E. Bronson Ragan Memorial Tribute

The Technical and Aesthetic Legacy of Carl Weinrich

by Ray M. Keck

In 1960, in an article about Glenn Gould for The New Yorker
magazine, Joseph Roddy harnesses Nietzsche's terms to describe a dichotomy he
perceives in the composition and the playing of piano music. Eighteenth-century
keyboard compositions "are Apollonian, adhering to classical formality and
reserve; those of the nineteenth century are Dionysiac, being notable for
poetic mood and emotional thunder." Keyboard compositions of the twentieth
century, "for all their involutions, have shown a tendency to return to
the Apollonian ideal."2 Rather than providing a clear example of either
Apollonian or Dionysiac tendencies, Glenn Gould's life and art enclose a
mesmeric opposition of both classical and romantic components: Dionysiac
frenzies during performance, behavior for which he became legend, and
Apollonian compositions and interpretations which are "essentially
dispassionate." It was Gould's interpretation of Bach's "highly Apollonian"
Goldberg Variations which established the young Canadian as a top-ranking
pianist. Playing the Variations, Gould accomplishes his technically flawless
performance, "lean, aloof and fleet," in ten minutes and twenty-one
seconds less than it took Wanda Landowska to complete her highly Dionysiac
performance of the same work.3

Joseph Roddy's description of Glenn Gould and his music
suggests a startling similarity to the Apollonian style and taste of Carl
Weinrich, organist and choirmaster of Princeton University from 1943 to his
retirement in 1973. There are, of course, many significant differences between
the two men.  Gould the pianist was
famous for his histrionics, swaying and singing and conducting himself as he
played. Weinrich the organist was just as known for a calm, classical manner,
an almost unnerving physical control which he exercised even during the music's
most intense passages.4 But, as we shall see, when Carl Weinrich compiled his
own canon of organ music, his choices were very like what the younger Gould
came to champion:  the music of
Sweelinck, of Bach, of Hindemith, of Krenek. In addition, few words could
better describe Carl Weinrich's playing than those applied to Glenn Gould:
"lean, aloof, fleet." And if Gould had his Van Cliburn, so, too,
Weinrich had his artistic antipodes. From his own era sprang the Dionysiac
Virgil Fox, whose preconcert foreplay, cavalier treatment of the printed score,
and wild technical high jinks asserted a violent contrast to Weinrich's
Apollonian creed. Most often compared with Weinrich was his exact contemporary,
E. Power Biggs, whose playing, though technically less precise than Weinrich's,
could hardly be called Dionysiac. Biggs's dedication to popularizing the organ,
however, eventually bred in him a Dionysian's taste, music of uneven artistic
merit from all periods, chosen because it appealed to the untrained listener.
In our own era, Anthony Newman, Simon Preston and Diane Bish are only a few of
the many outstanding Dionysiac recitalists.

Carl Weinrich's importance in American organ music, however,
reached far beyond the university where he made his home. Weinrich was both a
traditionalist and a revolutionary, the former because he chose to concentrate
his energies on the works of Bach, the latter because he was one of a group of
American organists who in this century thoroughly altered American practices of
organ playing and building.5 But what was Weinrich's method and how did he
acquire it?

Lynnwood Farnam: Beauty with Discipline

When Carl Weinrich began in earnest his study of organ in
the 1920s, instruments, the technique of playing, and attitudes toward organ
literature differed greatly from today's prevailing notions. Mechanically
sluggish consoles and the romantic organ's preponderance of 8¢ diapasons
and strings made intricate passages, particularly in the music of J.S. Bach,
difficult to hear and hence not rewarding to master.  Indeed, Bach's famous remark, "you need only to hit the
right notes at the right moment and the instrument does the rest"6
alleged, when Carl Weinrich began his career, not irony and understatement, but
impossibility. Lists of organ stops from those years read like a romantic
orchestral fantasy: flauto amabile, tuba mirabile, philomela. Weinrich was one
of a group of energetic, musically dissatisfied young organists who gathered
about the great teacher and player, Lynnwood Farnam, organist at the Church of
the Holy Communion in New York City until his death in 1930. Together they
reformed and refashioned American organ playing.7

As the first step toward unlocking music's subjective
components or its effect upon the soul, Lynnwood Farnam directed his students'
physical dexterity to the technical components or skeleton of organ music.8 To
approach music's aesthetic ends, Farnam first insisted upon absolute mastery of
the score, careful planning of fingering, endless practice of difficult
passages. Moreover, Farnam demanded an end to the physical pyrotechnics and
theatrical body thrusts which organists often affected at the console. Clear,
clean, precise playing soon brought a predictable dissatisfaction with the
sluggish, muddy sounds of romantic organs and led to an interest in Baroque
techniques of organ building, a return to the principles of construction,
design and stop selection practiced in Bach's era. Farnam's followers, then,
embarked upon a dual quest: more responsive instruments and clearer sounds to
convey more precise playing. Their vision for organ study proclaimed forcefully
the link between technical and aesthetic dimensions of music, the objective and
subjective components of art. And in his own practice, Lynnwood Farnam left
little to chance; before playing a recital, he insisted upon a minimum of
fifteen hours to prepare himself at the instrument he was to play.

In addition to his insistence upon technical perfection,
Farnam's notions of repertoire were built around the music of Bach. He
especially condemned the nineteenth-century custom of including transcriptions
or arrangements of piano music in organ recitals: études of Chopin or
Schumann, pieces such as Debussy's Clair de lune, Rachmaninoff's Prelude in
C-sharp Minor, and overtures and arias from opera. In a series of twenty
recitals, Farnam performed the complete organ works of Bach, a monumental
statement of his musical vision and a feat which his student, Carl Weinrich,
was to repeat many times. Weinrich's appointment as Farnam's successor at the
Church of the Holy Communion, following the latter's death in 1930, indicates
the high regard which Weinrich's playing enjoyed in Farnam's circle.

Weinrich's legacy to his students, and hence to all
musicians who followed him, is three-fold. First, he adopted, practiced, and
passed on Lynnwood Farnam's uncompromising standard of technical excellence as
the foundation of aesthetic satisfaction. Second, having at his disposal the
whole of organ literature, he offered to his students his own special views
concerning repertoire and its use. Third, Weinrich fostered in those about him
an artistic awakening, a refined musical judgment, the unerring aesthetic
sensibility which Plato attributes in the Republic, Book III, to a proper
education in music. Throughout his life, Carl Weinrich stubbornly refused to
practice or to perform any but the very best music composed for the organ.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 

Legacy 1: Technique, Organ Design and Artistry

It is the first of these three legacies, Weinrich's efforts
to rescue organ playing from technical lassitude, which remains his most
difficult, his most heroic and his most far-reaching musical gift to us. To
begin with, Weinrich's Apollonian style rested upon an intense scrutiny of the
notes. His scores included extensive notations of fingering, and much of his
time with students was given over to searching carefully and slowly for the
best possible execution of difficult passages. Impatient with older theories of
fingering, Weinrich was an outspoken proponent of employing, whenever possible,
"the strong fingers," the thumb, index and middle finger of each
hand. He insisted that, especially in the works of Bach, one could always
devise a comfortable fingering for even the most difficult passages. He often
commented that "if the fingering of a particular passage isn't comfortable
when you practice it, the tension of a public performance will probably cause
you to stumble at that spot. A musical composition is like a string of
pearls--one weak knot, and the necklace breaks; one flubbed measure can destroy
the beauty and perfection which you achieve in all the others."

To be sure, a difficult measure or passage, properly fingered,
might require scores of repeated attempts to master. One should know a work
well enough to play each part separately, he insisted, and should practice a
piece for at least one year before performing it in public.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  As if to follow Bach's famous attribution
of his own success to hard work,9 Weinrich the student practiced at least eight
hours per day. At the time of his retirement, he still considered five hours
per day a minimum practice schedule for an active organist.

Weinrich's concern for precision even extended to noting
pedal passages with a "P.N." to remind himself which was the
"pivot note," the moment at which the body should shift its angle to
execute comfortably the pedal lines. 
And then, like Farnam, he allowed himself no other movement at the
console.  He was willing to discuss
diverse possibilities for phrasing, and hence for interpretation, only after a
student had demonstrated undisputed mastery of the work's skeleton. He liked to
say that his first concern was to help a student get the notes firmly in hand,
into the "strong fingers." "After that," he once said,
"we can discuss phrasing at our leisure.  My first job is to see that you can play these notes
correctly and with the same good fingering each time you approach this
piece."

It is natural that, following Lynnwood Farnam's first steps,
Carl Weinrich's tireless zeal to perfect the technique of organ playing led
him, as it had led Bach before him, to a careful evaluation of the instrument
itself, to the impact of organ design upon technical and aesthetic
considerations. Determined that musical lines must be clear to the ear,
Weinrich was an early proponent of spare use of the 8' registers, of eliminating
the heavy Diapason stops and of developing a full Rückpositiv division for
proper registration of the music of Bach. Together with G. Donald Harrison of
the Skinner Organ Company, Weinrich toured the organ lofts of Europe in the
summer of 1936 and studied carefully the instruments whose design and sound he
admired. While head of the organ department at Westminster Choir College
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  (1934-1940), he designed a Baroque
instrument for his studio, the celebrated "Praetorius Organ"
installed in 1939, one of the first instruments in this country built to
recover the clear tonal capacity and clean sounds necessary to the technical
perfection Weinrich sought.

After taking up his post at Princeton in 1943, Weinrich
began with Harrison a rebuilding of the University's enormous Chapel organ,
disconnecting many of the old, useless stops and adding the bright sounds of a
Baroque instrument.10 In later years, Weinrich collaborated with Walter
Holtkamp, Sr. in pioneering efforts to design organs following Baroque models.
The thirty-four stop, three-manual Holtkamp organ at General Theological
Seminary in New York, completed in October, 1958, is a monument to their
labors.11  Weinrich proudly used
this instrument for all of his later recordings with RCA Victor.

Improved technical articulation and improved organ sound
generated new possibilities for interpretation. Both inspired and enabled by
new instruments, Carl Weinrich began to play Bach's works at a far greater
speed than had been the custom. One need only compare Weinrich's early
recordings of Bach with those of Albert Schweitzer, a formidable Bach scholar
but a technically mediocre performer, to understand the very pleasing aesthetic
implications of superior technique, clear sounds and brisk tempi. Throughout
his life, Weinrich remained keenly interested in the relationship between tempo
and music's aesthetic effect. He checked himself regularly with a metronome to
ensure an accurate rhythmic rendering of each passage. He was forever warning
of the danger of rushing the sixteenth notes, even when playing with the
metronome. The margins of Weinrich's music, particularly his Bach scores,
contained a fascinating record of the diverse organs upon which he had
performed and recorded, and the tempi appropriate to each.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  But the happy marriage of superior
technique and intelligent organ design gave birth to unexpected musical
problems, unanticipated artistic discoveries.

In 1959, Carl Weinrich dedicated a new Holtkamp organ for
the First Presbyterian Church, now Nassau Presbyterian, in Princeton. Conceived
as an instrument similar to the organ at General Theological Seminary in New
York, the Princeton Holkamp included a complete Rückpositiv division,
three manuals and twenty-nine stops.12 Organist of the church for forty years,
Mary Krimmel was also Weinrich's brilliant student from his earliest days of
teaching, and she was determined that her congregation should enjoy the fruits
of Weinrich's research into organ design. But upon completion of the organ, a
problem which neither Weinrich nor Mrs. Krimmel foresaw quickly began to
manifest itself. Unlike the New York organ, First Presbyterian's instrument is
housed in an acoustically challenged space. Because First Presbyterian stands
approximately 150 yards from the Princeton Chapel, with its immense Aeolian
Skinner and endless echoes, the several organists who often performed on both
instruments experienced a technical, then aesthetic dichotomy. Detached, crisp
playing necessary for musical clarity in the cavernous chapel produced a
crumbly, thin, and altogether uninteresting effect in the church; stately tempi
suited to the chapel's great masses of sound became tediously slow in the
church. Each setting was an exaggerated circumstance: few rooms could be as
acoustically alive as the Princeton Chapel or as tonally unresponsive as the
First Presbyterian Church.

Efforts to find a technical solution to the aesthetic
dilemma surrounding these two fine organs led Carl Weinrich and Mary Krimmel to
undertake a search for improved articulation, an approach which would finally
produce aesthetically pleasing music in both the chapel and church. For
Weinrich, the subject was not a new one. Questions of how to achieve the best
articulation of a musical line began during his days under Farnam. Carl
Weinrich the student marvelled at his teacher's ability to play a legato line
as though there were tiny spaces of air between each note.13 In later years,
Weinrich often commented to his own students that he learned from Farnam the
secret of how to execute a singing legato without loss of definition and
clarity. Under no circumstances was the listener to sense a staccato touch.

The problem of fitting articulation to the instrument and to
its environment remained a matter of great interest to both Carl Weinrich and
Mary Krimmel to the end of their professional lives. It was my great good fortune
to be the student of both Weinrich and Krimmel and to prepare for many years a
weekly lesson on each instrument. What they learned and I absorbed from this
experience proved the most exciting and complete instruction possible in organ
articulation. Their endless discussions of articulation, of technical
exactitude, of how to execute the notes, would not have been novel in piano
pedagogy. For organ study, it was revolutionary. The following principles
slowly emerged.

First, neither strict legato nor detached, non-legato
playing satisfied the listener in either setting.  On both organs, a sensible alternation between detaching and
connecting notes produced the best effect.  Second, step-motion generally required a legato line, while
skips could be detached.  In the
church, the slightest change from a legato to a detached line produced an
immediate effect; in the chapel, only very pronounced, exaggerated articulation
reached the listener's ear. What in the chapel seemed to the performer a
slightly detached articulation became a singing legato as the sound moved out
to fill the nave. Finally, and most important, the same piece had to be
executed very differently on each organ. In the chapel, Bach's heroic Toccata
in F major had to be played at a tempo deliberate enough to allow an
appreciation of the work's massive chords punctuated by octave leaps and
cadenzas in the pedal. In the church, the Toccata had to move at much brisker
pace; sections following the second pedal cadenza unfolded most effectively if
the organist conceived of one beat, not three, to a measure.

Handel concerti proved to be the most difficult works of all
to tackle. In the chapel, a clearly detached line in all parts produced an
exciting interpretation; in the church, one had to cultivate a very slight
detachment, an articulation midway between staccato and legato, one which
obliged the organist to remain precariously perched on the edge of the keys.
Carl Weinrich, having thoroughly adjusted to the very live acoustics of the
Princeton Chapel, continued to employ a crisp, detached articulation; Mary
Krimmel, confronted with the dry environment, moved to a firm, legato style
made vital by a careful detaching of skips. The lesson is a clear one:
organists must approach each instrument, able to make even radical adjustments
in articulation to suit the organ's setting.

