A Forest of Pipes

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

revolution: n. 1a. Orbital motion about a point, especially as distinguished from axial rotation: the planetary revolution around the sun. b. A turning or rotational motion about an axis. c. A single complete cycle of such orbital or axial motion. 2. The overthrow of one government and its replacement with another. 3. A sudden or momentous change in a situation: the revolution in computer technology. (The American Heritage Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000)
evolution: n. 1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. 2a. The process of developing.
b. Gradual development . . .
word-play: n. 1. Witty or clever verbal exchange; repartee. 2. The act or an instance of such exchange.

I can name that tune in four notes.
In 1964 the comedian and parodist Allen Sherman (1924–1973) performed a concert with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. The program included Sherman’s reading of Peter and the Commissar, a parody on Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with Cold War overtones (when discussing the effectiveness of an imaginary Politburo, Sherman quipped: “A camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.”), and a hilarious orchestral medley, Variations on “How Dry I Am,” which opens with a statement of the original and familiar melody (sol-do-re-mi) and continues with the beginnings of a series of familiar compositions and songs that start with the same four notes, ranging from You are my sunshine to the 1812 Overture. There’s even an inversion moment quoting one of the variations of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.
I think most musicians have had the experience of freely associating a few notes from one melody with another. I know it’s happened to me many times—I’m sitting all dressed up at Symphony Hall surrounded by serious music lovers (and a few old men snoring), when one of those associations hits me—I chuckle and receive my wife’s elbow. And I know I amused the choir at church countless times (at least I thought so) by interrupting a rehearsal to turn a phrase from an anthem by Vaughan Williams into a Rodgers and Hart song. As a budding continuo player while a student at Oberlin, we roared one night in rehearsal turning the second trio from the last movement of Bach’s first Brandenburg Concerto into “The Lonely Goatherd” from The Sound of Music. You can’t tell me Richard Rodgers never heard Bach.
Word-play is same sort of thing. You hear a word that reminds you of another, swap them in context, and you have a pun—that high form of humor that invites such frequent elbows. It’s a matter of sound association—does that make musicians naturally inclined as punsters (otherwise known as pundits)?
I’ll give you a couple classics for free:
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) was a writer and poet, perhaps best known for her humorous commentary on urban life in America published in The New Yorker. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, critics, and other literary folk who gathered each day for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel (West 44th Street near Fifth Avenue) from 1919 to about 1929. Harpo Marx, Tallulah Bankhead, and Edna Ferber were among other participants. Speaking about the Round Table years later, writer and curmudgeon H. L. Mencken commented, “their ideals were those of a vaudeville actor, one who is extremely ‘in the know’ and inordinately trashy.”
One session included a contest—each member was given a word around which to construct a pun. Ms. Parker was given horticulture. Her response, “You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.”
Science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov presented his favorite pun, which involved the story of an old cattle rancher whose offspring inherited the ranch, renamed “The Focus Ranch” as a stipulation of the will. The source of the name—“Where the sun’s rays meet.” Get it—focus, sun’s rays?1

