Anthony Hammond author of Pierre Cochereau: Organist of Notre-Dame

Dr. Carolyn Shuster Fournier thanks Father Michel Chausson, James David Christie, Jean-Louis Coignet, Pierre Farago, Jean Fonteneau, Yves Fossaert, André Isoir, Alain Louvier, Yvonne Mills, Francis Prod’homme, and Pascale Rouet for their assistance in preparing this article. Author of numerous articles for The Diapason, she is a French-American organist, musicologist, international concert organist and titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité in Paris, France. She has premiered numerous contemporary works, collaborating with composers such as Jacques Castérède, Jacques Chailley, Jacques Charpentier and Daniel Pinkham. In April 2009, she recorded a CD in homage to Nadia Boulanger at La Madeleine in Paris. She is Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.

Vital music-making is the heartbeat that animates André Isoir. Honorary organist at the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, Chevalier of Arts and Letters and recipient of the National Order of Merit, André Isoir has received the highest distinctions as an international concert and recording artist, with a vast repertoire and more than sixty recordings to his name. An eminent professor, he has taught over 900 organists from all over the world. A Renaissance man, he is also a composer who has made many transcriptions. Fascinated by organ building, he has been a consultant for numerous organ restorations and has served as a corresponding member of both the French Historical Monuments Commission (1970–85) and the Commission of Unclassified Historical Monuments from (1980–84).

Initial inspiration
André Isoir was born on July 20, 1935 in Saint-Dizier (in Haute-Marne, near Reims). He played the bugle in the city band. At age fourteen, his life was transformed when he heard J. S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, played on the organ in the chapel of his school. He immediately fell in love with this instrument. For the next two years, he studied on this organ with a Salesian priest and accompanied on the harmonium a church choir led by his father, an amateur musician. When Noëlie Pierront1 came to Saint-Dizier with the Philippe Debat Vocal Ensemble2 and performed a stunning rendition of Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, Isoir had the opportunity of playing Bach’s Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542, for her. Impressed by his immense talent, she encouraged him to come to Paris to study at the César Franck School.3

Musical training
In 1952, André Isoir enrolled at the César Franck School, then located on the rue Vavin, near Notre-Dame-des-Champs, in the Montparnasse district. After studying piano with Germaine Mounier, he then studied with two of Louis Vierne’s former students: Geneviève de La Salle and Édouard Souberbielle. First he entered de La Salle’s organ class.4 An excellent musician, she enabled him to acquire a firm technique and taught him to play with elegant phrasing, varied articulations, and refined registrations. She excelled in the art of registration so much so that Joseph Bonnet requested that she spend hours with him preparing for his concerts and recordings on the Gonzalez organ at Saint-Eustache. She gave her lessons on a Pleyel studio organ with electro-pneumatic action,5 teaching the works of Bach, Alain, Duruflé, Franck, Messiaen, and Vierne, leaving aside those by Widor and Gigout. In February 1956, when Geneviève de La Salle left to teach at the Gregorian Institute in Lisbon, Isoir succeeded her as organist and choirmaster at Saint-Médard in Paris.6
To acquire a solid musical formation, Isoir studied Gregorian chant as well as improvisation and harmony with René Malherbe,7 harmony with Yves Margat, counterpoint with Marcel Bitch, and continued piano with Germaine Mounier. This prepared him to enter Édouard Souberbielle’s8 organ class. This “true aristocrat of the organ” possessed a vast culture and an eminent spirituality that deeply influenced all of his students. He expanded each student’s personal perceptions by making them feel uncomfortable with their own opinions. This enabled them to acquire an elegant style.
In Souberbielle’s class, Isoir continued to play, notably, works by Bach and Franck, but more importantly, he began to play the early French composers. Influenced by his son Léon,9 Édouard Souberbielle served as consultant for the construction of a Roethinger organ in the French classic style (curiously enough with electric action) at the Benedictine Abbey in Limon (in the southern part of the Île-de-France). Voiced by Robert Boisseau, this organ included a Plein-jeu as described by Dom Bédos. It thus served as an inspiration to future constructions in this style by Philippe Hartmann and Pierre Chéron. In addition, Souberbielle’s refined and inspiring approach to improvisation, enrobed with Ravel-like harmonies, concentrated on the free treatment of a theme and, of course, the fugue.
In order to launch a career, it was necessary to obtain a First Prize in organ from the Paris Conservatory. While still enrolled at the César Franck School in September 1957, André Isoir entered Rolande Falcinelli’s10 organ class and Olivier Messiaen’s analysis class at the Paris Conservatory, where his fellow students included Xavier Darasse and Yves Devernay. He remained there for three years, taking lessons on a “really horrible organ”11 and received his Second Prize in organ on June 15, 1959. On June 22, 1960, he unanimously obtained, with the strong support of Maurice Duruflé, a First Prize in organ performance and improvisation. Fifteen days earlier, Isoir had received the ultimate degree that really mattered to him—the Superior Diploma in organ and improvisation at the César Franck School.
At the César Franck School, Isoir met many of his future friends and colleagues: Denise and Michel Chapuis, Jeanne Joulain, Éliane Lejeune-Bonnier, Elisabeth and Joachim Havard de la Montagne, Simone and Jean-Albert Villard, Émmanuel de Villèle, Paule Piedelièvre, and others, as well as his future wife, Annie Kergomard, whom he married in 1961.12 During his military service, from 1960 to 1962, he played brass instruments in a military band, along with Francis Chapelet, who became one of his closest friends.13

Beginning a musical career: skills as an improviser and a composer
Following his studies, Isoir’s international career was launched when he won various competitions: in Saint Albans (England), where he received the First Prize in 1965, and in Haarlem (Holland), where he won prizes for three consecutive years (1966–1967–1968). He also won the “Challenge Prize” and is the only Frenchman to have earned that distinction since the beginning of this competition in 1951. Isoir excelled in the ephemeral art of improvisation that enabled him to express his thoughts eloquently. For him, even a minimum amount of imagination, when it’s coupled with an assimilation of various styles and a sufficient preparation of an abundance of fresh ideas, can enable one to improvise well. He was fascinated with presenting, in a short span of time, a coherent form with appropriate registrations that bring out the style of the proposed theme. His vital musical personality, ready to receive and develop unexpected ideas (it is not surprising that he is an avid fisherman!) has been fully revealed through his improvisations.
Animated by a love of accompanying the liturgy, André Isoir used his improvisation skills to prepare the parishioners to pray and become spiritually receptive. From 1956 to 1971, he served as organist and choir master at Saint-Médard in Paris.14 He began his concert career by giving a recital in this church in October 1963, of classical works from the Flemish and German schools (Leonhard Kleber, Sweelinck, Wilhelm Karges, Scheidt, Lübeck, Pachelbel, Buxtehude and Bach). He played in such a manner that the romantic Stoltz instrument (1880) sounded like a German baroque organ!15 Throughout his career, he constantly presented lesser-known works in his programs.
In 1970, he was named as one of the four organists at Saint-Séverin, along with Michel Chapuis, Francis Chapelet, and Jacques Marichal, re-establishing the former Parisian tradition of having four organists. In 1963, Alfred Kern had successfully reconstructed the 1745 Claude Ferrand organ in a neo-classic aesthetic (under Michel Chapuis’ guidance, with Philippe Hartmann redoing the action). Isoir has many fond memories of the pre-Vatican II repertoire that he accompanied there. While at Saint-Séverin, he composed a Ravel-like Agnus Dei, with the text in French. (See musical example.) In 1973, after having served as a consultant for the reconstruction of Haerpfer-Ermann’s organ at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he was appointed organist there, along with Odile Bayeux, following a long line of blind organists who had served there (notably Augustin Barié, André Marchal, and Antoine Reboulot).16
In February 1974, Les Amis de l’Orgue awarded him with a First Prize for his first organ composition, Variations sur le Psaume 92 [“Variations on a Huguenot Psalm”]. James David Christie was in the audience for this occasion. When he told André that he really loved his piece more than any other and wanted to play it regardless if it won the prize or not, Isoir gave him his personal copy of the score on the spot! When the work was published by Forberg Verlag in Germany in 1979, Christie noticed that one variation had not been published:

