Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh are organists/choirmasters at First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. They also direct Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia, and Mrs. Betenbaugh is chapel organist and assistant choral director at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. Last summer they completed a 13-week sabbatical in the UK, visiting Cambridge, Oxford, London, and Salisbury. See previous articles from their sabbatical: "London Chats #1: Michael McCarthy," October 2003, p. 18; "John Tavener's The Veil of the Temple," November 2003, p. 17; "Cambridge Chats #1: Timothy Byram-Wigfield," December 2003, pp. 16-19; and "London Chats #2: Patrick Russill," February 2004, pp. 20-22.

We met with Sarah MacDonald on June 5, 2003, during exam week, in the lovely garden near the chapel of Selwyn College. On the previous day we had attended a rehearsal of the Selwyn choir and Evensong at the college. Sarah is the first woman in the history of any of the Oxbridge college chapels to hold the position of director of music. She greeted us by giving us publications issued by Cambridge University that included a prospectus and other materials given to all potential students. We learned a great deal from Sarah about the system of the Cambridge colleges. Sarah is a friendly young woman with an ever-present smile and bubbly personality.

Sarah was appointed Director of Music in Chapel at Selwyn in January of 1999. She is Canadian, and studied piano, organ and choral conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto before coming to Cambridge as Organ Scholar of Robinson College. She has taught organ and conducting at the Eton Choral Courses, teaches for the University Music Faculty, and is a winner of the Royal College of Organists' Limpus Prize for organ performance.

GB: Thank you for these materials.

SM: You're welcome! This should give you some information on the 17 colleges out of 23 undergraduate colleges that do offer choral scholarships. It certainly should give you an idea about the range of activities of the various choirs. Of course, they are all made out to sound like every choir is fantastic. You can judge that for yourself! (laughter)

BB: How long have you been here?

SM: I've been at Selwyn for four and a half years. I was here in Cambridge at Robinson College as an undergraduate from 1992 until 1995.

GB: As an organ scholar?

SM: Yes.

GB: Did they have a director of music?

SM: No, I was it—just my kind of organ scholarship!

GB: Let me quiz you about the organ scholarships. How are the lessons worked out for the organ scholars?

SM: Most colleges pay for them completely or subsidize the lessons up to a certain point. The amount you can claim depends on which college you're at. They study with a variety of teachers, including David Sanger, Anne Page and Nicholas Kynaston. Most of the organ teachers come up to Cambridge three times a term. Or one could go down to London for lessons if one preferred.

GB: So, basically they are just coaches, then.

SM: Yes, in a sense they are. Most organ scholars only have three lessons a term. That's really all they have time for. The terms are really short (only eight weeks long). That is actually almost a lesson every two weeks. It does come as a bit of a shock to some of them, because they come from schools where they've had lessons every week throughout the year. David Sanger, who teaches most of them, is very much a kind of Conservatoire coach. He's interested in hearing something once, maybe twice if you're going to play it in a big competition or something. I was really fortunate because I'd done this in piano performance in Toronto. I'd had that kind of teaching for three years already, and I understood it completely.

GB: Where is home base for him?

SM: He lives in the Lake District in a converted chapel which is absolutely stunning.

BB: We love the Lake District! It's so beautiful.

SM: Occasionally he will invite students up to spend a couple of days and have a couple of lessons. The nave of the old chapel is his living room, and the organ is in there. It's fabulous! It's not easy to get to—you have to take about three trains and three buses. Then he has to pick you up. It's just amazing once you get there!

BB: Tell us about your new organ here at Selwyn.

SM: Oh, it's going to be excellent! It will be a 3-manual with 30 stops, made by Orgues Létourneau. I knew their organs from Canada although they haven't built very many here. There's one in Pembroke College Oxford and one in the Tower of London. We went down and played the London one, and spoke with the organist who told us two things that really sold us on it—first of all it was the finest organ he'd ever accompanied on. The other thing was that it had been in for a year at that point, and they hadn't had a single technical fault with it. For a new organ that's very impressive.

GB: I knew Létourneau when he was working for Casavant, and I put in a new organ in Nebraska. Of course I know of his instruments around the country like the big installation at First Presbyterian in Greensboro, North Carolina.

SM: I've seen that one advertised.

GB: So he will have large-scaled principals here?

SM: Yes.

BB: When's it due?

SM: It comes in July of 2004 and will be installed over the summer. We'll then sort of "play it in" through Michaelmas term of 2004. We're having it dedicated in January of 2005 by Naji Hakim.

GB: Are you going to have French reeds?

SM: Yes, absolutely, French Canadian reeds! They will have Cavaillé-Coll shallots.

BB: How did you end up studying in Canada?

SM: I am Canadian, grew up there and studied there first of all.

GB: Is that when you studied with John Tuttle?

SM: Yes, that's right.

GB: You studied piano first?

SM: The organ was only ever for fun. I primarily wanted to be a conductor anyway, so I knew I would have to learn to play the organ and decided to do that. I do take my playing very seriously, however. I got the top prize for organ playing in my associateship exam for the Royal College of Organists, but I have not yet had the courage to attempt the fellowship. It costs £300 to take it so I can't afford to fail it! Only a very small proportion of candidates pass it the first time. The keyboard tests in particular are notorious. I think I'll wait until the new organ is installed, when I will really want to practice for it.

BB: Tell us about the instrument you have in your chapel at the moment.

SM: It was built in 1994 by a local Cambridgeshire company. It's actually the same builder as the organ in St. Catharine's College for which Peter LeHuray was the consultant. The St. Catharine's instrument is really quite good, especially following its recent cleaning and revoicing by Flentrop. Ours at Selwyn is not a successful organ though, and has a sad history. There's a place in the world for mediocre parish church organs, but a Cambridge College Chapel with a musical tradition is not one of them. We have an organ repair budget of £10,000 a year. Last year was the point at which we knew we would have to do something. You can imagine how excited the College was about the idea of replacing an organ that was only eight years old. They were fantastic about it, but they were not happy.

GB: That's happened in the States with several builders. At least you're going to have pistons!

SM: Yes, we need them really.

BB: It's good that the College is supportive.

SM: Selwyn has one of the most prestigious traditions of the 20th century, and the college knows it needs to be preserved. There's a long list of important 20th-century church musicians who were organ and choral scholars here including Richard Marlow (Trinity College), Sir David Lumsden, John Harper, Grayston (Bill) Ives, Andrew Lawrence King, Percy Young, Frederick Rimmer. Of the past five organ scholars who've come through here, not a single one of them is playing anymore because they found the experience of three years as organ scholar here so disheartening having to play this instrument. Something had to be done.

BB: Do you play the last hymn and the postlude all the time?

SM: No, only about once a term. I do very little playing, but I do play at an Anglo-Catholic church where I am assistant in my spare time. Because it's exam term the external pressure on the choir is at a maximum. Evensong has to be a fun experience, because the exam pressure is horrendous here. Everything is 100% finals. Your entire degree is based upon these three weeks now. They write five or six essays every week all throughout their 3-year degree, and they don't count for anything. That's one of the reasons that this is a good time for the senior organ scholar to conduct. He's a wonderful player, but not an experienced conductor. The music is easy, and finals are mostly finished now. It's just the 6 or 7 first years who have exams right now that are going to be away. The whole atmosphere is more relaxed, but normally the organ scholars don't conduct unless I'm away. I think it's a bit odd that in England the way the tradition works is that they teach you to play the organ. You play the organ and play the organ and then suddenly get thrown in front of a choir, never having had a conducting lesson in your life. They expect you to know what to do. I think that's a bit unfair, actually. Once or twice a term, I let the organ scholars conduct while I'm there, so that we can actually have a chat right afterwards.

GB: None of the schools here teach basic conducting?

SM: There are a couple of new conducting programs at some of the London Conservatoires. There's a new program at the Royal Academy which started up two years ago which is a Master's in Church Music and Choral Conducting. Again, there are only four or five students per year, and they are teaching you professional choral conducting. The difficulty is that they will become accustomed to working with former Oxbridge choral scholars that sing like a recording whether you can beat time or not. Then you get thrown in front of a choral society or parish choir, and you can't even bring them in.

GB: Right. It's different in the States. In the better colleges much emphasis is put on conducting. You are the first woman in 700 years at an Oxbridge College. Tell us about that.

SM: It is a very male-dominated tradition. I'm now chairing the annual meetings after the choral scholarship trials. It is me and this table full of gentlemen. It's fine actually. In fact, an interesting statistic which I just heard the other day concerns The University Church (Great St. Mary's) which is just now advertising for a director of music.

GB: Yes, we saw that.

SM: They have 17 applicants—not a single woman.

BB: I wanted to ask you if other women had applied for positions and not been accepted or if they just didn't apply.

SM: No, they just don't apply.

GB: Do they think they can't break through?

SM: Yes, there's this mythology that women can't train boys' voices, which isn't true. The feeling is that we haven't gone through what boys do at the age of 12, so we can't possibly know what to do with them before they go through it.

GB: Are there any female organ scholars in Cambridge?

SM: A few, actually! There are girls at Sidney Sussex, Emmanuel, Magdalene, Corpus Christi, and Christ's Colleges this year.

GB: There's a woman who's a sub-organist at one of the cathedrals.

SM: There are three or four women sub-organists, and there are also several women in number one spots in major parish churches, where they are training men and boys choirs perfectly well.

BB: Have you had any problems?

SM: I've had no problems at all. I'd like to think it's because I know what I'm doing and not because I'm female. I've had an easy time of it. I expect that's from a kind of "short list" point of view.

GB: Do you think it will be another 50 years before there are females in the top cathedral positions?

SM: As a matter of fact, there are two women in number one cathedral positions already: one is Judy Martin, a former Selwyn organ scholar, who has recently gone to St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and the other is Arundel Roman Catholic Cathedral in Sussex, where both the "master" of the music, and also the assistant organist are women. I am not sure how long it will take before one of the traditional cathedrals with a medieval choir school will appoint a woman to the top job.

BB: There are the girls choirs now.

SM: One of the main problems with the girls choirs is that they are creating jobs for women, but they shouldn't be. Why is it that a man can conduct a men and boys choir, but a woman has to be appointed to the position of "Assistant Organist and Director of the Girls Choir." I hope it will not become another unbreakable tradition that if you are a woman you must conduct only a girls choir. It's still discrimination.

Part of the problem is that the real training is still being given too much to the boys only, first as cathedral or collegiate choristers, and then at the traditional all-boys private schools which carry on teaching the choral tradition. The girls choirs are still too new for the effects to be felt at university. I've got three or four ex-collegiate/cathedral boy choristers in the choir. When they arrive at university, the men know the repertoire already. The girls are the weak sight readers, and do not know the mixed choral repertoire. The men know all the organ accompaniments by the time they're 18. They come up here, they do three years and they walk into those jobs because they're already qualified.

GB: Right. I've been very impressed with 18- and 19-year-olds handling huge instruments like at King's, the "accompanying machine." There are very few 18-year-olds in the United States that could handle a big instrument like that with complete mastery and artistry.

BB: I think Trinity College must be the silver slipper. It appears that way to us just from the two or three days we were there.

SM: Yes, anywhere with that kind of tradition and that kind of money to uphold it is nice.

GB: What plans do you have for touring with your choir?

SM: We're going to Finland and Estonia in September, and then we will do a brief tour to Scotland next summer, because we're hoping to go to New Zealand (if we can find the money) in 2005. Bishop Selwyn was the first bishop of New Zealand, and we've still never been there.

BB: If you ever come stateside call us, and we'll work something out.

GB: It would be nice to have you. Does the college underwrite the tours?

SM: They subsidize them. Selwyn choir is not well known. International Record Review two years ago reviewed one of our recent CDs and said that we would easily give any of our better-known neighbors a run for their money. Reviewers can say that, but still when it comes down to it, no one has heard of Selwyn, so we can't charge a big fee.