Legacy 2: Components and Uses of Repertoire

As he carried forward Lynnwood Farnam's technical legacy,
Carl Weinrich, like Farnam before him, exercised a formidable influence upon an
entire generation's notion of worthy repertoire for a superior organist.
Weinrich's clearest statement concerning organ literature came in 1950-51, when
Harvard University named him the Lamb Visiting Lecturer in Music, an honor
previously accorded Gustav Holst, Béla Bartók, and Aaron Copland.
For the first time, this prestigious post went to a performer, and the
compositions Weinrich chose for his series of eight recitals form what might be
called the Great Works for the organ.14 Weinrich's Apollonian tastes are never
more apparent: not one single work chosen for the eight recitals comes from the
nineteenth century.

It is here that the history of organ playing records an
accident, an irony, and an amusing juxtaposition. At the same time the
Apollonian Carl Weinrich was playing the eight Lamb recitals in Harvard's
Memorial Church, E. Power Biggs was continuing his custom, begun in the 1940s,
of broadcasting organ recitals from Boston's Symphony hall and Harvard's
Busch-Reisinger Museum. It would be an exaggeration to assert that these two
famous pioneers in organ study and building shared no common ground. As is
well-known, Biggs, like Weinrich, collaborated in the 1930s with his fellow
English ex-patriot, G. Donald Harrison, in the design and building of tonally
improved organs.  Biggs supervised,
in 1937, the construction of one of Harrison's early instruments, an organ for
Busch Reisinger Museum much like the "Praetorius Organ" Harrison
installed at Westminster Choir College for Weinrich. It is this instrument
which Biggs used for his famous broadcasts which began in 1942.15

Operating independent of both church and school, however,
Biggs's turf lay in the concert hall. Sensitive to that environment, he
cultivated a Dionysiac's taste and repertoire unlike Carl Weinrich's chosen
restraint. His programs, which contended with Weinrich's for announcement space
in the Harvard University Gazette of 1950-51, did include Bach, but also a
heavy offering of nineteenth-century music: Franck, Strauss, Schumann, and the
twentieth-century warhorse, Alain's Litanies. Biggs's Dionysiac programming was
conceived to make organ music accessible to untrained listeners, and to widen
organ repertoire to include all manner of popular and classical works.
Weinrich's Apollonian attitude gave no thought to popular taste or preference.
He was delighted with the environment which Princeton's chapel provided for his
recitals: absolute silence before the music began, and no applause at its
conclusion.

Among those Bach chorale preludes Weinrich played most often
were, from the Eighteen Organ Chorales, "O Lamm Gottes"; the
celebrated, double pedal composition on "An Wasserflüssen
Babylon"; and from the third part of the Klavierübung, a spectacular
little fugue, "Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot," and Bach's only
six-voice composition which has come down to us for the organ, "Aus tiefer
Not."

Perhaps the double pedal lines of "Aus tiefer Not"
and "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" appealed to Weinrich.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Only an organist of superlative
technical accomplishment can handle these complex pedal parts, and at the same
time convey the sadness and deep feelings which pervade each piece. And his
playing of much smaller works reliably captured the same mystical quality of
more extended compositions; from the Orgelbüchlein, he often chose for a
recital's encore "In dir ist Freude," "In dulci jubilo" and
"Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Himmel auf"; each in his hands became a
small, flawless jewel.

Of Bach's great preludes and fugues, Weinrich played often
the Fugue in E-flat major ("St. Anne"), the Toccata and Fugue in F
major, the extremely popular Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the Prelude and
Fugue in A minor, the Fantasie and Fugue in G minor, the Toccata, Adagio and
Fugue in C major, the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, the Toccata and Fugue
in D minor (the "Dorian"), the Fantasie in G major, the Prelude and
Fugue in B minor, the Prelude and Fugue in G major and, curiously, the
strangely hybrid Pastorale in F. His playing of both the pedal and manual
ornaments in Bach's Toccata in F, the piece which for Mendelssohn "brought
down the roof of the church,"16 and his introduction of complex
ornamentation in Bach's subject for the Fugue in F major, perfectly executed
each time the subject appears, were spectacular examples of his technical
prowess.

Another of his favorites was the Concerto in A minor, Bach's
arrangement for organ of Vivaldi's double concerto for two violins.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Weinrich performed the spare,
ravishingly beautiful middle movement at a very gentle, meditative pace,
employing a mournful reed for the solo passages, and then fell suddenly,
unexpectedly, with piercingly bright sounds upon the descending scale passages
which open the last movement. His breathlessly exciting tempo of this final
movement, notes spectacularly detached and perfectly articulated, formed a
thrilling contrast to the middle movement's careful legato touch and languid
mood. In addition, for the last movement of the concerto, Weinrich exploited
his talent for innovative registrations and the Princeton organ's resources,
employing two divisions located on opposite sides of the chancel; the result
accentuated the dazzling series of echoes and imitations for which Vivaldi's
music is famous, all played at a speed which no organist could match.

Weinrich regularly included movements from Bach's Trio
Sonatas in chapel services and on recital programs, and described playing these
most difficult of all pieces for the organ as "walking on eggs for twenty
minutes." He was, moreover, wonderfully inventive in selecting music for
the special needs of a university community. For the long academic processions
at all official university functions in the chapel, Weinrich chose, rather than
insipid voluntaries or marches, Bach's elaborately extended chorales and
chorale preludes on "Komm, heiliger Geist," from the Eighteen Organ
Chorales, and "Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit" and "Kyrie, Gott
heiliger Geist," from the third part of the Klavierübung. Weinrich's
choice of Bach's most ornate four-part chorales for processionals at university
functions meant filling the chapel's nave with what are perhaps music's most
majestic chords, most ordered voices. It is hard to imagine a more perfect
blend of reason, sensual splendor, and art: the four musical lines moving
flawlessly toward their cadences as scholars of all ages and academic colors
process ponderously by.

While his primary interest and preference always lay with
the music of J.S. Bach, Carl Weinrich often commented that his favorite piece,
one which he played in public at least once each year, was Buxtehude's chorale
prelude on Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern!  And Weinrich's unbending fidelity to the score did not imply
monochromatic or uninteresting choices of registration. His daring, unexpected
use of reeds in Buxtehude's Wie schön leuchtet, preserved in a recording
made on the Holtkamp at General Theological Seminary, is a truly ingenious
interpretation of a masterpiece. He frequently performed Sweelinck's echo
fantasies and variations on Mein junges Leben hat ein End', Cabezón's
Diferencias sobre el canto del caballero, the preludes and fugues of Buxtehude
and Bruhns, Lübeck's Prelude and Fugue in E major, Noël #10 from
Daquin's book of twelve noëls. He recorded the Handel organ concertos,
Mozart church sonatas, and the Haydn organ concerto with Arthur Fiedler and the
Boston Pops orchestra. In addition, Weinrich released recordings of Baroque
Christmas music and organ music of the Bach family.

Although not as a group his favorite works, a few pieces
from Romantic composers appeared each year on his programs and among his
recordings; reviewers and concert goers frequently commented that it was
surprising to hear the organist famous for definitive renditions of Bach bring
such precision and sensitivity to later works.17 He played Mendelssohn's Sonata
I, Franck's Pièce Héroïque, and Brahms's chorale preludes
and Fugue in A-flat minor. The modern period received his enthusiastic study,
especially Hindemith's First Sonata for organ, Messiaen's Dieu Parmi Nous, and
Marcel Dupré's Cortège et Litanie, copied down when Weinrich was
a student of the great Frenchman. And Weinrich was very proud to have offered
the first public performance of Schoenberg's "Variations on a Recitativ,"
op. 40, a work which he edited for publication.

Weinrich's improvisations, or, rather, what we might call
Weinrich's theory of improvisation, deserve special mention. No Princeton
student interested in music could ever forget Carl Weinrich's spectacular
modulations and improvisations spun out between the organ's offertory and the
congregation's singing of the Doxology which followed.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Retaining the theme from his offertory
piece, Weinrich slipped adroitly through a succession of keys, adding ranks of
pipes with each phrase. Three special pieces reveal how he planned his
modulations or "improvisations," for in truth, Carl Weinrich was too
much a student of the classical principles of form, too Apollonian, to attempt
an unplanned or uncharted improvisation. 

The last movement of Mendelssohn's first organ sonata and
Bach's "St. Anne" fugue, two master works he especially favored for
offertories at Princeton, possess unmistakable, famous musical tropes which he
used to begin the improvisation and to establish its structure. The thundering
arpeggios of Mendelssohn's finale to his first sonata, the "St. Anne"
theme and the subject of the third movement's fugue--each became the germ for
an improvisation.  If the offertory
happened to include an anthem or composition by Mozart, Weinrich quoted the
great chords, dissonances, and dotted rhythms of Mozart's Fantasie in F minor,
K. 608.   Listeners awaited
the inevitable, climactic arrival of the dominant seventh chord, and then the
resolution in G major on which note the singing began. Because Weinrich never
played a preparatory phrase from the Doxology, one was obliged to listen
intently as the downbeat of an emerging tonic chord drew nearer and nearer.
Organists who must provide an improvisational bridge between an anthem and
doxology would do well to remember Weinrich's secret.  One should choose a theme or motif of the piece just
completed, and make that theme or motif the unifying idea of improvisation.

Legacy 3: Aesthetic Sensibility and a Life in Music

Carl Weinrich's third great legacy to organ study and
performance evolved from his decision, taken early in his career, to invest his
energy and effort in only those works he considered the very best compositions
for the organ. Having little patience with Romantic warhorses which merely
exploit the organ's capacity to sustain loud, rushing noise, Weinrich
withstood, in Apollonian fashion like Bach before him, many years of censure
from mediocre musicians and critics who felt him excessively inflexible,
narrow, and rigid in his adherence to Bach.

But Carl Weinrich's early recognition of those compositions
of greatest artistic value, and his fidelity to their study and performance,
widened his place in musical history from that of master performer to master
teacher. His dual authority, first over organ music's technical, then its
aesthetic, dimensions pointed students' interest and organists' labors toward
those composers and compositions capable of capturing one's imagination
forever. His life's work answers not only the question of how to realize the
full beauty of organ literature, but which portions of that literature merit
first, our endless technical effort to play accurately, and then, a lifetime of
sensitivity and reflection to interpret.

Perhaps because as a weekly performer for the Princeton
community, Carl Weinrich had to reclaim and defend his mastery of the organ
each time he sat down at the console, he retained throughout his professional
life both a student's wonder at the act of playing and a student's uneasiness
before the demands of the art. One could say without fear of overstatement that
Carl Weinrich remained, forever, frightfully respectful of the perils of
performance. It is not possible to over-practice great music or to arrive at a
definitive interpretation of its beauty, he liked to observe, nor does one ever
tire of returning "to polish once again an exquisite diamond."

As a teacher, 
Weinrich set before his students a three-pronged challenge which he
himself had answered: to identify within one's self a passionate devotion to
one field of inquiry and to remain forever its restless student; to train
discriminating eyes and ears to direct the efforts of imperfect hands and feet;
to recognize that mastery of a discipline is achieved only when one understands
that it is in the details of construction, in the skeleton, that all great art
is made. The process of intense scrutiny required to master a work's skeleton
teaches us that all art is not equal, all compositions not of a quality to
command one's study for life.

It is not surprise, finally, to discover that in his thirty
years at Princeton University's center, Weinrich's approach to the study of
music practiced the fundamental principles of a liberal arts college.
Princeton's president Robert F. Goheen, in his address to the Freshman Class at
Opening Exercises in the fall of 1965, insisted that a liberal education is not
merely to prepare one to earn a living, but also to open the mind to a field of
inquiry, a body of knowledge or learning capable of engaging the spirit and
intellect throughout life. In order to realize any of the great ends of
education, students must give themselves to a discipline, an intellectual and
artistic task which will command their life's attention, effort, and passion.

In music, a regrettable emphasis, often encouraged by
teachers, upon pursuing "what hasn't been done" occasionally leads
students to invest their time and talent in works or ideas too shallow for
repeated scrutiny, too jejune to sustain a mature spirit. By stating
unequivocally that organists should look to Bach, that the Master's greatest
works require a lifetime to execute and to interpret, that a life spent with
J.S. Bach is a life well spent, Weinrich's legacy can still spare all who will
listen from the sa

Ralph Kneeream

Ralph Kneeream served as assistant organist and choirmaster at St. Paul’s Chapel for eight years, from 1958 until 1966.

M. Searle Wright died on June 3 at the age of 86. See the “Nunc Dimittis” column on page 8 of the August 2004 issue of The Diapason.

The New York Years

 

“Let us now praise famous men . . . those who composed musical tunes . . .”

Searle Wright’s days on earth began in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania on April 4, 1918. His family moved to Binghamton, New York while Searle was quite young, and he always considered Binghamton his “hometown.” From his father Clarence he inherited the traditional, quiet, and introspective aspects of his personality. From his mother Josephine he gained not only a name--she was a Searle whose father served in Congress during the McKinley Administration--but also a great sense of humor, an entertaining and insightful manner of talking, and especially a joie de vivre. Searle was an only child and both parents lovingly sought to give him the very best education, certainly in the field of music.

From an early age Searle, along with his parents, began an association with “Phoebe Snow,” the famous Erie-Lackawanna “choo-choo” train. At first the trips were to Buffalo--the city that gave birth to the “mighty Wurlitzer” and to the Schlicker Organ Company--to study with the city’s leading organist, William Gomph. Mr. Gomph was well-known for his abilities, as well as for his “role” in the McKinley assassination which took place in The Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition: Mr. Gomph “. . . had reached the highest notes on the great organ, and as he stopped at the height to let the strains reverberate in the auditorium, two shots rang out.” Years later “Phoebe” would carry Searle from Binghamton to Hoboken, with a ferryboat link to Manhattan, for lessons with T. Tertius Noble, the famous organist and choirmaster of New York’s prestigious St. Thomas Church. Then, after Searle became a New Yorker, about 1938, there were many trips on “Phoebe Snow,” returning frequently to Binghamton to conduct the Binghamton Choral Society and to visit his parents and his friends.