An evolutionary revolution
In the last several days I’ve experienced two artistic revolutions and as I reflected about them, the word evolution joined the fun. I couldn’t find any published etymological connection between the two words, but I can’t avoid the sound association leading to a more meaningful connection—is a revolution a re-evolution? The evolution of musical theater includes several revolutionary moments like Monteverdi’s opera, The Coronation of Poppea (1642), which stands out as a breathtaking and groundbreaking composition with a raft of soloists, a chorus, lots of orchestral music and dancing—a mid-17th-century foreshadowing of the tradition of romantic Grand Opera.
Yesterday we attended a live-by-satellite broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera of Hector Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust. The revolutionary brainchild of Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met since 2006, these performances are broadcast to nearly 800 venues, including movie theaters and concert halls, exponentially expanding the Met’s paying audience. The audiences are treated not only to huge-format excellent-quality broadcasts of the great operas, complete with “see every hair” close-ups so well known from televised sports, but also to backstage tours and interviews that give a great sense of the bustle that goes on behind the scenes. You see grand stage-sweeping shots and intimate close-ups. When the on-stage lovers are embracing, noses five inches apart and singing at the top of their gargantuan voices, one wonders if there is any hearing left when the afternoon is over. (Makes me think of the cheek-flapping films from early G-force experiments.)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) created the character of Doctor Faust, a melancholy aging scholar who is contemplating suicide until he hears church bells and an Easter celebration. As he changes his mind, he is approached by Satan (Mephistopheles), who undertakes to win his soul. After several twists and turns, Satan provides Faust with the vision of a lover who ironically kills her mother using Faust’s bottle of poison as a sleep aid, trying to keep the old woman out of the way so she could encounter Faust. In the original Faustian Deal, Dr. Faust signs a pact with the Devil committing his soul to the underworld in return for freeing his lover for ascension into heaven. (After all, it wasn’t her fault that Satan made her fall in love!)
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) was a revolutionary composer. His skill and insight as an orchestrator was such that his treatise on orchestration is still used in formal musical educations. He was a pioneer of the use of huge musical forces, on several occasions conducting more than a thousand musicians in performance. Berlioz originally called La Damnation de Faust a “légende dramatique”—as such it has most frequently been performed as an oratorio, only gradually evolving into a recognized part of opera repertoire.
Berlioz’s score is fantastique, contributing to the evolution of the symphonique tone poem, his interest in the form having been piqued by such masterworks as Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique. His orchestral technique is far ahead of its time. His sense of the dramatique is unique—the evil villain’s actions oblique, and the outlook for Faust’s soul is blique.
The evolution of stagecraft has been forever changed by electronics. The set for the Met’s production of Faust is a three-tiered skeleton on which the cast of characters carries on, and onto which virtual scenery is projected. The grid changes from a crucifixion scene to a bustling boozy inn to a stately mansion—from a creepy and spooky forest to the underworld and finally to heaven, all controlled by the proverbial flicking of switches. The concept is as revolutionary as the media. And I’ll tell you, watching such a progressive production in a quaint little tin-ceilinged second-story theater in a small town in Maine is surreal. Damnation and ascension complete, we walk out onto Main Street greeted by a wintery wind and the familiar sights and sounds of our little town. Revolution complete.
I think Hector Berlioz, whose imagination stunned the French public in the middle of the 19th century (200 years after the first performance of Coronation of Poppea), would have loved how the Metropolitan Opera, ostensibly but no longer that most stodgy of institutions, would present his music in such an imaginative and revolutionary way.