BB: Maybe that will change.

SM: I would hope so, but I don't expect it to change in the next year or two. Domestic invitations are starting to come in now which is great. Two weeks from now we're going to Birmingham, (not terribly exotic, but the invitation is lovely) to St. Augustine's Church in Edgbaston which is the only parish church for which Howells wrote canticles, and they're on our CD. In March we went to Canterbury and sang the premier of a new work by Jonathan Dove. That was really fantastic. Those things are starting to come in, and I can now actually get expenses paid when we're in the country. However, no one's invited us anywhere more exciting than Canterbury or Birmingham at this point. Choir members have to contribute their own money, which is unfortunate. It's well subsidized, though. They're getting ten days in Finland and Estonia for £150 which is a lot cheaper than they could do if they were actually going on holiday.

GB: That's a good deal!

BB: So, do any of these students have jobs outside of the college?

SM: They're not allowed to. It's against University regulations. You cannot have a job while you're a student. You obviously can when you're home in the summer, but not during term.

GB: We were just punting yesterday, and our punter was a student. I guess his exams are over.

SM: Yes. It's very, very intense academically. That's why I have to be really careful about balancing. My choir does really well academically, and that's important from the college's point of view. I don't want it to appear that choir is "getting in the way" of their studies. Also, there's a great deal of pressure from the media firstly, and the government secondly, to open up Cambridge and Oxford. We're trying desperately hard. In this country only about 40% of the population actually goes to university. They are desperately trying to increase that, but there's no tradition of it. In the UK education system, I think it's 7% of school-age children in the population are in private schools (i.e., schools for which they pay fees); 93% are in state-funded public schools. Cambridge and Oxford, which are government funded universities, are still struggling to get 50% of students from state-funded schools, which obviously is not representative given the percentage of children who attend state-funded schools. One of the areas that have had to deal with that over the past ten years is the choral tradition because we can't let people in now just because they can sing (i.e., they probably went to a private choir school and then a private high school where the choral tradition is still taught). If they can sing, good, great, but they need to be absolutely top class academically as well. They've got to fight evenly against everyone else. If you've got two people, both of whom are equal academically, and one of them can sing, great—in comes the singer. If you've got one who's reasonably good who can sing and one who's brilliant academically who's tone deaf, the tone deaf one comes. We have to do that, and we've all had to learn to deal with it.

GB: Your system is so different than in America. How do beginning harmony, theory, counterpoint, dictation and sight singing work with your system here?

SM: All of that gets taught in the first year. They have weekly one-on-one tuition in harmony and counterpoint. At the end of the year for their exam they have to do a 4-part fugal exposition on a given subject, and they have to complete a piece of 3-part Palestrina where one part is given throughout. There's no keyboard aid—it's all pencil on paper.

GB: So, they're taught harmony and counterpoint at the same time?

SM: Yes, and both are examined at the end of the year in three-hour exams. The harmony exam consists of three questions, and they have to answer two of them. One of them is the harmonization of a sort of "Schubertesque" song, and they have to write the piano part. The other is completion of a string quartet. They will be given four bars of the string quartet which they have to complete to a specified rubric (e.g., "write a further 24 bars with a modulation to the dominant at the half-way point"). The other question is to write up to six variations on a ground bass, either for a keyboard instrument or for strings. Aural training is extremely difficult here, because 20 or 25 of approximately 60 undergraduate musicians in each year have perfect pitch. Coming up with an exam that all of them can take is hard work. For the dictation questions, there are two things rather loosely termed "melodies." They are given the first note and 6 to 8 bars, and they get to hear it twice. These are really horrible—they are designed to test the people with perfect pitch. Then there are four rhythms that they have to memorize which are usually shorter, about four bars. Again, they hear them twice, but they can't write until after the second playing.

GB: It's different in the States.

SM: It's quite a clever trick, actually. You really learn to record and play back in your head. It's a skill that all of us have, but they have to learn to use it. They also have to complete a piece of 3-part keyboard counterpoint dictation, like a Baroque 3-part invention. They are given one part all the way through, and have to take the other part down. They hear that a total of four times. Then they have something called orchestral timbres. They are given a piano reduction of an orchestral score, and they then hear the orchestral version played three times. They then have to fill in boxes and say "that was a Cor Anglais or that was a viola with a mute on playing really high." They have to score up eight bars of it towards the end.

GB: That's all first year?

SM: Yes, it's all one three-hour exam.

GB: So orchestration is first year as are harmony and counterpoint?

SM: Yes. Then they have aural analysis. They hear a four- or five-minute piece of music. On this year's exam it was a piece of Couperin's keyboard music. They hear it three times, and the question is to write an account of the movement. The people who don't necessarily write things very well can just say "this happens or that happens." The kids who are really good actually write proper Schenkerian analysis for something they've heard three times and haven't got a score for. That's quite a big one. There's a mistake-spotting test. They are given a score that has mistakes in pitch and duration. They get played the correct version, and then they have to circle and correct the mistakes. Some of those are easy, and some are not. They have a keyboard exam as well in which they have to transpose a chorale, realize a figured bass, score a string quartet, score a Palestrina piece in C clefs and harmonize a melody.

The other written exams include analysis, in which there are two unseen works plus a set work which is a quick study. They'll find out what that is a couple of weeks before the exams. They would be asked to write three analysis essays in the exam, at least one of which must be on the set work. There are also two history papers (we call courses "papers"), the exams for which are also usually three essays to be written in three hours. The first one is the 19th century, and the other is 20th century. During the second year they choose from a selection of topics. This year's options include a Bach course, a course on Handel in London, one on Paris opera in the 19th century, and that sort of thing. They also have to submit a portfolio of tonal compositions. They have a set number of styles they can write in (sonata form or theme and variations or a collection of three songs or a ritornello) and they also must submit a three- or four-voice fugue. They study fugue all the way through the second year. The tripos1 is in the process of changing, and the major change is that the only compulsory paper (I think we are the only remaining university in the world for this paper) is a four-hour fugue exam. Every undergraduate, by the end of their third year, can sit down and write a fugue without a piano in four hours. It's not nearly as difficult as one thinks. I will ever be grateful that I did it. Now it's my favorite course to supervise. I teach about 15 fugue students, and I love it. I especially enjoy the ones who at the beginning of their third year say, "You must be kidding." By the end if they actually work well through the year, it's not a terrifying exam. They've actually learned how to deal with large-scale form, small-scale harmonic movements, etc., and writing good four-part counterpoint. I don't know what will happen next year, because it's not mandatory. They will have a choice. They will either have to write a 10,000-word dissertation on some scholarly topic of their choice which would be submitted obviously, or they can do the fugue paper. There's still a little bit of academic rigor left, but my guess is that 70% or 80% of them will go for the dissertation, which is a shame, because there are a lot of people who actually end up enjoying fugue who would never choose to do it at the beginning of the year.

GB: For the fugue course, for instance, would you use a textbook?

SM: Nothing is textbook-based in this university.

GB: That's what I thought.

SM: By midway through their second year for their history papers, they are reading journals. It's much more research-based. What I do in fugue, with the students who are reasonably comfortable keyboard players, or who at least have played some pieces, they simply have to write for me a complete fugue every week. We'll have a half-hour or 45-minute session on it every week, just the two of us. With those who struggle a bit, I'll do small amounts, say have them write four expositions, and I'll dictate. I'll have them write one using semiquavers modulating from E-flat to B-flat or whatever or write one in three parts using triplet quavers. I'll dictate a little bit, but I'll do that for the first term, and then I'll insist that they write a complete fugue all the way through. Writing a sequence, using the circle of fifths, bearing in mind that they've learned all of the basics of suspensions, etc. during the first year, they can learn that in about two afternoons, even the weak ones. You need them to consider how they are going to use this little bit of material in the whole thing. Occasionally, you'll get them to practice writing endings of fugues. Can you work your way up to a Neapolitan sixth chord? Anyone can write a Neapolitan sixth chord, but it's getting there and escaping from it that's tricky.

In the third year they all study a major set work, usually a choice of one of six big operas, Boris Godunov was one of them and Così fan tutte. There would be a choice of four other papers on various history topics. There's an in-depth editing and notation paper which this year was on Frescobaldi, so one would be dealing with a lot of nasty tempo relationships and that sort of thing. There would be various other random history papers depending on what research any of the lecturers are doing. One of this year's choices is "Music, Politics and Theology in the English Reformation." That would've been a fun paper to take. They can also write a dissertation if they want, 10,000 words on the topic of their choice. There's also the option to take a performance, which many of them do, but it's only one option, only in the third year. Two-thirds of them will do a 23-minute recital in which there's a set work that you have to perform. They also have to write a 3,000-word essay on the performance reception and history of any of the pieces in your program, which is a little bit nebulous, but there has to be something academic since it's not a performing degree. I did it actually, and my essay was on a piece of Bach on the organ. I did a study of all of the published editions of the piece I played. I went down to the National Sound Archive and listened to loads of recording of it and looked up every reference to it in every book ever written about Bach. You can actually come up with an essay, but it's not easy.

GB: Most of our degrees in the States are performance degrees.

SM: Yes, exactly. You can do that at a Conservatory. There's a gap between the Conservatory and the University. Lots of students graduate from here with a degree and then go on and do a Master's at the Royal Academy. There's some fabulous playing and some fabulous singing that gets done here, but there's even better playing and singing at the Conservatories in the undergraduate programs, because the ones who are really top quality performers will often just go there first.

GB: All of this exam talk is exhausting. I know why the students are looking like they are now. (laughter)

SM: Exactly, and that's just in music. The worst one I think is the English course. They don't do exams at the end of the first year, because there's too much to learn. They only take exams at the end of the second year. The first morning of the exam week they get up and write an exam called 900-1100. Then they get up the next morning, and it's 1100-1300, then 1300-1500, etc. Eight days in a row they will write an exam covering two hundred years of English literature. Then they have to take a second language paper as well and something called literary criticism, analysis of unseen texts.

GB: This is all much more difficult than in the States.

SM: I think it's more difficult here than in most places. Certainly the music course is twice as rigorous as anything I've ever seen in North America. In fact, there was a mathematician visiting a week ago who came in for dinner with someone he knows. He had been looking at the first years' math papers. Bearing in mind that Newton was a mathematician at Cambridge, and Stephen Hawking is here, I think it's allowed to be a difficult course. He was looking at the first year math exam, and he said to me that he had had a Ph.D. in mathematics for 20 years, and he thought he could probably get through about 25% of that exam. I'm sure that he is a top scholar in the specific area, but here it is a huge amount of material our students have to get through in a short amount of time. It's not just that they do everything in no detail. They do things in great detail, but they do an awful lot of stuff in a lot of detail. It's really intense, and that's why they get so stressed at this time of the year, because they have to show what they know now.

BB: That's hard, because they don't get graded at any time until the end. What about people that don't test well?

SM: Women always do worse than men. It's very definitely a man who would've thought of it, because it wouldn't occur to a man that it might not be a good day for a woman to write an exam. Many women do extremely well, but in general the overall performances show that the men do better. The other thing is that more men get in. There are three colleges that admit only women, and there's still a 65/35% gender imbalance across the university, even including those three colleges.

GB: Magdalene was the last college to accept women?

SM: Yes, in 1991.

GB: What was the first year?

SM: In 1972 or 1973 there was a wave of 3 or 4 colleges that accepted women. There was a big bunch in 1976 which included Selwyn. The rest of them jumped on board over the next few years, and Magdalene went in 1991.

GB: Well, we've covered a lot of academic ground.

BB: Thank you for explaining all this. We didn't understand all that we knew about the system in Cambridge. Most Americans don't understand the system here at all.