Soon after arriving in Manhattan he took some classes at Columbia University, an institution he would serve so well for two decades. He studied improvisation with Frederick Schleider at the School of Sacred Music, Union Theological Seminary, another institution he would join as a faculty member. Another individual who had a profound influence on him in these early New York years was David McK. Williams, the colorful organist and choirmaster of St. Bartholomew’s Church. I could not possibly remember all the interesting stories Searle told me of this man--some relating to his use of striking effects in service playing, others relating to his well-known wit in dealing with events and with people.

In addition to becoming immersed in the New York church music scene, he earned the AAGO certificate in 1939 and the FAGO certificate in 1941, and at the time, I believe, he was the youngest recipient of the latter. So we might say that as Searle moved into his early twenties, he was one of the most promising young New York church musicians.

At an early age, while still living at home in Binghamton, he discovered the theatre organ. It was love at first sight. In his teens he earned pocket money playing the “mighty Wurlitzer” at Binghamton’s Capitol Theatre just as he would do again, years later in semi-retirement, playing half-hour programs prior to Binghamton Pops concerts. Many Friday evenings, Searle, Louise (see below), and other friends and I would have dinner together, sometimes at Schrafft’s on Broadway at 43rd Street (“Mother Schrafft’s” to Searle), or at Longchamps on Madison Avenue at 59th Street. What wonderful evenings they were, much talk of music, the Broadway theatre, the New York scene, and yes, even “shop.” Why were the sopranos having so much trouble with this or that phrase, where can we find a few more tenors, etc.? There was always much laughter, as the most recent jokes would circulate throughout the evening. A well-made cocktail and/or a glass of wine always helped to liven things up. But, the pièce de résistance, on a few occasions, following dessert and much coffee, was a short taxi ride to Radio City Music Hall where we were admitted to one of the rehearsal studios high above the main auditorium. It was there that Searle, or perhaps another theatre organist friend, would “wow” the rest of us with the very best in theatre organ performance. What a treat! Unforgettable!

Armed with his Fellowship certificate, with great talent, and solid training in choral directing, organ playing, improvisation, and composing, he set about establishing himself. His first positions were a small parish in the Bronx and then one in Queens. In 1944 he was appointed organist and choirmaster at the Chapel of the Incarnation (the present Church of the Good Shepherd) on East 31st Street, near Second Avenue. There he began to establish himself as one of New York’s leading church musicians. The building has wonderful acoustics. With a small volunteer choir, and just a handful of paid singers, he prepared ambitious programs of service music, using both standard and new works in the Anglo-American tradition. He presented, as well, more extensive works to be sung at frequent Evensongs. In short, his music program at this small Manhattan parish attracted the interest of many leading New York musicians, and his reputation both as an expert and an innovator grew quickly.

When Columbia University was seeking a director of chapel music at St. Paul’s Chapel in 1952, Searle received this prestigious appointment. He remained in this position for nineteen years, until 1971. Concurrently, he was a member of the music faculty of Columbia and The School of Sacred Music, Union Theological Seminary. 

In addition to his full schedule of services, concerts, and rehearsals at St. Paul’s Chapel, he presented recitals and workshops throughout the United States. He served the American Guild of Organists as a member of the examination board, as national secretary, then from 1969 until 1971 as national president. He was instrumental in starting the AGO Young Organist Competition (1952). He was the first American organist to give a recital in Westminster Abbey (1954). He was co-chair of the program committee for the 1956 AGO Convention in New York City. He was chairman of the American “wing” at the 1957 International Congress of Organists, and for this effort, as well as his accomplishments in the field of church music, he was awarded the FTCL, honoris causa from Trinity College of Music, London. He was a member of the committee that designed Lincoln Center’s new Aeolian-Skinner organ (1963).

As a teacher in organ playing, composition and improvisation, he influenced an entire generation of American church musicians. He was an impeccable service player and a fine choir director. As a composer, he left a corpus of organ, chamber, choral, and instrumental works, both sacred and secular, that will remain a significant part of twentieth-century music.

It was a family tradition to spend time every summer on the St. Lawrence River near Clayton in the Thousand Islands region (and did Searle love Longchamps’ Thousand Island dressing on his salads!). After moving to New York City, he would join his parents for several days at their vacation spot on the river. Some of his compositions were first sketched there; he would also plan his upcoming music schedules. Beginning in the 1950s it was to England where Searle would return each summer, putting his assistant in charge of the chapel music program during those months. Based at the fashionable Park Lane Hotel on Piccadilly, he investigated every nook and cranny in the British capital and traveled to every corner of the English countryside. The summer would culminate with trips to Worcester, Hereford, or Gloucester to attend the Three Choirs Festival, an event that attracted him every year from the mid-1950s into the late 1990s. He was honored several years ago when the festival committee programmed some of his compositions. Each year Searle would return from England laden with a ton of new choral and/or orchestral scores, many of which were premiered by him in America at St. Paul’s Chapel concerts.

Searle was admired by legions of colleagues, students, and friends the world over, including many of the outstanding church musicians of the twentieth century. My generation and younger generations looked and will look to this man for guidance and inspiration. Through his compositions, his improvisations, through his innovative program building, and through his students and disciples,  the world of music was and is a far richer place.

I would not be able to end this tribute without speaking of Louise Meyer, the wonderful individual mentioned above. As music secretary during Searle’s tenure at both the Chapel of the Incarnation and St. Paul’s Chapel, she freed him from many tasks--preparing choir schedules, preparing payrolls and service music lists, preparing recital and concert programs for the printer, answering telephone calls, correspondence, etc.--in short, keeping him free to do all the musical things. Louise loved to sing in the choir, and she was a fine second soprano!

What final tribute can we offer this dignified, impeccably dressed, remarkable, good-hearted soul, this special human being? Perhaps an ancient text, a Rabbinic commentary from a Midrash, would be helpful.

Two ships were once seen to be sailing near land. One of them was going forth from the harbor, and the other was coming into the harbor. Everyone was cheering the outgoing ship, everyone was giving it a hearty send-off. But the incoming ship was scarcely noticed.

A wise man was looking at the two ships, and he said: “I see here a paradox; for surely, people should not rejoice at the ship leaving the harbor, since they know not what destiny awaits it, what storms it may encounter, what dangers it may have to undergo. Rejoice rather over the ship that has reached port safely and brought back all of its passengers in peace.”

By the same token, it is the way of the world that when a human being is born, all rejoice; but when the person dies, all sorrow. Rather, the opposite ought to be considered. No one can tell what troubles await the child on its journey into adulthood. But when a person dies after living well, all should give thanks, for he has completed his journey successfully and is departing from this world with an imperishable crown of a good name.

Searle Wright earned the crown of a good name. Our loss of him is great--but the gain of those who knew him is far greater still. He lived well, for himself, for others, and for his God. Requiescat in pace.

by James B. Hartman

Part 1 of this article was published in the May, 1997 issue
of The Diapason, pp. 18--21.

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Westminster Church had a reed organ until 1894, when it
acquired the discarded Warren pipe organ from Grace Church. Then, five years
later, D. W. Karn, Woodstock, Ontario, completed the installation of a
two-manual, 24-stop instrument; the opening recital on the handsome instrument
was anticipated as "one of the most interesting musical events of the
season,"28 and the organ was compared favorably with the one in Holy
Trinity Church.29

In 1912 the church replaced the organ with a four-manual,
49-stop Casavant organ at a cost of $10,500. This organ, which has undergone
several modifications since that date, is the grandest organ in Winnipeg in the
Romantic tonal tradition. For this reason it has served as the location for
many concerts and recitals by local players and world-renowned organ virtuosos
over the years.

St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church

When St. Stephen's Church was erected in 1903, it acquired a
new organ through a rather unusual sequence of events. In the same year the
Winnipeg College of Music opened, with a staff of fifteen teachers who offered
courses in piano, organ, voice, violin, harmony, and theory. The College had
ordered a two-manual $2,000 organ from an unidentified Toronto builder,
probably either Warren or Williams, for installation in their building. How St.
Stephen's acquired their organ was reported in a weekly newspaper:

When it came to making alterations in the new college
building it was found that it would be impossible to erect the organ there without inconvenience and a large expenditure of space--and the college business is growing so fast that space is a very valuable consideration. So, in this dilemma a convenient arrangement was made with the authorities of St. Stephen's church by which the organ will be placed in that church, used at the services and be available for college purposes during the week.30

The organ was only in use for about three years, when it was
replaced by a three-manual, 29-stop instrument, installed by Casavant
Frères in 1906 at a cost of $5,050.                     

Augustine Presbyterian Church

Organ installations received greater publicity when the
inaugural concerts were played by touring recitalists. For example, the
American organist Clarence Eddy, who had been the official organist at the
Paris Exposition in 1899 and who was reputed to have opened more organs than
any other living organist, played two recitals on the new three-manual, 28-stop
organ installed in Augustine Presbyterian Church by D. W. Karn, Woodstock,
Ontario, in 1905:

   Light
and color were transformed into waves of melody at Augustine church last
evening before a delighted audience of between seven and eight hundred music
lovers, assembled at the first of the two inaugural recitals on the new organ
by Mr. Clarence Eddy, a pastmaster on the great church instrument. The church
is as new as the organ so there were no grim ghosts of by-gone Covenanters to
protest against the introduction of a musical instrument in the kirk, but even
had there been they would have been soothed by the carnival of sound which the
magnificent instrument produced under the master touch of the world-wide famous
American organist.

   The
organ is set in an alcove on a level with the gallery and above the choir. It
was manufactured by the Karn Organ and Piano company, of Woodstock, Ontario, of
which Mr. Wright is the local manager. It is a splendid instrument, the largest
and best in western Canada, with over 2,000 speaking tubes; and, thanks to its
large open diapasons, it has a wide volume of sound which is unequalled by many
even larger instruments. Mr. Eddy himself is delighted with it. "It is
brilliant," he said, "and it was a pleasure to me to play on
it."31

The Augustine organ is the earliest instrument installed in
Winnipeg that still remains active, although it has undergone refitting and
renovation several times in the intervening years.

Other Installations

The arrivals of new organs in other large city
churches--Zion Methodist in 1905, Fort Rouge Methodist in 1906 and 1911, Young
Methodist in 1907, Wesley Methodist in 1908, St. Luke's Anglican in 1910, St.
Giles Presbyterian in 1913, and others--continued to receive attention in the
daily newspapers. With some exceptions, inaugural recitals by local players
were often ignored, perhaps because they were not stand-alone events, but were
part of dedication services involving religious rituals and church choirs. The
installation of a new organ also provided an opportunity for local organists to
inspect and play the instrument. Five city organists performed at a private
trial of the new three-manual Casavant organ at Broadway Methodist Church in
1907. Leading members of the congregation and several city clergymen were
present, along with J. C. Casavant, the head of the organ building firm.32

Local Players

As soon as trained musicians arrived in Winnipeg, usually
from England, they opened music studios in Winnipeg to offer private
instruction in voice, piano, organ, and other instruments. Many of these people
were also active in local orchestras or served as church organists and
choirmasters. Some took employment in local music stores to supplement their
meagre income from professional duties. For example, this advertisement was
printed in a daily newspaper:

Mr. C. J. Newman (Associate London Academy of Music),
Organist and Choirmaster, Holy Trinity Church, is now prepared to receive or
visit pupils for organ, piano and voice culture. He is also open to accept
concert engagements as a pianist, accompanist, or for organ recitals. For terms
and appointment, address, for the present, Prince's Music Store.33

In the early days organ recitals in the larger churches were
played before capacity audiences, and they were much more frequent than they
are today. Sometimes they were shared performances involving church choirs,
vocalists, or other instrumentalists. A number of Winnipeg organists were
particularly active, and the newspaper columnists followed their careers with
sustained interest.

One of the earliest was Dr. P. R. Maclagan, a native of
Scotland, who became a church organist there at the age of eighteen. Before
coming to Winnipeg in 1882, he was organist at Christ Church, Montréal,
for about twelve years. He served as organist at several prominent Winnipeg
churches and was in demand as a recitalist throughout the city:

The recital of organ music given by Dr. Maclagan in St.
Mary's Church on Tuesday evening was attended by a large and fashionable
audience, including most every professional and amateur organist in the city.
The programme was an unusually heavy one, and contained representative
compositions of nearly all the Great Masters, classical and modern. . . . The
technical difficulties of some of the pieces, notably the Guilmant sonata, are
enormous; yet they were all performed, not only with apparent ease, but with a
degree of artistic finish seldom or never heard in the country. . . . The
performance was probably superior to anything hitherto executed by that
talented artist, and his many friends who were present expressed their delight
at again enjoying his masterly interpretations.34

On one occasion he travelled to New York to play at one of
the Episcopal churches there. He was musical conductor of the Musical and
Operatic Society, and also of the Madrigal Society, before his untimely death
of consumption in 1887 at the age of thirty-six.

Among the organists who contributed to the development of
the local musical culture was Kate Holmes, organist at Grace Methodist Church
in the 1890s. While a review of her recital at Christ Church Anglican in 1892
was highly appreciative, its condescending tone would not pass late
twentieth-century feminist criteria unchallenged:

Christ church was well filled last evening by a music loving
audience, who had gathered together to hear and appreciate what is not too
often heard in this city, high-class music, well played on the organ. To very
few women is given such power over the master instrument as to Miss Holmes, who
is the organist of Grace church. Without apparent effort, she handles the keys
in a manner that proves her exceptional ability, for a woman, on the organ.

The programme which was selected was a very comprehensive
one, and was well calculated to exhibit the resources of the fine instrument
that Christ church now boasts.35

Robert D. Fletcher played his first reported recital at Holy
Trinity Anglican Church on 27 September 1898; eventually he was appointed
organist at the church, probably due to his demonstrated competence at a number
of recitals he played there and at other locations. This enthusiastic amateur
was pursuing medical studies (he received his medical degree in 1903) at the
time he was awarded a Master of Arts degree from The University of Manitoba in
1902 for his treatise, "The Church Organ--Its Evolution--Some Famous
Instruments." The opening paragraph of his 21-page dissertation accurately
reflected current views of the organ as a rival of the orchestra:

There is probably no instrument which has so engrossed the
public attention, as well as Musicians generally, as the organ, embodying in
its completeness almost all the principal effects obtained from band or
orchestra in solo as well as ensemble playing, even surpassing these in some
respects, and as capable of the most delicate pianissimo as the thundering
forte.