The other evolution of my week of revolutions was my second visit to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. I have yet to hear the extraordinary, revolutionary Rosales/Glatter-Götz organ in a live performance, but I have now had two opportunities to be with the organ in the company of Manuel Rosales in an otherwise empty hall. The visual design is fanciful enough in photographs, more so when viewing the organ from the hall. But the most fanciful is standing amongst the curved 32-foot Violone pipes that comprise the essence of the unique design. It’s a little like looking in a curvy fun-house mirror—the familiar is lost, and you feel a little disoriented. After all, the façade pipes of most organs sit obediently on an impost above the fray. To get to the “tracker console” of the Disney organ, you walk between a forest of façade pipes. Their toes are on the stage floor around the console—wind coming from who-knows-where through the floor.
Looking at the façade from inside the organ is a little like getting a backstage glimpse at the Met—you can see the clever structure that supports the façade: each pipe is curved, each pipe faces in a different direction, and there’s no apparent order to them that can be derived from musical scales, tuning systems, or chest order, as with virtually every other organ with an architectural presence. So much for obedience. (Notice that I didn’t bother to mention symmetry!)
In one sense this mighty organ represents a logical evolutionary step. In the past couple decades we’ve celebrated the design and construction of quite a few tremendous new concert hall organs. Each one has design features that build on its predecessors. A terrific amount of work has been devoted to understanding how to move enough air through an organ to produce pleasing and musical tones that can take a listener from whisper to volcano. It’s a grand achievement for a pipe organ to “stand up to” a modern symphony orchestra, which is capable of bewildering volumes of sound. To achieve that with modest wind pressures and slider chests is especially impressive.
There’s nothing quite like the bass response of a symphony orchestra. No great conductor is willing to wait a nano-second for a bass note to develop. The bottom notes from the orchestra’s tuba, trombone, contrabassoon, cellos and basses, and timpani are in the listener’s ears right now. Having spent a lifetime working to make organs sound their best, I can remember myriad struggles with bass response. Think of that low note in the Pedal Bourdon that yodels a little around the second partial before it settles on its pitch, or the note in the Contra Bombarde that offers a half-second of pfffff before you hear a note. No way. The organs that play with modern orchestras have to perform with their orchestral neighbors. On the Disney organ it’s possible to draw a dozen or stops at 32- and 16-foot pitch and play staccato notes in the bottom octaves—surreal.
§
On the score of his massive Grande Messe des morts (Requiem), Berlioz notes, “The number [of performers] indicated is only relative. If space permits, the chorus may be doubled or tripled, and the orchestra be proportionally increased. But in the event of an exceptionally large chorus, say 700 to 800 voices, the entire chorus should only be used for the Dies Irae, the Tuba Mirum, and the Lacrymosa, the rest of the movements being restricted to 400 voices.”
The score calls for 4 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 English horns, 4 clarinets, 8 bassoons, 12 horns, 4 cornets and 4 tubas (in the orchestra), 4 brass choirs [Choir 1 to the north: 4 cornets, 4 trombones, 2 tubas; Choir 2 to the east: 4 trumpets, 4 trombones; Choir 3 to the west: 4 trumpets, 4 trombones; Choir 4 to the south: 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 4 ophicleides (usually substituted by tubas)], a battery of percussionists, 16 timpani played by 10 timpanists, 2 bass drums, 4 tamtams, 10 pairs of cymbals, 25 first violins, 25 second violins, 20 violas, 20 violoncellos, 18 double basses, 80 women’s voices (divided between sopranos and altos), 60 tenors, 70 basses, and tenor soloist.
Alas, no organ. And he thought it would be a grand performance.
But the nearly equally ambitious (minus the four spatial brass choirs) Te Deum is scored for 4 flutes, 4 oboes (one doubling on cor anglais), 4 clarinets (one doubling on bass clarinet), 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 6 trombones, 2 ophicleides/tubas, timpani, 4 tenor drums, bass drum, cymbals, tenor solo, 2 large 3-part (STB) mixed choirs, 1 large unison children’s choir, strings, and (yes, Virginia) organ.
I’d love to hear that piece performed in Disney Hall. Given available space, they’d probably have to settle for about 300 singers, but that’d do. In the hall’s spectacular acoustics I’m sure I’d be able to hear every “K”, every “T”—and while most vowels would be clear, I’m afraid barely “O’s.” (Sorry, Hector.)

