Brian E. Jones dead at 80

Thomas H. Anderson

Thomas H. Anderson, 86, of North Easton, Massachusetts, died December 30, 2023. Born May 25, 1937, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he met his late wife Susan in Belfast, where they grew up on the same street.

Anderson started working at age 14 as an apprentice pipe maker at an organ pipe manufacturer in Belfast. At age 19, he emigrated to the United States, where he worked at the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, Boston, Massachusetts, as a pipe maker. Later he started his own company, Thomas H. Anderson Organ Pipe Company. He traveled around the country working on various projects including the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In his later years, he traveled to teach others to make organ pipes.

Anderson’s wife Susan died December 31, 1996, almost 27 years before the date of his death; they were married 38 years. They raised four children who survive him: Gail McGill and her husband Mark of Raynham, Massachusetts; Thomas Anderson of Lake Wylie, South Carolina; Cheryl Dekeon of Haverhill, Massachusetts; and Elizabeth Lehr and her husband Donald of Berryville, Virginia. He is also survived by six grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

The funeral for Thomas H. Anderson, Jr., was held January 6 at Southeast Funeral and Cremation Services, Easton, Massachusetts, with burial following at South Easton Cemetery. Memorial gifts may be made to Old Colony Hospice and Palliative Care (oldcolonyhospice.org).

Harold Gilchrest Andrews, Jr.

Harold Gilchrest Andrews, Jr., of High Point, North Carolina, died December 3, 2023. He was born March 31, 1932, in Framingham, Massachusetts, and grew up in Centerville on Cape Cod. At the age of eight, under the tutelage of Virginia Fuller, his first piano teacher, Andrews played services at the local Unitarian church. After his 1949 high school graduation, he attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio, where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in organ performance. After college, he served in the United States Army for two years as an organist at West Point. He then moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, playing first at First Friends Meeting House and then at Guilford Park Presbyterian Church. During this same period, he began his long tenure as a professor of organ at Greensboro College, where he remained until 1988. The C. B. Fisk, Inc., organ, Opus 102 (1993), at Finch Memorial Chapel of Greensboro College was donated and installed through his efforts. He also co-founded the Greensboro Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Leaving Guilford Park Church, Andrews took the position as organist and master of choristers at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, High Point, where he would spend the next 55 years. While working at St. Mary’s, Andrews completed a Master of Music degree in organ and church music at Oberlin Conservatory and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Boston University.

Andrews founded and owned Organ Craft, a local organbuilding company. He built and installed pipe organs all over the east coast, including part of the organ at Christ United Methodist Church in Charlotte and the organ at Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro. The organ at St. Mary’s in High Point was also significantly altered over the years by Andrews.

As an organist, he offered recitals in Europe, including at Canterbury Cathedral; St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; Saint-Sulpice, Paris; and Chartres Cathedral. In his retirement, he finished his manuscript for a study of music in the works of William Shakespeare.

Harold Gilchrest Andrews, Jr., is survived by one brother, Robert Francis Andrews. His funeral featuring Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem was held at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, High Point, on January 27. Interment in the church columbarium followed. Memorials may be directed to the music endowment at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 108 West Farriss Avenue, High Point, North Carolina 27262.

Charles Edmund Callahan, Jr.

Charles Edmund Callahan, Jr., 72, died December 25, 2023, in Burlington, Vermont. He was born September 27, 1951, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Callahan was a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and earned graduate degrees from The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. He held the Associate and Choirmaster certificates of the American Guild of Organists. In 2014 he was honored with the Distinguished Artist Award of the guild.

Callahan taught at Catholic University; Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont; Baylor University, Waco, Texas; Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; and the Bermuda School of Music, Hamilton, Bermuda. He served as organist and music director for churches in Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., New York, Vermont, and his native Massachusetts. Callahan moved to Orwell, Vermont, in 1988.

He was consulted often on the design of new organs and restorations and improvements of existing instruments. His two books on American organbuilding history, The American Classic Organ and Aeolian-Skinner Remembered, became standard reference works on 20th-century American organ history.

Callahan was a prolific composer; his compositions include commissions for Papal visitations to the United States and from Harvard University. His four-movement orchestral work, Mosaics, was premiered at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, Missouri, and other works have been performed at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton universities.