The reviews of his recitals also revealed attitudes towards
organ recitals in general that were widely held at this time:

Music--a branch of the art that, speaking locally, does not
hold its proper place in public esteem. There is usually an absence of vulgar
clap-trap at organ recitals, and in a beautiful church like Holy Trinity the
refined and restful surroundings add much to the impressiveness of such
occasions. Tuesday's programme was by no means a formidable one, in fact there
was not a "big" number on it; but its performance was characterized
by care and skill as to execution, and intelligence as to registration.36

There is a danger in organ music of relying too entirely on the mechanical effects for the interpretation of the work and while these effects are very necessary, in fact indispensable, nothing can take the place of a sympathetic, artistic delivery on the part of the performer himself. There are very few organists in the west who can entertain an audience as did Mr.
Fletcher last evening.37

Fletcher's great popularity can be gauged by the large
attendance at his recitals. He had a dedicated following in other social
circles, for he also played ragtime piano pieces at "smoking
concerts," where groups of men spent evenings playing cards amid the
fragrant odour of superb Havana cigars and being entertained by singers, small
orchestras, and instrumentalists. Even so, ragtime generally was denounced as
musical rot that makes money.38 Nevertheless, one critic deplored the meagre
collection received at one of Fletcher's organ recitals: "His talents will
some day be more substantially appreciated than in a community in which an
audience of one thousand 'music lovers' contribute the magnificent collection
of forty dollars and fifteen cents."39

Eva Ruttan was one of a new generation of organists emerging
in Winnipeg in this period. She received keyboard training in the city before
leaving in 1905 to study with Henry S. Woodruff, organist and musical director
of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis. On her return to Winnipeg two
years later, she opened a studio to accept students in piano and organ and also
became the organist at the new Fort Rouge Methodist Church, where she remained
until 1909. Her first public recital in 1907 was praised in print:

The lady shows distinct improvement in her manipulation of
the difficult instrument, and plays with fine expression. Her best numbers were
"Fanfare" by Lemmens and Lemare's "Andantino." Good
organists are not so many in the city but that a new recruit to the ranks will
be warmly welcome.40 

J. C. Murray, organist at St. Stephen's Church, was not a
frequent recitalist, but he was well known and appreciated in the musical
community. In 1908 a London publisher issued an album of his musical
arrangements of Elizabethan lyrics. One of his rare public performances, in
1909, was compared favourably with those of two world-class players, Edwin
Lemare and Clarence Eddy, who had visited Winnipeg, in terms of his command of
the organ's resources and his mastery of the art of improvisation.41 Murray
later received a warm posthumous tribute from an organist-diarist:

Mr. Murray had been an occasional pupil of Guilmant, i.e., I
think he had benefited on several occasions on courses of lessons designed for
pupils, who could have the time to run over to Paris from Great Britain and sit
at the feet of the great master. Mr. Murray was a superb player and maintained
the highest traditions of organ playing . . . [and] his playing had a charm and
finish that will not be easily forgotten.42

The same diarist also reminisced about George Dore, organist
at Holy Trinity Church for a time, who had arrived in the city from Chatham,
Ontario, late in 1890:

Professor Dore . . . was an elderly gentleman who played for
a time at Holy Trinity and subsequently was organist of the Anglican church in
Portage la Prairie. He had the hall marks of a fine musician and claimed, I
have no doubt with truth, to have been a fellow chorister with Sir John Stainer
and Arthur Sullivan. He was a remarkably clever improviser and a genial soul,
and I think of him with kindness as a man with the instincts of an artist and a
gentleman.43

When Zion Methodist Church installed a new three-manual
Casavant organ in 1905, the new organist Fred M. Gee was at the console. Gee
emigrated from Wales to Winnipeg in 1902 at the age of twenty and opened a
studio to teach piano and organ. In the following year he joined the staff of
the Winnipeg College of Music and became organist-choirmaster of Westminster
Presbyterian Church. For several years after his arrival in Winnipeg, until
around 1907, he was referred to as F. Melsom Gee, perhaps to preserve a family
identification with his father, Melsom D. A. Gee, who followed his son to
Canada in 1906 and served as organist at All Saints' from 1907 until his death
in 1921. Fred Gee served as organist at several churches, including six years
at All Saints' beginning in 1925, and often played inaugural recitals
elsewhere. He established Winnipeg's Celebrity Concert Series in 1927, later
described as the largest on the North American continent. As a full-time
impresario, Gee brought many world-renowned musical artists to perform before
large, enthusiastic audiences. A few months before his death in 1947, Gee was
the soloist in MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the visiting Minneapolis
Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Arnold Dann was one Winnipeg organist who achieved
prominence in the field of music education. Shortly after arriving in the city
to become organist at Grace Church, he opened a studio and secured an academic
appointment at Wesley College in 1918:

With the assistance of several talented teachers . . .
[Dann] will conduct classes in all grades for the study of pianoforte, harmony,
musical aesthetics, and interpretations. . . . Mr. Dann is planning to give a
series of organ and piano recitals personally. In addition he will deliver his
popular lectures on "Music and War," "The Complete
Organist," and "The Rise and Development of the Tune."44

Dr. Riddell, principal of [Wesley] College, recognizes the
importance of music as a communal asset and the necessity of placing it in
Winnipeg on the same footing as other arts and sciences. The services of Arnold
Dann, the well known piano virtuoso, and successful director of music at Grace
church, have been engaged. He has been given a professorship and a place on the
faculty of the college.45

Dann's recitals drew large crowds, and their frequency
clearly reflected their sustained success with the musical listening public.
Dann served as organist at Grace Church and held his teaching appointment at
Wesley College until he left Winnipeg in 1923 for the United States, where he
later became organist and choirmaster at a new one million dollar church in
Pasadena, California, in 1924.

Visiting Recitalists

Winnipeg was host to some of the world's most renowned
organists during this period; most of them came from the United States, several
from England, and prominent Canadian players were also represented. Advance
notices of their appearances were followed by lengthy and mainly appreciative
reviews of their recitals. The first reported recital by a visiting organist
took place at the Central Congregational Church in 1890. It was given by the
touring English recitalist Frederic Archer who, according to the English Globe,
"is now the greatest of modern organists . . . 2,000 organ recitals at the
Alexandra Palace." For an admission fee of 50 cents, the audience heard a
program comprised chiefly of transcriptions of orchestral or operatic works by
familiar composers. His return to the city early in the following year was
again accorded an enthusiastic reception.

In succeeding years, Winnipeg audiences heard recitals by
these performers:  J. Warren
Andrews, Minneapolis, at Grace Church in 1894; Frederick H. Torrington,
principal of the Toronto College of Music, at Grace Church in 1898; William C.
Carl, the New York organist who was on his way to give an inaugural recital in
Dawson City, Yukon, at Grace Church in 1903; Rosa d'Erina, the distinguished
Irish prima donna and organist, at St. Boniface Cathedral in 1905; Arthur
Dunham, the organist at Sinai Temple in Chicago who had received a testimonial
from the famous French organ virtuoso and composer Charles-Marie Widor, at Knox
Church in 1906 and 1914; Edwin H. Lemare, the expatriate English organist and
Paderewski of the organ who became a performing superstar of the organ in the
course of world-wide tours, at Grace Church in 1908; Lynnwood Farnam, the
Canadian organist who became a legend in his own time by committing 200 pieces
to memory and playing 500 recitals by the time he was thirty-five, at Augustine
Church in 1908; William Hewlitt, a co-director of the Royal Hamilton
Conservatory of Music and heralded as one of the most brilliant players in the
country, at Broadway Church in 1909; Gatty Sellars, the English organist who
was accompanied by the King's Trumpeter, at Grace Church in 1911 and St. Andrew's Church in 1912; Henry Woodruff, Minneapolis, at Knox Church in 1913; Albert D. Jordan, the Canadian recitalist who had served as organist at the
Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, at Westminster Church in 1915;
Herbert A. Fricker, former city organist of Leeds, England, who came to Canada
to conduct the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, at Westminster Church in 1919; Ernest
MacMillan, who eventually would become recognized as Canada's musical elder
statesman, at Westminster Church in 1919; and T. Tertius Noble, formerly
organist of Ely Cathedral and York Minster before settling in New York, also at
Westminster Church in the same year.

What They Played

The content of organ recital programs over the years can be
attributed to a variety of factors: the performers' backgrounds, training,
musical interests, and technical abilities; reverence for musical tradition and
the attraction of new material; the perceived musical preferences of audiences;
and the tonal resources of the organs. In Winnipeg in the early 1900s there
were only a few orchestras or instrumental groups that could provide public
performances of musical masterpieces of the past or of contemporary works.
Access to this realm of musical culture was broadened by the inclusion in organ
recitals of many transcriptions of operatic, choral, or instrumental works by
major composers. This practice, which was also evident in England and the
United States, eventually attracted much criticism, even in Winnipeg. Dr. Ralph
Horner, the music director of the Imperial Academy of Music and the Arts in
Winnipeg and music editor of a weekly newspaper, later referred to as the
"grand old man of music" in the city, commented on this issue in an
article that advocated more frequent organ recitals in city churches as a means
of increasing public familiarity with good music:

I am not an advocate for playing arrangements of orchestral
music on the organ, for the attempt to illustrate or imitate the orchestra only
results in disparaging the "King of Instruments," but in the absence
of a Symphony Orchestra these organ recitals can be the means of making people
acquainted with orchestral compositions which otherwise they would never
hear.46

In the four decades preceding 1920, there were 111 reported recitals, consisting of 733 selections in all. Slightly more than one-third of all the pieces performed were transcriptions of a wide range of works by the major composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most frequently
performed pieces were derived from Wagner's operas Lohengrin, Parsifal, and
Tannhaüser; and Handel's choral works, including his ever-popular
Hallelujah Chorus and Largo. Haydn was represented by arrangements of his
symphonic and chamber works. Audiences also heard organ interpretations of
marches by Gounod (Marche militaire), Mendelssohn (War March of the Priests
from Athalie), and Chopin (Funeral March), along with arrangements of Grieg's
Peer Gynt Suite and Dvorak's New World Symphony. Transcriptions of Von
Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture, as well as of Beethoven's overtures
and some of his piano pieces, were also presented.

As for original works, Alexandre Guilmant's organ
compositions were the most frequently played, led by his Marche funèbre
et chant séraphique; the earliest reported performance of his Sonata in
D Minor, written in 1874, was in 1885. Bach's toccatas, preludes, and fugues
began to be played often, but almost none of his chorale preludes; more than
half of their performances were by several visiting recitalists. The first
reported performance of his dramatic Toccata and Fugue in D Minor was in 1883.
Mendelssohn was first represented in 1885 by his Sonata No. 1 in F Minor,
composed about forty years earlier. Pieces by Louis
Lefébure-Wély, the fashionable Parisian organist who demonstrated
instruments of the leading French organ builder Cavaillé-Coll in the
mid-1800s, rapidly became recital favourites; one of his works, the Offertoire
in G, was played in the first known organ recital in Winnipeg in 1878, about
ten years after its publication. The works of Charles-Marie Widor were not
included in the programs of touring organists until 1905. Interest in the
compositions of Edwin H. Lemare escalated following his recitals in Winnipeg in
1908, and local organists included many of his lighter works--particularly his
Andantino, later popularized as Moonlight and Roses--in their programs for many
years. The compositions of Alfred Hollins, the blind English organist, began to
appear in the programs of both visiting and local players at least a decade
before his visit to Winnipeg in 1926.

The audiences at organ recitals probably consisted of
parishioners of all the major churches and members of the general public
possessing different degrees of musical enlightenment, along with the leading
musical people of the city--"the tutored and untutored alike," as one
newspaper commentator described them. A "full house" at a large
church would have amounted to a crowd of over 1,000 people. Considering that the
population of Winnipeg around 1900 was about 40,000, and although it more than
tripled within a decade, it is evident that attendance at organ recitals was a
significant aspect of musical culture. These musical-social events were but one
manifestation of intense musical activity that included the forming of bands,
church orchestras, choral societies, and choirs, as well as the establishment
of several musical conservatories, music teachers' associations, and music
clubs, and the inauguration of the Manitoba Musical Competition Festival.

Theatre Organs and Organists

Moving picture theatres were the chief form of popular
entertainment in the cities and towns of Manitoba and elsewhere in the early
years of the twentieth century. The larger Winnipeg movie houses also had
resident vocal soloists, instrumentalists, and orchestras that gave brief
concerts before screenings of motions pictures or during intermissions.
Vaudeville acts and sometimes local military bands were featured in these
events, too.

Theatre organs first were used to provide musical
backgrounds to the action in silent movies. Sometimes these sonic backdrops
were improvised spontaneously by the organist, sometimes they were adaptations
of composed music. In some respects the theatre organ was a competitor of the
orchestra, for the pipe ranks and stop lists of these organs mimicked
orchestral instruments. They were also equipped with a variety of percussion
devices, such as drums, traps, xylophones, bells, and chimes. Organ consoles
were elaborately decorated structures, often of coloured glass backlighted to
silhouette the player. Sometimes they were mounted on hydraulically-operated
platforms that allowed the organist, seated at the console, to rise
dramatically into the audience's view from beneath floor level, playing all the
while.

A bizarre instrument called "The Fotoplayer" was
installed in Winnipeg's Bijou Theatre in 1915. Many of these relatively
inexpensive music machines, manufactured by The American Photo Player Company,
New York, were installed in theatres throughout the United States and
elsewhere, where they added to the public's enjoyment of silent films. This
mechanical wonder included a pressurized reed organ section and perhaps several
ranks of organ pipes, along with various sound effects, all of which could be
played manually or by means of paper rolls. Some models had a device for
shifting quickly from one roll to another to follow the mood changes of the
film. The single keyboard was centred between two sound cabinets that housed
the electric blower, wind chests, and special effects devices. It was
advertised as "The Ninth Wonder of the World, The Musical Masterpiece that
Expresses the Griefs, Joys, and Triumphs of the Artists; that Supplies the
Unspoken Words in the Pictures--Magnificent Orchestral and Organ Tones."

Organ recitals of current popular music and transcriptions
of familiar light classics took on an independent life of their own with the
advent of talking pictures. These performances, like those of theatre
orchestras, were additional attractions to the current motion picture being
shown, and often featured special music for the Christmas season. It is
interesting to note that theatre organists endeavoured to maintain high
standards in their selections of music, whether to accompany the motion picture
or for short recitals during intermissions:

Modern theatres have for some time been equipped with
splendid pipe organs. Good orchestras have been introduced, and are now a
recognized feature. The music is one of the chief attractions. One organist who
plays at a large picture house said recently, "besides recital programmes
and special organ solos, I gave request numbers to get the musical pulse of our
audiences. Only once have I received a request for ragtime or any real cheap
piece. On one occasion I had a request for a Bach Fugue."47

Some theatre organists earned a living out of this activity,
while others occupied posts as church organists at the same time. Their
careers, involving moves from one theatre to another or presiding at the
opening of a new instrument, were reported in the entertainment sections of the
newspapers, perhaps in the belief that their fans would want to follow them
from theatre to theatre.