When I asked André about this several years later, he told me in his very humble and self-effacing manner that he felt the piece was too long with seven variations and six were enough. The work is an absolute masterpiece and the audiences love it; I have played it in concert often since 1975. I tried to commission André in 1989 for another major organ work, but he refused. He said he found composition too stressful and preferred improvising and performing the repertoire of others. I have often lamented the fact he did not devote more time to adding great repertoire to the organ. I always felt his glorious, exciting improvisations would have been the seeds of many a great composition.17
André Isoir has made numerous transcriptions, many of which have been published by Delatour France.

Interest in organ building and in early French music
Fascinated with mechanics in his youth, Isoir has always loved to tinker with and repair broken clocks. In the early 1960s, at an antique dealer’s near Saint-Séverin, he acquired an eighteenth-century barrel organ [a serinette] from Nancy, a cylindrical instrument that was used to teach domestic birds how to sing. He then constructed a copy of this instrument and installed ten pipes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B-flat, B-natural, C, and D. He reconstructed the cylinder with eight tunes, according to the indications specified by Engramelle, and incorporated an air by Couperin, La petite chasse. He has also built two regals and a virginal.
Francis Prod’homme, the organizer of concerts at Notre-Dame in Pontorson, near Mont Saint-Michel, has related an example of André Isoir’s generosity.18 During one evening meal, Isoir observed that Francis’s clock was not well-regulated and that it needed to be “tuned.” As on numerous other occasions, Isoir proclaimed “I will take care of that for you.” In several minutes, and with a delightful child-like smile that lit up André’s face, the clock was once again happily chiming in universal harmony.
Isoir’s close friend, the organ builder Jean-Georges Koenig,19 taught him how to construct wooden pipes. His friend, Father Michel Chausson (a priest who built organ pipes) taught him how to construct metal pipes. In addition, in 1965, Isoir constructed his first regal with Jean-François Clément and worked with Gérard Fonvielle, who built him a harpsichord. Isoir is not in favor of building exact copies of instruments; he prefers to play mechanical-action instruments that enable the performer to bring out the vocal polyphonic lines and to play a large part of the repertoire. His repair kit has accompanied him on his various concert tours, and he has admitted that on many occasions that he has spent more time repairing and tuning the various organs than rehearsing on them!
The composer Alain Louvier attests to André Isoir’s capacities as a “solitary navigator” [“navigateur solitaire”]:

André Isoir could have constructed a hydraulic organ, an aeolian, solar or geothermal . . . and could have taken it on a non-stop trip around the world on a trimaran sailing raft . . . he knew how to do everything, to repair anything. One would have thought that he was born in an organ case! A true genius in making repairs, with practically nothing he could fix a tremolo, a reed pipe, even its mechanism.
I imagine him—as an organist in the Iron Age—busy cutting down trees, carving wood, casting tin, hammering it, and, finally, creating his own organ, the fruit of his ear and his unbounded imagination.20
Isoir’s innate inventive spirit in improvisation and organ building led to his fascination with the interpretive possibilities of “recreating” early French organ works. Right from the start, Isoir realized that the organs he had played in the 1950s and 1960s in Paris, most of them in the neo-classical style, were not suitable for early French repertoire. This had not stopped interpreters such as Abel Decaux, Joseph Bonnet, and André Marchal from playing this repertoire. With restorations of magnificent organs like Jean-Esprit Isnard’s 1772 basilica organ in Saint-Maximin-en-Provence (restored by Pierre Chéron in 1954) and François-Henri Clicquot’s 1790 organ at Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Poitiers (restored by Robert and Jean-Loup Boisseau in 1971–1972), organists began to discover the splendid sound of these organs as well as a lively, variable wind and a suspended mechanical action, which allowed one to vary the attack.
Obtaining a varied, responsive action is extremely important to André Isoir. The French classical organ, with its sensitive action and lively wind, needs only a minimum amount of material to offer a maximum sound effect. For example, in Poitiers, with a wind pressure of 110 mm., four or five stops suffice to fill the cathedral. Following Alfred Kern’s reconstruction of the Saint-Séverin organ in 1968, René Delosmes, Pierre Hardouin, Jean Fellot, Alain Lequeux, Michel Chapuis, Francis Chapelet, and André Isoir, presided over by Jean Fonteneau, united to protect early French historic organs: they founded the French Association for the Preservation of Early Organs (A.F.S.O.A.—Association française pour le sauvegarde de l’orgue ancien).21
By consulting early sources, Isoir discovered that the early French repertoire can be moving and expressive. Once he had studied the various treatises and documents, notably with the musicologist Jean Saint-Arroman, he realized on the one hand that the knowledge of these texts did not suffice to bring this music to life; on the other hand, he was also aware that spontaneity and freshness never come by chance. To attain the elegance, distinction and well-proportioned expressions that are so characteristic of French art, one must study the various imperative rules and then put them aside, along with any automatic mechanical responses. Instead, one must use one’s intuition to find a harmonious balance, continually determined by good taste, the ultimate guide. As with wine tasting, it is so much more important to “taste” its fragrance than to recite texts about it. Isoir was especially guided by the writings of Eugène Borrel, who wrote that eighteenth-century art was “elegant, distinguished, warm without excessiveness.”22 Simplicity is a sign of real intelligence. Isoir particularly loves playing early French music because it gives the interpreter a great deal of freedom in bringing this music to life.