SM: Unless you've come up through it, you don't realize. You can't do anything resembling a liberal arts degree. If you come up here to read for the Music tripos, then you read for the Music tripos full stop. You can go and attend lectures in any of the other subjects if you want to, but you won't be examined on them, and no one will know. Nobody has time to do that anyway. Some people will finish Part I in a particular course, and then change. The sad ones are those who do Part I in a course they love and then panic and do Part II in Law when they realize that History or English or whatever isn't going to give them a job. That does happen, but it's usually only 3 or 4 students per course in each year that would actually change.

GB: The Oxbridge Colleges are still the only places that give an MA three years after the Bachelor's?

SM: Yes, absolutely.

GB: Free of any advanced study?

SM: Yes.

BB: This would then be different from an MA from the Royal Academy?

SM: That's right. You can do a Master's degree here as well—it's called an M.Phil. It's a one-year postgraduate research degree, and then you do your doctorate. Anyone who knows if your degree says MA Cantab (the abbreviation for the Latin form of Cambridge) they know perfectly you haven't worked for it. The other thing is that the undergraduate degree is really heavily research-based and a ridiculous amount of work. I didn't feel in the least guilty about accepting an MA, because I knew that I did so much intense research for my BA.

GB: I've heard that there were discussions about phasing that out.

SM: I don't know. It's fighting against 700 years of tradition. I would be surprised if they phase it out, especially because if you have a degree from Cambridge people know if it says M.Phil that you worked for it. If it says MA, then it just means that you did your undergraduate degree at Cambridge. If I go back to North America and say that I have an MA, they all assume that I've done a three-year research degree, which in a sense I have. It just comes with the undergraduate one.

GB: What is the total for room, board and tuition for a year?

SM: Tuition for a home student (a UK or EU student are the same) with parents that make money is £1,125 per year for any university in the UK. It's subsidized, you see. Tuition fees only came in three years ago. Before that it was free. You can imagine how painful that was. When I was here as an undergraduate tuition was free, and they still received maintenance checks from the government to go to university. That was their desperate attempt to increase the number of people at university. The maintenance checks were means-tested, so if you had wealthy parents you didn't get one. Fees and loans for home students are now means-tested instead, and grants are no longer available.  There is a huge debate in Parliament right now though about raising university tuition fees significantly (to £3000 a year minimum), and some universities, including Cambridge, are fighting for the right to set their own level of fees, rather than having it set by the government as it is now. In terms of living costs, 95% of undergraduates live in college residence, which keeps costs down. Rent in Selwyn, for example, is actually quite low. The rooms are small, because it was originally formed as a college for priests and for children of poor clergy. It doesn't have any of the big sumptuous rooms that some of the wealthy medieval colleges have. Depending on the size of the room they would be paying between £450 and £600 per term (there are three terms a year), which is quite low actually compared to some of the colleges. They also have to pay something called a kitchen fixed charge, which is about £100 a term. This keeps the prices for meals in hall really low, so they can get a full 3- or 4-course meal served in the formal hall three times a week for only £4, and daily lunch can be bought for as little as about £2.

Fees for overseas students, however, are exorbitant. For a science course, which music is classed as because a lot of the teaching is one-on-one, the tuition when I came ten years ago was £9,750 a year. Then I had to find accommodations on top of that. They expect you to have about £15,000 or £20,000 a year, which is fine except if you're paying it in Canadian dollars worth next to nothing.

GB: What kind of stipend do the organ and choral scholars get?

SM: The choral scholarship, as you will see in the materials, is £100 a year plus singing lessons. The organ scholarship is £300 a year plus organ lessons. There is an agreement across the whole university such that every choral scholar, no matter which college they're at, gets paid £100, and every organ scholar gets paid £300. An instrumental award is £75. It does depend on what college you are as to how much is paid for lessons. Selwyn is quite generous, because we had a nice alumnus about 25 years ago who endowed a music fund. The choral scholars claim up to £300 a year or up to £450 for lessons if they're studying music. This actually isn't bad—you can have a lot of lessons for that kind of money. We do get lots of inquiries from North Americans who think that choral scholarship is an equivalent football scholarship (i.e., is actually substantial financially), but it isn't.

GB: Are they big on early fingering here in Cambridge?

SM: Some of them are, yes. Then the musicians among us will think about the early fingering and how it affects articulation, and then do the articulation with normal fingering! (laughter)

GB: That's what I do—it's easier than refingering everything.

SM: Yes.

GB: What one hears is the main thing.

SM: If you're on your way to King's there's a mass there on Thursdays. It's not Evensong.

GB: Yes, they are doing the Howells Collegium Regale. We have heard the Kodály Missa Brevis twice. I don't know what their rotation schedule is. I haven't figured it out.

SM: My guess is that it's probably not particularly methodical. You can't count anything as being in your repertoire until the third term, because a third of the choir is new at the beginning every academic year.

GB: It's been a joy to hear all the Howells settings, particularly. They are our favorites.

SM: You should get our CD in that case!

GB: Yes, we'll pick one up from the porter.

BB: Thank you for giving us your hour and sharing your knowledge.

SM: Certainly. This has been fun.

Author's note: We left Sarah with promises to meet in cyberspace soon.

A conversation with Steven Egler

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

Robert Glasgow, Professor of Music at The University of Michigan, will celebrate his 80th birthday on May 30, 2005. In honor of this occasion, I was delighted to be invited by Jerome Butera, editor of The Diapason, to interview Professor Glasgow, and did so on February 12, 2005. We had a wonderful afternoon at his organ studio in the School of Music, and he answered many questions about his life and career. Thanks to Prof. Glasgow for the interview, and we wish him Godspeed upon the occasion of his birthday and best wishes upon his forthcoming retirement.

Robert Glasgow has taught at The University of Michigan since 1962, after teaching at MacMurray College in Illinois and having graduated with distinction from the Eastman School, where he was also awarded the Performer’s Certificate. MacMurray College named him an honorary doctor of music, and his Michigan colleagues honored him with the Harold Haugh Award for excellence in the teaching of performance. He has concertized abroad several times, has toured the United States and Canada every season, and has appeared as a featured performer, lecturer and clinician at numerous national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. Mr. Glasgow was named International Performer of the Year in 1997 by the New York AGO Chapter.

Personnel coded as follows:

SE--Steven Egler

RG--Robert Glasgow

RB--Robert Barker, who also took the photos that accompany this article.

SE: Bob, please tell us about your childhood in Oklahoma City and your early music training. Did you come from a musical family?

RG: I would say so. Both my parents played musical instruments. My mother was a pianist and somewhat of an organist. My father played violin rather well and also clarinet. In fact they played piano and violin in the church orchestra, and that is where they first met.

My mother heard about a new Presbyterian church being built in Ada, a little town in southeast Oklahoma. They were going to have a new organ; it was going to be a Hillgreen-Lane. When my mother learned about it she called to ask if they needed an organist. Of course, being a little town out there in the middle of nowhere, they said, yes, they needed an organist. My mother decided to take some organ lessons and be down there in about six weeks. So she did; took six lessons from a lady in Oklahoma City and learned how to play the pedals and the manuals--enough to play a service. So she became organist of that church.

SE: So your mother was an organist?

RG: She was a natural musician and she had a lot of piano study. When she was in high school, her piano teacher told my grandmother that she didn’t think that she was making the progress that she should. She said, “Your daughter has too much talent for her own good . . . that it was too easy for her.” By the way, when I started to play the accordion, she learned the accordion herself; then she’d listen to things on the radio and then she’d play them to me, and I’d learn them by ear. She’d learn them by ear and then transfer them to my ear when I’d come home from school. It was great fun!

Well, it’s easy! It’s the easiest way to learn music rather than read through all of those notes--the printed page! I still think that there’s something to be said for learning by ear at a young age. In the first place, making music is perfectly natural. It’s not going to become any more natural than it is right then.

You want students who can play with great persuasion and do not sound affected and contrived. Those who do play this way started off as youngsters playing by ear, singing tunes they’ve heard, listening to the radio.

SE: Who were some of the organists who inspired you as a young man?

RG: The organist at First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Mrs. J. S. Frank. Mr. Ken Wright of radio station WKY, who played a 4-manual Kilgen organ in the radio station studio--this organ produced some very beautiful sounds. His playing was very tasteful, he had good organ technique, and presented a good variety of popular style repertoire. For every broadcast he played his own theme song that was not published, but I learned to play it by ear. Jesse Crawford, a very famous theatre organist of the time. I had many of his recordings. Marcel Dupré came to Oklahoma City in 1939 to play a recital at First Christian Church. He had just played the wedding of the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII) and Mrs. Simpson. The recital was a sell-out event. He brought his daughter Marguerite on the tour, and they played Franck, Dupré, etc.

SE: Did your parents encourage music study as a boy?

RG: Well, I guess so. They didn’t discourage it. It was a perfectly natural thing in our home when I was growing up. I was an only child.

SE: What instruments did you play?

RG: Accordion! I wanted to study and play the organ, but I could not reach the pedals, so I talked my folks into buying me an 80-bass accordion. That’s how I learned to play the pieces my mother taught me by ear--on that accordion.

SE: So that’s as close as you could get to the organ sound.

RG: Yes, it’s like an organ. It’s a wind instrument. I loved doing it, and I got pretty good at it. I was popular playing for church basement suppers and things like that.

SE: You were well known early on.

RG: Oh yes, I started playing at age nine, and by eleven I was hot stuff!

SE: Who was your first teacher?

RG: My mother. She taught me some piano. We had a little baby grand. She taught me how to read the notes. I had these little pieces that I was supposed to learn, but I’d sort of half learn them and I’d fill them in myself and fix them up. Mother would say, “You’re not playing what’s there.” I told her one time, “My way is better!” Talk about cheeky!

SE: So you learned your notes then after you played the accordion: you learned the accordion by ear.

RG: Almost everything that you played on the accordion had to be arranged for the instrument anyway. There was very little written for the accordion all by itself. My piano book had wonderful illustrations in it with the keyboard going up into the sky. It was wonderful, lovely, and all very visual. But the last piece in there was the Minuet in G of Beethoven. It has a B section--all 16th notes--and I looked at that and thought, “Oh boy, if I ever get to play that piece I’ll be really good.” That was the last piece in the book, and if you got that far you were a finished pianist.

SE: So you were done. That was it!

RG: Yes. All done.

SE: Then you were ready for the organ, the real thing.

RG: I was ready, but I still couldn’t reach the pedals, and I hadn’t enough piano according to the piano teacher. Our church organist was a wonderful musician--Oberlin-trained from way back. She took me later on, but she said then that I didn’t have enough piano.

We’re missing a very important part right in here when I took up the string bass, and that’s had much more of a lasting effect upon me than anything else. The junior high school orchestra wasn’t all that good, but by the time we got to high school, the orchestras were very good. We went to state competitions at the University of Oklahoma and won A-1 ratings. We played Mozart Symphony No. 40 and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik--music of that caliber--and also the Franck D-minor Symphony.

SE: So did you just start playing the string bass?

RG: No. Oklahoma City Public Schools offered instruction in strings: first of all, violin, some viola, and you got free lessons, class lessons. This was fourth grade and there were little-sized instruments. I didn’t care anything about that: I wanted to play the big strings. By seventh grade, I could do string bass or cello, so I took up string bass because I liked the look of the scroll at the top. I’d take that instrument home on weekends and practice it and learned to play it.

SE: There must have been something about the bass notes.

RG: Oh yes, indeed. It was a physical thing. It was wonderful to play in an ensemble like that, and we really became quite good. Then they had a junior symphony (Oklahoma State Junior Symphony), and you had to audition to get into that. I got into it, and that was more fun than anything. We did get to play the major repertoire then.

That had a lasting effect. By the time I got out of high school, I was finished. I couldn’t keep using the string bass in the school. I didn’t have one. And, anyhow, guess what came on then?

