrant, and were color-wise and style-wise as fine as anyone could ever imagine. He would work for hours on these to get them just right. He would say, ‘fiendishly difficult,’ but they were done to perfection. Just imagine having all this to listen to as a student. And I think it helped him broaden his sense of musicianship as well.
“The most wonderful thing about my four years at MacMurray was the example Bob set for all of us. His mind was never still. He knew literature, art, architecture, drama, movies, and led all of us to a deeper appreciate of all that. But it was the musical example he gave us to measure up to, if we could, which was his greatest gift. Several times in the years since, I was able to tell him that he has always been my musical wellspring. It will always be true.”
Aylesworth’s light-hearted anecdotes were contrasted by Charles Kennedy’s intricately colorful and nuanced performance of the Howells Fugue, Chorale and Epilogue.

Martin Jean recalled his early days as a Glasgow student: “It was clear to me from my first lesson with Professor Glasgow that on some level we ‘clicked.’ I played the Liszt ‘BACH’ for him before my first semester of study, a piece that I had a hard time liking, and emerged from his studio that day with a new love of the music. This happened over and over again. But on many other levels, at least at the start, we were strangers to one another. I was a midwestern Lutheran, he was a Scot Presbyterian from Oklahoma. I was thoroughly Germanicized in my aesthetic; he was a Francophile. But one of the things that sticks in my head as different were the ways we kept time. I come from a family of morning people, and, as we all know, no one with any sense would have a lesson with RG before 10:30 in the morning, mostly because he was up half the night before watching old movies in the back room of his apartment. He was as puzzled with me as I was with him. ‘How can you get up so early?’ he would ask. ‘Well,’ I would answer, ‘I like being up when no one else is around. How can you stay up so late?’ He replied, ‘Same reason.’ It never made sense to me. Being a nocturnal animal was just not in my nature and it still isn’t. It seemed a lonely life to me, and as I came to know Bob better, I worried more and more that he lived a lonely life.
“I know for a fact that many of us caught our love for old films from Bob. Ironically, my first glimpse of the Yale campus came through the window of the Taft Hotel in the last scene of ‘All About Eve.’ It was indicative of Bob in general: that which he loved, he loved to share. And we, his students, were all the beneficiaries. He was an open book to us. From music to art to poetry to old movies to great food to Catherine’s killer punch to the joy of staying up late and enjoying the moonlight. It turns out that that nocturnal animal, deriving strength from moonlight instead of sunlight, was not so different from me. He simply liked to stay up later. The moonlight that nurtured him would for me, too, become alluring. Instead of the fierce brightness of the morning, there would be the dazzling gentleness of the evening light, stunning in its own way, a kind of sentinel that looked after him during his night-time vigil. I offer this piece in honor of that memory and so much more.” Jean then read the poem, “Clair de Lune” by Paul Verlaine, followed by a poignant rendition of Vierne’s fantasy piece of the same title.

Orpha Ochse was the final speaker for the evening. She and Bob Glasgow met at the Eastman School of Music, found they had much in common, and became fast friends. I recall Professor Glasgow always speaking of her with the utmost respect. Ochse began, “From the very first, I was awed by Bob’s music making, his understanding of the organ’s tone colors, his sense of style. Even then, he instinctively knew where he was going musically and he was not to be distracted. A quarter of a century later, he still maintained both his stylistic preferences and his artistic integrity through those years of the early music frenzy, a time when organ recitals were often more performance practice than music. And in his later years, he remained on track with his artistic convictions.
“Bob’s students were his family. He worried about them as much as any parent, and he was as proud of their accomplishments as any grandparent. I’m surprised he didn’t carry their pictures around in his billfold. Through the years, many of those students became my friends. I earned a place in that family circle by listening untold times to Bob’s musings about how talented and how wonderful his students were. I may have stifled a yawn, but he did speak truly. His great legacy depends on the generations of students who absorbed the lessons of musicianship that he exemplified. And this evening, we’ve been privileged to hear them create a fitting monument in his honor.
“I recall one time when Bob and I visited Harold Gleason toward the end of Gleason’s life. Harold loved to carry an idea to the ridiculous extreme. He said on this occasion, ‘You know, nothing in nature is ever lost. It may change form, but it continues to exist. If we send vibrations out into space, they just keep going forever. Maybe if we knew the spot in outer space to pinpoint, we could hear Mr. Bach playing.’ Well, Harold was just fantasizing to amuse us, but on this special occasion, we really do hear the Glasgow legacy, and are reassured that it will be perpetuated in new generations of grand-pupils and great-grand-pupils. Those of us who have been privileged to attend great universities and learn from great teachers assume a lifelong responsibility. Somehow we ought to repay the efforts that were made in our behalf, and justify those awesome opportunities.
“I’m drawn to the imagery presented in the letter to the Hebrews. In this familiar passage, the Greek people who are no longer with us watch to see if we will carry forward their work. ‘Since we are encompassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us thrust aside every impediment and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.’” Jeremy David Tarrant closed the concert with a thrilling performance of the Choral and Final from Widor’s seventh symphony.

On the evening of May 29, Hill Auditorium was alive with the legacy of Robert Glasgow, an atmosphere created by the cumulative effect of electrifying performances, affectionate spoken tributes, and the collective remembrances and esteem of all who had gathered to celebrate all that made Robert Glasgow unforgettable.
As I listened to the concert, I mused on my own student days. In particular, I recalled my nervous approach to the mammoth organ console at Hill to play the Franck B-minor Choral for my master’s recital, and several occasions when I laughed heartily at one of Professor Glasgow’s signature comments during a lesson (“It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”). When he would assume the bench to demonstrate a point, I watched, fascinated with the way he used the weight of his hands and arms to move effortlessly over the keyboards. I enjoyed and endured studio classes on Tuesday nights, sometimes lasting until 11:00 pm. I will never forget the day he both complimented and humbled me by saying, “You have enough musical instinct for three people; you just need to calm down.” I treasure his hand-written directions in my Franck scores, and I can still hear his voice in my mind, coaching me through the long phrases.
At the reception after the tribute concert, Huw Lewis mentioned that he had cut short a visit with his family in Wales to attend the tribute concert. I said, “But Huw, this is your family, too.” He replied, “You’re right. They are.” And what a heritage we all share, thanks to the inspiration, encouragement, discipline, excellence, mastery, romanticism, musicality and uniqueness of Robert Glasgow. 

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

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

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

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

Q: Does everybody in Oklahoma have energy like that?

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

Q: What suggestions do you have for young organists?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Would you talk about your family?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: How do you keep your positive attitude?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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