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON. Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of THE DIAPASON.i

LP in LA: The 47th National Convention of the American Guild of Organists July 4-9, 2004

More than 2000 organ enthusiasts spent an exhilarating week in the City of the Angels, enjoying a well-paced, well-organized schedule of high-quality musical events. Los Angeles weather, cool and sunny, was a joy after a month of unusually abundant rain in Texas.

In a sense, each person experienced a unique convention, since many of the morning programs were given two or three times in order to accommodate the number of attendees, and afternoon activities had been pre-selected from the more than 60 workshops and competition rounds offered. Evening events usually accommodated the entire convention, the exception being Tuesday's three concurrent services of worship. Perception and reception of particular events, thus, were influenced by the particular sequence in which they were experienced. For instance, Monday morning's "green group" progression of three recitals provided a satisfying order, while Wednesday's schedule did not. 

Rather than a chronological, day by day report, here are some high points from "my" convention choices.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall and the first public performances on its Glatter-Götz/Rosales organ

Architect Frank Gehry's landmark building, new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, is a striking and beautiful creation, immediately taking its place among America's most exciting concert halls. This 274 million dollar project pays apt tribute to American film maker Walt Disney with its decidedly whimsical and non-traditional architecture, and Gehry's organ case satisfies Lillian Disney's request that the organ not suggest a church. The controlled chaos of the pipe façade is the visual focus of the concert room; it is, however, well integrated into the hall, largely due to the use of the same wood, Douglas fir, for pipes, wall, and ceiling.

The 109-rank, four-manual organ is equipped with two consoles. In traditional case placement, the mechanical-action one was utilized for Joseph Adam's solo performances of Reger's Fantasia on BACH, Vierne's Naïades (played fleetly with impressionistic bravura), and Danse and Finale from Naji Hakim's Hommage à Igor Stravinsky. A movable, electric-action console, placed in front of the orchestra to the left of conductor Alexander Mickelthwate, allowed proper soloists' positions for organists Cherry Rhodes, in the program-opening premiere of James Hopkins' Concierto de Los Angeles, and Robert Parris, for the rarely-heard Concerto I in C Major of Leo Sowerby.

Architect Gehry was in attendance; so was the acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, and the organ builders. A pre-concert stroll through Melinda Taylor's stunning gardens allowed an opportunity to view Gehry's rose-shaped fountain created from 8,000 hand-broken pieces of blue and white Delft china--his "Rose for Lilly," in honor of Mrs. Disney.

Solo Organ Performances

Mary Preston at the Glatter-Götz organ opus 2 (1998) in Claremont United Church of Christ

Dallas Symphony resident organist Mary Preston played a perfectly constructed program on a splendid mechanical-action organ in a church with sympathetic acoustical environment. At her third performance of the morning Ms. Preston elicited spontaneous (and forbidden) applause with a compelling opening work, Jean Guillou's dazzling, difficult, and complex Toccata; left us spellbound with the magical gossamer conclusion of Duruflé's Scherzo; showed both charm and considerable comedic ability in George Akerley's A Sweet for Mother Goose (six movements for organ and narrator based on familiar nursery rhymes); and displayed an absolutely magisterial rhythmic control in Jongen's Sonata eroïca. Program notes by Laurie Shulman pointed out a musical connection between Jongen and Messiaen, an analogy strengthened by the happily chirping birds heard through open windows on the right side of the church.  Human auditors were equally ecstatic at this stellar performance.

Martin Jean at the Dobson organ in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

Yale University's Martin Jean gave a riveting performance of the complete Dupré Passion Symphony as conclusion to the second half of the first concert attended by the entire convention crowd. Spanish architect Rafael Moneo's massive cathedral, dedicated in 2002, seats 3,000 people in a spacious contemporary edifice of restrained elegance. The four-manual, 105-rank Dobson organ fills this space with noble and powerful sounds, as expected from its impressive 32-foot façade principals and dominating horizontal reeds. The organ performance was all the more appreciated coming as it did after a choral performance of works by Byron Adams, Morten Lauridsen, and C. Hubert H. Parry horribly amplified through the Cathedral's public address system. (Seated in the last row, we heard the choral sounds through crackling speakers positioned in the downward pointing, trumpet-shaped central posts of the chandeliers; any hope of a balance with the accompanying organ was thereby destroyed.)

Samuel Soria at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

Cathedral organist Samuel Soria played a prelude-recital before the Friday morning business meeting of the American Guild of Organists. Wanting to hear the Dobson organ from the best possible vantage point, we eschewed bus transport, walked the few blocks from the convention hotel to the cathedral, got there before the crowd, and chose an optimal seat in the left transept, diagonally across from the organ case. There the organ had splendid presence, character, and all the fullness one could want, qualities well illustrated in the playing of this talented young man. An appreciated tie-in to AGO history, his opening piece, Fanfare by past-president Alec Wyton, displayed the organ's horizontal reeds to fine advantage.  Atmospheric impressionism was equally well served in Herbert Howells' Psalm Prelude, set 2, number 1 ("De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine") with its steady crescendo from the softest stop to a mighty full organ climax, and the corollary retreat to near silence. But it was in Sowerby's fiendishly difficult middle movement from his Symphony in G ("Fast and Sinister"--listed in the program as "Faster") that Soria best displayed his formidable technique and sense of the work's architecture, giving a sensitive, secure reading of this quintuple-meter tour de force.

