John Near book on Widor performance practice

Shelby Fisher

Shelby Fisher earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in organ performance and pedagogy from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, where she studied under Kenneth Udy. She is organist and director of music at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) composed his organ Mass Suite médiévale in 1947, drawing on a rich tradition of French organ suites composed for use during the “low” Mass. Changes to the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council (“Vatican II”) in 1962 drastically reduced the role of the organ during the Mass, thereby eliminating the need for the French organ Mass. Suite médiévale is one example of a body of small-scale liturgical organ compositions that no longer carry their intended relevance due to changes to the liturgy. These works are often neglected in both concert and liturgical settings, yet they can be appropriate for both. Exploring the musical and liturgical heritage that influenced Langlais, as well as the changes resulting from the Second Vatican Council, provides today’s organists with a frame of reference to interpret and understand his organ compositions.

Organ music and the liturgy in twentieth-century France

During the four centuries between the Council of Trent in 1563 and the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, liturgical organ playing in France became highly developed in large part due to the autonomy afforded French bishops to govern the liturgy within each diocese.

The most widely known liturgy used in France was the Parisian Rite, which was used until the middle of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, most French liturgical organ music from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was written for the Parisian Rite.¹ Eventually the Parisian Rite was supplanted by the more universally recognized Roman Rite. This affected the evolution of the French organ Mass in at least two ways. First was the retention of the “low Mass,” during which the organist played for virtually the entire service, pausing only for the reading and homily as described by Gaston Litaize:

During this era, the organist at the main organ normally played two Sunday Masses:

1) The “Grand Messe,” which involved a processional, an offertory, often an elevation, a communion, and a postlude; in addition, he alternated with the choir for verses of plainchant for the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei); they sang a verse and the organ commented on in, changing registrations for each verset.

2) The “Messe Basse,” where the organist could virtually play a recital. With everything spoken in a low voice [“à voix basse,” hence “Messe basse”], this is what happened: the priest left the sacristy, the organist played a procession, which lasted until the Gospel reading, then came the sermon. The organ then resumed and didn’t stop until there was no one left in the church. So, one could easily play a complete Choral by Franck.²

Second, with the introduction of the Roman Rite, French organists largely moved away from chant-based organ music, favoring all-purpose Offertoires or Grand Choeurs.

A chant revival movement soon made its mark on French liturgical organ music. In 1889, the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes published a new chantbook based on extensive research of early manuscripts that sought to restore chant to its medieval form.³ Interest in chant revival trickled into Parisian music circles, where in 1894, organist-composers Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent D’Indy founded the Schola Cantorum de Paris. The school’s founding manifesto called for the “performance of plainchant according to the Gregorian tradition; restoration of polyphonic music in the Catholic Reformation style of Palestrina; the creation of ‘new modern Catholic music;’ and improvement of the repertory for organists.”⁴ Guilmant in particular championed a return to organ compositions that used chant, writing that, “The German organists have composed some pieces based on the melody of chorales, forming a literature for the organ that is particularly rich; why should we not do the same with our Catholic melodies?”⁵

No French organist-composer produced more of this literature than Charles Tournemire. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, eventually succeeding Franck as titular organist of Sainte Clotilde in 1898. His largest organ work was L’Orgue mystique, a cycle of 51 organ Masses, one for nearly every Sunday of the liturgical year. Each Mass comprises five movements: Prélude à l’Introït, Offertoire, Élévation, Communion, and Pièce terminale, all drawing motivic material from the proper chants for the given day.6

Jean Langlais and Suite médiévale

Charles Tournemire mentored only a few private students who showed the greatest promise. One of these students was Jean Langlais. Earlier Langlais had studied organ with André Marchal at the National Institute for Blind Students, then with Marcel Dupré at the Paris Conservatory. Upon graduation from the conservatory, Langlais continued improvisation studies with Tournemire and served as his assistant at Sainte Clotilde. Langlais chose Tournemire as his instructor specifically for Tournemire’s fluency with improvisation on plainchant.⁷

Langlais eventually succeeded Tournemire as organist at Sainte Clotilde in 1945. The Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte Clotilde had been enlarged and slightly modified at the end of Tournemire’s tenure, and Langlais was eager to compose for the new instrument. Langlais composed four organ Masses between 1947 and 1951.⁸ His Masses are important not only because they demonstrate both the pervasiveness of the plainchant revival movement and the development of the French School of improvisation and composition, but they are also significant because they are some of the last French organ Masses to be published.⁹

In 1947, Langlais completed Suite médiévale: en forme de messe basse.¹⁰ As indicated by the subtitle, the suite was intended for use at the “low” Mass. Langlais not only followed the same five-part structure as Tournemire, but also used chant as inspiration. However, unlike Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique, Langlais chose chants appropriate for use throughout the liturgical year rather than those tied to a specific day.

The first movement of the suite is titled “Prélude: Entrée” and can be divided into two parts. The first half opens on full organ with a succession of parallel fourths and fifths suggestive of Notre-Dame organum followed briefly by the incipit to the chant “Asperges me, Domine,” or “Thou shalt sprinkle me, oh Lord,” before returning to the fortissimo parallel fourths and fifths. The antiphon, taken from Psalm 51, typically accompanied the Asperges, or ritual sprinkling of the congregation with holy water at the principal Mass on Sunday. The first half ends with the rubric, “If not needed, do not play further,” suggesting the flexibility of the suite to be adjusted to fit requirements of the Mass at the moment of performance. The second half further develops the chant, first in parallel fifths, and then in parallel fifths doubled at the octave in the manuals. In a nod to the Solesmes style of chant singing with its unpredictable pulse, the time signature throughout the “Prélude” changes frequently.

The second movement, “Tiento: Offertoire,” was intended for use during the offertory of the Mass, hence its longer performance length of four minutes. Here Langlais honors Spanish keyboard music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, constructing a loosely imitative four-voice fugato, punctuated three times in the pedal by the Kyrie trope “Fons bonitatis” from Mass II. The Medieval practice of chant troping, or the insertion of additional texts and/or melodies within the standard chant, had long been abandoned. Langlais’ inclusion of the Kyrie trope is a clever acknowledgment of this historical practice rather than a modern application of chant. The movement ends with a final appearance of the chant accompanied by soft, homophonic chords. In order to keep rhythmic freedom without frequently changing the time signature, Langlais indicated “0” as the beginning time signature, explaining, “The sign 0 signifies free measures as for their length but regular as for their note value.” Langlais continued to employ this practice in later compositions.¹¹

“Improvisation: Élévation” is the calm and meditative third movement, utilizing a simple registration of only a single stop for each manual. It begins in A major, then moves to E-flat Mixolydian just before the introduction of the well-known and ancient Eucharistic hymn “Adoro te.” The final four measures are in E major, a key favored by Frescobaldi and other sixteenth-century composers for use during elevation toccatas.¹² The key of E and its cousin, the Phrygian mode, were traditionally used to express the mystical. The elevation represents the high point of the Mass at which time the celebrant elevates the host and chalice, having been transformed into the body and blood of Christ, so they may be adored by the congregation.¹³

The fourth movement, “Méditation: Communion,” was intended to be played as the congregation receives communion. It is based on two chants: “Ubi caritas,” an antiphon traditionally sung during the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday, but also appropriate as a Eucharistic hymn; and a second Eucharistic hymn, “Jesu dulcis memoria.” Langlais unifies the emergence of these themes with a sixteenth-note motive in multiple keys.

“Acclamations: Sur le texte des acclamations Carolingiennes” is the dramatic postlude of the suite. Langlais uses fragments of the ancient Roman chant “Laudes Regiae” from the Carolingian Acclamations, a hymn historically sung at solemn occasions and adopted by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. The melody for the words “Christus vincit” repeats six times in the pedal in alternation with the phrase “Exaudi Christi” from the same chant. Langlais adds two more chant fragments, “Christus regnat” and “Christus imperat,” and repeats them employing an ascending harmonic pattern he often used to create tension. Similarly, the manuals play the “Christus vincit” theme first in F, then in G, and finally in A, to which the pedal responds with “Christus imperat” first in F, then F-sharp and then G. Langlais concludes by introducing a pedal carillon of C–F–G–D played in long notes against the “Christus vincit” theme stated in manual octaves. Marie-Louise Langlais notes that these final measures are reminiscent of the bells of Reims Cathedral, where French kings were crowned during the Medieval period.¹⁴

Langlais’ reaction to the Second Vatican Council

As early as 1900, French clergy began holding grassroots meetings to study the Church’s handling of religious expression, particularly with regard to participation of the congregation at Mass.¹⁵ By 1945 this populist movement became known as Catholic Action, and its followers known as the “new liturgists.”¹⁶ At the heart of the new liturgists’ agenda was the democratization of the liturgy brought about partly through changing the musical context of the Mass. Other clergy and most professional musicians saw the new liturgists as a threat to the traditional practice of church music. The new liturgists championed simple, approachable music that favored congregational singing and the use of the vernacular rather than Latin. Furthermore, many in favor of liturgical reform sought to also diminish the role of both the organ and chant.

Langlais was distraught by the changes the new liturgists brought to the Mass. He regarded these changes as a departure from the artistic mission of the Church and wrote:¹⁷

All religious composers, of which I am one, are deeply discouraged by this movement, which is the negation of art. In my opinion nothing is beautiful enough for God. Our forebears knew this and held that to pray surrounded by beauty was central to worship.