SE: World War II?

RG: It was already going. But one thing that I got out of that was the GI Bill--a godsend for everyone of that generation.

SE: And that paid for your education at Eastman?

RG: Yes, just did. The amount of time you got was the amount of time that you had been in the service, and mine worked out just right. Eastman cost more than anything; in those days it was $500 a year!

I came back and I didn’t know what I was going to do where music was concerned. I thought I’d be an architect and was very serious about it. I kept drawing all the time. I couldn’t get away from it. I’d draw house plans, church plans, and outsides of buildings. Some were not bad, as I look back on that. I was about ten or eleven years old when I started drawing pictures of houses and floor plans.

SE: What sort of time was there, Bob, between your time in the service and going to Eastman? Was there much of a gap there?

RG: Well, I didn’t go to Eastman right away because it was too late by the time I got out of the service. It was March, and I had been working on Eastman for well over a year before that; there were thousands of GI’s out of the military service, and they all wanted to do something, go somewhere with the GI Bill. By that time, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do.

I decided I’d try for Eastman and then got the usual letter back stating, “No. We’re sorry, but you’re the low man on the totem pole. You’d be a transfer student.” That year I went to Oklahoma City University and was a piano major and had good teaching there. The faculty were all Eastman graduates. I then got busy with applications at Eastman and sent audition recordings of both my organ and piano playing.

I got this letter, “Sorry for you. You’re too late . . . way too many students . . . I don’t want to discourage you . . . but send your audition recordings to us right away.” Instead of sending it to the admissions office, I sent it to Harold Gleason. In days, I had this note back from him! The first big thrill that I had was that he wrote to me and said to check that I had all of my papers in, and that they wanted to have me there in the fall. WELL, that did it! He saw to it that I got in. So I found myself at Eastman that summer and got a church job right away. That plus the GI bill got me through without too much trouble or hardship.

SE: When did you start at Eastman?

RG: Summer of 1947. I started in with the program right then, but they classified me as a sophomore. Of course, I had the freshman year at OCU, and all that work was accepted. I took their basic exams.

SE: That must have been very exciting. 

RG: Well, it was! It was scary, too. I thought, “What am I doing here with all of these talented people? Good grief, they are going to find out about me. They are going to catch up to me and send me home.” I didn’t think that I was that good.

SE: It looks like that didn’t happen.

RG: It didn’t, fortunately. I was trying to figure out how I would explain it to the folks at home. It turned out that I stacked up pretty well with the rest, but at first I didn’t think that I was going to.

I went there because I had advice from people at home who were graduates of Eastman and who told me that there was only one place to go and only one teacher for me. There weren’t nearly so many organ teachers then and nearly so much good organ teaching then as there is now. 

SE: Who was your teacher in Oklahoma City?

RG: Dubert Dennis. He was an Oklahoma boy--Cherokee Indian--but he put me on the straight and narrow with the Gleason Method. I’ll tell you! Hand position. Finger action. I’d never had anyone be so fussy with me before. I thought, “I’ll get to Eastman. I’ll show them.” Turned out to be just the other way around, of course. I had to get off of my high horse. I did pretty quickly.

SE: We’ve all had someone like that in our background.

RG: You need to sit back where you belong and not where you don’t belong. It’s one of the best things a teacher can do for you sometimes. To say, “Wait just a minute. You’ll be there in a minute, but not right this minute.”

RB: Humility?

RG: I don’t think humility. It’s just honesty about where you are in terms of your development, and not imagining you are further along than you really are.  That’s often the trouble some students have: they think they are so much further along that they really are, and are unwilling to do “repair work.”

SE: That might be one of those later questions . . .

RG: Another big thrill while at Eastman was when I auditioned for the Performer’s Certificate. I thought that it would be fun to play with the orchestra. In those days you did not choose the concerto before you got accepted as a candidate for the Certificate.

I got chosen, and I thought that I would do the Poulenc, but it didn’t have any pedal cadenza. I wanted something that would show off the pedals. I found the Flor Peeters Concerto in a music store, so I chose that, and Howard Hanson liked it better than the Poulenc. Hanson was not a fan of Poulenc. 

He was a wonderful conductor and wonderful musician to work with on that concerto. It was the American premiere, and it did have a big pedal cadenza in it and a rousing climax. It just brought the house down. Flor Peeters knew how to write for organ and orchestra very effectively.

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in organ performance/church music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song, are available from Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts.

Introduction
Joe Hoppe has been organist and director of music for over 40 years at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, located in the business district at 734 Camp Street. This historic church, completed in 1840, is in the Gothic style with a vaulted ceiling, massive hand-carved doors, and towering stained glass windows. Here the Roman Mass continues to be celebrated in Latin, and here Joe Hoppe developed one of the finest music programs in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. He built a fine choir of volunteers, conducted choral masterworks with full orchestra, maintained the pipe organ, and in 2009 realized his dream of presenting the church with a new pipe organ, a magnificent instrument built by Patrick J. Murphy and Associates, Opus 53. Joe Hoppe retired from St. Patrick’s in March 2010. This interview is intended to celebrate his remarkable contributions to the musical life of St. Patrick’s Church, the community of New Orleans, and the lives of many international visitors, and to let you see some of the behind-the-scenes work of his remarkable tenure at St. Patrick’s. His music has touched the ears and hearts of thousands.
Joe was born on February 13, 1938 in New Orleans. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in philosophy, from Notre Dame Seminary in June 1961. In 1964 he completed three and a half years of postgraduate studies in theology, where he studied the theory and practice of Gregorian chant with Father Robert Stahl, S.M., and sang in the Notre Dame Seminary Schola Cantorum, which participated in joint concerts with the Saint Louis Cathedral Choir under the direction of Elise Cambon and Father Stahl.
In August 1968 Msgr. John P. Reynolds hired him as the organist for St. Patrick’s Church, where, as Joe said, “There was no choir or cantor. I was the music program!” Over time he recruited singers, and had a choir of over 40 voices. In September 1990 he was accepted into the master’s program at the University of New Orleans, where he studied organ with H. Gerald Aultman and choral conducting with Raymond Sprague. In May 1993 he was awarded a Master of Music degree, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of his employment at St. Patrick’s. In September 2008 he was honored at a banquet at the New Orleans Country Club and awarded a Waterford crystal cross for 40 years of devoted and dedicated service to St. Patrick’s Church. Also at this banquet, James Hammann, chair of the music department at the University of New Orleans, presented him with a “Distinguished Alumnus Certificate from the University of New Orleans Department of Music for Forty Years of Distinguished Service as Organist at St. Patrick’s Church, New Orleans, Louisiana.”
Here is Joe Hoppe who, when asked by a bride how long it takes to learn to play the organ, answered, with a twinkle in his eye, “Oh, a couple of weeks!”

Marijim Thoene: My favorite photo of you is as a young cleric. Knowing of your remarkable education, I’m not surprised that you should make that choice. When was this photo taken?
Joe Hoppe: In 1967 I was assigned as an assistant to the pastor (now referred to as Parochial Vicar) at St. Angela Merici Parish, and that is the photo that was printed on the weekly bulletin to introduce me to the parishioners.

M.T.: You have all the qualities I think a man of the cloth should have—compassion, a fine education, integrity, reverence, a sense of humor. Are you glad that you chose to serve the church as a musician rather than as a priest, that you chose to follow “a road less traveled ?”
J.H.: Yes. After two years in the active ministry, I came to the realization that for personal and spiritual reasons, I had to make a change in my life. After much prayer and consideration and consultation with my spiritual director, together we came to the conclusion that I should request an indefinite leave of absence from the archbishop. I made the request, and it was granted in February 1968. In August of that year, Msgr. John P. Reynolds, who was well aware of my situation and status, hired me as music director and organist for St. Patrick’s Church.

M.T.: What led you to playing the organ and directing choirs?
J.H.: When I was 13, Sister Mary Celia, SSND (School Sisters of Notre Dame), was the organist at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church and music teacher in the grammar school. I was studying piano with her, and she suggested that I should learn to play the organ. My parents gave their consent, and she began to give me organ lessons on the 11-rank, two-manual Tellers-Kent pipe organ, dated 1920, in the church. This was back in the days when Novenas and such things as evening May Devotions were very popular. As soon as I had learned the very basics of the instrument, she had me learn one hymn at a time, and as I learned each one, she would have me play it during the service. Then she had me learn the accompaniment to the Latin Masses that the school children sang at the 8:00 am High Mass every morning of the week, and she would let me play for these Masses. This was while I was still in grammar school. When I was in high school, I joined the church’s adult choir and sang with them.
When I was employed at St. Patrick’s in 1968, there was no choir. I was hired only to play the organ, and once in a while maybe sing for a morning High Mass. Between 1968 and 1987 I would invite musician friends to perform at the church for big feast days such as Christmas Midnight Mass or on Easter Sunday morning, but there was no organized music program. In 1987 I formed a male choir to sing an all-Gregorian High Mass on Passion Sunday of that year. Then in May I formed a female choir to sing a High Mass in honor of Mary. In September of that year, these two groups combined to form what became known as St. Patrick’s Concert Choir. This continued until March 7, 2010, when it was disbanded.
M.T.: To hear the Roman Rite sung in Latin is becoming a rare experience, yet you have kept this tradition alive at St. Patrick’s Church. When did you learn Latin and how were you able to maintain a volunteer choir that could sang the Latin Mass so beautifully?
J.H.: When the liturgical changes went into effect after Vatican II (1962), the pastor at St. Patrick’s Church was granted permission to continue the Tridentine Latin Mass because the Stella Maris Center (the Catholic Maritime Organization for Foreign Seamen) was directly across Camp Street from St. Patrick’s; the reasoning was that the foreign seamen would not understand the English language being used in the new liturgy, but would be more at ease and understand the Latin.
At present there are at least two additional churches in New Orleans that celebrate with the Latin liturgy.

Singing Latin
When I was in grammar school, beginning in the fifth grade, the whole student body was taught to sing Latin by rote. We sang a Missa Cantata (High Mass) every morning during the week at 8 am. The Children’s Mass was at 8:30 am Sunday, and all the students sang; on Saturday morning at 7 am individual classes were assigned on rotating schedule. During the summer months, individual classes were assigned to sing the 7 am Mass six days a week.
In 1953, when I was 15 years old, the nun who was the church organist—and also my first organ instructor—hired me to play for all the High Masses in June, July, and August. I was thrilled when at the end of the summer I was paid $150 for my services. The time I spent at Notre Dame was before the Vatican II changes went into effect. All the liturgies were in Latin. Even the philosophy courses had Latin textbooks.
When I started the choir at St. Patrick’s, it was with men who volunteered to sing a Latin Gregorian chant Mass for what in the old days was called Passion Sunday (two Sundays before Easter) 1987. In May I had volunteer women sing a two-part Mass. We called this a “Mary Mass” in honor of the Blessed Virgin. Then in September of that year I put the two groups together and St. Patrick’s Concert Choir was formed; some of these people assisted with the repair of the Möller.
All of the original members of the choir had sung Latin when they were in school, so Latin was not a problem. Most of these people knew how to pronounce Latin, but had a very limited knowledge of the meaning of what was being sung. As the years went along, there were very few members who had not been exposed to Latin, and the few who were not familiar with it were helped along by the older members of the group.

M.T.: Who were the greatest influences on your life as a musician and why?
J.H.: The two teachers who probably influenced me the most were Father Robert J. Stahl, S.M. (Society of Mary) and Elise Cambon. Father Stahl was in charge of the music program at Notre Dame Seminary for the six years that I was a student there. He conducted the Notre Dame Seminary Schola Cantorum, of which I was a member, and every day there was a 15-minute Gregorian chant rehearsal for the entire student body. Here I received my background in Gregorian chant. Eventually I was able to conduct the student body at High Mass when chant was sung. We sang two or three High Masses a week, and the entire student body was able to sing all of 18 Masses in the Kyriale and the Gregorian chant Propers of the Mass in the Liber Usualis. It was from Father Stahl that I received my foundation in chant, and learned much about choral conducting.
Dr. Elise Cambon, the organist at St. Louis Cathedral for 60 years, served on the faculty of Loyola Music School. I spent several semesters studying with her. She required hard work and dedication, and any success that I may have enjoyed as an organist must be attributed to her instruction and example.