Christopher Lane at the NYACOP Finals in St. James Episcopal Church

One of three finalists to compete in the National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, Lane, a student at the Eastman School of Music, gave the only playing of the required Roger-Ducasse Pastorale to realize both its delicacy and forward sweep. With no lack of virtuosity in the culminating mid-section "storm" music, Lane also limned the delicate contrapuntal writing in this unique organ work from the French composer.  Judges Craig Cramer, Bruce Neswick, and Kathryn Pardee, deliberating at length, chose Yoon-Mi Lim (Bloomington) as first place winner. Dong-ill Shin (Boston) was the third contestant.  Additional required repertoire played by all three contestants included Deux Danses (Le miroir de Meduse and Le Cercle des Bacchantes) by California composer James Hopkins, and Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV 654, the only organ work by the master included in the published convention program book. (This final competition round was heard by approximately one-tenth of the convention registrants.) One additional Bach piece, a chorale prelude from the Orgelbüchlein, Herr Christ, der ein'ge Gottes Sohn, BWV 601, was played simply and stylistically by Namhee Han, a guest organist who gave the pre-concert recital before ensemble amarcord's program at Wilshire United Methodist Church. Ms. Han holds the Ph.D. in applied linguistics and is currently studying for her MM in organ at UCLA.

Paul Jacobs at Westwood United Methodist Church

Young Mr. Jacobs, playing from memory, had no technical or musical limitations during his noontime playing of the monumental Reger Chorale-Fantasy on Hallelujah, Gott zu loben. It was refreshing to hear Handel's G-minor Organ Concerto (opus 4, no. 1) as a representative (albeit in transcription) of the conspicuously absent baroque organ repertoire. Jacobs' attractive program also included John Weaver's Toccata and the premiere of Margaret Vardell Sandresky's The Mystery of Faith. With four manuals and 153 pipe ranks, the Schantz organ could have recused the added 85 digital voices to the advantage of the whole.

Lynne Davis at First Congregational Church

American organist Lynne Davis has spent much of her distinguished career in France. For her pre-service recital before Evensong she played three works from the French organ repertoire: Vierne's Toccata in B-flat minor, opus 53/6, Marchand's Grand Dialogue in C, and Franck's mighty Choral in E Major on the immense composite organs of First Congregational Church, comprising five manuals, 339 ranks, and seven digital voices for a truly "surround sound" experience. It was playing of intensity with a distinctly personal approach; especially in the Franck, Ms. Davis presented a nuanced, individual, and ultimately satisfying reading of this Romantic masterwork. In the Marchand, the organ certainly provided commanding reeds for a classic French Grand Jeu, but seemed to be lacking a Cromhorne of sufficiently aggressive character to assure a proper balance for the accompanying voices.

Choral Performances

ensemble amarcord at Wilshire United Methodist Church

The five-man vocal ensemble, all former members of the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig, filled several unique categories at this convention: they were the only Europeans engaged for the program, and they gave the only ensemble presentation of a work by J. S. Bach, a two-stanza chorale from the Kreuzstab Cantata, BWV 56, "Du, o schönes Weltgebäude." It received an especially eloquent performance, with words perfectly articulated, and the almost-painfully beautiful suspensions viscerally calibrated for maximum tension and release of the piquant harmonies. The particularly welcome program alternated early music (stark and athletic organum, supple Byrd motets, the familiar Tallis anthem If Ye Love Me, elegant in its noble simplicity) with 20th (and 21st) century choral works.  The concluding Gloria (2001) by Sidney Marquez Boquiren was performed with the singers in a circle.  Long-held dissonant chords built around an ostinato pitch, were sustained throughout with nearly-unbelievable breath control. Repeated text phrases swirled like incense to create an unforgettable shimmer of sound. From start to finish this was virtuoso music making, with not a microphone or speaker to mar the sound.