Charles Callahan was laid to rest with his parents in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Memorial contributions in his memory may be made to the music programs at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 326 College Street, Middlebury, Vermont 05753, or Cornwall Congregational Church, 2598 Route 30, Cornwall, Vermont 05753.

James P. Callahan

James P. Callahan of St. Paul, Minnesota, died December 28, 2023. Born in North Dakota and raised in Albany, Minnesota, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964 from St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in piano and a Ph.D. in music theory and composition from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In addition, he studied at the Mozarteum University, Salzburg, Austria, and Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Vienna, Austria. His teachers included Anton Heiller, organ; Willem Ibes and Duncan McNab, piano; and Paul Fetler, composition.

Callahan was Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, where he taught piano, organ, composition, music theory, and piano literature over a 38-year period, retiring in 2006. As an organist, Callahan performed recitals in the upper Midwest, New York, and Austria. His performances appeared on the nationally broadcast radio program Pipedreams. He was instrumental in overseeing the commissioning of the organ for the chapel at the University of St. Thomas, Gabriel Kney Opus 105, completed in 1987. On this instrument he recorded a disc for Centaur, James Callahan: Oberdoerffer, Reger, Rheinberger, Schmidt. He also performed solo piano recitals and made concerto appearances. In addition to his solo performances, he was a member of the Callahan and Faricy Duo piano team, performing throughout the upper Midwest.

James Callahan composed over 150 works for piano, organ, orchestra, band, opera, and chamber ensembles. Cantata for two choirs, brass, percussion, and organ premiered at St. John’s Abbey Church and was performed at the Cathedral of St. Paul in 1975. His Requiem was premiered by Leonard Raver in 1990 at the University of St. Thomas. Callahan’s music was published by McLaughlin-Reilly, GIA, Paraclete Press, Abingdon Press, and Beautiful Star Publishing. Awards included a study grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Bush Artist Fellowship.

Quentin Faulkner

Quentin Faulkner, 80, died December 30, 2023, in Houston, Texas. He was Larson Professor of organ and music theory/history (emeritus) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a writer of scholarly books in the areas of church music and J. S. Bach performance practice, the translator of German treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries, and an organ recitalist.

Faulkner earned his undergraduate degree in organ and church music from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, where he studied organ with George Markey and Alexander McCurdy. He received graduate degrees in sacred music and theology from Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, where he studied conducting with Lloyd Pfautsch, organ with George Klump, and liturgics with James White. Faulkner completed his doctoral studies at the School of Sacred Music, Union Theological Seminary, New York City, where he studied organ with Alec Wyton. Each of these schools subsequently awarded him its distinguished alumni award for his contributions to the field of church music. While a student in New York City, he served for three years as assistant organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, during which time he led the musical celebration honoring Wyton at his retirement and was the organist for Duke Ellington’s funeral.

For 32 years Faulkner served on the faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he developed a comprehensive cycle of courses in church music and received numerous teaching awards. He and his colleague George Ritchie were co-coordinators of a distinguished series of organ conferences at the university, each conference with a distinct topic of scholarly investigation and culminating in the first conference held in Naumburg, Germany, at the newly restored 1746 Hildebrandt organ in St. Wenzel’s Church. In 1998 Faulkner was awarded a Fulbright grant to teach as guest professor at the Evangelische Hochschule für Kirchenmusik in Halle, Germany, a position to which he returned for the academic year 2006–2007 following his retirement from the University of Nebraska.

Faulkner’s professional career included both academic and practical pursuits. He was equally respected for his scholarly investigation in the field of church music (Wiser than Despair: The Evolution of Ideas in the Relationship of Music and the Christian Church, Greenwood Press, 1996) and in historical performance practice of the organ works of Bach (J. S. Bach’s Keyboard Technique: A Historical Introduction, Concordia, 1984; The Registration of J. S. Bach’s Organ Works, Wayne Leupold Editions, 2008; Johann Sebastian Bach, The Complete Organ Works, Series II, Volume I, The Performance of the Organ works: Source Readings, Leupold Editions, 2020). He translated historic German treatises into English, and then edited and annotated the translations to make them accessible to contemporary students and scholars (Jacob Adlung, Musica mechanica organoedi, Parts 1, 2, and 3, Zea E-Books, 2011; Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, Parts III–V, Zea E-Books, 2014).