Organ professor
For André Isoir, teaching is a sacred mission, enabling one to give priceless treasures to others, helping them to feel completely at ease while playing. He taught organ and harmony at the Angers Conservatory (1966–79);23 at the conservatoires in Versailles and Orsay (1974–83);24 and from 1982 to 1996 at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory as well as at various summer academies: Lagny (1982, 1985, 1986), Meaux (1983), Mitry-Mory (1984), Luxembourg (1989) and Nemours (1993). Among his 900 students are Jörg Abbing, Michel Bouvard, Jean Boyer, Monika Dabrowska-Beuzelin, Frédéric Denis, Frédéric Desenclos, François Espinasse, Pierre Farago, Yves Fossaert, Dominique Fournier, Jean-Louis Gil, Juliette Grellety-Bosviel, Emmanuelle Haïm, Makiko Hayashima, Léonid Karev, Joachim Kunze, Sven-Ingvart Mikkelsen, George Ritchie, Henri de Rohan, Pascale Rouet, Christophe Simon, Liuwe Tamminga, Timothy Tikker, Jean-Michel Verneiges, Francis Vidil and Haru Yamagami, to name but a few. Convinced that knowledge about organ building is indispensable to improving one’s interpretation, notably in the art of registration and touch, he also taught his students the rudiments of organ construction and maintenance. According to organist and composer Pierre Farago, his successor as organ professor at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory,
When André Isoir taught and played, the instrument was transformed under his fingers, and relinquishing its mechanical aspects, became purely organic—if I dare say—like a living being gifted with flowing expressiveness. His teaching is subtle and complex, insisting on utmost rigor, with utmost patience, without ever expressing it in the form of a dogmatic principle. The scores we studied were never cenotaphs, empty monuments or museum graphics, but rather sleeping beauties which ought to be brought back to life.25
In the early 1980s, the composer Alain Louvier, Director of the Conservatory in Boulogne-Billancourt, met André Isoir during the construction of the Koenig organ in the concert hall there. In spite of the fact that the city did not really want to invest in what the “very cultivated and refined” mayor Georges Gorse referred to as an “accordion for the wealthy,” Louvier appreciated Isoir’s “sense of humor, in addition to his wide-ranging competence, which both worked wonders.” Louvier had included stops in this organ with the seventh and eleventh harmonics that produced quarter tones. He was astonished by Isoir’s use of these stops:

By combining these experimental stops with the voix humaine, he was able to produce a sort of strange Bombarde 16 on the pedal that the city could not afford . . . thanks to his extraordinary acoustical intuition, one could play a Bach chorale with quarter tones, that were not noticed as such.26
In his teaching, André Isoir constantly emphasized the importance of acquiring a more fluid technique, of becoming sufficiently inventive in bringing music to life. At my first lesson at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory in 1983,27 we spent two hours looking at possible interpretations of the first movement (a Plein-Jeu) of Jean-Adam Guilain’s First Suite. I felt as if André were an optician who kept inserting different lenses to ask me if I could read the letters. It was necessary to understand the structure and the vital expression of this work from the inside out, to let the notes speak naturally. A deep harmonic and melodic analysis of each work, coupled with a fantastic imagination, enables one to perform this music spontaneously.
In the eyes and ears of a great artist, no detail is too small to be taken into consideration. An authentic artist with a vital personality abandons all preconceived static conceptions with prefabricated formulas and continually externalizes his capacity to listen to his playing, thus enabling him to understand more fully and to communicate an inner musical message. Each artist is a medium who communicates the deep spiritual message of the music. When I wrote to Frank Taylor in 1983, to share my experiences with him, he replied:

I’m happy you are studying with André—I think he’s perhaps the greatest eclectic (all round good) organist in the world. And I would rather hear him play anything, than anyone else I can think of. Give him my very most affectionate best wishes when next you see him.28
Recognized as an excellent teacher, in 1991 André Isoir co-authored, with Dominique Ferran and François-Henri Houbart, a practical catalog of the organ repertoire, in order of difficulty for the first ten years of organ lessons. It presents exercises and methods, early music until the seventeenth century, separate chapters on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the traditional notation and new notation in the twentieth century, concertos and unclassifiable pieces.29

International concert and recording artist with an eclectic repertoire
André Isoir first gave concerts in North America in the 1960s, thanks to his friend Jean Fonteneau, an assistant organist at Saint-Séverin. In 1971, Isoir performed in Oberlin (Ohio), Quebec, Montreal, at Harvard University, and in New York. At that time, Fisk was building his famous organ for the Old West Church in Boston. Isoir provided him with numerous details concerning the construction of the French-style reed stops incorporated into this instrument, thus contributing to the movement in favor of restoring instruments to play early French music in the United States. In 1974, he performed in Toronto and in Buffalo, where he met with the early French music specialist David Fuller. In 1975, he played concerts in Toronto and Montreal. In 1976, he returned to Harvard and gave recitals in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
In November 1989, James David Christie invited André Isoir to come to the United States for a mini-tour in Boston. He testifies to Isoir’s memorable performances in Wellesley and Worcester:

He played a fantastic concert at Wellesley College on the meantone Fisk organ, complete with short octave, sub-semitones, a three-octave keyboard range, etc. He ended his program with a super-charged, exciting performance of his transcription of Bela Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances (originally for piano solo).
He played at Holy Cross, Worcester, and ended the program with an incredible improvisation on “B-A-C-H.” I think there is an archival recording of the Holy Cross concert; it was just stunning and André was in his usual top form, having the time of his life.30
During this last tour to the United States, Isoir also gave masterclasses on the Charles Fisk organ at the Old West Church for the AGO national convention. On this occasion, Isoir has quite fond memories of the moments he spent with Frank Taylor, Barbara Owen, and Charles Fisk.
Isoir has inaugurated at least eighty organs. I was privileged to attend the memorable inauguration of the Gonzalez organ at Meaux Cathedral on June 8, 1982. That year, he also inaugurated the Grenzing organ at Saint-Cyprien (in the Périgord, where he also served as a consultant) and the Marc Garnier organ at the church in Esquelbecq. On November 3, 1990, he was especially pleased to inaugurate the restored Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ in Saint-Dizier, his hometown. In addition, he often plays with other musicians. In 1973, he toured with Georges Brassens in Paris and the Île-de-France, playing twenty-one concerts on a positive organ built by Jean-Loup Boisseau.
Isoir has given numerous concerts outside of France, performing in Freiberg on September 18, 1983. In 1988, he was absolutely delighted to perform for the first time on the magnificent organ in Weingarten, in Sion in 1989, in Lübeck and Hamburg in 1990. He has also performed on numerous occasions in Japan: in 1978, 1987, 1990 and 1993. In 2006, he toured Russia, performing in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In addition, he performs regularly on the four-stop, one-manual organ that the builder Philippe Vialle built for him. Isoir had added a tremolo and a “cymbale” made up of fifteen pipes that he “invented,” only to discover since then that it is present in several diverse and unknown pieces. He rarely ever plays the same piece on the same organ.
The variety of styles in his eclectic repertoire is revealed by the pieces that four composers have dedicated to him. In June 1973, Jean Langlais acknowledge his “classical side,” appropriately dedicated to him his Plein-Jeu, the first movement of his Suite baroque, op. 176.31 In 1983, Alain Louvier’s Etudes for Aggressors, Book Six for Organ (Études pour Agresseurs, livre 6 pour orgue), published by Alphonse Leduc in 1987, were written for the mechanical-action three-manual Koenig organ in the concert hall at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory. He dedicated these pieces to Isoir, who premiered them.32 They use the same techniques as in his previous five books for piano and harpsichord (ten fingers, two palms, two forearms, without fists), but with the addition of two feet! The two last pieces are appropriate tributes to André Isoir, who also plays the trombone and the French horn: Lionel Rogg’s Finale (written in the spring of 1994) was inspired by the sumptuous sonorities of the American big band;33 Pierre Vidal’s piece, entitled Cromorne, was written in 1996.36
In 1971, Jacques Le Calvé, the director of Calliope, was so impressed by Isoir’s performance of this repertoire that he asked him to make his first record at the Church of Saint-Jacques in Compiègne (L’Orgue français au Grand Siècle, works by André Raison, Jacques Boyvin and Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers).
Among his favorite historic French organs, Isoir has recorded numerous times on the J. Boizard (1714) historic organ of the Abbey of Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache: in 1987, The Couperin Dynasty, François “the Great,” Armand-Louis, Gervais-François Couperin (ADDA 581063); in 1993, Nicolas de Grigny, Complete Organ Works (Erato S.A./Radio France, MUSIFRANCE 4509-91722-2); and in 1997, Jean-Adam Guilain, Four Suites for the Magnificat (1706) with the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr, directed by Emmanuel Mandrin (France Musique, Tempéraments, TEM 316012, Distribution Harmonia Mundi).
André Isoir has always felt comfortable playing a vast repertoire (although never ever Reger!). Among his recordings of romantic works, two were made on the Cavaillé-Coll organ at Luçon Cathedral: César Franck’s Complete Organ Works (Calliope, CAL 9920/1, 1987, recorded in 1975) and The Romantic Organ, works by Boëly, Lefébure-Wély, Guilmant, Pierné, Widor, and Ropartz on the Cavaillé-Coll in Luçon and on the Isnard/Cavaillé-Coll/Boisseau organ in Pithiviers (Calliope, CAL 5922). In 1996, he recorded The Organ in Compiègne during the Second Empire on the Carlier/Plet organ at Saint-Antoine in Compiègne (Calliope, CAL 9934).
Isoir loves performing on successful neo-classical organs, such as the Pascal Quoirin in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and the Haerpfer-Ermann at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. Among the recordings that bear witness to this, he recorded François Couperin’s Messe des Paroisses and French Noëls on the Saint-Séverin organ (Calliope, Le Livre d’Or de l’Orgue français).
Rodin’s most penetrating thoughts concerning French taste that have been perpetuated from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century sum up André Isoir’s approach to an eclectic repertoire:

The additions of previous centuries in our cathedrals, in different styles—chapels, stained-glass windows, decoration—do not destroy the harmony of them, because throughout the various periods these embellishments have been determined by the same French taste.35
In the same spirit, it is not surprising that in November 2000, Isoir recorded repertoire from the fourteenth century to the end of the nineteenth in celebration of the 500th anniversary, in 2001, of the Renaissance organ in Lorris, one of the oldest organs in Europe.36 This is in spite of the fact that this organ only has a 48-note keyboard with a 14-note coupled pedalboard and is tuned at A=405/408! Father Michel Chausson, who initiated the restoration of this historic instrument, admires André Isoir: he is among “all those who have provided great poetical inspiration to twentieth century organ interpretation.”37 Our world needs such a spirit more than ever.
From 1976 to 1993, Isoir crowned his career with an ultimate homage to his great teacher Édouard Souberbielle, by recording J. S. Bach’s complete organ works on six different organs by German builders (fifteen CDs produced by Calliope, 9703-17). His greatest joy was recording Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue on Josef Gabler’s monumental stunning organ (1737–1750) at Weingarten Abbey, a legendary instrument conceived around the number 6: the number of the beast of the Apocalypse, six windows, six tonal plans, 6,666 pipes.
Grenzing’s Saint-Cyprien organ is among Isoir’s favorites, where he rerecorded, in 1993, Bach’s four Toccatas and Fugues along with the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor. In 1988 and 1989, André Isoir played in European television broadcasts, notably on the France 3 channel, in programs written and hosted by Gilles Cantagrel and in Alain Duault’s “Musicales.”
In all his interpretations, Isoir’s deeply human approach gives a spiritual dimension to his artistic offerings. His interpretations are well conceived and prepared, yet spontaneous. His wife Annie observed that it was very rare to hear him play a piece in its entirety during his practice sessions. He usually works fragment by fragment, even measure by measure. More than searching for perfection, he aims at playing as naturally as possible. His eyes, ears and mind are constantly receptive to discovering new elements of a musical score. Adapting to each particular circumstance, his elegant playing moves his audiences. As Yves Saint-Laurent said, “without elegance that comes from the heart, there is no elegance.”
Thank you, André, for sharing your immense joy in making beautiful music and for so generously enlightening your audiences and students throughout the world.

All of the citations in French were translated by the author.
All photos are from the Collection A. Isoir, and are published with his kind permission.

Elise Murray Cambon died December 30, 2007, at Touro Infirmary, New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Cambon received a B.A. from Newcomb College in 1939, a Master of Music in organ from the University of Michigan (1947), and a Ph.D. from Tulane (1975). For 62 years she served St. Louis Cathedral as organist, music minister, and director of the St. Louis Cathedral Choir and Concert Choir. She was named Director Emerita in 2002.
A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Cambon studied in Germany in 1953, attended Hochschule fur Musik in Frankfurt-am-Main, and continued her studies in organ with Helmut Walcha, harpsichord with Marie Jaeger Young, and conducting with Kurt Thomas. She also did post-graduate work at Syracuse University, Oberlin College, and Pius X School of Liturgical Music in Purchase, New York. She spent a summer at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes, France, studying Gregorian chant.
Dr. Cambon was a professor in Loyola’s College of Music (1961 to 1982), founding their Department of Liturgical Music, and also taught music at the Louise S. McGehee School and Ursuline Academy. She was one of the founders of the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists. She received the Order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government for encouraging French music in New Orleans. She led the St. Louis Cathedral Concert Choir on five pilgrimages to Europe, where they sang at St. Peter’s in Rome, Notre Dame de Paris, and other famous cathedrals and churches. In 2004, she made a gift of a new Holtkamp organ for the cathedral. Dr. Cambon was interviewed by Marijim Thoene for The Diapason (“Her Best Friends Were Archbishops—An interview with Elise Cambon, organist of New Orleans’ St. Louis Cathedral for 62 years,” October 2004).

Anita Jeanne Shiflett Graves died September 16, 2007, at age 86. Born September 20, 1920, in Lincoln, Illinois, she attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and earned a master’s degree in music at Northwestern University. She had worked as a church organist, choir director and funeral home organist, and taught at Drake University and San Jose State University. A funeral service was held at Campbell United Methodist Church in Campbell, California.

Kay Wood Haley died July 10, 2007, at age 90 in Fairhope, Alabama. Born March 26, 1917, in Sumner, Illinois, she began playing for church services in Flora, Alabama, at age 14. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and then transferred to the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Harold Gleason and graduated in 1938. From 1939–1983, Mrs. Haley was organist at Judson College in Marion, Alabama, and at First Baptist, First Presbyterian, and St. Paul’s Episcopal churches, all in Selma, Alabama. She helped found the Selma Choral Society and the Selma Civic Chorus, and helped lead the Alabama Church Music Workshop.