Dale Adelmann's setting of the Spiritual "Steal Away to Jesus"

Heard as the Introit for the Service of Evensong at First Congregational Church, this, and the equally exquisite singing of Herbert Howells' St. Paul's Service by the choirs of All Saints' and St. James' Episcopal Churches, conducted by Adelmann and James Buonemani, proved to be the full ensemble choral highlights of the convention for this listener. Of course, choirs need to be superb at these services to compare with the hymn singing of a thousand, or more, organists, most of them paying attention to punctuation, pitch, and proper vocal production. It makes for participatory experiences that remain in the memory.

New Music

David Conte: Prelude and Fugue (In Memoriam Nadia Boulanger) for Organ Solo. E. C. Schirmer No. 6216.

What a way to begin the first solo organ recital of a convention! A single pedal B-flat sang out gently. Then a theme, beginning with the opening intervals of Raison's (and J. S. Bach's) Passacaglia was spun into a 14-measure cantilena, after which the solemn five-minute Prelude built slowly, always above the continuing pedal point. The ensuing Fugue, its memorable subject carefully shaped by Ken Cowan at the recent Fisk organ in Bridges Hall of Music at Pomona College, fulfilled the promise of the Prelude, moving inexorably from duple to triple accompanimental figurations, and building to a full climax with pedal flourishes. A work worthy of Maurice Duruflé or Gabriel Fauré, and a fitting tribute, as well, to Boulanger, the great French teacher with whom Conte studied for three years early in his career.

George Akerley: A Sweet for Mother Goose for Organ and Narrator. Hinshaw Music, Inc. HPO3009

Winner of the 2004 Holtkamp-AGO award in organ composition, this charmer of a suite weds appropriately pictorial music with rhythmically notated texts for the narrator in a pleasure giving work that should find its way into many organ recital programs. (It is music for young persons of all ages.) "Little Bo-Peep" allows the organist to take off on an extended pedal cadenza, to be halted only by the irritated shout of the narrator. The head of a school instructs her charges on good behavior in "The Clock." There's Irish musical color aplenty in "The Cats of Kilkenny," and, after a recitation of the poetry, the organist plays a solo tone poem to illustrate the "Tale of Miss Muffet." Mathematical note groupings provide comment for "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe;" while the concluding movement ("The Fiddlers") provides chuckles of recognition with its ritornello based on the famous Widor Toccata. That it was so well presented by Mary Preston, with the ebullient Kathy Freeman as narrator, made for a memorable premiere indeed.

Denis Bédard: Duet Suite for Organ and Piano (Details: www.majoya.com)

Duo Majoya (Marnie Giesbrecht, organ; Joachim Segger, piano) gave a most unusual recital at Bel-Air Presbyterian Church. Two Canadian composers provided commissioned works for the Duo; each had some interesting musical ideas to communicate. The more accessible work was this Suite, comprising an Introduction, Fughetta, Menuetto, Romance, and Final, full of wit, good humor, and memorable melodies, many reminiscent of Poulenc's catchy and romantic voice. Three movements from Jeffrey McCune's Crossing to Byzantium, and his arrangement of Stravinsky's Danse infernale de roi Katschei from The Firebird, plus Joe Utterback's brief Images: A Jazz Set completed the program, which would have benefited from more textural variety, perhaps provided by a solo offering from each of these fine players. The Bel-Air organ, reconstituted from a Casavant instrument heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, now consists of 60 pipe ranks plus 91 digital voices, including both Cherubim and Seraphim hanging speakers: not a particularly happy marriage of sounds for this hilltop-sited church.

Other newly-commissioned and prize-winning works heard at convention events I attended included anthems by Byron Adams and Michael Bedford, works for instruments with organ by Mary Beth Bennett, Ian Krouse, and Erica Muhl, plus the Hopkins and Sandresky works mentioned previously, as well as an anthem by Williametta Spencer, premiered in the Ecumenical Protestant service, not on my schedule. 