The installation of a large theatre organ in the Province
Theatre in Winnipeg in September 1917 created a high level of interest. The
three-manual, electric-action instrument (claimed to be the only organ in
Winnipeg so equipped), containing 2,000 pipes, was supplied by the Toronto
organ builder C. Franklin Legge. The $20,000 instrument also had a self-playing
mechanism  that allowed the
instrument to perform on its own in the absence of a trained organist. The
organ was formally opened by George E. Metcalfe, "The Organist
Supreme" from the Pacific Coast, who amused the theatre customers with a
steady stream of improvisations on the "Wonder Organ" throughout the
afternoon and evening. On that occasion the theatre was featuring the
hand-coloured film "Mayblossom," made in France by
Astra-Pathé. 

The Winnipeg theatre organist Walter Dolman had a career as
a church organist before and after his experience in Winnipeg cinemas. Born in
England in 1875, he was appointed organist in a church in Burton-on-Trent at
the age of fourteen. After coming to Canada in 1903, he lived in Toronto and
worked for a while with F. H. Torrington, principal of the Conservatory of
Music, then moved to Chatham, Ontario. He was a church and theatre organist
briefly in Detroit, Michigan, before coming to Winnipeg around 1918 to play at
the largest movie theatres. Later in his career he inaugurated a daily series
of "twilight recitals" in the late afternoon and early evening, when
he presented a mix of music by modern masters, earlier composers, and popular
numbers in vogue with the younger set. In 1928 he moved to nearby Kenora,
Ontario, to become organist at Knox Church in that town, where he remained
until his death in 1947.

The question of the influence of the theatre organ generally
on the development of an appreciation for mainstream organ music was the
subject of a borrowed newspaper editorial. The fear that "bad" music
would drive out "good"was unfounded, according to this writer:

The feeling among musicians that the organ performances
given in "movie" shows lower the public taste for dignified music
seems to be increasing. In regard to the general influence of
"movie"organ music a writer in Musical Opinion says: "When the
instrument began to take a prominent part in the 'movies,' some of us thought
that people, having the organ thus brought to their ears night after night,
would esteem it more highly. But this is not likely to provide an exception to
the rule that 'familiarity breeds contempt.' We are now beginning to see that
the old aloof position of the organ was not a bad thing. True, its public was
limited, but if it spoke to comparatively few, the few were devotees. It is not
likely to gain new ones from its association with Mr. Chaplin."48

Later Years

The 1920s marked the height of fashion for cinema organs.
Several of the larger movie theatres in Winnipeg installed pipe organs in this
period, and the arrival of a new instrument was a matter of intense interest on
the part of the popular musical establishment and the entertainment industry.
Following the advent of the first sound-synchronized "talkies" in 1928, the role of the theatre organist began to change. With the gradual demise of silent motion pictures, cinema organists still continued to provide musical
entertainment before picture showings and during intermissions, but these
practices eventually were discontinued as the talking movies came to be
regarded as self-sufficient entertainments in themselves.

The Winnipeg Centre of the Canadian College of Organists was
established in 1923 by some of the city's leading organists. This small but
enthusiastic group sponsored recitals by local and visiting players and
arranged special events for the improvement of church music generally. The
1920s were the peak period of organ recitals, and the 1930s were almost as
active. The frequency of new organ installations diminished over the succeeding
decades, particularly during the years of World War II, when materials were in
short supply. Many renovations of existing instruments were undertaken in the
1950s, but only a few of the churches built after this time acquired pipe
organs, preferring less costly electronic instruments instead.

The past four decades have been marked by renewal,
consolidation, and modest growth in the fortunes of the organ. Interest in the
organ and its music is still relatively strong today, considering the various
musical and performing arts alternatives, as well as the other forms of
cultural entertainment now available. But in terms of organ installations,
recitals, and intensity of public interest in the King of Instruments and its
players, the period of the "Golden Age" of the organ remains
unsurpassed in the history of music in Manitoba.               

Notes

                        28.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
15 April 1899.

                        29.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              Winnipeg
Tribune, 22 April 1899.

                        30.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
31 October 1903

                        31.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
22 February 1905.

                        32.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
27 April 1907.

                        33.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
18 June 1888.

                        34
style='mso-tab-count:1'>                FF,
11 November 1885.

                        35.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
19 May 1892.

                        36.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
1 October 1898.

                        37.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
12 September 1900.

                        38.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
1 June 1901.]

                        39.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
5 October 1901.

                        40.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
19 October 1907.

                        41.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              TT,
8 May 1909.

                        42.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              "Recalling
Early Organists: From the Diary of the Late Jas. W. Matthews," FP, 3
January 1925.

                        43.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              "Few
Pipe Organs When Winnipeg was a Hamlet: Diary of the Late James W. Matthews
Recalls Early Instruments and Players," FP, 13 December 1924.

                        44.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
31 August 1918.

                        45.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              "Wesley
College to Inaugurate Music Department," FP, 14 September 1918.

                        46.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              "Music,"
TT, 17 February 1912.

                        47.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              "Music,"
FP, 23 March 1918.

                        48.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>              FP,
21 September 1918.

James David Christie, David Craighead, Thomas F. Froehlich, John Grew, Stephen Hamilton,

Recitalist, teacher and recording artist, Marie-Claire Alain is one of the leading personalities in the world of organ music. Born into a family of musicians at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, she studied music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, where she won four first prizes, soon followed by several awards in international competitions.
Marie-Claire Alain’s concert tours have led her throughout the world, including numerous trips to the United States and Canada since 1961. Critics praise the clarity of her playing, the musicality of her interpretations, the purity of her style, and her mastery of registration.
Greatly sought after as a teacher and justly famous for her lectures illustrated with musical examples, Marie-Claire Alain bases her teaching on extensive, unrelenting musicological studies in organ literature and performance practices of early music. After teaching for sixteen summers in Haarlem, The Netherlands (1956–1972), she now holds a workshop every summer in Romainmôtier, Switzerland, where the house organ from her family home in France is located. She taught for many years at the Conservatoire National de Region de Rueil-Malmaison, followed by several years at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris. Her discography is impressive, containing over 220 recordings, including the famous “integrales” or complete works (J. S. Bach, Couperin, de Grigny, Daquin, Franck, Handel, J. Alain, etc.), which have won her numerous Grands Prix du Disque in France and abroad. In addition, an educational DVD featuring Mme. Alain was produced by the American Guild of Organists in 2002. Marie-Claire Alain has received honorary doctorates from Colorado State University (Fort Collins), Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, The Boston Conservatory of Music, McGill University, Montréal, Canada, and most recently in 2006 from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1984, she was named International Performer of the Year by the New York City AGO chapter, and in 1999 was given the AGO Lifetime Achievement Award. In France, she was awarded the degree “Commandeur des Arts et Lettres.”
As an outgrowth of her great interest in the pipe organs of her own country, Mme. Alain serves on a commission of the French government for the promotion and construction of new pipe organs in France. Classic CD magazine named her one of “The Greatest Players of the Century” in 2001 in a list that included the entire classical music world. For many years, she has been an adjudicator at organ competitions all over the world. In 1999 she was president of the jury of Concours Suisse de l’orgue, and on several occasions she has presided over the juries of the Concours International de Chartres and of the Musashino International Competition in Tokyo.
—Stephen Hamilton
 

•

In 1965, a brilliant young student of Arthur Poister, Byron L. Blackmore, moved to my hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin, to assume the city’s only full-time church position. I had the privilege of being his first organ student at the age of 13, and it was Byron who introduced me to the artistry of Marie-Claire Alain. He had me purchase her recordings of de Grigny, Couperin, Bach, Handel and Jehan Alain, and from these recordings my life completely changed. I immediately fell in love with her incredible musicianship, her extraordinary attention to detail, touch, ornamentation, breath, style and, above all, music-making, and I knew I wanted one day to be her student.
I met Marie-Claire for the first time at a concert she performed in Rochester, Minnesota, when I was 14 years old. She made a very ordinary electric-action organ come alive. Following the concert, we spoke at the reception in French, and she patiently coached our conversation along, helping me with my first year “command” of the language. She was so kind, warm and encouraging. She gave me her home address in L’Etang-la-Ville and told me to keep in touch. I couldn’t believe such a great artist would be so kind and take so much time with a young student. Many years later, I realized I was the same age as her only son, Benoit. She has always had a loving maternal relationship with all of her students.
Throughout my high school and early undergraduate years, I followed her around the country for masterclasses and concerts. The most memorable was her week-long seminar at Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1971. It was amazing to see her deal with so many diverse students. She had an uncanny way of meeting every student where they were and helping them change by opening their ears and minds. She received her first honorary doctorate on this occasion and, twenty years later, I had the honor of placing a doctoral hood over her head as Chair of the Organ and Harpsichord Department at the Boston Conservatory. After my junior year at Oberlin, I decided to take a year off and go to Paris to study privately with Marie-Claire. We worked mainly on classical French works, Buxtehude, and Jehan Alain. Her attention to detail, her pleas to always listen to the music, and her insistence that the organ itself was one’s best teacher changed my approach to performing and certainly influenced me greatly in my own teaching. As I was particularly interested in Buxtehude, she encouraged me to go to North Germany and play the historic organs, which I did. Because of this, I devoted the next ten years of my life to an intensive study of Buxtehude and the North German masters of the 17th century.
Marie-Claire Alain taught all her students to question, to be stylish, eclectic, open, inquisitive, ready to do research, always prepared to learn and change one’s mind, and to live as a 20th-century musician. She stressed the importance of knowing, studying and performing music of our entire heritage and to be “diversified” (she was using this term years before investment companies did!). Her performances of music including the complete classical French masters, Muffat, Bruhns, Bach, Franck, Liszt, Widor, Jehan Alain, Duruflé, Messiaen and Charles Chaynes were all equally thrilling.
The most moving day of my life was in Paris in January, 1995, when Marie-Claire invited me to move from “vous” to “tu”—but it never feels right when I do this. The respect I have for our “Mâitresse” is too great. Happy birthday, dear Marie-Claire—thank you for all you have given the world—you will live forever!
—James David Christie
Professor of Organ
Oberlin Conservatory

 

 

•

It is both a privilege and an honor to be invited to join with those who are contributing tributes to Marie-Claire Alain. Like many, I first became acquainted with her through her prolific recordings and writings. It was not until the 1981 organ workshop at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, that I had the opportunity to observe her as a recitalist and teacher, and to get to know her as a person. My wife Marian was at the conference with me, and we were completely captivated at how the remarkable personality of Mme. Alain showed forth in all that she did—conducting classes and performing. Her enthusiasm and love for many different styles of music, along with her attention to detail and appropriate fingering, were things that those of us who were observers could retain far into the future.
Marian and I both found Mme. Alain to be supremely generous with her musical ideas, and gracious in letting us “pick her brain”! I clearly recall Marian remarking wistfully how she wanted so much to play Franck’s E-Major Choral, but her hands were too small. The immediate response was “Oh nonsense! I’ll show you how to do it!”
Aside from music and pedagogy, Marian was quite taken with her many other interests, especially relating to her home life—her children and the roses she tended to with loving care. We couldn’t get over how, being a genius, she was so very down-to-earth!
Regarding Mme. Alain’s stature as a teacher and scholar, the two occasions that gave Marian and me the best opportunities for observation and assimilation were the Fort Collins workshop and then, sometime later, a similar week at the Eastman School of Music.
The five-day Fort Collins event included a recital, which was divided in half and played on two different organs. The first part, devoted to Bach, was played on the 3-manual Casavant (1969) at the university. The second half was at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church where the organ is a 2-manual Phelps (1974). This program included Nivers, Franck, and Alain. It was of interest to me to note the effective way in which she handled the Franck and Alain on an unenclosed instrument that was predominately North German in style.
I was also greatly interested in her class presentation of the connection between French and German organ music. There were five groups of music for illustration:
1. Music written on religious texts. (from Couperin Parish Mass, Bach Partita O Gott du frommer Gott)
2. Use of liturgical melodies (four excerpts from de Grigny Mass; Bach, four chorales from BWV 651) 3, 4. Bach’s influence through the 19th century (Bach Prelude & Fugue in a minor, Franck Choral No. 3 in a minor, Bach Passacaglia, Franck Choral No. 2 in b minor)
5. Connections of J. Alain with J. S. Bach (Bach Sonata No. 3 in d-minor, Alain Variations sur un thème de Clement Janequin, Choral Dorien, Choral Phrygien, Litanies).
Marian and I gained so much from the sessions that week that I find myself wishing I could hear them all over again!
One especial gesture of kindness that I cannot forget is the beautiful note that Mme. Alain wrote to me following Marian’s death ten years ago. This letter completes the esteem and admiration we both had for Mme. Alain for all these years—as a performer, teacher, and a wonderful person!
This is to wish her continuing great joy and success for many, many years!
—David Craighead
Professor Emeritus
Eastman School of Music

 

 

 

 