M.T.: What have you enjoyed the most in your career as a musician?
J.H.: I have always enjoyed playing music, and playing for other people, either piano or organ. As long as I have been at St. Patrick’s, whenever I played a service, it was not unusual for me to play for thirty minutes before the service began. This was just as important for me as was playing for the service itself. I enjoyed improvising the long organ prelude and creating a prayerful and quiet time for anyone who was in church.
The most rewarding aspect of my tenure at St. Patrick’s has been conducting large works for choir and orchestra. Over the years I conducted Haydn’s Mass in Honor of John de Deo (also referred to as The Little Organ Mass) and the Lord Nelson Mass; Mozart’s Trinity Mass, Coronation Mass, Sparrow Mass, and D-minor Mass; Dvorak’s Mass in D; Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël; Rheinberger’s Mass in C; Bach’s Cantatas #142 and #190; Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio; and Schubert’s Mass in G.
Every time I listen to a recording of one of these performances, I have difficulty believing that I was able to put something like this together and achieve such glorious results. It humbles me and makes me grateful that I have been blessed to be able to do this.

M.T.: I know the crowning glory of your tenure at St. Patrick’s Church is installation of the organ built by Patrick J. Murphy & Associates in 2009. However, before this, you yourself resuscitated the 1962 Möller instrument. Your efforts to rescue it in the 1980s are remarkable. Please tell us how you did this.
J.H.: In 1982, the 1962 Möller (#9614) became unplayable because of the deterioration of the pouch leather and reservoir leather in the organ mechanism. An estimate of the cost to make the needed repairs was in the neighborhood of $60,000. At this particular time, St. Patrick’s Church building was undergoing an extensive and expensive renovation (1977–1990), and the funds needed to repair the organ were not available. So the church purchased a small Allen organ to substitute for the Möller until the necessary repairs could be made.
In 1986 someone made a $3,000 donation to the church for organ repairs. This was the seed money that began the restoration of the Möller. I dismantled and rebuilt the 1962 Möller in the 1980s. At this time I had a piano tuning, repair, and rebuilding business. I specialized in the old-time mechanical player pianos. This work on player pianos required the use of leather, pneumatic cloth, and hot liquid hide glue, many of the same materials that are used in a pipe organ. So René Toups, some of the choir members, and I decided to undertake the organ repair project. I purchased several books on organ construction and repair and the project began.
While the ceiling plaster was being repaired, the workmen did not properly cover and protect the organ pipes. As a result, several large pieces of plaster fell onto the Great pipes and damaged about a dozen pipes. Since Möller was still in business at this time, I sent the pipes back to Möller for repair or replacement. Much of the dirt from this work was not only dropped on the exposed Great and Pedal pipes, but it also found its way into the Swell and Choir chambers. So all the pipes of the organ had to be removed and cleaned, and all the windchests had to be cleaned. This was very dirty work. Our crew removed all except the bottom octave of three 16-foot sets of pipes and cleaned each one individually. When the pipes were removed and cleaned and all the pipe chests vacuumed, I replaced all of the primary pouch leather, recovered all the pneumatics in the relay chest with new leather, and also releathered eleven of the thirteen reservoirs. We began this work in September 1987 and had the organ back together roughly tuned in time for Christmas Midnight Mass the same year. In January I hired a professional organ technician to tune the organ properly and do some voicing.

M.T.: Your final gift to St. Patrick’s is the splendid organ built by Patrick J. Murphy, Opus 53. What prompted you choose him as the builder? And how were you able to accomplish this?
J.H.: The pitch on the old Möller was about 20 cents flat. It had been this way for years. Any time that the organ was tuned, it was tuned at that pitch. Finally in 2007 after we began the orchestra Masses and all the instrumentalists complained about how difficult it was to tune their instruments to the organ, I decided that maybe it was time to bring it up to A = 440 Hz. I asked Jim Hammann if he would undertake this task for us, but it was a bigger job than Jim could handle at the time because of his involvement with the university. Since Jim could not undertake this task, he recommended Patrick J. Murphy. I engaged Patrick to tune the organ to 440. I was very impressed with his tuning ability and his overall knowledge about organs.
It had been over 20 years since I had completed the re-leathering work in 1987, and there were many indications that the Möller was going to need a rebuild in a very short time. After all these years, it was obvious that the leather I had installed was nearing the end of its usefulness.
Patrick Murphy was very impressed by the acoustics of the church, and expressed an interest in building a new organ for St. Patrick’s. By this time his company had already constructed or completely rebuilt 52 pipe organs throughout the country. I suggested that he draw up a proposal for an instrument that he thought would serve our needs and submit it to the pastor. The proposal was submitted in the summer of 2007, and several organists whose opinion I respect examined it. Everyone felt that the organ described in this proposal would be a wonderful instrument for St. Patrick’s Church. I presented the proposal to the Parish Council meeting in the fall of 2007, and the group was in favor of the new instrument. All we needed was the funds to pay for it. About a month later, Mrs. Betty Noe, a longtime choir member, informed me that she would underwrite the cost of the new instrument in memory of her late husband. By the end of December the contract was signed. In January 2009 the Möller was completely removed, 27 of the 29 ranks were reconditioned and used in the new organ, along with 23 new ranks, giving the new organ a total of 50 ranks. The week after Easter 2009, the new organ arrived and was installed in time to be used for the first Mass of a newly ordained priest in June.
The Patrick J. Murphy organ was officially dedicated and blessed by the pastor, Rev. Stanley P. Klores, S.T.D., on Sunday, September 14, 2009, during the celebration of a Solemn High Mass, celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the Tridentine Latin Mass). At this Mass the choir sang Dvorak’s Mass in D, with only organ accompaniment. Dr. James Hammann was the organist, and I conducted. I chose this Mass for the dedication of the organ because it was originally commissioned to be sung at the dedication of a chapel.

M.T.: Thomas Murray, University Organist and Professor of Music at Yale University, played the dedication concert of the Patrick J. Murphy organ on December 6, 2009 for a packed church. I was delighted to be invited to play the second recital on February 28, 2010. The instrument and sacred space of St. Patrick’s are perfect for the music of Bach, Franck, Langlais, Alain, and Hovhaness. One teenager commented that he thought Langlais’ Suite Médiévale sounded “Gothic” and suited the architecture of St. Patrick’s. High praise indeed!
You, Betty Noe and her children, Rev.Stanley Klores, S.T.D., and the builder, Patrick J. Murphy & Associates, are to be thanked for this pipe organ that will bring solace, joy, and hope to those who hear it. It is a marvel, and without you, it would not exist! We thank you, Joe Hoppe, for your determination, vision and legacy. Knowing you, you will continue to make wonderful things happen. 

Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh are organist/choirmasters at First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, VA. They have recently returned from a 13-week sabbatical in the UK. They also direct Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia, and Mrs. Betenbaugh is chapel organist and assistant choral director at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg.

Tim Byram-Wigfield has been the music director at Jesus College in Cambridge since 1999. A former chorister at King's College, he was organ scholar at Christ Church Oxford before he moved to Winchester Cathedral to be sub-organist in 1985. For eight years he was Master of the Music at St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh before taking up his present appointment. He combines his work at Jesus College with a busy schedule as an organ recitalist, and has played in France, Australia, Belgium, the USA and Canada. He conducts the Northampton Bach Choir, is organist for the Millennium Youth Choir, and regularly gives workshops for amateur choirs. He is also active as a pianist, arranger and composer. He broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 3, and has recorded on the EMI, Hyperion, Argo, Priory and Herald labels.

The chapel at Jesus College is the most ancient college building in Cambridge, begun in 1140. We had occasion to speak with Tim over tea prior to his afternoon rehearsal on Friday, May 23. We had previously attended a week's rehearsals and Evensongs at Jesus. The program is distinctive in maintaining two choirs. During university term there are five choral services each week. The Chapel Choir sings three and the Mixed Choir sings two. The alto, tenor and bass voices are common to both groups and are sung by the choral scholars, who each receive £100 per term plus a nominal payment for all the services they sing.

Tim Byram-Wigfield has recently been appointed director of music at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. The chapel runs a conventional cathedral-style set-up of boy choristers and twelve professional men, singing daily services. The building is one of the finest examples of English 15th-century architecture, with fan vaulting, fine stained-glass windows, and a marvelous Harrison and Harrison pipe organ.

BB: Your boy choir doesn't have a choir school like King's College or St. John's, do they?

TB-W: That's right.

BB: Do they pay tuition?

TB-W: No, the college provides it. In fact, the college also pays them a small stipend of £35 per term which is put into a savings account for them. It can accumulate until the time that their voice changes. We also provide some instrumental bursaries for them.

BB: How does that work?

TB-W: An instrumental bursary is a small donation that the college would make to the parents directed toward the cost of their instruments.

GB: Suzuki is not taught much over here, is it?

TB-W: It is in some places and certainly at very young ages. It used to be very popular for children who wanted to learn the violin in large classes. I daresay in London it still happens. I don't know of a class in Cambridge, but there might be one.

GB: Actually, from a choral standpoint it only helps the ear. It doesn't help the reading skills which is paramount.

TB-W: Yes, that's true. When I first came here four years ago there were only 13 full-time choristers, and only about half of them were reading on their instruments. Maybe it's just been through luck or because we've been tapping a different vein, the caliber of chorister we've been getting in terms of their musical ability and literacy has appreciated a bit. Going back to what you were saying, ours is a very different set-up from King's and St. John's. We operate on a part-time basis and can only be on that part-time basis, because the activity is essentially taking place after school at the end of the choristers' day.

BB: In the auditioned children's choir we have at home, the parents pay tuition. We've found that when parents pay tuition to the choir just like they do for soccer or other sports and activities, they feel more inclined to insure that their child attends rehearsal.

TB-W: Yes, that's like having lessons. That's less of a problem with us, because in a sense we're asking them to do us a favor by having the boys come and sing the services for us. In return, of course, we're providing them with a certain element of musical education and other aspects of education as well. Commitment being what it is these days, the amount of things the parents want their children to do affects the choir. We had a full house on Wednesday evening, and then we had less than 2/3 yesterday. This morning I got several e-mails that children would be absent for this, that, and the other reason. You get the idea.

GB: Yes, we have the same thing with church volunteer children's choirs at our church.

BB: Do you teach the boys in a separate theory class?

TB-W: No, it has to be done in the context of the music that we teach them. The only time I get the chance to teach them anything in that vein is when they're probationers and come to their probationers' class, which is on Tuesday afternoons. We only have an hour.

GB: Did you start the mixed choir of boys and girls in Edinburgh at St. Mary's Cathedral?

TB-W: No, my predecessor Dennis Townhill did. That works for them very successfully because they operate like a choir school. We had rehearsal in the morning and a service in the evening. Also, because it's in Scotland, where the tradition is not so firmly embedded in the society, it wasn't seen quite so much as a heresy to introduce boys and girls together, although for a while it was not without its difficulties. One of the strongest arguments there was that it was the only choir school in Scotland, and also because the choir school operated like a specialist music school like Wells Cathedral or Manchester. The argument was that this was a golden opportunity for a child to sing in the choir, so boys and girls should have the same opportunity. That's a pretty strong argument, really! It was for those reasons that they introduced the boys and girls. They kept an eye on the balance, which never really got beyond a third, boys to girls. Here it is a different situation, because this is a volunteer boys choir, just a club really. It could be swimming or it could be football.