The new liturgist movement reached its peak during the Second Vatican Council. In December 1963, the council issued the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Initially the constitution alleviated the concerns of the professional musicians by declaring the musical tradition of the Church as “a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art.”¹⁸ While the council supported the use of Gregorian chant and polyphony, it also seemed to support the new liturgists by stating that “to promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalms, antiphons, hymns as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper time a reverent silence should be observed.”¹⁹ In the practical application of the constitution, it was the new liturgists that seemed to gain the upper hand.

In 1962, Langlais and other organists served on the French Episcopal Commission on Sacred Music, tasked with interpreting the Second Vatican Council’s new guidelines on liturgical music. A second group, the Commission of Expert Musicians, was formed in 1964 to supply new music to accompany the Propers that had been newly translated into French.

The role of the organ was a troublesome point in the new liturgy. Monsignor Maurice Rigaud, who acted as president of both the French Episcopal Commission on Sacred Music and the Commission of Expert Musicians, indicated that silence was to replace the use of the organ after the collect, at the offertory, at the elevation, and at communion; and in addition, that sung chant rather than the organ was the preferred method of balancing music with silence. The organists serving on both commissions lamented to Rigaud that there was nothing left for the organists to do during the Mass:²⁰

If the role of the organist is so reduced to this sort of humming in the background, in this role of “hole-filling” between two verses of songs in French and to serve as accompaniment for eventual new songs, one wonders . . . if it is now necessary to train young organists and to place them in careers that are reduced to such a farce, a career that is so long in its preparation, so costly, so laborious and difficult. One no longer even sees the necessity to maintain organ classes in our Conservatories and Schools of Music.

Musically, Langlais was slow to respond to Vatican II. Though initially supportive of attempts to write music for the new liturgy, Langlais became discouraged not only with the Commission of Expert Musicians’ tendency to favor the opinions of clergy over those of professional musicians but also with the low quality of new music that was admitted. In an interview with L’Est Républicain, Langlais was bold in his opinion of this new music, saying, “The goal of those who are currently writing religious songs is good, but the quality of the music is mediocre.”²¹

Langlais’ shameless musical response to Vatican II was his Trois Implorations, commissioned as the final organ exam piece at the Paris Conservatory in the spring of 1970. The third movement of the set, “Imploration pour la croyance,” expresses Langlais’ continued frustration with the Catholic Church. In his program notes Langlais writes, “The composer has tried to translate the state of the soul of a Christian in revolt against the current desacralizing atmosphere.”²² Langlais uses the chant intonation of the Credo from Masses I, II, and IV “Credo in unum Deum,” answered by staccato chord clusters with full organ as if in protest. The juxtaposition of chant and chord clusters continues until the piece finally ends with five staccato chords that use all twelve tones of the scale simultaneously. Marie-Louise Langlais writes that “Imploration pour la croyance” is Langlais’ way of shouting to the world, “I believe with all my strength, but with all my strength I also suffer from what I hear in the Church.”²³

Conclusion

Langlais represents the culmination of the Sainte Clotilde organist-composer tradition, which began with César Franck and continued with Charles Tournemire. His style represents a unique synthesis of twentieth-century compositional techniques, traditional influences, and theological commentary. His close personal and professional ties to the Catholic Church at a time when it was experiencing major changes significantly influenced his work.

One cannot understand Langlais’ music without considering his Catholicism. To appreciate Langlais’ “other-worldly” harmonies and diverse colors, it is important to understand the religious context that inspired his compositions. Langlais saw himself not just as a composer, but also as a theologian, whose role was to connect the faithful to God. Although Vatican II reforms have erased its original context, Suite médiévale remains an excellent representation of Langlais’ compositional style and techniques; with short movements, contrasting tone colors, and recognizable chant fragments, it is an exciting and convincing work that merits continued recognition in the organ repertory.

Notes

1. Orhpa Ochse, Organists and Organ Playing in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994), 127.

2. Marie-Louise Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered (New York: American Guild of Organists, 2016), 136–137.

3. Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 284.

4. Ibid.

5. Edward Zimmerman and Lawrence Archbold, “Why Should We Not Do the Same with Our Catholic Melodies?: Guilmant’s L’Organiste liturgiste, Op. 65,” in French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor, ed. Lawrence Archbold and Willliam J. Peterson (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 203.

6. Edward Schaefer, “Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique and Its Place in the Legacy of the Organ Mass,” in Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, ed. Jennifer Donalsen and Stephen Schloesser (Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2014), 40.

7. Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered, 41.

8. Langlais published Suite brève and Suite médiévale in 1947, Suite française in 1948, and Hommage à Frescobaldi in 1951.

9. Schaefer, 31.

10. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 133.

11. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 145.

12. Willi Appel, The History of Keyboard Music to 1700 (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972), 478.

13. John Caldwell and Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Elevation,” In Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001).

14. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 138.

15. Ann Labounsky, Jean Langlais: The Man and his Music (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2000), 211.

16. Labounsky, 211.

17. Labounsky, 214.

18. Anthony Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Transformations and Treasures (Chicago, Hillenbrand Books, 2007), 314.

19. Labounsky, 219.

20. Labounsky, 226.

21. Labounsky, 229.

22. Labounsky, 272.

23. Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered, 263.

Bibliography

Apel, Willi. The History of Keyboard Music to 1700. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972.

Archbold, Lawrence and Edward Zimmerman, “Why Should We Not Do the Same with Our Catholic Melodies?: Guilmant’s L’Organiste liturgiste, Op. 65,” in French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor, ed. Lawrence Archbold and William J. Peterson. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995.

Caldwell, John and Bonnie J. Blackburn. “Elevation,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline/ezproxy/lib/utah.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000023373 (accessed March 22, 2019).

Darasse, Xavier, and Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais. “Jean Langlais,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000023373 (accessed March 22, 2019).

Donelson, Jennifer, and Stephen Schloesser, ed. Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2014.

Labounsky, Ann. Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2000.

Langlais, Jean. Suite médiévale en forme de messe basse. Paris: Éditions Salabert, 1950 (originally published 1947).

Langlais, Marie-Louise. Jean Langlais Remembered, trans. Bruce Gustafson. New York: American Guild of Organists, 2016.

Mahrt, Peter William. The Musical Shape of the Liturgy. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2012.

Ochse, Orpha. Organists and Organ Playing in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Piunno, John. “Restoring Liturgy and Sacred Music in the Latin Roman Rite.” The American Organist 135, 4 (2010): 82–85.

Poterack, Kurt. “Vatican II and Sacred Music.” Sacred Music 125, 4 (1998): 5–19.

Rone, Vincent. “A Voice Cries Out in the Wilderness: The French Organ School Responds to the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church.” PhD diss., University of California, 2014.

Ruff, Anthony. Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations. Chicago, Illinois: Hillenbrand Books, 2017.

Schloesser, Stephen. Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

The Parish Book of Chant. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2008.

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is a past editor of The Diapason.

Katelyn Emerson is a member of The Diapason’s inaugural 20 Under 30 (2015) class, an honor bestowed prior to receiving her undergraduate degrees from Oberlin. She had already earned top prizes in numerous competitions in the United States, France, and Russia. She teaches in her private studio and performs nationally and internationally. Katelyn Emerson is represented in North America by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.

Katelyn, what were some of the first instruments you played? What led you to prefer the organ?

Growing up, I was drawn to voice, piano, flute, and organ. Singing was integral to my childhood as my whole family sang in a church choir and my older brother, Andrew, and I both sang in the Sandpipers Seacoast Children’s Chorus, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 

When Andrew turned ten, he began piano lessons. Naturally, as a six-year-old enamored with everything he was doing, I began to sightread through his piano music, and my parents sought a piano teacher to spare them from the cacophony coming from the keyboard—and so that I wouldn’t learn bad habits. 

Four years later, all I wanted for my birthday was flute lessons as I had watched my mother play and loved the sound of the instrument. Flute and voice ultimately allowed me to join both local and all-state youth symphonies and choruses. 

Dianne Dean, director of the Sandpipers Chorus, first introduced me to the possibility of playing the organ. I had plunked out a hymn or two at my parents’ church but thought this imposing instrument out of reach for a small girl. However, Dianne had been instrumental in founding the Young Organists’ Collaborative, an organization that introduces young people to the pipe organ and funds their early studies. She encouraged me to audition for a scholarship, and upon receiving it, I studied piano, flute, and organ through high school.

The “lightning bolt” moment was during the Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, opus 78, of Camille Saint-Saëns. I was principal flutist of the Portland (Maine) Youth Symphony Orchestra, playing at the heart of the ensemble while my then organ teacher, Ray Cornils, played the Kotzschmar organ in Merrill Auditorium. There had been no time to rehearse with the organ prior to the concert, so those brilliant C-major chords of the final movement came as a complete shock. I realized the organ could be all the musical instruments I loved—and that it could even keep pace with a full symphony orchestra! This could be my instrument.

Tell us about your experience with the Young Organists’ Collaborative.

The Young Organists’ Collaborative (YOC) was founded in 2001 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when a new Létourneau organ was installed in Saint John’s Episcopal Church. When Bishop Douglas E. Theuner came to bless the instrument, he donated $1,000 seed money with the charge to find a way to bring young people to play the pipe organ. Chosen students received a year’s worth of lessons and a small stipend for shoes or scores. Today, students come from around the seacoast—Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, etc.—and are paired with an approved local teacher who can help find practice spaces. They are required to play at the end-of-year recital and are invited to take part in a masterclass with a professional organist partway through the year. The YOC can fund up to three years of study and offers additional scholarship competitions.

I received one of these scholarships in 2005 and began studies with Abbey Hallberg Siegfried, who worked at Saint John’s. When she went on maternity leave a year later, Abbey connected me with Ray Cornils, municipal organist of Portland, Maine, whose teaching included practice techniques, patience, and good humor that form the foundation of my playing and teaching. 