Gerald W. Herman Sr. died August 25, 2007 at age 81 in Gainesville, Florida. Born November 9, 1925, he began his 61-year organist career on April 28, 1946, at Rockville United Brethren Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and played for several other churches in the area. A job transfer with Nationwide Insurance in 1979 brought him to Gainesville, Florida, where he served as organist at Kanapaha Presbyterian Church and then at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Archer, Florida. He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Charlotte, a daughter, and a son.

Theodore C. Herzel died September 28, 2007, in York, Pennsylvania. Born October 10, 1927, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, he held church positions in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Detroit, Michigan, and served as organist-director of music for 28 years at First Presbyterian Church, York, Pennsylvania, retiring in 1988. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Westminster Choir College and a master’s at the Eastman School of Music. He was an active member of the York AGO chapter and the Matinee Music Club.
H. Wiley Hitchcock, musicologist, author, teacher, editor and scholar of American as well as baroque music, died December 5 at the age of 84. In 1971 he founded the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College of the City of New York, and in 1986 he edited, with Stanley Sadie, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. He retired from CUNY in 1993 as a Distinguished Professor, but maintained a consulting relationship with ISAM until the end.
Born on September 28, 1923, in Detroit, Michigan, Hitchcock earned his B.A. in 1944 from Dartmouth College and served in the military during WW II. After the war he studied music with Nadia Boulanger at the Conservatoire Américan and at the University of Michigan, from which he earned his Ph.D. in 1954. His dissertation was on the sacred music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
He started teaching in 1950 at Michigan and in 1961 moved to Hunter College in New York. A decade later he went to Brooklyn College and became founding director of ISAM. In his honor, the ISAM is to be renamed the Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music. In addition to his work on Grove, Hitchcock edited numerous publications. His last book, Charles Ives: 129 Songs (Music of the United States of America), was published by A-R Editions in 2004.

Everett W. Leonard died June 9, 2007, in Katy, Texas, at age 96. Born March 4, 1911, in Franklin, New Hampshire, he began piano lessons at age nine and organ lessons in high school. He worked for 40 years for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington, DC. In addition, he served as organist at Central Presbyterian Church and Mount Olivet Methodist Church, both in Arlington, Virginia, and at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Punta Gorda, Florida, and at the Lutheran Church of the Cross, Port Charlotte, Florida. A longtime member of the AGO, he served as dean of the District of Columbia chapter.

W. Gordon Marigold, longtime author and reviewer for The Diapason, died November 25, 2007, in Urbana, Illinois. Born May 24, 1926, in Toronto, he earned a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and earned an M.A. from Ohio State University. He also studied in Munich, Germany. Dr. Marigold taught German at the University of Western Ontario, Trinity College Schools, the University of Virginia, and at Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky. At Union College, he was a department head, division chairman, and college organist, and he supervised the installation of a new organ by Randall Dyer in 1991. He retired as professor emeritus of German in 1991, and moved to Urbana, Illinois.
Dr. Marigold received his musical training in piano, organ, and voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and in Munich. He served as organist at churches in Toronto, at First Methodist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he gave an annual series of recitals, and churches in Columbus, Ohio. He was heard in radio organ recitals broadcast by station WOSU in Columbus, and played on the annual Bach recital at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Champaign, Illinois.
Professor Marigold was an internationally known scholar of German Baroque literature and music, and author of five books, countless articles in scholarly journals (including The Diapason, Musical Opinion, and The Organ), hundreds of reviews of German literature for Germanic Notes and Reviews, and countless reviews of recordings and books for The Diapason. He was a recipient of many research grants for study and research in Germany.
Dr. Marigold is survived by his wife Constance Young Marigold, whom he married on August 22, 1953. A Requiem Eucharist was celebrated on December 1 at the Chapel of St. John the Divine in Champaign, Illinois. Linda Buzard, parish organist and choirmaster, provided music by Bach, Purcell, Byrd, and Willan, along with hymns Lobe den Herren, Austria, Slane, and Darwall’s 148th.
In addition to numerous reviews of new recordings and books, Dr. Marigold’s Diapason bibliography includes:
“Max Drischner and his organ writings: a neglected modern,” Oct 1955;
“Austrian church music experiences extensive revival,” May 1956;
“The organs at the Marienkirche at Lübeck,” Dec 1969;
“A visit to Preetz, Germany,” April 1971;
“Some interesting organs in Sweden,” May 1971;
“Organs and organ music of South Germany,” Oct 1974;
“Organs in Braunschweig: some problems of organ placement,” Aug 1982;
“18th-century organs in Kloster Muri, Switzerland,” Feb 1986;
“Organ and church music activity in Munich during the European Year of Music,” Aug 1986;
“A variety of recent German organs,” April 1989;
“Dyer organ for Union College, Barbourville, KY,” Dec 1991.
(Dr. Marigold continued to write reviews to within weeks of his death. The Diapason will publish these reviews posthumously.—Ed.)

Johnette Eakin Schuller died September 21, 2007, at age 66 in Brewster, Massachusetts. She earned degrees from the College of Wooster, Ohio, and the Eastman School of Music. She and her husband, Rodney D. Schuller, served for 31 years as ministers of sacred music and organists at the Reformed Church of Bronxville, New York. Johnette Schuller also held positions at Andrew Price Memorial United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee; the Presbyterian Church in Bound Brook, New Jersey; the Post Chapel in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland; and Calvary Lutheran Church in Verona, New Jersey.

Lukas Foss, composer, performer, and teacher, died in New York on February 2. He was 86. German-born, Foss was trained in Germany, in Paris, and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; he had studied composition with Randall Thompson and Paul Hindemith, and conducting with Fritz Reiner and Serge Koussevitzky. Known for composing in different musical styles, he often combined past and present influences and techniques. He served as the pianist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1944–50, and he conducted numerous orchestras including the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony. He taught composition and conducting at UCLA from 1953–62 and had served as composer-in-residence at Carnegie-Mellon University, Harvard University, the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, and Boston University. Foss’s compositional output included many orchestral, chamber, and choral works, as well as several works for piano, and two organ compositions, Four Etudes (1967) and War and Peace (1995). Lukas Foss is survived by his wife Cornelia.