•

Like my friend and colleague Jim Christie, I was also a young person in Wisconsin when I first came to know of Marie-Claire Alain. Playing the organ was my first love, and it was during my senior year in high school that I went to hear her play a recital at Northwestern University. The program made such an impression on me that to this day, 35 years later, I can still remember some of the compositions that she performed.
My decision to enroll at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music was largely based on the fact that their organ teacher, Miriam Duncan, had recently returned to the States after a year of sabbatical study in Europe. During that year she was a student of Anton Heiller, but also took some lessons from Mme. Alain, specifically to study early French music. So, having the opportunity to study with a student of Marie-Claire Alain, I soaked up information and performance practice like a sponge. All I wanted to do my freshman year was to play early French music! Quite coincidentally, in the fall of my sophomore year, I happened to win a contest in which I played Clérambault’s Second Suite. Anton Heiller was on the jury and was the first to plant the seed that perhaps I might want to study with Mme. Alain myself some day. That’s exactly what I did during my senior year. After graduate school I went back to France for two more years.
Mme. Alain’s students traveled to her home in L’Etang-la-Ville, a western suburb of Paris. (In about the mid-1970s, she affiliated herself with the conservatory at Rueil-Malmaison, and so students after me studied in a more structured conservatory environment.) It was such a relaxed environment (including her cat sitting on the window sill) that it was more an atmosphere of friends getting together than a young student in the presence of a great teacher. My lesson time was on Tuesdays at 10:15, and I was her only student of the morning. Sometimes the lessons were an hour; sometimes they stretched to 90 minutes or more.
I’ll never forget my first lesson. One can imagine what a bundle of nerves I was, yet Marie-Claire put me instantly at ease with a simple admonishment: “You’re not here to impress me with how well you play, nor to make me cry with what beautiful music you can produce. You’re here to learn.”
And so it was, for three years, countless lessons during which we covered all of the major French Baroque literature, nearly the complete works of Bach, and most of the music of Jehan Alain, Franck and other French masters, as well as a generous smattering of North German music, too. The repertoire at each lesson was totally different. Only once did I play the same piece twice.
Mme. Alain’s teaching style was similar to what I had been used to as an undergraduate. She started with the assumption that one could at least play the notes and beyond that very little was ever necessarily right or wrong. Often she would throw out a provocative question about interpretation just to quiz general knowledge of a period and style. On more than one occasion I caught her purposely stating something totally contrary just to see if I’d have the wherewithal (or nerve?) to contradict her! More than anything, Marie-Claire made a very conscious effort to allow her students the freedom to express themselves at the organ. I remember her saying “the last thing the world needs is a bunch of little Marie-Claires running around!” Since then I’ve always been of the opinion that the mark of a really great teacher is one who can teach without stifling the spirit or creativity of the student. Her students bear her imprint without being her clone.
In the 30 years that have elapsed since those days as a student in France, I have been continually impressed with Marie-Claire’s continued interest in her former students. It is often said that her students are like her children and that, while they grow up and move away, the bond remains nonetheless. When I consider the sheer number of students that she has taught over her impressive career, I wonder how she has time to do anything else except to keep up with her extended family. Recently, I’ve heard Marie-Claire play any number of times and, like Horowitz or Rubenstein, who played well into their 80s, she continues to play beautifully. Clearly you’re not ready to retire from performance, Marie-Claire! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your wisdom, your guidance, your inspiration, and, most of all, for your enduring and loving friendship.
—Thomas F. Froehlich
Organist, First Presbyterian Church
Dallas, Texas

 

 

 

 

•

One of the great pleasures for me during the past 30 years of teaching at McGill has been those numerous occasions when Marie-Claire Alain came to give masterclasses and play concerts. The most memorable of these was in November 2001 when her visit happily coincided with the Fall Convocation, and McGill was able to confer a Doctor of Music, Honoris Causa, on her. The text of the citation that I read was as follows:
“Marie-Claire Alain is one of the legendary musicians of our time. Mme. Alain was born in 1926 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye into a home full of music. Her father, Albert Alain, who had studied with Caussade, Guilmant, and Vierne, was an accomplished church musician, performer, and composer. Her brother, Jehan, killed in action in 1940, left a legacy of some of the 20th century’s finest organ music. A second brother, Olivier, became a leading musicologist. By the age of 12, Marie-Claire was already, on occasion, replacing her father in the organ loft. Her own teachers, after her father, included such illustrious musicians as Marcel Dupré, Maurice Duruflé, André Marchal, and Gaston Litaize: a goodly heritage indeed.
“As concert organist, Mme. Alain has toured worldwide and made over 200 LP recordings and more than 60 CDs, and earned numerous prizes, including multiple Grands Prix du Disque. “As a pedagogue, Mme. Alain has had a spectacular career. Students from the four corners of the globe have flocked to Paris to study with her, their names reading like a veritable Who’s Who of the organ world today. Probably no other organ teacher has produced so many prize winners at international competitions. Her courses are legendary, her teaching marked by an open questioning manner and a quest for authenticity in matters of historical performance practice.
“Mme. Alain has also been a champion of historical instruments, evidenced by the great care she takes to choose the most historically appropriate instrument for each recording project. This obviously entails exhaustive research.
“As a scholar, Mme. Alain has published numerous articles on performance practice, many of which have been widely translated. We are pleased to note frequent citation in musicological literature of one of her articles published by McGill in L’Orgue à notre époque, a collection of papers and proceedings of an organ symposium held at the University in 1981 on the occasion of the installation of the French classical organ in Redpath Hall.
“Marie-Claire Alain has been named a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music. The city of Lubeck granted her the Buxtehude Prize in recognition of her work promoting early German music, and the city of Budapest awarded her the Franz Liszt Prize. In France, she is a Commander of the Légion d’honneur and a member of the Ordre Nationale du Mérite and of the Ordre Nationale des Arts et Lettres.”
The 2001 visit of Marie-Claire also happily coincided with the 20th anniversary of the splendid Wolff organ in Redpath Hall. She gave masterclasses on both weekends before and after convocation and played a memorable recital. During the planning stages of this organ in the late 1970s, she was always ready and willing to answer questions, or to point us in the right direction and open doors. Needless to say, planning an historical copy in the 1970s was somewhat more nerve wracking than it might appear today. It was a great adventure, and Marie-Claire knew how to encourage us to stay the course whenever doubts set in.
There are many anecdotes that come to mind. One of the most memorable for me dates from 1969 when she invited all her students to come to Poitiers. She had just completed a recording session over the preceding two days, and there she was giving us a class on this great Clicquot. The energy and the generosity were breathtaking to say the least. And of course there was wonderful food and wine in a little restaurant sympathique!
A story that I love to tell my students, especially those having difficulty remembering where the stops are, concerns a visit to play a concert on the von Beckerath in my church in Montréal. I met her at the airport around 11 am and we proceeded to the church. She spent about half an hour trying out various registrations and asking my opinion but she never wrote anything down. Then we went off for a leisurely lunch bien arosé. After lunch she went to her hotel to rest and to study her scores. That evening she played her concert from memory and pulled all her own stops in the process. All the registrations worked magically! What métier!
There were the many occasions when she traveled for concerts and I would go along as assistant, especially during the Haarlem organ academies. Not only did I get a chance to play some incredible organs, but we drank some splendid wine.
When all the faculty were assembled to teach at the 2003 McGill Summer Organ Academy, I realized that half of the fourteen were her former students. I think that even she was a little surprised—at least momentarily—when I announced this at the opening dinner. Has there ever been an organ teacher more admired and loved by her former students than Marie-Claire Alain?
—John Grew
University Organist, Chair of Organ Area, Schulich School of Music,
McGill University
Artistic Director,
McGill Summer Organ Academy

 

 

 

 

•

It was in 1961, when I was a 13-year-old organ student, that the Des Moines (Iowa) Chapter of the American Guild of Organists presented Marie-Claire Alain in a concert at University Christian Church on the Walter Holtkamp pipe organ. It was impressive to hear her performing from memory, and captivating to hear Litanies for the first time.
From that moment, I became obsessed with finding all of her recordings. My quest took me to every bookstore and record shop in central Iowa, and unearthed recordings of Couperin, de Grigny, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Franck, Alain, and Widor; Musical Heritage Society had the good sense to issue her performances of all the works of Bach.
In 1967 during my college years, Mme. Alain performed in St. Louis at the Priory on an instrument with mechanical action. I remember her playing all six of the Bach Schübler Chorales, the third Trio Sonata, the St. Anne Prelude and Fugue, and the Franck Pastorale as well as Messiaen’s Dieu Parmi Nous and both of the Jehan Alain Fantasies. The clarity and vibrancy of her rhythm coupled with her registrations made this concert an unforgettable example of personal expression and music making.
From 1972 to 1986, I taught organ and theory at a small college in Virginia that was fortunate to have a new concert hall housing a Flentrop organ. In 1973, 1978, 1982 and 1985, Marie-Claire Alain came to campus for concerts and masterclasses. It was inspiring and exciting to hear her perform and teach as well as to have the opportunity to solidify a blossoming friendship. As a pedagogue, Mme. Alain has sought out scores and documents that helped bring historical research alive and into the mainstream of today’s teaching.
In 1973, an inquiry about private study took me to Paris for the first of several such sojourns. Her enlightened teaching brought current performance practices to my inner musical ear and new expressive sensitivity to my playing especially in early French music and the music of Bach. Our lessons on her house organ or at her church at St. Germain-en-Laye shall forever remain as highlights of my career.
Since moving to New York City in 1991, it has been a joy to present Mme. Alain in concert at The Church of the Holy Trinity (Episcopal) in four special events. Her New York City appearances have been inspiring. Her preeminence as a musician has been noted in the New York Times referring to her as “the Grande Dame of the organ world” and by the New York City AGO chapter bestowing upon her its “Performer of the Year” accolade. The AGO national council presented her with a lifetime achievement award following her concert at The Church of the Holy Trinity in October 1999. The education committee of the Guild further endorsed Mme. Alain’s prominence as a teacher by filming her masterclasses at Holy Trinity and the University of Kansas for the AGO Master Series.
We all come together to honor Marie-Claire Alain on her 80th birthday as a performer, teacher, scholar and friend, and to celebrate her life, her love of music, and her lasting influence on our profession. —Stephen Hamilton
The Church of the Holy Trinity (Episcopal)
New York City

 

 

 

 

•

In the late 1960s, while I was an undergraduate student at St. Olaf College, my teacher, Robert Kendall, arranged for his students to travel to Minneapolis to hear a recital by Marie-Claire Alain. The recital was held in the cavernous sanctuary of Central Lutheran Church, and on that evening every seat was occupied. There was a sense of anticipation as the crowd was waiting for the first sight of the performer, and it was evident that we would be experiencing something exceptional that evening. I remember the thunderous applause when she appeared—a tiny figure facing that huge crowd—and I remember that she performed completely from memory. But even now, over 40 years later, I vividly remember being completely transported by her music making. I had no idea that organ playing could be so beautiful, could communicate so clearly. I wanted to meet her after the recital, but the crowd completely engulfed her, and we students were whisked away back to Northfield. That evening I vowed to meet her someday and thank her for that recital. Little did I know how our lives would intersect. Through the years, I heard her play many times both in North America and in Europe. I not only got to meet her, but to study with her, and she became the dominant musical force in my life. I discovered that not only can she communicate with her playing, but that as a teacher Marie-Claire is without peer. Whenever I feel my busy schedule overwhelming me, I have only to remind myself of Marie-Claire’s prodigious output as a performer, recording artist, teacher, and scholar, and I realize I’m moving in slow motion in comparison. While most of us know Marie-Claire as the recipient of numerous awards and honors, her greatest pride has been her family—both the family that she grew up in and the family that she created. Without the inspiration, love and support of her family, she could not have had the career that has brought her so many accolades. Her home is full of laughter, good food and good wine. My wife Patti and I treasure the evenings that we spent with Marie-Claire and her late husband, Jacques Gommier. I don’t think we have ever laughed more than on those occasions. The close and gregarious relationship that she enjoys with her children and grandchildren is reflected in her music making. Marie-Claire likes good food. She likes to read books; in fact, she learned English in large part by reading novels in English. She loves flowers, especially roses, and has always made room for a big garden in her yard. She finds knitting a good way to relax. She loves to drive—fast!! She has traveled more than anyone I know.
I recently reminisced with Marie-Claire about the first time I heard her play. She was pleased to know that she had achieved the goal she sets each time she performs—to communicate her love of the music. It has been my great fortune to know Marie-Claire—as a teacher, a colleague and a friend. Happy Birthday Marie-Claire!
—James Higdon
Dane and Polly Bales Professor of Organ
The University of Kansas

 

 

 

 

•

Some 40 years ago, I took a carload of students from Albion College (Michigan) to hear a little-known organist from Paris perform one of her first concerts in the United States. We were all dazzled by her technique, musical sensitivity, versatility of style, but above all, her ability to communicate with the audience. My friendship with this great artist, Marie-Claire Alain, began when we met and visited after her recital.
As a result of that first encounter I arranged to study with her during the early summer of 1966 at the Alain family home in St. Germain-en-Laye on the now famous “Alain Organ,” and also on the smaller house organ in her home in L’Etang-la-Ville. Later that summer I took her classes at the International Summer Academy for Organists in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
This petite young lady sat on the bench at that huge St. Bavo console, would swing around to face the various student groupings, and instantly switch from French to German to Italian to English. Amazing! She had a command of the music like no one else I had ever known. Always gracious and kind, she gently corrected and coached us with skill and authority.
A particularly memorable experience happened during that Haarlem experience. She announced to the class that she would be playing a recital on the famous Schnitger organ in Zwolle, and since I had a car I volunteered to be her chauffeur. Now if I were preparing a recital—anywhere—I’d arrive at least one day in advance. But arriving mid-afternoon on the day of the recital was apparently plenty of time for her, and that commenced only after we first took time for a beer to quench the thirst after a warm afternoon drive.
She graciously let me spend some time “trying out” the great Schnitger—a real challenge for me since its pitch was one step higher than A=440, and my ears and fingers couldn’t reconcile playing the Bach E-flat Prelude in the key of F. Obviously this was not a problem for her.
We had dinner across the town square, and when the check hadn’t arrived just minutes before the recital was to begin, I remained to settle up while she hurried across the plaza. By the time I arrived she had already begun what was to be a brilliant performance to a packed church. What an ability to concentrate!
After that wonderful summer there were many more occasions to experience our friendship, usually in conjunction with a recital. Many of those times she was a guest in our home, occasionally joined by her husband Jacques Gommier. Being a true friend, she invited us to be their guests in Paris and Maule. Marie-Claire Alain has countless friends in this country and Europe as witness the long receiving lines after every recital. Even though she may be exhausted after a demanding day of teaching and playing, she’s always warm and friendly to all who greet her, and always available for advice and counsel—and a hug.
This remarkable artist has made more friends for the organ than any one other person I know. Happy birthday, dear friend.
—John Obetz
Professor Emeritus
Conservatory of Music
University of Missouri at Kansas City Organist Emeritus, the Community of Christ World Headquarters (formerly RLDS), Independence, Missouri

 

 

 

 

•

 

 

Study

I first heard Marie-Claire Alain play in Detroit in 1964. The following day, she was on campus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with Marilyn Mason. Dr. Mason was driving her to Lansing for a masterclass and recital, and I was invited to accompany them. As I observed Mme. Alain’s work with students in the masterclass, I realized that she had not only an enormous wealth of knowledge to share and could immediately analyze what might help the person’s playing, but also was exceptionally kind and down to earth. Right then I began to formulate the idea of studying with her. A few weeks later when she played in Evanston, Illinois, I drove over to hear her. Afterwards I got up the nerve to ask if I might come to study with her.
I went to Paris after completing my master’s degree at Michigan. I was 22 years old, knew little French, yet felt instantly at home. As it turned out, I was her first full-time American student.
On the day of my first lesson, she picked me up at the train station in St. Germain-en-Laye and took me to the family home. In the parlor was a 4-manual organ. My lessons would be on the Alain organ! We got right to work and later that afternoon I went back to Paris with a large list of repertoire to learn. From then on, after lessons I tried to write down everything she said in a notebook as I took the return train. I still have that notebook.
Our lessons were usually two hours in length. As they progressed, I came to understand that pieces needed to be learned in their entirety for the first lesson, and “perfected” by the second. Except for large Bach works, pieces were seldom brought a third time. My repertoire grew by leaps and bounds. She would allow me to play a piece through before making comments. Good work on my part was met with generous praise; criticisms were delivered gently. She got to the important things immediately. Once in a while, for example, she might show me fingerings for a small hand. But her approach to everything was musical first and foremost; technical work came only when necessary to express the music. She was always kind, often funny, and lessons were an absolute joy. (See continuation of this article.)