When and where did you give your first recital? What did you play?

It’s difficult to recall my first recital! I do remember my first organ masterclass vividly, when I had only been studying for about six months. This class, sponsored by the YOC, was with Ray Cornils, whom I was meeting for the first time. I played the “Prelude and Fugue in B-flat Major” from the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues attributed to Bach. After I played through the work in its entirety, Ray quietly asked if I realized which pedal note I had missed in the prelude. While I can’t remember now which note it was, I do remember him guiding me through the process of identifying the reason for the mistake. That detective work set the standard for how I problem-solve in my own practice and how I work with my students to do the same.

You earned your degrees at Oberlin and subsequently studied in France and Germany. How did each of these experiences form you?

During my first semester at Oberlin, my assigned teacher, James David Christie, went on sabbatical. While usually a cause for chagrin, this was an extraordinary stroke of luck: he swapped positions with Olivier Latry. 

I have always learned repertoire quickly, but Professor Latry’s demands put me into high gear. At least one new piece each week was expected, which meant that I had expended the music I had prepared over the summer halfway through the semester. After panic-learning Duruflé’s Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain in five days, I finally mastered “the back burner”; with two dozen or so pieces in progress at once, each at a different stage of learning, a new one would hit the “lesson-ready” point just at the right moment. Professor Latry also expanded my arsenal of practice techniques, and I would credit nearly all of my inherited practice methods to him and Ray Cornils.

Professor Christie’s preferred pedagogical approach was almost perfectly opposite: rather than covering new music every week, he preferred a lengthier study of style, working through a half-dozen pieces over the course of a semester to develop deeper understanding that could be applied to other music of that genre. I have grown to appreciate this more than I did as a teenager and to balance learning notes quickly with understanding and translating the music. 

My love affair with all things French had begun only two years before university, and fortunately additional academic scholarship was available if I pursued the double degree program at Oberlin (a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music after five years), so French language and literature was the natural choice. I remember asking Professor Latry about studies at the Conservatoire de Paris within our first few lessons together, likely to his amusement!

My first solo trip abroad was in 2011, between my freshman and sophomore years, for the last iteration of the Summer Institute for French Organ Studies, led by Jesse Eschbach and Gene Bedient. Aided by a scholarship, I traveled to Poitiers and then Épernay, wondering if I could handle being alone abroad. Wandering the cobblestones of Poitiers, reveling in that 1787 Clicquot, and then the 1869 Cavaillé-Coll of Église Notre-Dame in Épernay, and getting to know the other students from Indiana, Utah, and Canada, I discovered that I thrived on travel. 

During my sophomore year at Oberlin, Marie-Louise Langlais came to teach. In contrast to Professor Christie’s detail-oriented teaching, Madame Langlais emphasized beautiful broad lines, Wagnerian long phrases, and propelling the music forwards no matter what.

At Oberlin, one of my most impactful teachers was not an organ professor. David Breitman remains head of the historical performance department and teaches fortepiano. After I carelessly ran through a Mozart sonata in one of my first fortepiano lessons, I remember him asking, “Now, this is an opera. Tell me about the first character. What else was Mozart working on while composing this?” Ray Cornils had planted the first seeds of exploring musical character in my mind (“If you met this piece walking down the street, what would it look like? How would she feel? Where would he be going?”), but I hadn’t applied this inquisitive curiosity more broadly. Professor Breitman’s similarly Socratic method of teaching was a continuation of Ray’s. Neither teacher ever dictated interpretation. Instead, they posed questions that led a student to make informed decisions and arrive at possible conclusions themselves through a contextualization and personification of music that has become a cornerstone of my playing and pedagogy. 

The formative experiences and broad education I received from Oberlin continued to feed my curiosity. I took classes in psychology, astronomy, anthropology, rhetoric, French literature, and more. 

Upon graduating, I won a Fulbright scholarship to study in Toulouse. I documented a fraction of that year in France on my blog (katelynemerson.wordpress.com), but spent most of it on road trips to see untouched instruments in the countryside, locked into Saint-Sernin at night, scrambling for practice time, being clapped at because nobody had mentioned a noon Mass, stopping by the marché for bread and a bottle of wine for a picnic, and showing up at the Conservatoire to discover there was another strike and it was closed. Life had a different pace. Concerts were a train ride away, I performed on instruments sometimes wonderful and sometimes frightful, and I met brilliant colleagues and lifelong friends. 

My teachers in Toulouse, Michel Bouvard and Jan Willem Jansen, once again revealed how contrasting teaching styles can enrich study. With Michel Bouvard, I delved into the French Romantic, allowing the instruments to inform how the repertoire can really be played. His relaxed technique and unpretentious approach to this music gave it space to sing. Jan Willem Jansen had extraordinary attention to detail. After hearing me play the “Allein Gott” trio from the Clavierübung, he rightfully informed me that the fourth and fifth sixteenth notes of measure 27 had rushed. I doubt my ears will ever be so attuned to proportion, but I still strive for it nonetheless!

As my year in France concluded and I prepared to pursue further graduate studies, I was offered the associate organist and choirmaster position at the Church of the Advent in Boston, which I simply couldn’t turn down. I had worked with music director Mark Dwyer for several months while at Oberlin and was in awe of the program, liturgy, and choirs. Mark remains a dear friend, colleague, and teacher, and his attention to detail emphasized the importance of every part of music—from note to silence. 

The itch to live abroad is difficult to scratch, so I’m particularly grateful to make a living based on travel! Having heard that Ludger Lohmann would retire in 2020, I applied for a German Academic Exchange Scholarship (DAAD) to pursue the Master Orgel at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart. It broke my heart to leave Boston but I looked forward to two years in Germany.

Navigating life in France had been fairly easy given my comfort with the language. I had enough German to be dangerous—enough so that people assumed I understood. Thankfully, I avoided extreme disaster, realized the meaning of halb zwei in time not to miss my lessons, and discovered the delicacies of southern German cuisine. Lessons with Ludger perfectly balanced churning through new repertoire, exploring historical context, and receiving a list of sources (often primary) to consult. When the pandemic disrupted studies, we met at his beautiful home on the border of Switzerland to indulge in cake and then play and discuss Reger on the three-manual tracker in his living room.

I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have mentors, human and instrumental, that have each shared perspectives and ideas for ways to approach both music and life. This is but a small sample of those who have shaped my understanding, and I hope those not mentioned will still feel my appreciation and forgive the oversight, due solely to lack of space.

How has your knowledge of foreign languages and your living abroad given you insights into the music of those countries’ composers?

Music is inevitably tied to the social, historical, and cultural context in which it was conceived, even while its nature as organized sound allows it to have meaning outside a single context. My understanding of different languages and sensitivity to ways of comportment have helped me to get to know people all over the world, and I continually strive to connect with and understand them better. As an interpreter, I try to delve into the composer’s influences as well as my own, linking both to the present listeners as we undertake the aural tour of emotive depth and structure that is music performance. To do this, I strive to learn as much as I can of the time, place, and people that surrounded the music’s conception to make interpretative decisions that both link and are drawn from the past and present. The more I learn and study, the richer and more complex these relationships become, which results in further exploration and endless excitement!

Tell us about your recordings—those already made, and those planned for the future.

I have released two recordings on the Pro Organo label, working with Fred Hohman. The first of these, part of the prize package from the American Guild of Organists’ 2016 National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, was recorded on the glorious 1935–1936 Aeolian-Skinner at the Church of the Advent in Boston where I was working. These winners’ CDs are typically variety programs, so I sought to showcase how this liturgical instrument can play a variety of repertoire brilliantly, with music by Bruhns, J. S. Bach, Mendelssohn, François Couperin, Alain, Vierne, Tournemire, Thierry Escaich, and Howells. The album title, Evocations, comes from Escaich’s Évocation III (this was its first CD recording). Two years later, Andover Organ Company approached me about a new recording on their magnum opus, Opus 114, at Christ Lutheran Church in Baltimore in honor of their company’s seventieth anniversary. For this CD, Inspirations, I played Rachel Laurin’s Finale, opus 78 (this was the first recording), Horatio Parker, Rheinberger, Buxtehude, Bairstow, de Grigny, Langlais, and Duruflé.

Over the last two years, recording has become more essential than ever. I now have my own video and audio recording equipment and, while none of it equals commercial-level recording equipment, I can use it to pre-record recitals for venues that want to “premiere” the recital on YouTube or Vimeo, particularly if they don’t have their own equipment, and I can also make recordings for my channels. I have a huge “dream list” of instruments on which I would like to record CDs and frequently tweak ideas for programs on them. One idea would juxtapose commissions of living composers with previously composed repertoire related by inspirational source or another contextual consideration—an idea that will hopefully come into being in the next few years!

Who are some of your favorite composers?

My favorite composers are those who wrote the music I’m currently playing! Similarly, the best organ in the world is the one on which I will perform next or am currently playing, and the best piece in the world is the one that’s on the music desk right now. While this might seem to be a cop-out, it’s a simple truth: we play music better when we like it—so we must like what we are working on in order to play it well.

When push comes to shove, I am happiest playing a variety of music. My music bag currently contains music by Parry, Bach, Taylor-Coleridge, Dupré, Demessieux, Reger, Sowerby, Alcock, Laurin, Duruflé, Price, Widor, Whitlock, Franck, and Scheidemann, as well as a few others.

Tell us about your teaching.

After beginning at Oberlin, I was asked to help guide incoming students as an academic ambassador, explaining the sometimes-overwhelming collegiate administration and helping them to choose courses that would feed their curiosity. I tutored French, music theory, and organ at Oberlin, and taught music theory at the local community music school.