BB: Do you have auditions?

TB-W: Oh yes, they are auditioned, and they have to pass that audition. They also have to pass an informal audition having done their probationary training before they become full choristers.

BB: Explain that, please. The earliest we take choristers in our auditioned children's choir is third grade, which is age 8. What age do you start the boys?

TB-W: I take them earlier at age 6, because I want them to get the bug early and get them used to using their voices and get them to understand something of the single line of music in front of them. They come and sing with the older boys once or twice a term.

BB: How often do you meet with these boys?

TB-W: Just once a week for a half an hour on Tuesday for singing with a bit of theory thrown in. It's really learning how to use the voice, and they learn some chorus songs and some easy hymns. They have a little test every term, so they have to learn something from memory, and they have to count rhythms. It's predominantly based on the singing rather than on instruments. That gives them the bug. They get their own cassock in the vestry and have something to aspire to. By the time they're 8 or 9 they are old enough to join the big guys.

GB: I understand that the college has done this for about 150 years.

TB-W: Yes, in 1849 when the stalls were put in and that lovely ancient organ case with the angels painted on it. [Author's note: In 1849 the "Sutton Organ" was built by J. C. Bishop and restored by Mander in 1967.] There was a rededication of the chapel, and we still have the manuscript for an anthem which was written by Thomas Walmisley for four boy choristers to sing. The names of the four boys are on the front of the manuscript. It's really very touching. They clearly were one of the porter's sons or one of the cook's sons or that kind of thing. Ever since 1849 there's been this tradition of getting volunteer boys to come sing in the chapel. That is, I daresay, one of the reasons why Jesus College is distinctive among other college chapels, because they've had the boy trebles, and a number of very distinguished church musicians have cut their teeth by being organ scholars here. There's James O'Donnell, Peter Hurford, Richard Lloyd, Malcolm Archer and a whole host of others who've gone on to work in schools as well as cathedrals. I think we've got four, maybe five, ex-Jesus organ scholars who are now assistants in cathedrals, which is very encouraging. It's a pretty worthy record. So, we don't have as long a tradition as King's or St. John's. One of the reasons that it wasn't as developed was because they never had a director of music to develop the program. The organ scholars were responsible for running it. In days gone by when academic pursuits weren't so pressurized, it was probably possible. In these days what with children's protection, the experience of teaching them, never mind the time it takes to go around to the schools and recruit them, the energy and time you need to devote to the program, you can't expect an 18-year old organ scholar to do that and do his degree also. That's why they created this post.

BB: How do you recruit?

TB-W: I go around to the schools where we already have choristers, and ones which I know are sympathetic. I do know some colleagues in other cathedrals where they have a similar situation where the headmasters won't allow them across the threshold because they think that it's peddling Christianity. This is becoming a real issue of political correctness in this country. You get parents who will refuse to allow their children to sing Christmas carols. I hate to say it, but this has emanated from the other side of the Atlantic. It's very sad in a way, because it undermines and makes us question everything about the oral tradition that we have in this country. In that context, it's actually in some places very difficult to sustain any kind of Christian choir at all. In Cambridge we're lucky because a lot of the people we're appealing to are educated enough to understand about the tradition; secondly there is a huge reservoir of parents who are employed by the university and therefore can understand what's being offered and thirdly, although they might send their child to a state school, they still want their child to be a chorister. Those three things give us an extra edge, but I think in other places it's rather different.

GB: We're going to the Southern Choirs Festival in Salisbury on the Saturday that you'll be there accompanying the Millennium Youth Choir. What kind of commitment do you have with them?

TB-W: Two courses, one at Easter and one in the summer.

GB: You don't accompany them each week then?

TB-W: No, because they come from all over the country. It's drawn from parish church choirs. The whole rationale behind the Millennium Youth Choir is that the RSCM designed this for young people between the ages of 16 and 23. It's for "A" level and university singers who wouldn't otherwise get the opportunity if they sing in their parish church choir to sing to that level of excellence.

GB: We have a chorister, a rising senior, who just e-mailed us that she'd been invited to sing at a new RSCM course at Washington National Cathedral this summer. She was delighted.

BB: She had been to two or three RSCM camps.

TB-W: Right. The RSCM has a number of summer courses as you've probably seen. The Millennium Youth Choir is relatively new as its name might indicate. It's only been going for three years. It was first conducted by Martin Neary. He did it for about 18 months to two years. Now Gordon Stewart conducts it.

GB: Where's he from?

TB-W: He hails from Dundee, but he's operating in the North. He was organist at Blackburn Cathedral and taught in Manchester for a long time. He's now the borough organist of Huddersfield Town Hall. There's a very fine Willis organ there. He does a lot of work with the BBC. He conducts both Daily Service and Songs of Praise as well as The Millennium Youth Choir.

BB: The Millennium Choir basically sings only twice a year?

TB-W: Yes, but there are one or two other opportunities that come along. For instance, they sang on the BBC Songs of Praise which is a television program on Sundays. Generally it's just twice a year, but I'm happy to go and play. It's nice to be able to do that.

GB: The 1971 Mander organ in the chapel is certainly eccentric!

TB-W: Oh, yes. It's really on its last legs now.

GB: Are you going to renovate it?

TB-W: Thirty years ago English organ builders were only just discovering or re-discovering about the principles of German Werkprinzip and tracker action. This was their brave first attempt to build something with tracker action and bold German choruses. That's what it is! It's very much a product of its time. It has the eccentric things like the reed en chamade (laughter, and a nasal YYENT). It's a very strident sound. Everything is starting to wear. It's always been very heavy to play. As I say, it's one of these curiosities that is, in many ways, a pioneering experiment. People recognize that now. There are those that say we should keep it because it was pioneering. That's fine if you don't have to play it every day.

GB: I understand.

TB-W: The college recognizes that something's got to be done. In fact, our strategy has been not to replace it with a new organ, but to replace it with a worthy Victorian instrument that needs a home. We found a 3-manual Hill up in a Baptist church in Portsmouth. It didn't start out there. It came from another church in South London. The Baptist church is closing, so we've purchased the organ, and it's being taken down and put in storage. The next stage now is to finalize how it will fit in the Mander space and whether we want to enhance the specifications at all. We'll then put forward proposals to the college. That's been our strategy rather than to build a new tracker action organ. Also we need some liturgical sounds to do the accompaniments. We need an oboe, a harmonic flute, a swell to choir, just those kinds of basic things.

GB: It will be a 3-manual?

TB-W: Yes, at least a 3-manual.

GB: With pistons and memory?

TB-W: It will have pistons, but it won't have a stepper. I'm not into those sequencers. It will have some memory. A lot of the accompaniment skills relied on in this country is being able to use the manual and the pedal pistons together. There's a coupler that I don't think you have very often in the states called the great to pedal pistons coupler. For many years organists would learn to accompany using great pedal pistons. When you press the great thumb piston, it operates the pedals as well. The idea is that you would use the great and the swell. People like Howells, Whitlock and Ireland learned their craft of organ management by using this skill. That's something which is fast disappearing, because everybody uses sequencers these days to change one of the stops.

GB: I have on my instrument Great 1 and 2 pistons which affect the pedal also. I wired it in mainly for the cadential 32's and accompanying. It's easier than a toe stud, of course.

TB-W: Yes, it is. Our organ will be quite a modest specification, probably about 49 stops. We deliberately decided to go down this route, because a lot of the new organs being built at the moment in Cambridge are of a particular type. Selwyn's having a Létourneau built now.

BB: We'll be there week after next. Létourneau does excellent work.

TB-W: Gerton College has a new Swiss organ by St-Martin. It is a very clever 4-manual with about five stops in each manual. It's a particular style of instrument which does lend itself very easily to turn of the century style music. There are very few romantic symphonic organs in Cambridge--King's is a modest example. St. John's is not really one, but it pretends to be. You should go and see the one in Our Lady and the English Martyrs.

GB: We went down there and saw it, but we haven't heard it yet. I understand it is used in Sarah MacDonald's CD of Howells' Evening Canticles with the Selwyn College Choir.

TB-W: Yes, it's a very fine romantic organ, and they restored it very well.

GB: I love the sound of the crescendo "build up" while accompanying at King's.

TB-W: It's fine up to about mezzo-forte I think. 

GB: I was surprised to see that bass flute inside the organ screen in the staircase to the console.

TB-W: Yes.

BB: Do you ever get to play other instruments in town?

TB-W: I played that Harrison on Monday. The King's Voices (mixed voices) sing the services on Mondays.

BB: Did you play last Sunday for Evensong or was it an organ scholar?

TB-W: Yes, I played.

BB: We were there and have been attending rehearsals of the Men and Boys choir and Evensongs for several weeks.

TB-W: What did we do? The Mathias--the Jesus service, and the Hadley My Beloved Spake. Well, it's quite a nice thing to do and no pressure for me. It's nice not to be in charge and to be at the steering end.

GB: It's quite a room.

TB-W: Yes! What kind of church do you work in?

GB: Presbyterian. It's about 1200 members. We have an adult choir of 40 people, a Youth Choir of about 40+, children's choirs of about 50 and three handbell choirs. We have an auditioned choir called Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia consisting of two choirs from 3rd-7th grade and 8th grade through high school. I direct the younger choristers, and a colleague does the high school singers. Barbara accompanies one choir and directs a third group called the Cantabile Singers, which is an all-girl choir in grades 8 through 12.

TB-W: Both boys and girls together?

BB: Yes. The original concept was just to be children. The girls could stay until age 15 or 16, and the boys were supposed to leave when their voices changed. They wouldn't go away, so we just changed the concept. The older group sings SATB, and the younger ones all treble.

TB-W: In some cathedrals where there are volunteer choristers, like Carlisle and St. Alban's, they occasionally arrange for the ex-choristers whose voices have recently changed to come and sing with the existing choristers, so that they don't feel that they've been thrown out on the scrap heap. Of course, we are desperate for altos, tenors and basses.

GB: Well, are you playing Monday at King's?

TB-W: Yes, I think so. It's extraordinary, isn't it, that there's so much activity in a radius of about three miles. Most churches in this country are gasping for decent resources. The real sadness of this training is that most choral scholars, especially at Trinity where they have girls, unless they want to make a career as a professional singer, they don't tend to carry on singing in church choirs. It's a real shame. Then, of course, we have a dearth of organists.

GB: I was going to ask you if you have problems like we do in the states.

TB-W: It's getting bad now. Early this month we had the open day for prospective organ scholars, those who would like to apply to Cambridge to be organ scholars. We had 24, which if you consider that we have 22 colleges in the scheme isn't very much.

GB: So the university will have to take everyone?

TB-W: That wasn't the actual competition. That happens in September, but it's indicative of how things are. Last year I asked the question of how many of them were expecting to go on to be a professional organist. I think only two were.

GB: Are the organ scholars at King's going to continue in the profession?

TB-W: I think Daniel Hyde is staying on another year as a postgraduate student, because there are hardly any openings at the moment.

BB: What about Ashley Grote?

TB-W: Ashley still has another year, so he's set there. The really high fliers like the idea of going to London perhaps and maybe being an organ scholar or one of the assistants at St. Paul's or Westminster ABBey. They don't like the idea of going somewhere in middle England and subsequently doing scout mastering or something.

GB: Since you have two choirs, do you have a lot of administration work?

TB-W: I spend a lot of my time dealing with administrative things to do with the choristers and the interaction with child protection monitoring procedures. A lot of administrative work is generated just by having the choristers. If we want the choristers to take part in a concert, either we or the person promoting the concert has to be responsible for getting licenses for those children to take part in that concert. Technically, that means filling in 12-page forms, getting passport photographs and doctor's certificates for the kids to take part.

BB: That's just for them to leave the country?