Godwin Sadoh

Godwin Sadoh is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the organ works of Fela Sowande at Louisiana State University.
An earlier version of this article was originally published in the February issue of "The Organ."

Nigeria has been blessed with very few, but seasoned organist-composers
since the arrival of Christianity around 1842. The schools and churches built
by the missionaries had a great impact on the emergence of the Nigerian
"organ school." The incentive to become professional organists and
composers was further propelled and inspired through the private lessons given
to talented Nigerian church musicians at an early age. All the musicians in
question had their formative periods at the mission schools, in church choirs,
and under organ playing apprenticeships.

The genealogy of Nigerian organist-composers is confined to
four generations from around the 1880s to the present. These are professional
organists trained at various schools of music in Great Britain and America.
Interestingly, each generation has produced only one musician: Thomas Ekundayo
Phillips (1884-1969), Fela Sowande (1905-1987), Ayo Bankole (1935-1976), and
Godwin Sadoh (1965-).

First Generation

Thomas Ekundayo Phillips is the pioneer and grandfather of the Nigerian school of
organist-composers, and he paved the way for the younger generations that were
to come after him. Born in 1884, he attended the Church Missionary Society
(CMS) Grammar School in Lagos. He received his first organ lessons from his
uncle, the Reverend Johnson, and at the age of eighteen he was appointed
organist of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos. Phillips served at
St. Paul's for nine years. In 1911, he proceeded to the Trinity College of
Music, London, to study piano, organ and violin. Thus, he became the second Nigerian
(after Rev. Robert Coker who studied in Germany in 1871) to study music at a
professional level. After returning from England in 1914, he was appointed
Organist and Master of the Music at Christ Church, now Cathedral Church of
Christ, Lagos (the headquarters of the Nigerian Anglican Communion). Phillips
held this position until his retirement in 1962--a total time span of
forty-eight years of outstanding accomplishments.

In 1964, Phillips was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music
degree by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for his contribution to the
development of church music in Nigeria. One of Phillips' most important
achievements was his training of many prominent modern Nigerian composers such
as Fela Sowande and Ayo Bankole. These were some of the leading and prolific
composers in Africa, and they constitute the next generation of professionally
trained organists.1

Ekundayo Phillips wrote only two major works for organ solo:
Passacaglia on an African Folksong, and Variations on an African Folksong.
These pieces are based on his postulations in his book, Yoruba Music, a
treatise on the compositional style of early Nigerian church music. In the
book, Phillips demonstrated various techniques in traditional Nigerian musical
processes that could be utilized to create new forms of church music which
indigenes could easily assimilate.2 His compositional style is simple and
conservative.

Second Generation

Fela Sowande
represents the second generation of Nigerian organist-composers. He can be
regarded as the father of the Nigerian "organ school." It was he who
propelled the musical genre to an unprecedented height through his extensive
compositions and publications for the King of Instruments. Up to the time of
writing this essay, no one else has written such a great number of works for
organ in Nigeria. Interestingly, Sowande composed for other media such as
orchestra and voice, but his works for organ outnumbered the rest.
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Sowande was born at Lagos, in 1905, into a musical family.
His father, Emmanuel Sowande, was a minister of the Gospel and one of the
pioneers of church music in Nigeria. Sowande received his first lessons in
music from his father. Another influence on his early musical training was
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips. Under the tutelage of Phillips, as a chorister at the
Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Sowande was exposed to European sacred music
and indigenous church music. He received private lessons in organ from Phillips
while singing in the Cathedral Choir. Sowande asserts that Phillips' organ
playing, the choir training, and the organ lessons he received had a major
impact on his aspiration of becoming an organist-composer.

At age 27, Sowande decided to become a civil engineer and
went to London to study in 1935. After six months, he changed his mind and
decided to study music. He played jazz in London nightclubs to support himself.
Sowande enrolled as an external candidate at the University of London and
received private lessons in organ from George Oldroyd and George Cunningham. He
became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists with credit in 1943--the
highest British qualification for organ playing. He happens to be the first
Nigerian and perhaps the first African to receive the prestigious British FRCO
diploma. Sowande was awarded the Harding Prize for organ playing, the Limpus
Prize for theoretical work and the Read Prize for the highest aggregate marks
in the fellowship examination. Sowande also obtained the Bachelor of Music
degree from the University of London and became a Fellow of the Trinity College
of Music.

Sowande had a rounded musical experience in England. He was
a solo pianist in a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in 1936, and was
appointed organist and choir director at the West London Mission of the
Methodist Church (1945 to 1952). It was during this period that he began
composing for organ. The influence of his participation in and exposure to
church music during his formative years could be seen in the abundance of works
written for organ. His organ compositions at this time included Kyrie,
Obangiji, K'a Mura, Jesu Olugbala, Go Down Moses, Joshua Fit the Battle of
Jericho, and Yoruba Lament.3 

These pieces are based on borrowed themes from Nigeria's
Yoruba culture and African-American spirituals. Indig-enous songs are employed
in Sowande's music for three reasons: 1) as a symbol and mark of national
identity; 2) to classify the works under the umbrella of modern Nigerian art
music; and 3) to arouse the interest of Nigerian/African audiences in
performing, studying and analyzing the music. Apart from rhythm, the indigenous
songs are the elements of Nigerian culture most audible to the audiences and
performers. Hearing those songs enabled them to categorize the works as
Nigerian musical heritage.

During the war, Sowande enlisted with the Royal Air Force,
but was released at the request of the Ministry of Information to go to the
Colonial Film Unit as a Musical Adviser of the British Ministry of Information
in London. He was designated to provide background music for a series of
educational films geared towards Africa. Sowande also presented several
lectures titled West African Music and the Possibilities of its Development for
the BBC's Africa Service. He collected a substantial amount of indigenous
folksongs during this period. The songs were later to be employed in creating
large works such as African Suite and the Folk Symphony. The Folk Symphony was
commissioned by the Nigerian government in 1960 to mark the nation's
independence. Although the work was not accepted, the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra in Carnegie Hall eventually premiered it in 1962.

In 1944, Sowande was invited to conduct the BBC Symphony
Orchestra in the performance of his tone poem Africana, a work for orchestra
based on a Nigerian melody. In 1952, his African Suite for strings and a
selection of his original compositions for organ were recorded by the Decca
Records Company (London Records, U.S.) under the title "The Negro in
Sacred Idiom." Sowande received two outstanding positions on his return to
Nigeria in 1953. He was appointed as the Musical Director to the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos and as honorary organist at the Cathedral
Church of Christ, Lagos.

Among his numerous awards are Member of the British Empire
(MBE) from Queen Elizabeth II for distinguished services in the cause of music
(1956); the Member of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (MFN) in 1956; the
Traditional Chieftaincy award, the "Bagbile of Lagos" in recognition
of his research in Yoruba folklore (1968); and an honorary doctorate from the
University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1972. Sowande also
received partial grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.4

Sowande first came to the United States in 1957, playing
organ recitals sponsored by the U. S. Department of State. He also toured as a
guest conductor of symphony orchestras and as a guest lecturer. He later came
back to take up permanent residency in 1968. His teaching career included
tenures at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, Howard University in
Washington, D.C., the University of Pittsburgh, and Kent State University,
Ohio. Sowande died on Friday, March 13, 1987, at a nursing home in Ravenna,
Ohio.

Sowande composed sixteen major works for organ:

K'a Mura, 1945 (Chappell, London)

Obangiji, 1955 (Chappell, London)

Kyrie, 1955 (Chappell, London)

Yoruba Lament, 1955 (Chappell,

London)

Jesu Olugbala, 1955 (Chappell,

London)

Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, 1955 (Chappell, London)

Go Down Moses, 1955 (Chappell,

London)

Oyigiyigi, 1958 (Ricordi, New York)

Gloria, 1958 (Ricordi, New York)

Prayer (Oba A Ba Ke), 1958 (Ricordi, New York)

Sacred Idioms of the Negro

Pastourelle

K'a mo Rokoso

Plainsong

Fantasia in D

Festival March

Sowande's sixteen pieces for organ are all based on Yoruba
Christian or folksongs from Nigeria, with the exception of Joshua Fit de Battle
of Jericho, Go Down Moses and Bury Me Eas' or Wis' (from the Sacred Idioms of
the Negro) which are based on African-American spirituals. The structures of
these pieces range from simple three-part forms to continuous development
types, fugues, and theme and variations. To create contrast in the music he
uses bicinium, tricinium, homophony, and contrapuntal textures between the
pedal and manuals. Sowande has a predilection for a continuous tonal shifting
within a work. He sometimes begins a piece in one key and ends in another, such
as Go Down Moses which begins in F and closes in D major. He uses a wide
variety of tonal resources ranging from diatonicism, pentatonality and
chromaticism. The pedal part is generally simple and sparse, but explores
extremes of range. Pedalpoints are used to tonicize specific tonal centers and
to create climax.

Third Generation

Ayo Bankole alone
represents the third generation of Nigerian organist-composers. A prolific
composer, Bankole had the makings of a genius. He had a special skill for
composition and a talent for presenting his material in an eclectic and
personal way that made him stand as a master composer and performer in his own
right. Bankole continued from where Fela Sowande left off, a generation before
him.

Ayo Bankole was born on May 17, 1935, at Jos, in the plateau
State of Nigeria. He belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group. Bankole spent the
first five years of his life with his father, the late Mr. Theophilus Abiodun
Bankole (M.B.E.), who was then organist and choirmaster at St. Luke's Church,
Jos. During those early years in Jos, Bankole began to show great promise for
music, since he was from a musical family. The composer's biography was
exclusively obtained from Afolabi Alaja-Browne's M.A. thesis.5

In 1941, Bankole came down to Lagos with his father and
began living with his grandfather, the late Mr. Akinje George, who exposed him
to various types of musical styles. In 1945, at the age of 10, Bankole went to
school at the Baptist Academy, Lagos. He played piano and through his activity
in organizing small groups to perform, he began one aspect of his life-long
contributions to music--choral conducting. Bankole was appointed as a clerical
officer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1954. During this period,
he came in contact with notable Nigerian musicians such as Dr. Thomas Ekundayo
Phillips and Professor Fela Sowande. Bankole had great admiration for Fela
Sowande, and a few years later he was to come under his influence both as
organist and composer.

Between 1954 and 1957, Bankole was already very active as
organist in Lagos churches. For instance, he was assistant organist at the
Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, under the leadership of late Ekundayo
Phillips. It was about 1956 when he began composing his first major work,
Sonata No. 2 (The Passion), for piano.

In August 1957, Bankole left Lagos on a Federal Government
Scholarship to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in
London. He was enrolled in the graduate program (GGSM), a three-year teacher's
diploma, and studied piano, composition, organ, harmony, and counterpoint. Some
of his teachers included Alan Brown (organ), Harold Dexter (organ), and Guy
Eldridge (composition). During his time at the Guildhall School of Music,
Bankole was exposed to a variety of musical styles. His works from this period
show the influence of these various styles. He experimented, progressing from
works that were tonally simple, to works in which he explored diverse
twentieth-century compositional devices as exemplified in the Three Yoruba
Songs for voice and piano (1959) and the Toccata and Fugue for organ (1960). In
spite of the intensity of the program at Guildhall, Bankole found time to sit
for and obtain a series of professional diplomas: Associate of the Royal
College of Music (piano), Licentiate of the Trinity College (piano), Licentiate
of the Royal Academy of Music (Teacher's Diploma), Associate of the Royal College
of Organists, and the Graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
(GGSM).

In addition to his activities as organist-composer, Bankole
was able to organize and train a special mixed choir, comprising fellow
students, which gave performances of his compositions, many of them in the
Yoruba language and musical idiom. Members of his choir and the audiences were
captivated by the Nigerian melodies and rhythms. This type of creative
procedure led to the synthesis of Yoruba and Western musical elements in his
works. Some of the works in this category are Sonata No. 1, Christmas (1958),
Cantata No. 1 in Yoruba, Baba Se wa l'Omo Rere (Father, make us good children)
(1959), Sonata No. 2, Passion (1959), and the variations Op. 10, No. 1 (1959),
based on a Yoruba folktune, Ise Oluwa. 

After spending four years at the Guildhall School of Music,
Bankole moved to Claire College, Cambridge University, London, where he
obtained his first degree, the Bachelor of Arts in Music, at the end of 1964.
While at Cambridge as an organ scholar (1961-64), Bankole obtained the
prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), thus becoming
the second and the last Nigerian to receive this British highest diploma in
organ playing.

During Bankole's stay in England, he wrote music that he
himself could perform. A tremendous amount of music was composed for piano and
organ. He also wrote some choral and orchestral works that are technically
oriented towards European performers. The works of this period include Sonata
No. 4, English Winter Birds for piano, Variations Liturgical (theme and nine
variations for piano), Three Toccatas for organ, Fugal Dance for piano, Second
Organ Symphonia (with drums, trumpets and trombones), and a number of choral
works such as Art Thou Come (1964), Little Jesus, Gentle Jesus (1964), Canon
for Christmas (1964), and Four Yoruba Songs (1964). 

After completing his bachelor's degree at Cambridge
University in 1964, Bankole received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to
study ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Works
produced at UCLA include Ethnophony and Jona. Jona is a cantata in Yoruba for
mixed media comprising a narrator, singers, a dancer and an unusual combination
of musical instruments, including the Indian tambura.

In 1966, Ayo Bankole returned to Nigeria, and was appointed
to the post of Senior Producer in Music at the Nigerian Broadcasting
Corporation (N.B.C.). He remained in this position until 1969, when he was appointed
Lecturer in Music, School of African and Asian Studies, University of Lagos.
His job as a senior producer at the N.B.C. brought him into contact with
various Nigerian musical genres. This contact was to become useful to him both
creatively as well as in his development as a scholar. Two works were written
as a result of his experiences at this time--Fun mi Ni'beji (Give me twins),
parts 1 and 2 for unaccompanied chorus (1967), and the opera Night of Miracles
for chorus, soloists, and Nigerian instruments (1969).