James Barclay Hartman died on January 23 at the age of 84. He was predeceased by his wife Pamela in 1983. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on January 12, 1925, he was educated at the University of Manitoba (BA 1948, MA 1951), Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (Ph.D.). He began a teaching career at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, returning to Canada in 1967 to teach at Scarborough College, University of Toronto. In 1974 he was appointed director of development and external affairs at Algoma University College, Laurentian University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and in 1980 joined the Continuing Education Division at the University of Manitoba as associate professor and director, humanities and professional studies. At the time of his retirement he held the position of senior academic editor.
A skilled photographer, he did commercial photography to help finance his university education. His great passion was music, especially the music of J. S. Bach, and in particular the works for organ and for harpsichord, both of which he played. He served for many years as book reviewer for The Diapason, and authored reviews and articles for numerous academic journals. His chief publication was the book The Organ in Manitoba, published by the University of Manitoba Press in 1997.
Dr. Hartman’s articles published in The Diapason include: “The World of the Organ on the Internet” (February 2005); “Alternative Organists” (July 2004); “Seven Outstanding Canadian Organists of the Past” (September 2002); “Families of Professional Organists in Canada” (May 2002); “Organ Recital Repertoire: Now and Then” (November 2001); “Prodigy Organists of the Past” (December 2000); “Canadian Organbuilding” (Part 1, May 1999; Part 2, June 1999); “Purcell’s Tercentenary in Print: Recent Books” (Part I, November 1997; Part II, December 1997); “The Golden Age of the Organ in Manitoba: 1875–1919” (Part 1, May 1997; Part 2, June 1997); “The Organ: An American Journal, 1892–1894” (December 1995); and “The Search for Authenticity in Music—An Elusive Ideal?” (June 1993).

Thomas A. Klug, age 61, died suddenly at his home in Minneapolis on January 8. He received his bachelor’s degree in music from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and his master’s degree from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. An accomplished organist for 44 years, he began his musical career at St. Michael’s United Church of Christ in West Chicago, Illinois. He went on to serve the First United Methodist Church in Elgin, Illinois, Olivet Congregational Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and most recently was the organist for 20 years at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Roseville, Minnesota. Tom was a member of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society, an outdoor enthusiast, gardener, and an accomplished cook. He will be deeply missed by his family and friends. A memorial service was held January 13 at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, Roseville. He is survived by his parents, Armin and Marjorie Klug, brothers Kenneth (Cindy) and James (Diane Donahue), five nieces and nephews, one great-niece, and special friend Doug Erickson.
—Frank Rippl

Dutch organist and musicologist Ewald Kooiman died on January 25, on vacation in Egypt. He died in his sleep; the cause was heart failure.
Ewald Kooiman was born on June 14, 1938 in Wormer, just north of Amsterdam. He studied French at the VU University in Amsterdam and at the University of Poitiers, taking the doctorate in 1975 with a dissertation on the Tombel de Chartrose, a medieval collection of saints’ lives. He then taught Old French at the VU University, where he was appointed Professor of Organ Art in 1988.
As a teenager, Kooiman studied organ with Klaas Bakker. After passing the State Examination and encouraged by members of the committee to pursue music studies at a higher level, he continued with Piet Kee at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, earning a Prix d’Excellence—the equivalent of a doctorate—in 1969. While studying French at Poitiers, he simultaneously studied organ with Jean Langlais at the Paris Schola Cantorum, taking the Prix de Virtuosité in 1963.
Kooiman had a long and impressive international career as a concert organist. He twice recorded the complete organ works of Bach—first on LP, then on CD—and was awarded the Prize of German Record Critics in 2003. He was in the midst of recording his third complete Bach set—on SACD, using Silbermann organs in Alsace—which was scheduled to come out in late 2009 or early 2010.
Although Bach was at the heart of his musical activities, Kooiman took an interest in many other parts of the organ repertoire, for example the French Baroque. His study of this repertoire and the relevant treatises was, of course, greatly facilitated by his knowledge of the French language. His interest in the French Baroque organ also led to the construction of the so-called Couperin Organ (Koenig/Fontijn & Gaal, 1973) in the auditorium of the VU University.
But he also loved playing—and teaching—Reger and Reubke; he very much enjoyed learning Widor’s Symphonie gothique when he was asked to play the work as part of a complete Widor series in Germany; and he admitted to having “a weak spot” for Guilmant’s Variations on “Was Gott tut das ist wohlgetan.”
As a scholar, Kooiman edited some 50 volumes of mostly unknown organ music in the series Incognita Organo (published by the Dutch publisher Harmonia). Much of the series was devoted to organ music of the second half of the eighteenth and of the early nineteenth century, traditionally considered a low point in history of organ music. He also published widely on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performance practice, mainly in the Dutch journal Het Orgel. His inaugural address as Professor of Organ Art was about the nineteenth-century roots of the French Bach tradition.
Besides teaching at the famous International Summer Academy for Organists at Haarlem—at first French Baroque repertoire, later Bach—Ewald Kooiman was for many years chairman of the jury for the improvisation competition in the same city. His fluency—besides French—in English and German and his ability to listen critically to the opinions of his colleagues made him the ideal person for such a job.
Although he was never the titulaire of one of the major historical Dutch organs, Kooiman served as University Organist of the VU University, playing the Couperin Organ in recitals and for university functions. But he also played organ for the Sunday morning services in the chapel of the university hospital.
In 1986, Kooiman succeeded Piet Kee as Professor of Organ at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, mostly teaching international students at the graduate level. I had the pleasure of studying with him for three years before graduating with a BM in 1989, having previously studied with Piet Kee for two years. Although much time was naturally spent with Bach—I learned at least two trio sonatas with him—he also taught later repertoire very well: Mozart, Mendelssohn, Reubke, Reger, Hindemith, Franck, and Alain come to mind. From time to time, I had to play a little recital, and he personally took care of “organizing” an audience by inviting his family.
As Professor Ars Organi at the VU University, Ewald was the adviser for three Ph.D. dissertations, all dealing with organ art at the dawn of Modernism: Hans Fidom’s “Diversity in Unity: Discussions on Organ Building in Germany 1880–1918” (2002); David Adams’s “‘Modern’ Organ Style in Karl Straube’s Reger Editions” (2007); and most recently René Verwer’s “Cavaillé-Coll and The Netherlands 1875–1924” (2008).
Ewald Kooiman was a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion; an honorary member of the Royal Dutch Society of Organists; and a bearer of the Medal of Merit of the City of Haarlem. For his 70th birthday, the VU University organized a conference in his honor and a group of prominent colleagues—including American Bach scholars Christoph Wolff and George Stauffer—offered him a collection of essays entitled Pro Organo Pleno (Veenhuizen: Boeijenga, 2008). Piet Kee’s contribution was the organ work Seventy Chords (and Some More) for Ewald. Earlier, Cor Kee (Piet’s father, the famous improviser and improvisation teacher) had dedicated his Couperin Suite (1980) as well as several short pieces to Ewald.
Though clearly part of a tradition and full of respect for his teachers, Kooiman was in many ways an individualist. He enjoyed frequent work-outs at the gym, not only because it kept him physically fit and helped him deal with the ergonomic challenges of playing historic organs, but also because he liked talking with “regular” people. Among colleagues—particularly in Germany—he was famous for wearing sneakers instead of more orthodox organ shoes. One of his favorite stories about his studies with Langlais was that the latter was keen on teaching him how to improvise a toccata à la française, a genre that Kooiman described as “knockabout-at-the-organ”—not exactly his cup of tea. “Non maître, je n’aime pas tellement ça,” he claimed to have answered: “No professor, I don’t like that too much.”
Ewald Kooiman is survived by his wife Truus, their children Peter and Mirjam, and two grandchildren. The funeral service took place at the Westerkerk in Amsterdam on February 4.
—Jan-Piet Knijff