Since graduating, I have continued teaching, both privately and in masterclass and lecture settings, holding general question-and-answer sessions that follow tangents of interest as well as structuring courses that focus on specific topics. I enjoy connecting sometimes disparate ideas and exploring possibilities, discussing why decisions can be made this way or that, and, above all, searching for the many nuanced ideas that make an individual “tick.” 

My teaching studio is loosely divided into three groups: those working on interpretation, those seeking to improve practice strategies, and those learning about injury prevention or working to recover from injury. Of course, most are tackling all three! 

Interpretation, at its core, requires working with ideas, examining options, and then seeking physical means to translate them convincingly into sound. Since we organists cannot modulate volume with touch as pianists can, nor can we swell or diminish sound via the breath of wind or the bows of string players, much of our playing is about manipulating smoke and mirrors to turn our intention into aural reality. Since we can now so easily record ourselves, I hold even greater admiration for how players listen in the moment to what is going on, and particularly for how each of my students has a different way of perceiving the sounds swirling around them. Couple this with learning about the context of the composer, their influences, the instruments they may have known, and the time and place in which the piece was composed, and we have rich, unique “readings” of the repertoire that can link to the interests of any student, all while we explore techniques to help bring that perspective to reality. 

Time is short for everybody, and practice must be as efficient as possible. Having studied with excellent teachers of practice methods and having experienced fairly limited practice time during study and travel, I continue to explore ways to break down repertoire for efficient practice. I often make a game of turning difficult sections into manageable chunks, isolating them from the context that can distract from them. Sometimes, I encourage a student to leave it in that “practice mode” for days or even weeks, which allows the subconscious mind to digest novel movement. The best part of this technique is the excitement with which a student brings me new ideas for this “game,” ideas that I can then share with others when similar sections come up!

Surveys indicate that somewhere between 60% and 90% of professional musicians in the United States have experienced some kind of performance-related musculoskeletal disorder, most often due to overuse. The enthusiasm with which the work of pedagogues such as Roberta Gary and Barbara Lister-Sink has been received, the many stories shared by colleagues and students, and both the unnatural perch on the organ bench and the similarity in how organists use their hands and upper body to that of pianists all make me suspect that this prevalence is much the same in organists.

At age fourteen, I developed bilateral tendonitis in my wrists and forearms. Giving music up was not an option, so I undertook technical retraining with Arlene Kies, late professor of piano at the University of New Hampshire. Arlene helped me to completely rebuild my technique, as I had had almost no technical training in my six years of study. Through her work and that of my mother, a certified hand therapist and occupational ergonomist, I regained my ability to make music and developed a deep respect for my body. By paying attention to its abilities and limitations, I overcame many flare-ups throughout the next decade (including several during competitions). 

This firsthand experience with how playing and practice techniques can couple with contributing factors for tragic consequences inspired me to deepen my understanding of these complex issues so I can work with musicians, particularly organists, to prevent injury and, when injury happens, collaborate with the individual and their medical specialists to work towards recovery. We discuss healthier practice techniques that utilize mental involvement to balance out physical repetition that can lead to overuse, review postural considerations, and discuss ways to give whatever part of the body that is most at risk a little relief, whether avoiding using force when opening jars or cans or making small changes to computer and office workstations. If a student is experiencing pain or discomfort or is recovering from an injury, I always strongly recommend that they work with a medical professional for treatment in addition to exploring adjustments at their instrument.

Being a teacher and being a student go hand in hand. We teach ourselves while in the practice room, but the added variable of joining another person on their journey of learning means that we are continually exposed to different vantage points and ideas. 

How have things been for you during the time of covid?

In spring of 2020, I was based in Germany, but, when rumors that international borders might close began to proliferate, I was on tour in the United States. Fortunately, I made it back to Baden-Württemberg just a few days before flights were grounded. Despite the restrictions, I was able to complete my final semester of my master’s study, performing a program of Froberger, Messiaen, and Reger to an audience of fourteen (including the jury) in the Stuttgart Musikhochschule’s concert hall. That summer was spent waiting and then moving quickly as restrictions changed, but my husband, David Brown, who then worked for Glatter-Götz Orgelbau while I completed my studies, and I managed to return to the United States in September 2020 so he could resume work at Buzard Pipe Organ Builders.

Many people I have spoken with have described challenging months, yet they have almost always also shared silver linings like cherishing time with family and friends or pursuing new projects. My 2020 and 2021 were the same: over seventy concerts were postponed (incredibly, very few canceled entirely), which broke my heart, but my time was filled with writing articles, teaching in person and over Zoom (which I had been doing while traveling, even before 2020!), and learning new repertoire. I also took a course in occupational ergonomics to support my teaching of injury prevention. The world felt like it was on hold for so long, but hope was always on the horizon with wonderful events scheduled for the future—many of which are taking place now! 

What are some of your hopes and plans for the future?

We live in such an exciting time. No previous generation has had so much information at their fingertips, just a click away. The work of thousands of previous performers and researchers—and the life experiences of millions of human beings—is there for our perusal and for us to build on. 

It is incredibly easy to pour through stacks of music and literature, both physically and online, and I’m constantly noting repertoire that I want to learn and share with people. Including some of this less-familiar music in programs requires that I show why this music matters and why audiences should care about it. Without knowing the context or inspiration of a particular piece, how could a listener attending a concert after a busy workday be expected to respond to it? They often have nothing to hold onto, particularly with a longer or more esoteric work, so why should they come back to hear more? Highly aware of this, I seek to share my passion for each piece, proposing some ways through which to relate to it. Connecting a particular piece of music with the heart of the listener has become one of my highest performance priorities.

I would also like to help to evolve the definitions of success for us musicians and organists. I have spoken with so many who did not experience their “big break” before age thirty and who desperately strive to feel successful. We are so often told what success should look like that we can no longer hear our internal voice showing us how our unique skills could create something quite different. This leads to discouragement, depression, and sometimes a heartbreaking lack of self-compassion. I tackle this with my students and work with musicians in all stages of life to help curate their unique careers and pursue whatever they hope to achieve. My own path has been rather unusual, with several gap years that opened Europe and Asia for performance and study, and with my primary income from performing and teaching. The latter is integral to who I am as a person and a musician, as is writing articles that continue conversations about a diverse range of ideas.

While I don’t yet have the answer to this challenge, I try to work with my students and colleagues to explore ways to find our place in a world large and varied enough for all of us. We all may play the pipe organ, but our unique backgrounds—culture, language, family, and everything else—cause us to approach life and this instrument so vastly differently that each of us have the potential to fill a gap that the field didn’t even know was there.

It just takes listening.

Thank you, Katelyn!

Katelyn Emerson’s website: katelynemerson.com

David Lim

David Lim is a doctoral organ student at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, studying under Damin Spritzer and Adam Pajan, and previously studied at Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, Minnesota, and the University of Iowa, Iowa City. He is also director of music at Saint Philip’s Episcopal Church in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and a shop technician with Red River Pipe Organ Company, Norman, Oklahoma.

The Organ Sonata on Psalm 94 of Julius Reubke (1834–1858) is perhaps the best example of programmatic music in the organ repertoire—wholly unusual for a mid-nineteenth-century composition in multiple regards. Firstly, composers and performers exploited the expressive and virtuosic capabilities afforded by the piano. The use of the piano in solo and collaborative works was undoubtedly a hallmark of nineteenth-century composition. In contrast, relatively few major compositions for the organ were produced during this period. The Romantic perspective noted the “organ’s expressive and dynamic possibilities were deficient, falling far short of those of the piano . . . .”¹ Just as the organ was the tenor² of north-German keyboard literature of the eighteenth century, the piano was likewise in nineteenth-century composition. Secondly, period composers frequently used contemporary literary works as programmatic, extra-musical bases for their compositions.³ Ecclesiastical associations and the archaic nature of the organ were certainly not aligned with the growing secularization of the enlightenment and emphasis on innovation and modernity at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Reubke’s substantial contribution of an organ composition based on a religious program was somewhat countercultural for the mid-1800s. This novelty provides a landmark, revolutionary composition in organ literature, demonstrating great sensitivity towards the program and virtuosity previously unseen. The piece reflects several important characteristics of Psalm 94, namely the personal and human perspectives of the psalmist and the literary structure of the psalm.

Several influences in Julius’s short life make his unusual organ sonata appear to be a natural outgrowth of his experience. His childhood was undoubtedly formative. Born in Hausneindorf, he was baptized and educated in the village’s Evangelical (Lutheran) Church and received instruction from the parish cantor. One can presume that education in religious matters was taught, though no sources cited mention curriculum. The village was insulated from the effects of the 1848 revolution.⁴

Julius was exposed to the cutting edge of music throughout his life. He was a child prodigy, having studied with many notable teachers, and quickly gained a reputation as a regarded pupil, performer, and composer. As the son of an organ builder, Julius was undoubtedly exposed to the organ world in his youth⁵ as his father, Adolf, was completing notable projects in the style of organ building prevalent at that time.

Reubke’s later studies with Franz Liszt (1811–1886) in Weimar coincided with Liszt’s development of the symphonic poem. His influence on the young Reubke was profound.⁶ Liszt began to realize, explore, and exploit the possibilities that modern German Romantic organs afforded in compositions such as his Fantasie and Fugue on the Chorale “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” (written 1850, premiered 1852) and the Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H (premiered 1855).⁷ Organs built during this time reflected larger trends in music. Large instruments were constructed in Germany and France, facilitated by technological innovations. Greater emphasis on unison (8′) color stops and increasing tonal resources allowed new and rebuilt organs to accommodate the gamut of dynamic and color possibilities previously unavailable to organists. The organs of Friedrich Ladegast and Adolf Reubke defined this modern style in north Germany.⁸ Julius’s musical experiences from early youth to developing composer culminate in his Organ Sonata.