Faulkner reveled in working at the intersections of various disciplines, particularly enjoying the interplay of the scholarly and the performing musician and extensively studying the relationships between and among religion, culture, and the arts. He served as a member of the advisory board for the Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments for Garland Publishing Co., as consultant for the J. S. Bach Tercentenary publishing project of Concordia Publishing House, as editor for performance issues for the Leupold Edition of J. S. Bach’s organ works, and as a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. He also led multiple tours of Bach’s Organ World in eastern Germany, sharing his passion and knowledge with participants as they studied, played, and listened to instruments with direct connections to J. S. Bach.

Throughout his career and in retirement, Faulkner remained a performing musician, presenting organ recitals, workshops, and lectures. He and his wife served as church musicians in Dothan, Alabama; New York City; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Greenfield, Massachusetts. He was particularly concerned with music in small churches and wrote numerous practical articles for professional journals, composed anthems for small choirs, and served as a clinician for more than fifty church music workshops in Nebraska. He served the American Guild of Organists on various local and national committees and as its national councilor for education. He was an honorary lifetime member of the Lincoln Chapter of the AGO.

Quentin Faulkner is survived by his wife of 56 years, Mary Murrell (Bennett) Faulkner, three brothers, a daughter and son-in-law, a son and daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren. A memorial service will be held April 20 at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, Texas. Memorial contributions may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association (Attention: Donor Services, 225 North Michigan Avenue, Floor 17, Chicago, Illinois 60601; alz.org/donate), Church Music Institute (5923 Royal Lane, Dallas, Texas 75230; churchmusicinstitute.org/donate), or the charity of one’s choice.

Brian E. Jones

Brian E. Jones, 80, organist and choir director, died November 17, 2023. A native of Duxbury, Massachusetts, he began piano studies at age eight and discovered the pipe organ soon thereafter. During his first visit to Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts, as an eager ten-year-old, he was said to have exclaimed, “I want to be the organist here someday!” Some three decades later, his dream became a reality.

After earning an undergraduate degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Jones landed a teaching position at Noble and Greenough School, Dedham, a post he would hold for the next twenty years. Concurrently he completed the Master of Music program at Boston University. While at Noble and Greenough he conducted numerous choral groups and expanded the music program to include the production of a wide variety of musicals.

Soon after commencing his teaching career, Jones was appointed music director of the Dedham Choral Society, a position he held for 27 years. During his tenure, the group grew in size from 25 to 150 members, expanding their audiences by performing in Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall in Boston. In 1984 Jones fulfilled his childhood dream when he was appointed director of music at Trinity Church, Boston. Over the next two decades he and his choirs produced five recordings, including the Christmas CD, Candlelight Carols. In addition to his work as a choral conductor, Jones enjoyed a solo organ career, performing concerts and dedicatory recitals in churches and cathedrals throughout the United States and England. Upon assuming the mantle Emeritus Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church in 2004, Jones accepted interim positions from as far afield as Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2007 a number of former Trinity choir members coalesced to form The Copley Singers under Jones’s direction. This semi-professional group of musicians began performing together several times each year, most notably during the holiday season.

Brian E. Jones is survived by his husband, Michael Rocha, with whom he shared the past 35 years, as well as two children, Eliza Beaulac and her husband, Joe, and Nat Jones and his wife, Kiera; four grandchildren and one great-grandson. A celebration of life is planned for spring. Memorial gifts in memory of Brian Jones may be made to the Parkinson’s Foundation (parkinson.org).

Uwe Pape

Uwe Pape, 87, died August 13, 2023, in Berlin, Germany. He was born May 5, 1936, in Bremen, Germany. In his early life, he studied mathematics, physics, pedagogy, and philosophy at Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, graduating in 1959, earning a doctorate in computing technology at Technische Universität Braunschweig in 1971.

From 1971 to 2001 Pape was professor of business informatics at the Technische Universität Berlin. He was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974 and in 1984–1985; at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1975; at the University of Texas at Austin in 1976; and at the University of Szczecin, Poland, from 1988 until 1998.