Joseph F. MacFarland, 86, died on December 29, 2008, at the Westport Health Care Center in Westport, Connecticut. A native and lifelong resident of Norwalk, Connecticut, he was born on February 14, 1922. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School in New York, and studied organ with David McK. Williams and Jack Ossewarde at St. Bartholomew’s Church. For 56 years MacFarland served as organist-choirmaster at the First Congregational Church on the Green in Norwalk. He also was the accompanist for the Wilton Playshop, Staples High School, and Norwalk High School. He was a lifelong member of First United Methodist Church, Norwalk, Connecticut, and a member of the Bridgeport AGO chapter. He was a veteran of World War II, having served in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Richard H. (Dick) Peterson died at age 83 on January 29, fourteen years after suffering a debilitating stroke. Besides spending time with Carol, his devoted wife of 53 years, and with his other family members, Richard’s greatest passion in life was applying modern technology to pipe organ building. His goal was always to make organs better, more affordable, and consequently more available for people to enjoy. During his long and prolific career, he was awarded over 70 U.S. and foreign patents.
Dick Peterson was born on February 26, 1925 in Chicago. He served in the U.S. Army as a radio engineer from 1943 until 1946 and studied electronics at the City College of New York. While stationed in New York City, he often visited Radio City Music Hall and loved the room-filling sound of the organ there while also being fascinated by the mechanics of pipe organs. It was during that time that he told his parents his goal in life was to “perfect the organ.”
Mr. Peterson soon co-founded the Haygren Church Organ Company in Chicago, which built 50 electronic organs for churches all around the Midwest. Soon thereafter, he founded Peterson Electro-Musical Products, currently in Alsip, Illinois. In 1952, he presented a prototype spinet electronic organ to the Gulbransen Piano Company. Gulbransen’s president was thrilled with the sound of the instrument, and they soon negotiated an arrangement where Richard would help the piano company get into the organ business and, as an independent contractor, he would develop and license technology to be used in building a line of classical and theatre-style home organs for Gulbransen to sell. One particularly notable accomplishment was Gulbransen’s introduction of the world’s first fully transistorized organ at a trade show in 1957. Gulbransen would ultimately sell well over 100,000 organs based on Peterson inventions.
Meanwhile, many of Peterson’s developments for electronic organs evolved into applications for real pipe organs. Especially notable among over 50 of Dick’s innovative products for the pipe organ are the first digital record/playback system; the first widely used modular solid state switching system; the DuoSet solid state combination action; a line of “pedal extension” 16-foot and 32-foot voices; and the first commercially available electronic swell shade operator. Many thousands of pipe organs worldwide utilize control equipment that is the direct result of Richard’s pioneering efforts. Also carrying his name is a family of musical instrument tuners familiar to countless thousands of school band students and widely respected by professional musicians, recording artists, musical instrument manufacturers and technicians.
In the 1950s, Dick Peterson enjoyed learning to fly a Piper Cub airplane, and in more recent times preceding his illness enjoyed ham radio, boating, and restoring and driving his collection of vintage Volkswagens. He was a longtime member of Palos Park Presbyterian Community Church in his home town of Palos Park, Illinois.
Memorial donations may be made to the American Guild of Organists “New Organist Fund,” where a scholarship is being established in Richard Peterson’s name.
—Scott Peterson

William J. (Bill) Stephens, 84, of Lawrence, Kansas, died suddenly at home of heart failure on December 19, 2008. Born in Jacksonville, Texas on June 28, 1924, his organ playing career began at the Episcopal Church in Jacksonville while in his early teens. He later studied organ with Roy Perry in Kilgore, Texas, and became interested in organ building at the workshop of William Redmond in Dallas. He graduated from the University of North Texas in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in organ, where he was a pupil of Helen Hewitt. Stephens served in the Navy during WWII as a gunner’s mate 2nd class in the Pacific theater. He subsequently studied organ at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was a teaching assistant in organ and a pupil of Everett Jay Hilty in organ and Cecil Effinger in theory.
Stephens taught public school music in south Texas, was the organist-choirmaster of Trinity Episcopal and Trinity Lutheran Churches in Victoria, Texas, and was south Texas representative for the Reuter Organ Company, Lawrence, Kansas. He married Mary Elizabeth Durett of Memphis, Tennessee, in Denton on November 19, 1946. In 1968 Bill moved his family to Lawrence, Kansas, and installed Reuter pipe organs in all of the 50 states except Alaska. He operated an organ building and maintenance service business, covering most of the Midwest. He was also organist-choirmaster at Grace Episcopal Church, Ottawa, Kansas, for three years.
During his years at Reuter he taught many young men the mechanics, care and feeding of pipe organs and was very proud of their work when they became full-fledged “Organ Men.” For 40 years he was curator of organs at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, and was proud of the recognition he received upon retiring. He also took special pride in rebuilding the organ at Trinity Episcopal Church, Aurora, Illinois. It had been water-soaked and inoperable for 25 years. Kristopher Harris assisted, and Christopher Hathaway played the dedication recital November 11, 2001.
Bill Stephens was a member of the Organ Historical Society. He is survived by his wife, Mary Elizabeth Durett Stephens, five children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
—Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home
Lawrence, Kansas

Marguerite Long Thal died December 5, 2008, in Sylvania, Ohio. She was 73. Born January 27, 1935, in Quinter, Kansas, she studied organ with Marilyn Mason at the University of Michigan, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. After graduation, she received a Fulbright grant to study in Paris, France for two years, where she attended the American University and studied with Jean Langlais and Nadia Boulanger. Returning to the U.S., she was appointed minister of music at the First Congregational Church in Toledo, Ohio, and taught organ at Bowling Green State University. In 1961, she married Roy Thal Jr., and they moved to Sylvania, where they remained for more than 40 years.
Active in the AGO, Mrs. Thal was a past dean of the Toledo chapter and served as Ohio district convener. She served as minister of music at Sylvania United Church of Christ for 18 years, gave many solo performances, and appeared with Prinzipal VI, a group of six organists who performed regionally. She is survived by her husband, Norman, two daughters, and three grandchildren.

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

“With a Lot of Help from Friends”
Post-Christmas desk clearing always reminds me not only of how cluttered my working space is, but also how much I owe to the generosity of friends and correspondents as they “keep me in the loop” about matters of mutual interest. So here follows a miscellany of unrelated, but (hopefully) fascinating items, brought to my attention because of a friend’s initiative.