TB-W: Yes.

BB: Do you take your choir on tour every year?

TB-W: Yes, we do, but we don't undertake concerts for which people are charged, so that problem doesn't arise. There was a story I heard about Wells Cathedral. Wells took their choir to the States about three years ago. They had not only to work out a schedule which corresponded to legislation concerning rehearsal time, sufficient bathroom stops and this sort of thing. They then had to keep a diary about how the actual tour went, so they could compare the two. They had to have something written down in case somebody made any allegations, or wanted to pursue litigation or complained about being tired, became ill, etc. They would have a record. Things are going berserk. Of course, most places take the easy way out and don't want to deal with that. It's hard enough to get choristers in the first place and yet, there is still this much trouble.

BB: What about your mixed college choir? Do you tour with them every year?

TB-W: Yes, we do. We try to have each choir have a project of going away once a year. It's sometimes nice to take the mixed choir away to the Continent whereas the boys choir might go to a cathedral. They've done a lot of touring in the last eighteen months or so. We've taken them to Paris and Copenhagen. In the new year we'll be going to Edinburgh to sing services for Epiphany. One thing I'd like to ask you actually is what's your view of church music in this country coming from the States.

GB: Well, we always said that God lives at King's College! (laughter) The first time I heard a recording of the King's choir was in the early 1960s, and it was the most in tune singing I'd ever heard. I didn't know it was possible to sing like that. I got the bug as an undergraduate and through the years we learned to love the wonderful music making at St. John's and other colleges and cathedrals as well.

BB: We think church music here is wonderful with performances to uncompromising standards in many places.

TB-W: The world even in this country has moved on a great deal since 1960 to 2003.

BB: Oh, sure.

TB-W: Have you seen a copy of the magazine Cathedral Music?

GB: Yes, we take it. It is excellent.

TB-W: In there is an article by the organist at Guilford Cathedral trying to defend a very difficult situation. Guilford, as you probably know, is a post-war cathedral. Barry Rose was the first organist, and he recruited the kids. They started from nothing. He managed to get scholarships at the local schools. 40 years ago it was possible to do that. In a changing society and the way that parents run children's lives these days, it isn't possible to do that nowadays. One couldn't start a cathedral choir from nothing in the way that Barry was able to do in the 1960s. In Guilford, his successors have had to cope with and deal with that legacy. It's been very difficult. In that situation they've decided to scrap the Saturday services, so the boys will have one day of the weekend free. I can see that in some cathedrals that will happen more and more. I do think that things are different. In places like King's and Westminster Abbey where the resources are rich you will always have the tradition continued. When you get to places where they operate on a part-time basis you have trouble even getting an alto at all. When I first went to the cathedral organist conference, it was very obvious some people are having difficulty securing lay clerks. However, they wanted to pretend that they were doing as well as their colleagues were. I think now that organists are beginning to be much more vocal and frank about their experiences in recruiting boy choristers and adults. In trying to persuade parents of the commitment involved, I think we are seeing the start of fragmentation. Maybe in King's and Westminster Abbey it will continue for years and years, but I don't think it's going to continue everywhere. Even if you try and take those kinds of things into account. you then throw in the changing liturgical demands and the more informal stances that the clergy likes to take who perhaps question the need for having such regular formal services. Even initiatives like Common Worship dilute what the Book of Common Prayer offers in terms of musical opportunities. They would say otherwise. They point to all the resources that they produce. Actually it's a dilution of a music that used to be so rich. They are encouraging to ditch 400 years of music and use theirs instead. Their music simply isn't in the same division. Then you're caught in a problem because clearly there are questions of whether Evensong is just a time warp and are you just presenting music that was written 400 years ago. But what else is being offered?

GB: Dumbed down rubbish.

TB-W: It is dumbed down. Some people are just taking the position that you just have to go with the flow.

BB: Any difficulties or problems you may face over here are more than doubled in the States.

TB-W: I think you are further down the track than we are. The only thing we've got that saves us really is the tradition and the history of the buildings that we happen to be in.

GB: I was commenting to Barbara as we walked here today that I think that educated people here in the UK are more cognizant of the arts because of the long tradition. Our parish is an unusual congregation in that almost all are professionals and world travelers, well educated and at the top of their profession. We are very fortunate to have much support for all our endeavors and concerts. However, educated people in the states in general are not usually musically cultured or supportive of the arts. I think that the vast majority of professionals in the states still listen to pop music on the radio for entertainment, and a small percentage support the symphony and community concerts, etc.

TB-W: Certainly. One can't talk of a more superior tradition--you can't talk about the western tradition of classical music as being superior to ethnic musicology or even studies in popular music and jazz music which has over 100 years now. It isn't really possible to talk of Beethoven, Brahms and Bach in the same reverential tones we used to and get away with it. So, the times they are a-changing!

BB: It's not as scary for us in our position.

TB-W: Again, you're further down the track. I've been very lucky to have the opportunity both in Edinburgh and before when I was at Winchester to be able to deal in music which I love and was brought up on. I count my lucky stars that I'm still in a job which allows me to do it.  I'm not quite sure that in another ten years time it will still be there. It's only a trust fund that keeps things going and pays for my salary. That's a big part of my fortune, really. For as long as the college wants it to happen, that's fine. I can see a time, even here, where the dean might retire and the college might say, "Oh, do we really want a dean? Do we really want to have Evensong?"

GB: A turnover of ministers in any church could greatly change musical things. The stories are legion.

TB-W: Of course, the decline in churchgoing is becoming very alarmingly rapid in this country. It's slightly higher in Scotland. Perhaps we should leave for rehearsal now.

Author's note: As we left for that day's rehearsal of men and women and walked through the beautiful grounds of Jesus College, the mood of our philosophical discussion greatly changed. Tim is a high energy, easy-going person who smiles a lot and encourages his choristers in the joy of music. He is also an excellent, natural pianist who plays with much ease and joy. His choristers obviously enjoy making music with him. We look forward to visiting Jesus College again and attending Evensong after the Hill organ is installed. We also look forward to meeting up with Tim at Windsor Castle.

On the occasion of her 80th birthday

Sarah Mahler Highes is Associate Professor of Music and College Organist at Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin, where she has taught since 1989. She holds degrees in music education (B.A., Olivet College, 1976), music history and literature (M.M., University of Colorado, 1979), and organ performance (D.M.A., University of Kansas, 1985). Dr. Hughes teaches piano, organ, harpsichord, and music history courses at Ripon as well as directing the Collegium Musicum. She is also Minister of Music at First Congregational Church in Ripon, where she directs children's and adult choirs and plays for services. Dr. Hughes has published articles on and edited music by women composers and is a regular contributor to THE DIAPASON. She recently studied in Vienna with Michael Radulescu of the Hochschule fuer Musik und darstellende Kunst.

Miriam Clapp Duncan, Emerita Professor of Music at Lawrence
University, Appleton, Wisconsin, celebrates 50 years of teaching and her 80th
birthday on October 26 (the same date as Scarlatti) this year. In honor of her
achievements, the Northeastern Wisconsin Chapter of the AGO has commissioned
from David A. Heller an organ
partita based on "Down Ampney," to be performed by chapter members at
their worship services during the succeeding year. Professor Duncan reflects
upon a long and satisfying career in an interview with Sarah Mahler Hughes.

Q: What was the first musical experience you can remember?

A: It was coming home from my father's funeral--I was five
years old--and playing the songs I'd heard on the piano. My family decided I
had to have lessons.

Q: How did you come to choose the organ as your principal
instrument?

A: I grew up in Anderson, Indiana. As a child, I listened to
radio station WLW from Cincinnati, which wasn't far away. They broadcast a
daily organ program from their studios which I listened to faithfully. I also
had an English aunt, a real character, who lived with us and who wanted me to
learn to play the organ. I started taking lessons at the age of 13 from a nun
who had gone to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. That's what
influenced me to go there.

Q: Describe your education at the American Conservatory. Who
were your teachers?

A: As a music school, it wasn't the worst place, but it
wasn't the best place, either. I had excellent theory instruction, which really
helped later when I went to Vienna to study with Anton Heiller. I discovered
then that be and I spoke the same language as far as theory went.

Leo Sowerby taught theory, music history, and composition at
the Conservatory, and I'd like to talk a little about his classroom teaching
because as I get older I realize what an influence he had on me. He paid
enormous attention to detail. We had to analyze quantitities of works,
including a dozen string quartets by Beethoven. Sowerby believed in studying
the scores of whatever pieces you were playing. When he was young, he never
went to a concert without going to the library first to get scores of the
things he was going to hear. Who has that kind of self-discipline these days?
He believed you could teach yourself because he had taught himself very much in
that way. He made us write our counterpoint exercises in the old clefs so we'd
know how to read them. He'd sit at the piano and improvise chord progressions,
and suddenly he'd stop cold, point a finger at you, and ask, "What chord
is that?"

Q: Did you also study organ with Sowerby?

A: Yes, but not at the Conservatory. He wasn't allowed to
teach there because he didn't have a degree in organ. He hadn't studied with
anyone famous--in fact, he hadn't even studied! He taught himself to play the
pedals by drawing a pedalboard on a piece of brown butcherpaper which he put
under the piano. I took lessons from him privately, at St. James' Episcopal
Church, where I played the big 1925 Austin organ. It was mostly his own works
we studied, and some English works that he liked to play for church. I learned
a lot about service-playing in the English tradition from him.

Q: Your first teaching job was at Wheaton College, was it
not? How did that come about?

A: One of my organ teachers at the Conservatory was Frank
van Duesen, who had been a student of Guilmant. Mr. van Duesen had surgery for
glaucoma in 1945, and I ended up teaching for him at Wheaton for two years.

Q: After teaching at Wheaton, you finished your M.M. degree
in 1947, and you and your husband moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where be began
teaching piano and theory at Lawrence University.

A: Yes, and I didn't teach at first because Lawrence, like
most liberal arts colleges in those days, bad a rule that wives couldn't teach
in the same department as their husbands. However, the GIs had arrived after
the war, and by 1949 they were desperate for another organ teacher. LaVahn
Maesch, the Dean of the Conservatory and the principal organ instructor, came
to my house one Sunday afternoon and said, "I need you at the
Conservatory, because I know you taught at Wheaton, and we really do need
somebody with experience to teach." So I was in business. I had 26
students that first year, and for the whole year of teaching I was paid $600. I
never dreamed then that I would end up being chair of the organdepartment and a
full professor.

Q: Seemingly your course was set. Yet something happened in
the 1950s--a sort of musical awakening?

A: Yes, and not just for me. It began, I think with the
Haarlem Academy, which the Dutch government sponsored in order to show off the
great organ at Haarlem. College teachers from this country, dozens of them,
went there to study and bring back the gospel of performance practice to their
students. The faculty was the best: Anton Heiller, who did all the Bach
teaching, Marie-Claire Alain, Luigi Tagliavini, and Gustav Leonhardt for
harpsichord. I never attended the Academy workshops, but I heard the Haarlem
organ and learned about what went on there. What the Academy did was bring
people up to date on performance practice, and its influence on organ teachers
has changed organ playing in this country--I don't think that's an
exaggeration. We know things now, and people play very much more intelligently than
they did 35 or 40 years ago.

Q: Were there other significant musical experiences for you
during these years?

A: Yes, two in particular. I spent two summers--1950 and
1951--as a student at the Organ Institute of America in Methuen, Massachusetts,
where the old Boston Music Hall organ had been moved thanks to the efforts of
E. Power Biggs, Arthur Poister, and Carl Weinrich. The organ--a Walcker, I
believe--was a beautiful instrument with a very handsome case. The faculty at
the Institute were all the major organists in the United States. We practiced
in the mornings, had lectures in the afternoons, and heard recitals at night on
that gigantic, four-manual-plus organ. For the first time, we learned what
organo pleno meant, because every division had a plenum. I date my interest in
the organ music of Bach from these sessions.