Workshops

Organ Recordings from the Past, David McVey's self-effacing session on gems from the audio history of organ playing, was a model of effective, well thought-out presentation. All the requisite citations were listed in a spacious 8-page handout. The motto "Res ipsa locutor [The thing speaks for itself]" was borne out as McVey kept comment to a minimum in order to allow complete performances of works recorded by Widor (Andante sostenuto from his Gothic Symphony, committed to disc in 1932), Tournemire (Chorale-Improvisation on "Victimae paschali," 1930), Thalben-Ball (Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, 1931), Sowerby (his Carillon, 1946), Schreiner (Vierne's Naïades, 1959), Biggs (Daquin's Noël grand jeu et duo at the 1936 Aeolian-Skinner organ of the Germanic Museum at Harvard), Fox (Bach's Passacaglia at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, 1963), and Crozier (Dupré's Prelude and Fugue in G minor, opus 7/3, 1959).

Panel Discussion on the Disney Hall Organ, ably moderated by Jonathan Ambrosino, with organ builders Caspar von Glatter-Götz and Manuel Rosales, architect Craig Webb from Gehry Partners, and organ consultant Michael Barone.

An overflow crowd of 500 assembled to hear the whys and wherefores behind the inspiration and evolution of Gehry's unusual organ design for the new hall, and the challenges posed during the installation of the instrument. 

Extra-musical happenings

Television personality and actor David Hyde Pierce (of Frasier fame) brought along the necessary props: his organ shoes, a book of registrations copied down at some early lessons (numbers only, no stop names), a tattered copy of the Gleason Method. Pierce, who really did study organ with several noted teachers, took his audience through a quick course on ornamentation ("I don't care"), temperament, and various other organ-specific arcana. The huge crowd responded with almost-constant hilarity.

The Very Rev. Canon Mary June Nestler's sermon at Evensong moved with quiet humor from her own experiences as a voice student through some of the shared vicissitudes of the organist's profession (especially vis-à-vis relationships with the clergy) to a sound theological conclusion, and a prayer for peace.

Class Acts

Frederick Swann: organist and AGO president extraordinaire

Both for a very fine recital at the Crystal Cathedral, his "home base" during the years 1982-1998, and for his deft, unpretentious handling of the American Guild of Organists presidency, Swann deserves high accolades. Always in command of the music he played, never pompous or overbearing in his official actions, Fred serves as an exemplary leader for the national organization, and he represents the profession well with his high musical and personal standards.  Who would not love him for his one-sentence disposal of the listed "Presidential Remarks" at the national meeting? Kudos, as well, for his service as performances chair of the convention. The artists selected for the program were consistently top-notch.

The Convention Committee

To Dr. Robert Tall and his legions of hardy workers for the stellar planning and smooth organization of a first-rate convention, especially noted in the efficient and on time management of the necessary bus transportation. Mailing the convention program book (itself a work of art) more than a month before the actual event allowed attendees the opportunity for advance preparation and orientation. Bravi tutti!

Additional Observations

It was my first experience to see two hotel elevators (in the headquarters hotel, the Westin Bonaventure) marked with historic plaques, noting their use by actor (now Governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1993 movie The Terminator.

Crystal Cathedral organist Christopher Pardini's fine performances of The Joy of the Redeemed, composed by AGO founding member Clarence Dickinson, not only showcased the Aeolian-Skinner organ in the Cathedral's Arboretum, but served as an effective aural connection to an important figure in the Guild's history.

What a savvy idea to present this year's AGO President's Award to Craig Whitney, an assistant managing editor at The New York Times and author of the best selling book All the Stops. His enthusiastic and engaging writing about the world of organ music and its personalities has provided  some much needed popular awareness for the profession.

Peter Krasinski's masterful organ improvisation at the AGO annual meeting was based on the song "Chicago, Chicago," a theme selected and presented to him by improvisation committee chair Ann Labounsky. This served as a not-so-subliminal aural advertisement for the next national convention, to be held July 2-6, 2006.