Oscar Peterson
The death on December 23 of jazz great Oscar Peterson brought to a close the far-ranging career of this major keyboard artist. Richard Severo, writing in The New York Times for December 25, 2007, commented “Mr. Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a piano technique that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. . . . One of the most prolific major stars in jazz history, he amassed an enormous discography. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or five albums a year. . . . Norman Granz, his influential manager and producer, helped Mr. Peterson realize [his] success, setting loose a flow of records on his own Verve and Pablo labels.”
One of the more unusual of these Pablo records was made in Los Angeles on January 26, 1976: with guitarist Joe Pass, Peterson played music from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in instrumental arrangements for acoustic guitar and CLAVICHORD. The digital re-release of this rare duo [Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-829-2] was brought to my attention by friend Linda Raney, the director of music at First Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe, NM, who had received it as a gift from a retired Episcopal priest.
Not the least of the joys of this disc comes from reading the original liner notes by Benny Green, who relates “The genesis of this album is wildly improbable, even by jazz standards. In the late summer of 1975 Oscar Peterson talked on BBC-TV with a succession of guests whose only common denominator was their commitment, either as amateurs or professionals, writers or performers, to problems of keyboard technique. One of these guests was Edward Heath, one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, . . . [who] turned up with an instrument called the clavichord, . . . an instrument that presents intriguing enigmas, the most challenging of all being its dulcet tonal quality which defies the resources of sound recording engineers; there are times when music played on this instrument seems less like an act of premeditated artistic execution than a musical enchantment of silence.”
Peterson was so captivated by the clavichord’s musical capabilities that he determined to acquire one, with a view to making jazz on it. The Gershwin album was the result of this aural infatuation. Peterson’s inspired arrangements of Gershwin’s immortal music survive as a touching, gentle memento from this great keyboard master of jazz.

19th-Century Harpsichord Citings
From John Carroll Collins, Dallas bibliophile and reliable purveyor of esoteric musical knowledge, come these references to harpsichord connections for two outstanding Romantic-era composers: Georges Bizet and Frédéric Chopin.
“Once when we were discussing the use of the harpsichord in Paris toward the middle of the 19th-century, you asked about my sources, which at the time I could not remember. I have tried to check back on them, and following is what I was able to recover.
I found the reference to Bizet’s early keyboard instruction on the harpsichord in Bizet and His World by Mina Curtis (New York, 1958). Curtis apparently was not a musician herself, but taught in the English department at Smith College, where she counted among her devoted students the young Anne Morrow, later the wife of Charles Lindbergh. Curtis had a wide knowledge of the historical and biographical aspects of her subject, and during the preparation of her beautifully written and thoroughly researched study she amassed an impressive collection of autograph letters by Bizet and other members of his circle. On pages 13 and 14 she tells of Bizet’s early keyboard training.
One of his first teachers was his uncle, François Dalsarte (born 1811), who taught voice at the Conservatoire. This was in 1846 and 1847, when Bizet was eight and nine years old and thus too young for admittance there. At their home he shared lessons with Dalsarte’s children, Bizet’s cousins. For their lessons they used Dalsarte’s favorite instrument, a harpsichord that had belonged to Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), wife of King Louis Napoleon of Holland and mother of Napoleon III [of France]. Curtis is sometimes vague about her sources, but I gather she found her information on Dalsarte in a book by his student Angélique Arnaud (François Dalsarte, Paris, 1882).
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, on page 184 of his Chopin: Pianist and Teacher (translated from the French, Cambridge University Press, 1986), mentions a harpsichord performance at a private concert in Paris on 25 December 1852. A group of Bach fugues was played on an early 18th-century harpsichord by one of Chopin’s students, the Norwegian Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen (1823–1874), this being just over three years after Chopin’s death. Eigeldinger gives as his source the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1852–1853, page 447.”

Historic Harpsichordists in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic
Robert Tifft (Dallas), long fascinated by the recordings of Hungarian revival harpsichordist János Sebestyén, provides comprehensive information about this highly-regarded artist in a remarkable website: <http://www.jsebestyen.org&gt;. Sites devoted to other lesser-known figures of European revival history may be accessed from the same address: Italian Luciano Sgrizzi (1910–1994); Landowska disciple Ruggero Gerlin (1899–1983); the “dean of Italian harpsichordists” Egida Giordani Sartori (1910–1999)—also interesting as the close friend and biographer of legendary soprano Toti Dal Monte; younger Hungarian artist Agnes Varallyay; and, added most recently, an accurate, complete discography and biography of leading Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova.
Robert also sent a notice of the passing, on June 5, 2007, at age 64, of Hungarian harpsichordist Zsuzsa Pertis, a student of Isolde Ahlgrimm.

Fernando Valenti’s Scarlatti
Harpsichord aficionado and record collector David Kelzenberg ([email protected]) has completed his exhaustive project of locating all the Scarlatti recordings committed to long-playing discs by Fernando Valenti for Westminster Records beginning in 1951. Although the project was not ever to be comprehensive, Kelzenberg recently wrote, “To this day musicians wonder if Valenti actually managed to record all of the 545 sonatas in the Longo Edition [plus the Menuet in F]. After years of collecting scrounging, horse trading, and begging, I believe I have assembled all of [Valenti’s] Domenico Scarlatti that was ever commercially released by [the company]: 359 sonatas in all.”
David recently sent me eleven copied compact discs of these exciting, intensely musical performances. It has been a tremendous “labor of love” on Dave’s part to assemble and digitize such an extensive collection, and his gracious gift of these discs has brought much delight to this listener. Kelzenberg requests that any collector who knows of additional releases in the series contact him at the address printed above.

Trombones in Dido and Aeneas? Remembering Albert Fuller
The September 22, 2007 death of Albert Fuller brought back warm memories of several visits the fine American harpsichordist and educator made to Dallas. Perhaps the most memorable, amusing, and culinarily satisfying one occurred during the rehearsal period for the Dallas Opera’s production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1972. Although I had recently played harpsichord continuo for a Dido performance in Norfolk, the Opera in those days disdained local artists if they could import someone at great expense from Milan or New York. The management did, however, deign to rent my Dowd harpsichord since neither Opera nor Symphony owned such an “off-beat” instrument.
Albert had called me from New York to ask “why [the hell] they would bother to fly him such a distance when I was already there?” but I assured him that the discrimination was general, not personal, and that he should just enjoy the production (which turned out to be costumed in futuristic, space-age costumes), and charge them a high fee.
One evening Albert arrived at the Fair Park opera theatre to tune the harpsichord, but became alarmed when two trombonists entered the pit and began warming up. Perhaps, he thought, the scoring has been altered to match the costumes? But when a tuba player joined in he decided it was time to ask the musicians what was going on.
The brass players informed him that it was not Dido that was to be rehearsed that evening, but its companion work, Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci (nearly as strange a coupling as the costumes and staging). Albert was quite incensed that the management had changed the rehearsal schedule without informing him, thus resulting in his flying (first class) from New York when he would not be needed.
I received a telephone call relating this sequence of events, concluding with “Well, I’m here, so before I fly back home let’s have dinner at the best restaurant in Dallas—and charge it to the Opera!”
I had dined only once previously at The Old Warsaw, then considered one of the finest culinary experiences available in the city, so that’s where we had our leisurely and memorable meal. I don’t know if this was a prime example of “turning annoyance into pleasure” or simply the best way to ignore a scheduling snafu, but it was certainly a civilized way to deal with the matter, and remembering it reminds of a happy conversation with a distinguished fellow musician. Ave Albert, et vale.■

Comments or news items for these pages are always welcome. Please address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; <[email protected]>.