Pape was recognized worldwide for his expertise in pipe organs, especially historic mechanical-action instruments. Pape had his first contact with organbuilding in 1953 at the Liebfrauenkirche, Bremen, where he studied with Harald Wolff and had contact with the organ builder Paul Ott. Pape began to document the organs of the Braunschweig Lutheran Church in 1959. In 1962 he founded a publishing house for works on organbuilding history, which exists today as Pape Verlag Berlin. He became a freelance organ expert for regional churches and foundations in Berlin, Bremen, Lower Saxony, and Saxony. From 1985 to 2016 he led a research project on organ documentation that resulted in an organ database at the Technische Universität Berlin. With Paul Peeters of Gothenburg and Karl Schütz of Vienna, Pape was one of the founders of the International Association for Organ Documentation (IAOD) in 1990. He made significant contributions to the documentation of historic north German organs. Among his many book-length publications is The Tracker Organ Revival in America/Die Orgelbewegung in Amerika, first published in 1978. One of his most recent publications is Organographia Historica Hildesiensis: Orgeln und Orgelbauer in Hildesheim, printed in 2014. For The Diapason, he wrote “Documentation of Restorations,” which appeared in the December 2006 issue, pages 20–22.

Alice Stuart Parker

Alice Stuart Parker, 98, born December 16, 1925, in Boston, Massachusetts, died December 24, 2023, in Hawley, Massachusetts. Having grown up in Winchester, Massachusetts, she graduated from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1947, having studied organ and composition. After earning a Master of Music degree in choral conducting from The Juilliard School in New York City two years later, she began teaching in a high school. Parker would then study and begin a long collaboration with Robert Shaw and the Robert Shaw Chorale. She would meet and marry one of the chorale’s singers, Thomas F. Pyle, in 1954.

As a composer she would pen more than 500 choral works and arrangements, from choral anthems to cantatas and operas. In 1985 Parker founded Melodious Accord, which presents choral concerts, singing workshops, and other events. The Musicians of Melodious Accord, a 16-member chorus, made several recordings with her. Parker authored books including The Anatomy of Melody in 2006 and The Melodious Accord Hymnal in 2010, both available from GIA Publications. She conducted masterclasses and seminars widely.

Alice Stuart Parker was predeceased by her husband in 1976. Survivors include her sons David Pyle and Timothy Pyle; daughters Katharine Bryda, Mary Stejskal, and Elizabeth Pyle; 11 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Michael Radulescu

Michael Radulescu, 80, born June 19, 1943, in Bucharest, Romania, died December 23, 2023. He studied organ and conducting with Anton Heiller and Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, Austria, at the Academy (now University) of Music and Performing Arts, where he taught as professor of organ from 1968 to 2008. His career encompassed work as a composer, organist, and conductor. With his debut in 1959 he presented concerts throughout Europe, North America, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. He regularly presented guest lectures and masterclasses in Europe and overseas, focusing mainly on the interpretation of Bach’s organ and major choral works.

As a composer, Radulescu wrote sacred music, works for organ, voice and organ, choral and chamber music, and orchestral works. He was frequently engaged as a jury member in international organ and composition competitions and as an editor of early organ music. Radulescu conducted international vocal and instrumental ensembles in performances of major choral works. As an organist, he recorded among other items Bach’s complete works for organ, without any technical manipulation.

For his musical and pedagogical contributions, Radulescu was awarded the Goldene Verdienstzeichen des Landes Wien in 2005. In 2007 he received the Würdigungspreis für Musik from the Austrian Ministry of Education and Art. In December 2013 Michael Radulescu’s book on J. S. Bach’s spiritual musical language, Bey einer andächtig Musiq: Schritte zur Interpretation von Johann Sebastian Bachs geistlicher Klangrede anhand seiner Passionen und der h-Moll-Messe, focusing on the two passions and the B-Minor Mass, was published. For The Diapason, his article, “J. S. Bach’s Organ Music and Lutheran Theology: The Clavier-Übung Third Part,” was printed in the July 2019 issue, pages 16–21.

Someone had to do the dishes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What were they really like?

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

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

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

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

Warm in their PJs, and sent off to bed

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

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

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

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

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

Well done, good and faithful servant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

Adventures and transitions

In the last six weeks, Wendy and I have attended three singular events involving three very different pipe organs. One was small and in poor condition, another was a grand instrument in an iconic church, and the third was so large as to be off the charts. Most instruments have little variations in size—a violin is a violin, a trumpet is a trumpet—but pipe organs span huge ranges of size as well as styles and even purposes. These events provided a fun overview of extremes.

We traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, on April 5 to hear the brilliant young organist Anna Lapwood play a recital on the massive Midmer-Losh organ in Boardwalk Hall. No other organ in the world has ten 32′ ranks, and those are just ten of 447 ranks; the organ has 33,111 pipes. You can find the stoplist and list of ranks at boardwalkorgans.org. (See also the cover feature of the November 2020 issue.) There is an impressive restoration effort underway there, a daunting task being faced by a professional staff and a troupe of volunteers under the direction and curatorship of Nathan Bryson.

According to its website, the interior of Boardwalk Hall is 456 feet long, 310 feet wide, and 137 feet high. Remember that a football field is 300 feet long, and you might imagine the scale of the place. Among the activities in the hall beside organ recitals are car races, tractor pulls, and rock concerts, and it is the only space in the world that has hosted an indoor helicopter flight. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson was nominated to be a candidate for president of the United States during the Democratic National Convention in Boardwalk Hall.

The stage of Boardwalk Hall is 148 feet wide, and the main organ chambers flank the proscenium arch. The size of the organ and the number of expressive divisions were obvious to the audience as the organ chamber lights remained on throughout the concert. All the individual sections of the instrument were evident, and hundreds of huge shutters opened and closed suddenly and majestically.

Anna Lapwood is twenty-eight years old and has risen to international fame through her fantastic abilities, popular appeal, and masterful use of social media. Enter her name in search fields for Google, TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube, and one will find days of fun listening. She was recently appointed an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for her service to music. According to her official website, Anna “holds the position of director of music for Pembroke College (Cambridge), associate artist with Royal Albert Hall, and artist in association with the BBC Singers. In 2023 she was awarded the prestigious ‘Gamechanger’ award from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and signed to Sony Classical as an exclusive recording artist.”

Knowing that this would be a popular event among organists and organbuilders, I bought our tickets for Anna’s concert at Boardwalk Hall immediately after they went on sale in early February, and Wendy and I enjoyed our seats at a table on the main floor. Since Boardwalk Hall’s seating capacity is over 10,000 we were not worried about missing the concert. While the main floor was nearly full, the audience of around 1,200 people had plenty of space to move around. We cruised the floor, drinks in hand, greeting old and new friends, and chatting with my admired colleagues who serve on the Historic Organ Restoration Committee, responsible for this, the most massive of organ projects.

Ms. Lapwood’s entry to the concert stage was one only possible at Boardwalk Hall. We heard the blast of a car horn, and a 1938 regency blue Chevrolet Master Sport Sedan entered the hall from the left wing. With horn blowing, British flag waving, headlights blazing, and the audience cheering, the uniformed chauffeur, owner Chuck Gibson, walked around to open the passenger door. Ms. Lapwood stepped out onto the vast floor clad in sparkles and gold shoes, mounted the stage energetically, and we were off. The program featured her transcriptions of Hans Zimmer’s music from Interstellar, Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and my favorite, Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude and Fugue on the Name of Alain.

I have attended dozens of organ concerts offered by serious, even stuffy artists, including many of those I have stuffily played myself. Organ music can be very serious, confusing, arcane, and difficult for lay people to understand and appreciate. Anna Lapwood’s arresting stage presence and honest enthusiasm for the instrument and the music she played filled the cavernous space with excitement. It was a thrilling evening, and that is one room that can truly support 32′ organ tone.

Goodbye, good friend

In November 2023 friend and colleague Brian Jones passed away. (See “Nunc dimittis,” January 2024 issue, page 6.) Brian had been organist and choir director at Trinity Church, Copley Square, in Boston from 1984 until 2004 where he built a widely admired choir program, making brilliant use of the church’s resources and central location to attract wonderful singers to the program, both professional and amateur. Brian along with associate organist Ross Wood and the choir produced eight recordings including the wildly successful Carols for Choirs, which helped transform Trinity’s Christmas carol service into a must-go experience for Boston audiences, so popular that after several years they started offering it twice on a December Sunday. One year Wendy and I took her mother for drinks in the Oak Room at the Copley Plaza Hotel before crossing Saint James Place to enter the church early enough to find seats. I was honored to serve as organ curator at Trinity during Brian’s tenure, and I wrote about some of the experiences we shared in the February 2024 issue of The Diapason (pages 8–9).