Sowerby once told me he'd like to go to the Organ Institute
for a summer. Imagine the challenge of trying to explain organum plenum or
tierce en taille to America's first Prix de Rome winner and Pulitzer Prize
winner two times over. Sowerby's Toccata for Organ was the first piece he wrote
after this long conversation with me (accompanied by martinis, of course) about
Baroque organ music.

Q: How did you make the connection between the Organ
Institute and study in Europe?

A: One of my fellow students at the Institute one summer was
Rudy Kraemer, who now teaches at the University of North Carolina. He told me
about his study with Anton Heiller in Vienna. Rudy had gone there on a
Fulbright, but he didn't know about Heiller at first. One day Rudy had walked
into a cafe on the Schwartzenbergplatz and discovered Gustav Leonhardt having
coffee with H. Robbins Landon. Rudy got to talking with them both, and they
told him to go to Heiller, that be was the only organist in Vienna who knew
anything about Bach and early music. Heiller at that time was less than 30
years old, but he'd already established himself as a player and scholar. I
decided that I wanted to study with Heiller, too, and in 1954-55, my husband
and I went to Vienna, thanks to a Ford Foundation grant. I worked with Heiller,
and also with Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Q: What were your impressions of Heiller?

A: He had a very good voice--his first job, in fact, was as
a baritone in the chorus at the Volksoper. He sang a lot at my lessons, and I
never would have learned to play appoggiaturas expressively if be hadn't sung
them first. He also had a fantastic ear. He could pick out a 4' flute in a
plenum and say, "Get that flute out of there!"

Heiller, of course, and Marie Claire Alain, and Tagliavini,
were pioneers in the historical performance practice movement that began in the
'50s and changed the organ world forever. All of these people believed
thoroughly in getting your hands on a photocopy of the original music--the Orgelbüchlein
style='font-style:normal'>, for example. They didn't even trust what somebody
else had written because they didn't know what his scholarship was like. And
they didn't trust trying to play as you heard someone else play. Although
Heiller used to say, "I'm no scholar, but I have friends who are." He
was so modest; however, he had plenty of imitators.

I can't overemphasize Heiller's influence on organ-playing
in this country. Let me give two examples. In 1962, be appeared at the AGO
National Convention in Los Angeles. It was the first time be came over to the
U.S., and he lectured on the Orgelbüchlein normal'>. People were transfixed--they didn't know there was so much to be
known about this collection. They became interested in it again--most of them
had been bored out of their skulls when they'd had to study it, and they
acknowledged that. Heiller toured the country after that, stopping in Appleton,
among other places. He played the entire Orgelbüchlein
style='font-style:normal'> on a little eight-stop Schlicker practice organ at
Lawrence, and he wowed 'em--even the band students, who like all the others,
had been required to go. That's an artist, who can make people interested in
difficult music!

The second monumental event was Heiller's dedication of the
Fisk organ at Harvard in 1967. That's a magnificent organ, and his playing
matched it--I'll never forget his performance of the Reger Wachet auf
style='font-style:normal'>. Every great organ teacher in the United States was
there--Gleason, Craighead, and others. I think some of us realized for the
first time what organ recitals could be. That organ sent ripples across the
entire country and influenced a whole generation of builders and students.

Q: What did you learn from Gustav Leonhardt?

A: Leonhardt was a great teacher--extremely knowledgeable,
and fluent in several languages. The first thing he did was explain to me his
idea that there was no such thing as a German Baroque style because it was all
borrowed from the French and Italian practices. The only German contribution to
a Baroque musical tradition was the chorale. That was a pretty strong
statement, but it illustrates an important fact--the existence and appreciation
of various national styles in this period. For example, once you know the
unique characteristics of these national styles, you can pick out passages in
Buxtehude that sound like Frescobaldi.

Q: What happened when you returned from Europe in 1955?

A: Well, first I had to cope with an old Kimball organ,
which actually seemed like a pretty good instrument because it had replaced one
that was even worse. But the main thing was that when I came back to Lawrence,
I started teaching repertoire outside the French Romantic school, which
dominated the American organ world at that time. I taught Buxtehude, Bach, and
Hindemith and music that I liked and thought was important. And by golly, the
students liked those things, too. I think I began to have a following because I
was not teaching Robert Elmore's "Donkey Dance." People didn't know
what I was up to--they thought I was either mad or trying to undermine Mr.
Maesch.

It's hard to believe, but at that time only a handful of
Bach works were played on recitals, mostly the big preludes and fugues. Nobody
taught and played the Clavierübung or the chorale preludes--the music was
considered too serious. Of course, part of the problem was that there weren't
many organs that could "play" the music well. The French organ
symphonies were known, but only
the "Toccata" from Widor's Fifth was played a lot. I think many
organists were afraid to play something they thought people wouldn't like.

Anyway, I ran afoul of Mr. Maesch, who had studied with
Dupré in Paris, not only because of the repertoire I was teaching but
because I was playing faster and with more articulation. He--and lots of other
people, too--believed that everything should be played legato. Organ music was
like spaghetti--long lines of legato notes--with swell shades used for contrast
and expression. I told him, "It may surprise you to know that Austrian
organists do play at a good clip." He said, "How can they do that in
those acoustics?" I replied, "They play cleanly and they
articulate." This was a new concept!

Q: Obviously, you have been committed to historical
performance practices in your teaching and playing. How did you continue your
studies in the following years?

A: Well, in 1966 I spent a sabbatical in France, Germany,
Italy, and Vienna, listening to and playing old organs, and taking lessons. I
took lessons from Marie Claire Alain at her house, because I wanted to get the
goods on the French Classical school, and I worked with Tagliavini on
Frescobaldi.

Q: You also spent some time at the Newberry Library, didn't
you?

A: Yes, on another sabbatical in 1973, I researched Baroque
treatises in the Newberry Library in Chicago. The Newberry is one of the great
music libraries in this country, which many musicians don't seem to realize.
They have very interesting seminars as well as more early music scores than any
library in the United States. Why bother digging through treatises? Well, many
treatises were written in the Baroque era, not instructing you how to play, but
describing how the playing was done. So it's possible to learn a very great
deal about performance practice by reading, and I don't think anyone is ever
going to be a knowledgeable organist playing Baroque music unless they read
about it.

Q: Your study in Vienna really convinced you of the merits
of mechanical-action organs, did it not?

A: Absolutely. I had to bide my time, but by the mid-60s
tracker organs were becoming popular. I managed to convince my organ majors at
Lawrence that tracker organs were superior even though they'd never heard one
(there weren't any in northeastern Wisconsin). I took a group of students to
Boston in 1967 to bear the Fisk, and we wore our "Tracker Backer"
[modeled on the NFL "Packer Backers"] buttons. E. Power Biggs came
onstage for a recital, and he said, "Welcome, all you Tracker Backers and
all you non-Tracker Backers." I'm still amazed at how many people have
beard of us. People hear 'Lawrence' and they say, "That's where the
Tracker Backers are from." But behind it all was a very serious
appreciation for tracker organs and a longing for one at Lawrence.

Q: And finally that dream did come true.

A: It took 30 years, but in 1995 the Brombaugh Opus 33 was
dedicated in the Memorial Chapel at Lawrence. I truly feel that this is the
culmination of my whole teaching career. I feel like everything has finally all
come together. It's been an inspiration to see it come to fruition because I
know it's the right thing to do, musically and in every way.

Q: You've had a strong committment to teaching, not only
college students, but other people in the community. You were heavily involved
in the OROCO program in the Fox Valley of Wisconsin, for example.

A: That was my idea, and I helped to organize it. The
Outreach Opportunity for Church Organists program started about 1970 to give
people lessons who wouldn't otherwise have had access to training. Many people
were (and maybe still are) playing the organ in church and had never had a
lesson in their lives. We--Mr. Maesch, Clinton DeWitt, an organist from Oconto,
and I--traveled around to churches in northeastern Wisconsin recruiting
students. Originally, we sent teachers, including Lawrence students, out to
these communities to teach group lessons. But then, thanks to a $10,000 gift,
we were able to award scholarships to individuals, and they made arrangements
to study with designated teachers in Appleton, Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Ripon. I
think the program was very successful--many of the OROCO graduates are still
active in church music. I think we turned out at least 45 new organists, and
the program continues to this day.

Q: Officially, you retired in 1985, yet you're still active
and visible in the organ world.

A: I don't think musicians ever really retire--I know I
haven't. Lawrence wouldn't let me retire--I've taught both organ and
harpsichord for sabbatical replacements, and I still have 15 community
students. There seems to be a steady stream of people over the age of 35 who
want to learn to play the organ. In fact, I have a waiting list! But that's
good news for church music. I resist the recent trend of "canned"
music to accompany singing in church, and I hope most other organists do, too.
I think we have to have live music if we're going to have viable church music.
We need to all hang in there and produce more and better organists.

Q: What advice do you have for organ teachers today?

A: Develop patience--it's a slow process to develop organ
technique. Be interested in your students not only as musicians but as people.
And don't expect your students to play the way you do. Many of my teachers just
did what their teachers had done. I think that's a curse. Students who just
play the way they're taught will never make it as performers.

I still think mechanical-action organs are the best for
training organists, but teachers should never allow themselves or their
students to play mechanically. Teach musicianship! It's hard work, but it can
be done. But don't neglect a reliable technique in favor of sleazy
"expression." Don't kid yourself! The most beautiful music is made
more beautiful by impeccable technique.

Teaching organ must be the most wonderful vocation for a
woman organist. I have had great success as a teacher but it's hard work. I've
had some failures. I could never get my students to believe that their senior
recital pieces were not necessarily the most godly music to play for church,
though a case could be made for the godliness of all organ music. Too many
organists, I fear, seek supreme godliness in their own playing rather than in
the purpose of the Supreme Being.

I'm very proud of my students--all of them. Hardly a day
passes that I don't get a phone call from one of them. They call me
"Mother Duncan," and they're all over the country and even overseas.

Q: What would you advise organ students to do?

A: Practice. And learn to listen to your own playing. Don't
rely on CDs and how other people "do it." And, of course, study your
scores and learn as much as you can about music theory and history.

Q: Do you have any thoughts about the future?

A: I'm glad I'm 80 years old this October. At least I can
look forward to hearing some fine organ playing in heaven, and maybe I'll be
able to give J.S. Bach the chance to explain some performance practice to me.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>

Chronology

Born October 26, 1919, in Anderson, Indiana

1942, BMus, American Conservatory of Music, Chicago

1945-47, Instructor of Music, Wheaton College

1947, MMus, American Conservatory

1949, Part-time Intructor, Lawrence University

1950-51, Summer Organ Institute, Methuen, MA

1954-55, Sabbatical in Vienna, study with Anton Heiller

1962, Chair, Organ Dept., Lawrence

1963, First woman organist to perform at St. Norbert's
Abbey, DePere, WI

1964, Full-time Instructor, Lawrence

1965, Assistant Professor

1966, Sabbatical in Germany, Italy, Vienna; study with
Marie-Claire Alain in Paris

1967, Began lobbying for mechanical-action organ at Lawrence

1971, Received tenure

1972, Associate Professor

1973, Sabbatical, Newberry Library, Chicago

1979, Full Professor

1985, Retirement

A conversation with Steven Egler

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

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

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

SE: How did they compare as teachers?

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

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

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

SE: And it was always from memory, right.

RG: Yes.

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

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

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

SE: You’re absolutely right!

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

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

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

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

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

SE: No. I only recall hearing the name.

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

SE: Didn’t Harold Gleason design that organ?

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

SE: That would explain the connection to Eastman. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SE: So, will you do that then?

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

SE: What about recording?

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

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

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

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

RB: It’s like a chain of succession.

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