Liszt and Reubke “strove to emancipate the organ, to raise it to the level of the piano,”⁹ by exploring and exploiting the new avenues of modern organs. “Liszt set new standards for handling the instrument,”¹⁰ and Reubke followed Liszt’s orchestral approach to the organ.¹¹ Such efforts solved one problem and created another. Their organ works were revolutionary, but the technical demands exceeded the abilities of most organists of the time. Any progressive traits in their organ compositions were negated by the relative unavailability of suitable organists to perform and promote such innovations.

Discrepancies surround the initial relationship and presentation of the program and music at the sonata’s premiere performance at the Merseburg Cathedral on June 17, 1857,¹² with Reubke performing. Franz Brendel notes in a review: “The work is not titled as a sonata, quite the contrary, the 94th Psalm was printed as the program, a procedure of which I completely approve.”¹³ Daniel Chorzempa interprets this to mean the entire text of Psalm 94 was included in the program.¹⁴ However, only select verses were included in Otto Reubke’s (Julius’s brother) 1877 edition of the sonata (Figures 1 and 2). Michael Gailit comments that Brendel likely would not have realized if the full psalm text was actually present in the program, considering its “rather long and very rarely used” nature.¹⁵ In contrast, Choonhae Kim Lee understands that “The 94th Psalm” was printed as the title, not the program.¹⁶ Programs from the premiere performance are not known to exist. No sources determine whether the work was based on the psalm text from its inception or if it was added as a program after the sonata was completed.

Existing discussions focus on direct text-music relationships and sectional comparisons. All have used the verses appearing in Otto’s edition of the sonata, despite the ambiguity surrounding Reubke’s use of the psalm text. The writings of Chorzempa (1971), Lee (1989), Manwarren (1994), Nieuwkoop (1995), and Gailit (1992) emphasize different aspects of the sonata. References to its programmatic and formal analysis are included to varying degrees in all papers. Chorzempa’s interpretation in part revolves around the Baroque idea of Affektenlehre, whereby specific musical characteristics elicit emotional responses. He extends this into a Romantic notion that the inclusion of programmatic music, according to Wilhelm Wackenroder, allows the written word to take on fuller meaning, as music is the “completion of philosophy.”¹⁷ He also mentions the general “atmosphere” in particular sections. Lee’s dissertation approaches the sonata from the perspective of the psalmist in the first two movements and later God’s presence in the final. She conjectures specific text-music relationships, “double function” formal structure, and includes an analysis of rhythmic treatments of the principal theme (Figure 3A). Manwarren offers the most objective analysis of the sonata, relating the organ sonata to the piano sonatas of Liszt and Reubke. Psalm 94 itself is mentioned only briefly, aside from his formal and harmonic analysis. In contrast, the analysis offered by Nieuwkoop distinctly relates text and music, describing Reubke as a “master of musical depiction.”¹⁸ His commentary on the music’s textual representation is undergirded by specific musical features. Gailit’s journal article (which later evolved into a book) is dominated by detailed motivic analysis with the occasional comment referencing programmatic meaning. Lee, Manwarren, and Gailit all cite Chorzempa’s dissertation and draw upon his interpretation.

Direct correlations are commonly made when discussing program and sonata. Nieuwkoop describes measures 16–21 as

. . . an impressive musical rendering of another key word from verse 1: “. . . erscheine (. . . shew thyself).” It is an imperative exclamation, which Reubke represents by means of the following musical techniques: 1. dotted rhythms, 2. a sequential treatment, 3. an increased number of voices (from 3 to 10), 4. a large ambitus.

Similarly, Lee describes, “The second verse ‘Rise up’ is portrayed immediately after the repetition of the opening phrase in the full organ. The music builds with the sequence of rising phrases.”²⁰ Numerous similar descriptions are routine in existing literature. These descriptions portray Reubke’s treatment of the psalm text as “Mickey Mousing” (to borrow a phrase from film music scholars), wherein musical gestures intend to describe, reinforce, and clarify specific on-screen actions; or, in our case, a specific word, phrase, or mood from the psalm text. Nonetheless, each interpretation offered is informative and provides different perspectives.²¹ Curiously, while the importance of the program has been highlighted to varying degrees in the sources detailed below, none cite any scholarly resources pertaining directly to the psalm text itself.

Psalm 94 features a distinct three-part construction, as reflected in the commentaries of Clifford, Howard, Kraus, and Limburg. Clifford’s analysis is more microscopic but is consistent with the larger sectional division of the others (Figure 2). The opening and closing sections are laments for the community and individual respectively. The middle introduces wisdom literature. This “wisdom interlude” is one of the defining features of Psalm 94, as it interrupts the psalm’s otherwise lament form. In verses 1–7, the psalmist writes of the injustice and violence occurring in the world. Frustrated with God’s inactivity, he invokes God to action in hopes that the numerous atrocities cited will end and the oppressors see justice. Verses 1–2 directly invoke God to be present and act in the world. Concern for the larger community is expressed. The middle section (verses 8–15) employs wisdom poetry, which is often used to describe human nature²² and the education of humankind. The teachings of an all-knowing God are “supremely strange,” as God is better known as a creator and judge in Old Testament Judaic thinking.²³ The resulting advantages are described in verses 12–15, where those who accept such teachings are happy²⁴ and assured of God’s faithfulness to humanity.²⁵ The lament returns in the concluding section; however, focus shifts now towards the psalmist’s relationship with and reliance on God. Clifford notes several statements of trust and confidence: God is referred to as “rock” and “refuge.” Howard mentions Kraus’s interpretations of the last section as “a prayer of an individual.”²⁶ Thoughts expressed about God’s interaction with the world are constantly developing in the psalm, as the psalmist is quick to find comfort in God despite the terrible circumstances of his present condition.

The human, earthly, and personal perspective of the psalmist is readily noticed in Psalm 94. Personal pronouns are found throughout. Questions and petitions are offered to God. The general affect of Reubke’s Organ Sonata is one of bewilderment and chaos. Such a setting is most appropriate as the psalmist is likewise perplexed and angered by the world’s “wicked” state. The very nature of God is questioned. This confused and seemingly illogical state of both the psalmist and the world are musically portrayed. Harmonic stability is rare and definitive cadences are lacking throughout much of the sonata. The introduction establishes this confused state with the first thematic entrance (measures 1–7) cadencing in D-flat major and the second (measures 8–15) cadencing in C major—neither establishes nor alludes to the work’s tonic of C minor (Figure 4).²⁷ This “veiled” and “amorphous” tonality²⁸ in conjunction with the rapid shifts in both dynamics and tempo preclude predictability, anticipation, and order. Just as the psalmist is left to the mercy of God for a response to his dire situation, so, too, must the listener wait for musical answers and conclusions. The laws of God and of conventional western music theory seem to be abandoned to some extent.

Monothematicism offers the only possibility of reliable predictability as the entire work revolves around a single, two-part theme. Gailit’s analysis and nomenclature refers to the “falling melody line” as the main theme. This theme consists of two-halves: a head motive consisting of a “semitone + third” (measures1–2) and a descending chromatic scale (measures 3–4) (Figure 3A).^{29, 30} Principal and secondary themes first appear in the Grave and Larghetto sections of the first movement, respectively (P1, S1). The themes of the second movement (Adagio) are derived from those of the first. Although different, these two themes are simply in altered guise (P2, S2). The fugue of the third movement is a distinct but not exact return of the principal theme from the first movement (Figure 3).

Thematic variation of both main theme, especially the head motive, and descending scale is present throughout and comprises repetition and fragmentation.³¹ The distinctive rhythmic and melodic qualities of the head motive, in particular, permeate virtually every section of the piece.³² This incessant use of the head motive represents the psalmist’s similarly frequent address and reference to God. Titles such as “Lord,” “God,” and “He” appear in several verses of Psalm 94. Divine names are distributed equally in all the three parts of the psalm.³³ Hence, the head motive is a musical address of God, just as the titles mentioned are verbal addresses. The psalmist is constantly invoking God in both text and music. This may be a simple side effect of the sonata’s cyclic, monothematic construction; however, it is an undeniable commonality between text and sonata.

Moreover, thematic variation further reinforces the personal view exhibited by the psalmist. Each address of God is framed differently—petition, questioning, trust, confidence. The principal themes of each movement demonstrate this. The precise rhythmic (as examined and described by Lee) and melodic characteristics of each iteration are different, yet each retains the essence of the original. Respective iterations are likewise harmonized differently and presented in the context of different textures, all in addition to motivic alterations themselves. The head motive’s distinctive nature readily identifies it in various textures. Voices throughout the sonata resemble the theme’s scalar portion making distinctive identification thereof challenging—the temptation of over-identifying such sections is very possible.

The third movement’s fugue subject (Figure 3E) is clearly derived from the principal theme (P1), and the descending scale of P1 is now inverted. Gailit offers that this scalar ascent “could be taken to symbolically represent the portion of the text which speaks of hope and trust in the Lord.”³⁴ Indeed, this programmatic correlation bears more significance as this literal change in direction reflects the psalmist’s changed attitude towards and opinion of God. Compared to the damning accusations of the psalm’s opening, he reverses his position by placing trust and confidence in God. The programmatic function of the scale seems to represent the psalmist’s general attitude towards the Divine.