Brian’s memorial service was held at Trinity on April 27, 2024. We had dinner with friends the evening before and spent the night at a fine hotel on Copley Square. As we approached the church on Saturday morning, we were greeted by Lydia, Brian’s beloved 1933 cobalt blue Chrysler Coupe, complete with rumble seat and oversized headlamps, parked in the same spot next to the church where I parked every Friday morning for my pre-recital tuning all those years ago. Lydia was a common sight among Brian’s friends, her “ooo-gah” klaxon horn heralding her imminent arrival. She once made an appearance at our house in Maine, that crazy horn blaring through the woods as she came down our long driveway. Seeing that car invoked memories of the immense pleasure Brian got from driving her around, his ebullient, toothy smile as he enjoyed the daylights out of corny, often racy jokes, and his joy of sitting around a table with friends and family.

Brian’s memorial service was a reunion of dozens of colleagues, some I had not seen in years. People came from great distances to be with him in spirit one last time in that great church where it had been Brian’s childhood ambition to serve as organist. The building, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and decorated by John La Farge, is a symphony of crotch-matched marble, painted stenciling, rich dark woodworking, and a magnificent pair of organs, Skinner Organ Company Opus 573, revised, and Aeolian-Skinner Opus 573-C. A small herd of organists took turns at the great four-manual console, and Colin Lynch, Trinity’s director of music, led a large and enthusiastic alumnae choir.

The choir sang a collection of anthems including two great swashbucklers that I first heard sung by the Trinity Choir under Brian’s directions, pieces that he loved and that I taught the parish choir I was leading at the time. “Kyrie,” from Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle, expresses the height of the French Romantic symphonic literature for organ as inspired by the stupendous expressive organs built in many of France’s great churches by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, including the doozy at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame where Vierne was organist from 1900 until his death at the organ console with his foot on low E at the end of his 1,750th recital at the church. The organ accompaniment is worthy of Vierne’s six great symphonies for organ, and the choir sings dramatic expressive passages culminating with a soaring soprano line in the closing statement of “Kyrie eleison.” The choir was rehearsing that piece as we entered the church, and I burst into tears. “I can name that tune in one note.”

Brian Jones loved sublime pieces like the Vierne and the carols of John Rutter, and he had a soft spot for syrupy, nostalgic music. A beautiful reading of Adolph Adam’s O Holy Night was included in the recording Carols for Choirs, and Stephen Adams’s The Holy City was a perennial favorite. Colin Lynch and the alumnae choir gave us The Holy City with its dramatic sweeps and swoops, rolling triplets in the accompaniment bass line, and the treacly text that combine to make the piece a sentimental favorite:

And then me thought my dream was changed, the streets no longer rang, hushed were the glad Hosannas the little children sang, the sun grew dark with mystery, the morn was cold and chill as the shadow of a cross arose upon a lonely hill. . . . Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Hark, how the Angels sing Hosanna in the Highest, Hosanna to the King!

There was hardly a dry eye in the house.

Listening to that marvelous barnburner of an anthem, I remembered a moment during my time caring for the Trinity organs. I was sitting at the console, maybe planning the next hour of tuning, when a foreign tourist came up to the velvet rope, got my attention, and asked, “Can you play zee Holy City?” I gave him a chorus of “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” and went down the steps to shake his hand.

Anyone who has attended a convention of the Organ Historical Society has witnessed the best of hymn singing as it is a tradition of the society that the audience/congregation sings a hymn at each recital. That Saturday morning at Trinity Church, Mr. Richardson’s massive roof was raised as the throng of organists and singers poured their emotional hearts into singing some of the great hymns of the faith led by that gorgeous heroic organ, all of them except me, because I cannot sing while weeping.

Brian’s grown children, Eliza and Nat, gave loving moving eulogies, speaking for Brian’s widower Mike and the entire family. Brian had a distinctive, often stentorian voice and a repertory of standard phrases always delivered in the same singsong fashion. Nat Jones’s imitations of his father were so authentic as to bring Brian into the room with us, both hilarious and unnerving. It was a grand morning remembering a grand man.