While at the radio station, Bankole had a series of
programs, which he designed to educate the Nigerian public and to present
indigenous African music to the world at large. Some of his works were
performed and recorded under a project initiated by Fela Sowande and jointly
sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Information, Lagos, and the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation. Some of the works from this period are Ore Ofe (The
Grace) for unaccompanied chorus (1967) and Adura fun Alafia (Prayer for Peace)
for voice and piano (1969).

In 1969, he was appointed  Lecturer in Music at the University of Lagos, where he
continued his research into Nigerian indigenous music and presented scholarly
papers. From 1970 onwards, as a result of his research efforts, Bankole began
to employ more traditional materials in his compositions. A work which marks
the beginning of this phase is the Cantata No. 4, Festac, completed in 1974 and
scored for soloists, chorus, organ and orchestral accompaniment consisting of woodwinds,
brass, and some Nigerian traditional instruments. Ona Ara is scored for
soloists, chorus, organ, and Yoruba musical instruments.

Between 1971 and 1974, Bankole spent a lot of time on
special assignments, both within and outside Nigeria. For instance, he was
External Examiner to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1971. Between 1971
and 1972, he was Visiting Lecturer at Ohio State University. In 1973, he
received a Federal Government Commission to compose the anthem for the Second
All-African Games. Between July and August 1974, he was director of a music
seminar, organized by the Rivers State Center for Arts and Culture, and in
April 1974, he was Nigerian Composer-Elect to the Fifth Congress of Soviet
Composers, held in Moscow.

From 1974, Bankole began studying diverse musical practices
of the various ethnic groups in Nigeria. The result of these studies gave birth
to three major projects: 1) Dictionary of Musical Instruments of Nigeria; 2)
The Music of the Rivers' People of Nigeria; and 3) a special study of the Edo
musical instruments.

At the University of Lagos, Bankole combined the roles of
music educator, composer, performer and musicologist. As a music educator, he
was especially concerned with promoting the cause of music at the grassroots. He
achieved this by training young talents, teaching them to read music and also
giving voice and piano lessons. Furthermore, he organized and trained several
choral groups. He composed regularly for these groups and exposed them to
various indigenous and foreign musical works. Among the groups he founded and
trained were The Choir of Angels, comprising students from three secondary
schools in the Lagos area; The Lagos University Musical Society; The Nigerian
National Musico-Cultural Society; and The Choir of the Healing Cross.

Although Bankole contributed immensely to the development of
modern art music in Nigeria, he did not live long to witness the fruits of his
efforts. For on November 6, 1976, at the age of forty-one, Ayo Bankole and his
wife, Toro Bankole, were killed in very tragic circumstances. Today he is still
greatly admired by Nigerian musicians for his magnificent contributions to
Nigerian music as a composer, music teacher, musicologist, organist, pianist,
conductor, and choral director--an extremely gifted man who was not able to
develop his God-given gifts to full potential. Bankole composed five major
works for organ solo:

Toccata and Fugue (1960), published by the University of Ife
Press, Ile-Ife, 1978

Three Toccatas, published under Operation Music One, 1967

Fugue, published under Operation Music One, 1967

Organ Symphonia Nos. 1 & 2, for organ, drums, trumpet
and trombone, unpublished, 1961-64

Fantasia (1961-64), unpublished.

Fourth Generation

Godwin Sadoh
represents the fourth and present generation of Nigerian organist-composers.
Interestingly, like his predecessors, he is the only one in this category, and
his musical training, contribution, experience and expertise are eclectic and
extremely diverse. He is a Nigerian ethnomusicologist, African musicologist,
teacher, composer, pianist, scholar, organist/choir director and an ordained
minister of the Gospel.

Sadoh was born on March 28, 1965, at Lagos, Nigeria, to a
middle-class family. Unlike his predecessors, he was not fortunate to have musicians
in his family. The only musical exposure he had during childhood was the
rendition of folksongs by his late mother and older sisters. His mother
enrolled him in one of the local church choirs, St. Paul's Anglican Church,
Idi-Oro, Lagos, in 1979. It was at this choir that Sadoh was first introduced
to European church music. 

Sadoh attended Eko Boys' High School, Lagos, from 1977 to
1982, where he received private lessons in music theory and piano from Mr.
Ebenezer Omole, the school's music teacher. Omole quickly noticed Sadoh's
talents and interests in music and got him appointed as one of his assistants
in conducting and accompanying the school's choir at the piano. It was Omole
who prepared him for the theory examinations of the Associated Board of the
Royal Schools of Music, London. When Omole was transferred to another
institution, the school's principal and the teaching staff unanimously
appointed Sadoh to the position of organist and choir director of Eko Boys'
High School in 1981 at the age of sixteen. During his tenure, he coordinated
musical activities for the school and directed a Festival of Nine Lessons and
Carols in December, 1981.

In 1980, Sadoh joined the renowned Cathedral Church of
Christ Choir, Lagos, to sing tenor under the leadership of Mr. Obayomi Phillips
(son and successor of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips), who was then the organist and
master of the music. Worthy of mention is the fact that all the Nigerian
organist-composers passed through the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, and
were directly or indirectly trained by Ekundayo Phillips. Obayomi Phillips, who
gave Sadoh private organ lessons, was trained by his father, Ekundayo Phillips.
Obayomi Phillips took keen interest in Sadoh's talents and dedication to
advance his skills and aptitudes in music. Phillips soon appointed Sadoh as the
assisting organist to accompany the choir practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays
and to play for the 7:15 am communion services on Sundays. Phillips also gave
Sadoh private lessons in piano, organ and general musicianship (aural skills),
and he prepared Sadoh for all the piano examinations of the Associated Board of
the Royal Schools of Music, London, from grade 3 through grade 7.
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During his fourteen years at the Cathedral Church, Sadoh was
privileged to meet prominent Nigerian trained musicians such as Yinka Sowande,
substitute organist at Cathedral Church and brother of Fela Sowande; Mrs. Tolu
Obajimi, a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music, London, and music
teacher; Kehinde Okusanya, a concert pianist and Director of the Music
Department of Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Lagos; Professor Lazarus
Ekwueme, a Nigerian musicologist, singer, choral conductor, and Professor of
Music at the Department of Music, University of Lagos; Kayode Oni, a graduate
of Trinity College of Music, London, and one of the notable concert organists
in Lagos; and Christopher Oyesiku, a bass singer and choral conductor. Obayomi
Phillips gave Sadoh a personal scholarship from his own purse to study music at
the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) from 1984 to 1988.
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Between 1982 and 1984, Sadoh founded and directed several
choral groups in Lagos. He accompanied and directed most of the groups by
himself at rehearsals and concerts. It was during this period that Sadoh
discovered his gifts in composition. Among his creative works at this early
stage are Oluwa Gbo Adura Mi (Lord Hear My Prayer) for tenor and piano, Oluwa
mi (My Lord) for two voices and piano, Ale ti le (Night has Fallen) for
baritone and piano, Gbo Ohun Awon Angeli (Hear the Voices of Angels) for SATB
and piano, and several other works. He wrote mainly vocal music during this
period.

In 1984, Sadoh was accepted to the Obafemi Awolowo
University, Ile-Ife, to study piano performance and composition. Between 1985
and 1986, he was appointed as the director of the Unife Joint Christian Mission
Choir (over 250 voices). He was formally introduced to traditional African
music at the Obafemi Awolowo University. It was there that he became more
conscious of his existence as an African musician and the component elements of
the music. Sadoh's interest in African music was invigorated through his
exposure to diverse musical cultures of the world. He took courses such as
music in African culture, survey of world music, black music in the Americas,
music in the Middle East and India. As time went on he acquired deeper
theoretical knowledge of African music. Sadoh's musical studies at Ile-Ife
paved the way for his growing interest in incorporating indigenous Nigerian
elements and the creative procedures in his musical compositions. Hence, he
began to employ distinct Nigerian rhythmic patterns, harmony, tonal
organization, and scale systems in his works. Sadoh's creative output during
this period includes Memoirs of Childhood for piano, Moonlight Dances for
piano, Akoi Wata Geri for SATB and piano, and Akoi Wata Geri for tenor and
piano. Sadoh completed his Bachelor of Arts degree with a Second Class
Upper-Division in 1988. He was retained to teach in the same Department of
Music from 1988 to 1994 as a result of his diligence and academic excellence.
While teaching at the Obafemi Awolowo University, he founded and directed two
major choral groups, the Ile-Ife Choral Society and the Ile-Ife Junior Choral
Society. With these two groups, he directed several public concerts of choral,
vocal solos, and instrumental music within and outside Ile-Ife. Sadoh also
played piano solo recitals on the university campus and other regions in
Nigeria.

In 1994, Sadoh was accepted to the graduate program in
ethnomusicology and African music at the University of Pittsburgh where he
obtained an M.A. degree in 1998. As a teaching assistant at the institution, he
taught several courses including world music, class voice, and class piano. During
this period, he was apointed as a guest/visiting lecturer at GoldenWest
College, California, in 1995, and at Thiel College from 1995 to 1998. Sadoh
studied organ with Dr. Robert Sutherland Lord at the University of Pittsburgh
for three years. While in Pittsburgh, he also served as organist and choir
director at St.  Stephen's
Episcopal Church, Wilkinsburg, from 1996 to 1998.

Sadoh continued his musical training in organ performance
and church music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1998 to 2000. His
teachers were Dr. George Ritchie and Dr. Quentin Faulkner. Sadoh was often
called upon to present several guest lectures on African and world music at the
School of Music, University of Nebraska. In fact, he created the curriculum of
the African music program and taught the course from 1998 to 2000. During his
two-year sojourn in Nebraska, he served as organist at Christ Lutheran Church,
Grace Lutheran Church, and as associate director of music ministries at the
First United Methodist Church. Sadoh obtained the M.Mus. degree in May of 2000
after playing two Master's organ recitals in one academic year--November 1999
and April 2000. He published his first scholarly article "Music at the
Anglican Youth Fellowship: An Intercultural Experience" in the HYMN
journal, in January 2001. This was a paper he wrote for twentieth-century
church music class, and it was Dr. Faulkner, the instructor, who encouraged him
to get the paper published.

In 2000, Sadoh was accepted to the Doctor of Musical Arts
degree program in organ performance and composition at the Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge. With this admission, he became the first African to
study organ at doctoral level. He has been studying with Dr. Herndon Spillman
(organ) and Dr. Dinos Constantinides (composition). At LSU, he wrote mostly
instrumental and chamber works at the instigation of his composition teacher.
His major works at this time include Three Dances for piano, Three Pieces for
flute solo, Illusion for violin and piano, Potpourri for trombone, flute, oboe,
clarinet in B-flat, and string quartet, A Folk Dance for percussion ensemble of
four players, Yoruba Wedding Dance for brass quintet, Badagry for woodwind
quartet, A Suite of Nigerian Folksongs for string quartet, Tribute to Homeland
for chamber orchestra, Harmattan Overture for symphony orchestra and Nigerian
instruments, Summer Evening at Ile-Ife for wind quintet, and Three Wedding
Songs for soprano and piano. Sadoh wrote his first major works for organ in the
summer of 2002: 1) Folk Dance, 2) Ore Ofe Jesu, and 3) Nigerian Toccata.
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The Folk Dance was composed on August 13, 2002. The thematic
material was derived from a Nigerian folksong "Owo o, Omo o, ma m'omo se
ire" (money and children are both desired and I will embrace both and revere
them). It is divided into three sections. The first introduces the main theme
on the Great with an ostinato in the Pedal. The second section is the
development of the theme in D-flat, while the third section returns back to the
home key (F) and ushers in the principal theme triumphantly in the Pedal with
full organ. Nigerian Toccata was influenced by nineteenth and twentieth-century
French toccatas. Composed on August 14, 2002, it is a virtuoso piece that calls
for all the resources of the organ from the smallest pianissimo to the loudest
fortissimo. The four thematic materials are original. Structurally, it is in a
quasi-sonata allegro form without a development. The harmonic framework and
sonority are purely modern. The work is characterized by diatonicism,
chromaticism, pentatonicism and sequences. Ore Ofe Jesu (The grace of Jesus)
was composed on August 15, 2002. It is a quiet and meditative piece most
suitable for offertory, communion or any other contemplative aspect of a divine
service, and is in three sections. It opens with a prelude in duple meter and
moves into the second section in triple meter. This section is based on a
Yoruba church hymn "Idahun re l'a nreti" (We are waiting to receive
your answer). It closes quietly with the first four measures of the prelude.
These three pieces were published by Wayne Leupold Editions in April 2003 as
one major work titled Nigerian Suite No. 1 for organ solo.

In 2002, Sadoh wrote and published two articles: "A
Centennial Epitome of the Organs at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos,
Nigeria," published in The Organ (London), and "The Creative Process
in Nigerian Hymn-Based Compositions," published in The Diapason (August,
pp. 15-17). Several scholarly articles by him are to be published in 2003.
"Creativity and Dance in Joshua Uzoigwe's Music," will be published
in ComposerUSA, "Organ Building in Nigeria" and "A History of
South Africa's Organ Builders" will be published in the Organ
Encyclopedia. In May 2003, Sadoh was nominated by members of the faculty at LSU
for membership in the Beta Lambda Chapter of Pi Kappa Lambda, for his academic
and musical accomplishments.

It is interesting to note that an organist-composer is born
in Nigeria every thirty years. Sowande was born in 1905, Bankole in 1935 and
Sadoh in 1965. Hypothetically, the composer-organist for the fifth generation
must have been born in 1995 somewhere in Nigeria.

Others

The following are organists only.

Kayode Oni studied
organ at the Trinity College of Music in London. He came back to Nigeria in the
1970s and was subsequently appointed Honorary Organist at the Cathedral Church
of Christ, Lagos. He was also organist and choir director in several Anglican
churches in Ogun and Lagos States. He taught several budding organists in
Lagos, including Deji Osun.

Deji Osun studied
organ privately with Kayode Oni for several years in Lagos. He sat for the
theory, piano, and organ examinations of the Associated Board of the Royal
Schools of Music, London, while studying with Kayode Oni. He served as organist
in various churches in Lagos and Ogun States before leaving for the Trinity
College of Music, London, to continue his studies in organ in early 1980s. He
has completed his training and currently resides in England.

Merriman Johnson was
the organist at the Tinubu Methodist Church, Lagos, for several years. He went
to study organ in one of the British schools of music in the early 1980s. He
has finished his training and is currently residing in England.