The juxtaposition between sections of Psalm 94 bears elements of plot archetype. For the psalmist, confusion and question leads to trust and understanding. A musical trajectory of chaos to order can be found in harmonic and phrase structures, paralleling the psalmist evolving understanding of God’s nature. Chorzempa comments on the first movement’s Larghetto that “a measure for measure analysis reveals no governing system or imposed order. Harmonic color is exploited for its own sake.”³⁵ Manwarren undergirds this statement, mentioning a “shifting chromatic nature” and later states that Reubke “avoids tonicizing the key outright.”³⁶ Harmonic chaos continues in the second movement (Adagio) as three keys are established in a five-measure section (measures 237–242).³⁷ Phrase structure seems to have little regularity, though some can be found. Unlike the sonata’s first two movements, the final movement is harmonically and structurally stable. The fugue is stricter as a tonal center and phrase structures are overtly present. Manwarren notes a “traditional tonic-dominant relationship” between subject and answer, mentioning a “firm grounding” in the tonic.³⁸ Lee identifies a constancy of the C-minor tonality (Figure 5).³⁹ Gailit observes regular four- and eight-bar phrases in episodic and developmental sections of the fugue; subject statements are consistently seven bars.⁴⁰ The fugue is unambiguous and goal-orientated. The sonata and program establish clear musical and textual dichotomies respectively that are placed in parallel. Such transformations, however, do not extend to the sonata’s mode. One expects or desires a “happy,” triumphant ending with minor giving way to major. Curiously, the sonata’s conclusion is not consistent with aspects of a plot archetype model, as Reubke defies any such expectations and concludes the sonata with a dramatic, defiant conclusion in C minor using the fullest resources of the organ. This inconsistency is justified when considering items absent from the music and its program.

Parallels between music and program support and reflect each other. Likewise, these may be extended to elements that are not present. Gailit states,

It is of great importance to understand that the second theme does not show the regular contrast to the first theme. It does not use another (major) key, it stays in C minor. Those contrasting, “friendly” themes are very often used for the triumphant ending of the composition. The lyric themes are, so to speak, the germ of redemption. . . . In his organ sonata, Reubke does not “program” the redemption. When listening to the second theme one can already guess that the piece will not have a happy ending!⁴¹

Reubke’s compositional style is understandably influenced by the works and teachings of Liszt. Manwarren’s analysis of Liszt’s and Reubke’s piano sonatas finds similar treatment of the second theme, describing them as “lyrical” and mentions their “even phrase structures.”⁴² The second theme from Reubke’s
Organ Sonata does not conform to this description. Gailit notes that Reubke seems to purposefully “avoid regular bar numbers,”⁴³ consistent with the initial presentation of the primary theme. This supposed intention of developing a clear, non-contrasting second theme is supported by Reubke’s exposure to Liszt’s lyrical second theme of and creation of his own in the Piano Sonata, as Manwarren’s dissertation demonstrates.

The closest thing to a “redemptive” theme is a soloed melody in measures 81–86, beat 1, intended to be played on an 8′ Trompete (Figure 6). Reubke specifies several other instances where lines are to be soloed on different registrations. For example, Reubke prescribes “Man. I Viola da Gamba 8′” for the second statement of first movement’s secondary theme (S1) (measure 64) with the melody to be “very prominent.”⁴⁴ Several other similar prescriptions for soloing are found in both first and second movements and always solo thematic material. This solo Trompete line is curious as it bears little, if any, resemblance to any of the primary or secondary themes, with the exception of the ubiquitous head motive (measure 82). Reubke makes clear that it should be understood as a thematic statement, considering its soloed distinction, yet it is intrinsically athematic. The listener is intended to hear this as important and substantive (especially when played using the prominent, distinct Trompete color), despite its content being contextually unrelated. This contradiction is confusing. Such an oddity is explained if labeled as the sonata’s “redemptive theme.” Such a label is further justified as it aligns with the typical “lyrical” and “evenly phrased” qualities previously mentioned, in particular the slur markings within each bar, routine use of eighth notes, and stepwise and tertian motion. However, its singular appearance in the whole sonata disqualifies it as thematic material. Rather, it seems Reubke intends this to be a fake theme, presented as authentic but without credentials. Any true redemptive theme is simply not present in the organ sonata—an imposter offers false hope. The lack of a true contrasting second theme appears to have basis in the program’s own lack.

It is precisely the wisdom interlude of Psalm 94 (verses 8–15) that is excluded from the sonata’s program as listed in Otto Reubke’s edition. The program thus unites the two lament sections of Psalm 94 into a more unified whole. The single-movement and monothematic structure of the sonata reflect this. The absence of text focusing on education and human behavior precludes any chance for a musical depiction of redemption in the world. Without accepting and understanding the wisdom, teaching, and guidance through God’s presence in the world, humankind has little chance of achieving a just world. The psalmist does not desire the wicked to return to a righteous lifestyle, nor does he intercede on their behalf. Rather, the psalmist concludes by expressing desire for God’s justice and retribution in the form of eradication of the unjust. Redemption is denied to this demographic in the psalm, just as a redemptive theme is denied in the sonata. Gailit’s comment about the lack of a “redemptive” secondary theme foreshadowing and fulfilling a “bad ending” therefore stems from the program itself. This is yet more sinister when realizing the intentionality inherent in both text and music.

Reubke demonstrates a more profound understanding and realization of Psalm 94’s text, extending beyond the straightforward “depiction” as described by others’ analysis identifying, relating, and explaining the sonata’s affect with specific musical features. He seems to offer the listener something more akin to a critical reading, one that helps us understand, sympathize with, and participate in the emotions and thoughts of the psalmist. Reubke’s Organ Sonata on Psalm 94 offers a visceral musical experience, whether one is performer or listener. His virtuosic and highly technical writing in combination with a religious program places the sonata in a unique position as it engages performer and audience sonically and theologically as found in few other compositions in the organ repertoire.

Notes

1. Hans van Nieuwkoop, “Interpretation of Reubke’s ‘Sonate der 94 Psalm,’” in Proceedings of the Göteborg International Organ Academy 1994, trans. Rechard van der Hart, ed. Hans Davidsson and Sverker Jullander, 383–402 (Göteborg: Novum Grafiska AB, 1995): 383.

2. In the Latin sense of “holder.”

3. J. Peter Burkholder, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 8th ed. (New York: W. W. Morton, 2010), 606.

4. Daniel W. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke: Life and Works” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1971), 14–15.

5. Nieuwkoop, “Interpretation of Reubke’s ‘Sonate der 94 Psalm,’” 384.

6. Michael Gailit, “Julius Reubke and His Organ Sonata: The 94th Psalm, Part I,” The Diapason, 83, no. 1 (Jan. 1992), 12–14.

7. Ibid., 13.

8. Nieuwkoop, “Interpretation of Reubke’s ‘Sonate der 94 Psalm,’” 384.

9. Ibid., 384.

10. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part I,” 13.

11. Matthew C. Manwarren, “The Influence of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor on Julius Reubke: A Study of Reubke’s Sonata in B-flat Minor for Piano and the Sonata on the Ninety-fourth Psalm for Organ” (DMA diss., University of Cincinnati, 1994), 91.

12. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 101.

13. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 102.

14. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 252.

15. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part II,” 10.

16. Choonhae Kim Lee, “Reubke’s The 94th Psalm: Synthesis of conservative and progressive styles, A lecture recital, Together with three Recitals of Selected works of J. S. Bach, C. Franck, A. Heillerds, M. Reger, L. Sowerby, M. Widor, and Others” (DMA diss., University of North Texas-Denton, 1989), 24.

17. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 250.

18. Nieuwkoop, “Interpretation of Reubke’s ‘Sonate der 94 Psalm,’” 394.

19. Nieuwkoop, “Interpretation of Reubke’s ‘Sonate der 94 Psalm,’” 388.

20. Lee, “Reubke’s The 94th Psalm,” 26.

21. Music scholarship prior to 1971 was not examined as research presented by Chorzempa corrects previous errors and misunderstandings.

22. Richard J. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 113–114.

23. Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60–150: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 241.

24. Clifford, Psalms 73–150, 114.

25. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 241.

26. David M. Howard, Jr., The Structure of Psalms 93–100 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 49.

27. Lee, “Reubke’s The 94th Psalm,” 41.

28. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 224.

29. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part II,” 10.

30. Gailit includes the rising chords in mm. 4–7 in addition to the head motive, creating a “Main Idea.” I do not find this useful in my analysis.

31. Lee, “Reubke’s The 94th Psalm,” 312.

32. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 206.

33. Howard, The Structure of Psalms 93–100, 50.

34. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part IV,” 13.

35. Chorzempa, “Julius Reubke,” 232.

36. Manwarren, “The Influence of Liszt,” 47.

37. Ibid., 67.

38. Manwarren, “The Influence of Liszt,” 80.

39. Lee, “Reubke’s The 94th Psalm,” 42.

40. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part IV,” 14

41. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part III,” 12.

42. Manwarren, “The Influence of Liszt,” 37.

43. Gailit, “Julius Reubke: Part III,” 12.

44. “Melodie sehr hervortretend.”

Bibliography

Extra-musical:

Clifford, Richard J. Psalms 73–150: Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.

Gillingham, Susan. Psalms through the Centuries. Singapore: Blackwell, 2008.

Howard, David M., Jr. “Psalm 94 amongst the Kingship-of Yhwh Psalms.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 61, no. 4 (Oct. 1999): 667–685.

______ . The Structure of Psalms 93–100. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997.

Kraus, Hans-Joachim. Psalms 60–150: A commentary. Translated by Hilton C. Oswald. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989.