Why we do this

All that wonderful music in that beautiful place was a reminder of the magic that is the instrument we love so much. In a lofty setting like Trinity, the organ is a monumental presence. Years ago, when I still worked at Trinity, I was at a meeting on Cape Cod discussing the possibility of bringing an organ to a summer chapel there, when a retired Episcopal bishop hearing that I worked at Trinity referred to the organ there as a “weapon.” I am not sure that was the right word, but I think I know what he meant. That organ is a great example of an instrument perfectly suited to its room, with a range of expression from barely audible mystery to thundering triumph, all under the hands and feet of a single musician. The nerdy organbuilder in me sits in a pew picturing the thousands of pouches and valves flapping away inside the windchests, pouring air into thousands of pipes, lifting our spirits. It is mystical, magical, and majestic all at once. That’s why we do this.

Inaugurating a new ministry

Since we moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a couple years ago, Wendy and I have been attending Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church on Main Street across from the Red Lion Inn. I have a previous personal connection with the parish as my grandfather, the Reverend Dr. George Douglas Krumbhaar, was rector there from 1960 to 1974, from when I was four years old until I graduated from high school. I have fond memories of holiday family visits to the rectory, and solo summer weekend trips when my grandparents treated me to concerts at Tanglewood. I practiced and played a couple recitals on the Roosevelt organ as rebuilt with neo-Baroque accent in the early 1960s, and walking around town as an adult fills me with memories from over fifty years ago.

Saint Paul’s is a beautiful building, designed by Charles McKim and richly decorated with appointments by John La Farge and Stockbridge resident Daniel Chester French.¹ Its stately location with adjoining rectory on the northeast corner of the main intersection gives it a local prominence, and its doors are perpetually open, welcoming the many tourists who visit for skiing in the winter and the countless artistic outlets during the summer.

On May 8 we were thrilled to join a throng of clergy, members, and guests attending the installation of the Reverend Samuel T. Vaught as the twentieth rector of Saint Paul’s. Father Sam is young, a newly minted priest, and this is his first appointment as rector of a parish. It was an involved and poignant service full of symbolism and hopefulness. Especially meaningful was the prayer of the new rector, “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, yet you have called your servant to stand in your house and serve at your altar. To you and your service I devote myself, body, soul, and spirit.” He proved his youthfulness by delivering the prayer kneeling on the bare stone floor and when finished, standing smoothly with nary a grunt, creak, or stumble. Father Sam is ambitious, hoping to stay long enough to make a difference, and as one of the many silver-haired people in the congregation, I hope that his youthful enthusiasm will attract younger families to join the fun.

Saint Paul’s has the thoroughly picked over old bones of Hilborne Roosevelt Opus 127, built in 1884, the same year that the building was completed and dedicated. The replacement of principal stops with tapered pipes along with the addition of an especially narrow-scaled mixture, Scharff, Sesquialtera, and Krummhorn on electric windchests have obliterated much of the organ’s original character. I am pretty sure that Mr. Roosevelt never heard a Krummhorn. Besides the poorly conceived and executed alterations, the organ is in horrible condition. I have not mounted the steps to the organ loft buried in the base of the tower since my return to Saint Paul’s, but from sitting in the pews, I can list on my fingers which Bourdon pipes have cracks or fallen stoppers and which are dead, which manual notes are prone to ciphering, and which notes of specified stops are out of tune by more than two whole tones. Yikes. There is no choir, and there are two organists casually employed who take turns at the keydesk. Although there is not much of a music program, it is still nice to hear a pipe organ.

In addition to his priestly presence, Father Sam is an organist and pianist. I enjoyed a coffee date with him a few weeks ago during which he expressed the ambition that the church should have an appointed parish musician who could start a program involving solo and choir singing. Knowing that for at least the current moment there would be no money available for significant organ repairs or replacement, I offered to inspect the instrument and suggest what might be repaired with a little bit of local elbow grease, and I am pretty sure I could improve the tuning supposedly applied during Holy Week. While money was paid, it does not sound to my ears that much good happened.

In an age when many parishes flounder, it is fun to think of the possibility of reinvigorating this venerable parish that I have been associated with for more than sixty years. As a twelve-year-old, I thought the organ was great. As a sixty-eight-year-old, not so much. Here’s hoping and anticipating that the arrival of an energetic young priest will bring new life to the place. I think the town is ready 
for it.

Notes

1. Sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) is best known for his monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln housed in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. His summer home and studio in Stockbridge, Chesterwood, is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.