Limburg, James. Psalms. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.

Musical:

Chorzempa, Daniel W. “Julius Reubke: Life and Works.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1971.

Gailit, Michael. “Julius Reubke and His Organ Sonata: The 94th Psalm, Part I.” The Diapason, 83, no. 1 (Jan. 1992): 12–14.

______ . “Julius Reubke and His Organ Sonata: The 94th Psalm, Part II.” The Diapason, 83, no. 2 (Feb. 1992): 10–11.

______ . “Julius Reubke and His Organ Sonata: The 94th Psalm, Part III.” The Diapason, 83, no. 3 (March 1992): 12–13.

______ . “Julius Reubke and His Organ Sonata: The 94th Psalm, Part IV.” The Diapason, 83, no. 4 (April 1992): 12–14.

Klotz, Hans, and Daniel Chorzempa. “Reubke.” Grove Music Online, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

Lee, Choonhae Kim. “Reubke’s The 94th Psalm: Synthesis of conservative and progressive styles, A lecture recital, Together with three Recitals of Selected works of J. S. Bach, C. Franck, A Heillerds, M. Reger, L. Sowerby, M. Widor, and Others.” DMA diss., University of North Texas-Denton, 1989.

Manwarren, Matthew C. “The influence of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor on Julius Reubke: A study of Reubke’s Sonata in B-flat Minor for Piano and the Sonata on the Ninety-fourth Psalm for Organ.” DMA diss., University of Cincinnati, 1994.

Nieuwkoop, Hans van. “Interpretation of Reubke’s ‘Sonate der 94 Psalm.’” In Proceedings of the Göteborg International Organ Academy 1994, translated by Rechard van der Hart, edited by Hans Davidsson and Sverker Jullander, 383–402. Göteborg: Novum Grafiska AB, 1995.

Reubke, Julius. Orgelwerke. Edited by Günther Kaunzinger. Vienna: Wiener Urtext Edition, 2004.

Reubke, Julius. Der 94ste Psalm für die Orgel. Edited by Otto Reubke. Leipzig: J. Schuberth & Co., 1871.

David Herman

It was the only paying job I’d ever had.

So said Ralph Vaughan Williams, speaking on the biographical DVD, O Thou Transcendent, as he talked about his first—and only—church organist position.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), arguably the most imaginative, prolific, and engaging British composer of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote so relatively few works for solo organ.¹ Why was this? Other twentieth-century British composers (such as Matthias, Leighton, Wills, Jackson, and, especially, Howells) contributed to the organ’s literature in major ways. Some say Vaughan Williams did not like the organ. It is more accurate, I believe, to suggest he did not enjoy playing the organ. It might have been difficult for him; he was, after all, a large man and had (as noted by relatives speaking on the DVD) long fingers and “enormous” feet! Others suggest his personal brand of Christian agnosticism got in the way of composing solo organ music.² But there are, of course, British organs in not only churches and cathedrals but also in many town halls and other non-religious concert venues. There was even an organ set up in his childhood home in Surrey so that he could practice.

Perhaps Vaughan Williams could not quite sort out how to translate some musical thoughts into organistic musical thoughts. In one of his many profoundly important observations on playing the organ, the late Erik Routley once wrote, “The organist must translate the [hymn] score into organ language [author’s emphasis] when he or she plays.”³

It is true that while many places in Vaughan Williams’s organ works have the ingredients for great musical expression, they are not entirely easy to bring off at the organ, due to matters of fingering, pedaling, and especially of texture. The same could be said of organ music by some other composers (Jehan Alain comes to mind), for which the player’s creative imagination must be called upon to combine with the composer’s notes.

It is the goal of this short work to consider Vaughan Williams’s views about and experiences with the organ and to examine the organ works that he left us. In so doing we will note some of the important influences on his compositional life, including his friendship with Gustav Holst, and especially his long and admiring relationship with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. And, we will see that the organ had an important role in Vaughan Williams’s life from his early teens through his funeral in Westminster Abbey in August 1958.

A final theory offered by some in explaining Vaughan Williams’s relatively small output for the organ is that he simply couldn’t play the organ well.

I cannot tell that I think he is justified in going in for an organist’s career which is his pet idea. He seems to me so hopelessly ‘unhandy’ . . . . I can never trust him to play a simple service for me without some dread at what he may do.

So wrote Alan Gray, Vaughan Williams’s organ teacher at Trinity College.⁴ Vaughan Williams himself, likely with a degree of false modesty, was critical of his own playing. We should take care, however, in believing that he was not a competent organist, as many factors suggest otherwise. To begin with a significant milestone, he studied for and passed (in 1898) the demanding Fellowship exams for the Royal College of Organists (only to resign his membership a few years later). John Francis, Vaughan Williams scholar, author, and vice president/treasurer of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, suggests that the situation above that Alan Gray complained of was due to the fact that Vaughan Williams was “unpredictable rather than technically incompetent.”⁵ Francis continues:

Self-deprecatory remarks by Vaughan Williams in later years have perhaps been taken too often at face value. We have no account of his [organ] playing by anybody who heard him play.

Further, Gray himself followed his lament by adding,

And this he combines with considerable knowledge & taste on organ and musical matters generally.⁶

This essay is not a biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams; fortunately, there are many excellent volumes available, some issued quite recently. Nevertheless, many events in his childhood, youth, and university days are intertwined with a study of his organ music. The reader will note at the end a list of some twenty-four sources consulted. Also particularly useful is the Timeline found on the website of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society: www.rvwsociety.com.

Vaughan Williams’s father was the vicar of Down Ampney (which Vaughan Williams pronounced “Amney”)⁷ in Gloucestershire. He died when his son was only two years old. His mother came from families of means: she was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood (of pottery fame) and the niece of Charles Darwin.⁸ Let Vaughan Williams’s own words summarize the next few years, as spoken in Tony Palmer’s video, O Thou Transcendent:⁹

At age 11 [1883] I was sent to a horrid school at Rottingdean. Three years later I arrived at Charterhouse [1887]. They still sing my hymns there to this day. From Charterhouse I was sent off to the RCM [1890], and there I met a fellow pupil called Gustav Holst.

In his youth Holst had also secured a church position involving considerable responsibility. Vaughan Williams’s niece, recalling these early days with Vaughan Williams, remarked,

We used to laugh about Uncle Ralph but he wasn’t very good at the organ, and yet he was always playing for funerals or weddings or things.¹⁰

While at Charterhouse he was once greatly impressed by a schoolmate’s playing of Bach’s “St. Anne” fugue—a work that would remain a favorite throughout his life and which he himself designated as the postlude for his memorial service in Westminster Abbey.¹¹

During school holidays he practiced diligently, and the family even arranged for an organ to be installed at Leith Hill Place near Dorking, the seventeenth-century house in Surrey, wherein lived Wedgwoods and Darwins and which had become Vaughan Williams’s childhood home. (He later remarked that Dorking was “my home for nearly 40 years.”¹²) He inherited the house from his brother in 1944, whereupon he gave it to Britain’s National Trust.¹³ Breakfast at Leith Hill was at 7:30, and “Mr. Ralph” normally practiced beforehand. “The trouble about the early morning was finding a blower for the organ.”¹⁴ The butler, housemaids, groom, and gardener all avoided him!¹⁵ On Sundays he would practice long after the rest of the household had started to walk the two miles to church, usually arriving just as the service was starting. While a student at Charterhouse he was allowed to practice on the chapel organ. (One wonders what pieces he was working on!) In any case, from an early age Vaughan Williams seemed committed to the organ.

Throughout his childhood Vaughan Williams was steadfast in declaring his desire to be a professional musician. His family agreed, with the provision that he became an organist. (Thoughts were different in the late nineteenth century!) He later wrote:

I believe I should have made quite a decent fiddler but the authorities [!] decided that if I was to take up music at all the violin was too ‘doubtful’ a career and I must seek the safety of the organ stool, a trade for which I was entirely unsuited.¹⁶

It should be noted that when he subsequently left his only church position after only four or so years, it would seem that, although he disliked being an organist, there is no evidence that he disliked the organ.

The Royal College of Music

Vaughan Williams entered the Royal College of Music in 1890, just prior to his eighteenth birthday, and there became a pupil of Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. His family wanted him to commute, which he usually did by rail but occasionally on foot! (Really? London to Leith Hill in Surrey—some thirty miles! Far from the 200 miles Bach supposedly walked from Arnstadt to Lübeck, but . . . ). He often announced his arrival at Leith Hill Place by first having a go at the organ.¹⁷

While studying at the Royal College of Music he also entered Trinity College, Cambridge (1892), and there experienced a “spiritual awakening.”

As my mother insisted that I had a ‘proper’ education, I was sent to Cambridge . . .
what an awakening that was! You might almost say a spiritual awakening. The sense that even if you didn’t believe in God, there was something beyond. Something mysterious.¹⁸

Vaughan Williams would have heard many organ recitals and services at Cambridge and in nearby Ely Cathedral (whose organist then was T. Tertius Nobel, later to become organist at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City). Undergraduates at Trinity College were obliged to attend chapel services, and Vaughan Williams sometimes avoided this duty by retreating to the organ loft. At Cambridge he studied the organ with Alan Gray¹⁹ (organist of Trinity College) and left the university with a B.Mus degree in 1894, returning to the Royal College of Music in 1895. There Vaughan Williams began composition study with Charles Villiers Stanford, with whom he had a famously difficult relationship; Stanford’s comment on Vaughan Williams’s music often consisted only of “All rot, me boy.” Vaughan Williams, however, was in later years to speak warmly of him.

The Church of Saint Barnabas, South Lambeth

Vaughan Williams was appointed organist here in 1895. Since this was to be his first and only church position it seems appropriate to include here some details of the place and his duties. It seems that he held this post until 1899. Vaughan Williams describes his work there, again with some false modesty:

I was appointed to my first and last organ post, at St. Barnabas, South Lambeth. As I already said, I never could play the organ, but this appointment gave me an insight into good and bad church music which stood me in good stead later on. I also had to train the choir and give organ recitals and accompany the services, which gave me some knowledge of music from the performer’s point of view.²¹

This was a large church (originally seating 1,500 people) on Guildford Road in South Lambeth. The parish, as confirmed by the Diocese of Southwark office, exists no more.

The building, however, is still there, having been gutted and refitted as a series of “council flats” (low-income housing). Interestingly, when I visited there, the building manager was astonished to learn that a very famous composer had once served as organist of the church! Vaughan Williams presided over a largish instrument built by Hill and rebuilt by Bishop.²² At the time of his tenure the church supported an ambitious music program with a sizeable budget. The duties, for which Vaughan Williams was paid a salary of £50 per year, were demanding and time consuming.²³ His wife Adeline reported that he worked very hard and practiced on the organ up to five hours per day. For Vaughan Williams the salary was probably incidental to the experience.

He did not need to earn a living, having a healthy but not excessive private income. His work as an organist was for his continuing education, not to keep body and soul together.²⁴

His time at Saint Barnabas was not easy. He told his friend Holst that his choristers were “louts” and the vicar “quite mad.” The vicar insisted on the organist’s taking communion; Vaughan Williams felt that he, as a principled atheist, could not. So he resigned, without any apparent regret.²⁵ First, however, resolving to go abroad to study (with Max Bruch), he requested from the church, and was granted, a leave of absence. It is here that his friend Gustav Holst enters the picture.

Vaughan Williams and Holst

Vaughan Williams met Holst (1874–1934) at the Royal College of Music in 1895, and they remained fast friends for forty years until Holst’s death, going for extended hikes in the countryside and critiquing each other’s compositions. These “field days,” when they played and dissected their respective works were to prove invaluable to them both. Although in his youth Holst also had various tries at being a church organist, he was instead to become a professional trombonist (recommended as a treatment for his asthma).

He [Holst] left the College of Music to abandon the eminently respectable career of an organist . . . and to get at music from the inside as a trombonist in an orchestra. The very worst that a trombonist has to put up with is as nothing compared to what a church organist has to endure.²⁶

In taking leave of the organ bench at Saint Barnabas it was natural for Vaughan Williams to think of his friend Holst. There are somewhat differing accounts of the manner in which he broached the subject with Holst. Heirs and Rebels,²⁷ the collection of letters exchanged between the two composers, establishes some clarity. First, in a letter from Vaughan Williams to Holst, probably July 1897:

I am leaving this damned place [Saint Barnabas] in October and going abroad.

And then, contrary to some accounts in which he offered Holst the job, he in fact inquired about the latter’s interest:

Suppose you were offered it would you consider the matter? The screw [sic!] is £50 [per annum] and the minimum duties . . .

And here he lays out what sounds like a demanding list of tasks, working on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, as well as running the choral society and giving occasional organ recitals. Vaughan Williams later states:

Mind I AM NOT OFFERING IT YOU [VW’s caps] only [sic] if you would like it I will do my best to Back you.

He concludes by asking Holst to deputize for him while he is gone and provides many specific instructions on getting through the service (pitches, cues, etc.). He suggests beginning the morning service with a “short and easy voluntary” and concluding with a “long and difficult voluntary.” He notes about the choir:

Those louts of men will slope in about 8.45 and make you mad—the only ones who can sing will be away.

As a postscript VW adds, “The vicar is quite mad.” (Does any of this sound familiar to us today?) In any event, the position was not taken by Holst but probably by William H. Harris (later a faculty member at the Royal College of Music and organist at Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor).²⁸

Vaughan Williams and Bach

Vaughan Williams showed nearly life-long fondness and admiration for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, whom he placed above all musicians. He regarded the Saint Matthew Passion, a work that he would conduct many times, to be Bach’s greatest achievement. Vaughan Williams had clear and strongly held thoughts on performing Bach’s music. First, he insisted that, for his audiences, the choral works, including the Matthew Passion, be sung in English (a preference shared by the late David Willcocks when he was director of the Bach Choir). He did not have patience with so-called “authentic performance practices” of early music.

Bach, though superficially he may speak the eighteenth-century language, belongs to no school or period.²⁹

Vaughan Williams had a clear and oft-stated aversion to the harpsichord! He used the grand piano as the continuo instrument in his many Bach performances.

The harpsichord, however it may sound in a small room—and to my mind it never [author’s emphasis] has a pleasant sound—in a large concert room sounds just like the ticking of a sewing machine.³⁰

He had similar thoughts about the so-called Baroque organ, which in the 1950s put him distinctly at odds with those planning the new organ for London’s Royal Festival Hall.

By the way, I see there is a movement afoot to substitute the bubble-and-squeak type of instrument for the noble diapason and soft mixtures of our cathedral organs.³¹

It is interesting to note that the opening recital on the Royal Festival Hall organ included Vaughan Williams’s Three Preludes Founded on Welsh Hymn Tunes.

These views on instruments and performing practices may now be considered old-fashioned and out-of-date. They are, nonetheless, the beliefs of a great musician whose musical thoughts and ideas, planted in the mid-Victorian era, grew through more than a half-century of music making. “Vaughan Williams paid tribute to Bach practically, in his non-authentic but deeply moving performances of the major choral works at Dorking.”³² [For the Leith Hill Festivals, founded in 1905, which he conducted from 1905 to 1953.]

The Great War

The effect of war on musicians has been a topic of lengthy and interesting studies. In addition to the English composers who did not return from the First World War, the Second World War took the lives of many composers, including Jehan Alain and Hugo Distler, and affected the lives of countless others. Although space does not permit an excursion on this topic, it seems relative to touch on Vaughan Williams’s army service, which relates to his work as organist and church musician.

Vaughan Williams volunteered for military service in the Royal Army Medical Corps (in 1914, at age 42!) and from May 1915 was stationed at Saffron Walden where he spent considerable time at the organ of the parish church,³³ finding refuge from the horrors of war through playing Bach. At the outbreak of war he was for a time stationed with his unit in Dorking. When there was a death in the company and no organist could be found for the service at Saint Martin’s Church, Vaughan Williams offered to play, providing he could have some volunteers to form a choir. In the same year he was posted to a field ambulance brigade. The following year he was sent to France (at the rank of lieutenant) and was involved in the Battle of the Somme.

Vaughan Williams’s patriotic spirit was evident during the Second World War through his composing of film music to aid the war effort and in many types of volunteer work. For example, he regularly gathered scrap metal. His Thanksgiving for Victory was written and performed in 1945 in celebration of the war’s end.

Vaughan Williams and church music

We have seen that, with the one exception of four or so years at the end of the nineteenth century, Vaughan Williams never functioned as a parish musician. Nonetheless, his many choral works, large (Hodie) and small (O Taste and See), enrich the repertory of all manner of choral organizations, ranging from parish singers to concert choirs. His choral music was written not so much for places (as with Howells’s many settings of the services for various cathedrals and collegiate chapels) but for occasions (coronations, victories, and more).

One of Vaughan Williams’s most monumentally important works in the field of church music was as editor of The English Hymnal. In 1904 a committee headed by the Reverend Percy Dearmer³⁴ set about creating a new hymnbook, in succession to the venerable Hymns Ancient and Modern.³⁵ Vaughan Williams was invited to be the musical editor and, by his own testimony, in the process learned a great deal about music—the good and the bad. He introduced several new tunes of his own creation as well as folk melodies, making it a thoroughly “English” book. He succeeded in purging the new hymnal of many poor Victorian hymn tunes (while retaining the better ones), and those which he was forced to keep he banned to the back of the book in a section he called “The Chamber of Horrors.”

Songs of Praise followed in 1925, once more with Dearmer as general editor and Vaughan Williams, assisted by Martin Shaw, the musical editor. It is said that Vaughan Williams was thrilled by the sound of an enthusiastic congregation singing a great hymn. The same trio of Dearmer, Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw worked together again to produce The Oxford Book of Carols in 1928.

Organist friends of Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams loved the typical cathedral organs of the first half of the twentieth century and liked hearing them played. In return, many cathedral organists enjoyed playing for him—often at night when the building was closed, often playing works of Bach. Such special playings took place often—by Walter Alcock at Salisbury; Herbert Sumsion in Gloucester; William McKie in Westminster Abbey, as they worked together preparing for the 1953 coronation. After Vaughan Williams’s death in 1958, it was decided to place his ashes next to those of Stanford and Purcell in the Abbey.

Other prominent organists who were friends and colleagues, and from whom he no doubt learned much about the instrument: Thomas Armstrong, Ivor Atkins, Harold Darke, Walford Davies, John Dykes Bower, Alan Gray, Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Henry Ley, Christopher Morris, Boris Ord, Cyril Rootham, Martin Shaw, R. R. Terry, and George Thalban-Ball.³⁶

In considering Vaughan Williams and the organ, Relf Clark suggests an interesting comparison with Elgar:³⁷

Early in their careers, both were briefly the organist of a parish church. Neither of them appears to have enjoyed the experience very much. Both wrote for the instrument a handful of not entirely characteristic works. Both made notable use of the organ in a few orchestral scores. And both enjoyed the friendship and support of professional organists.

In a famous letter to The Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1951, Vaughan Williams makes some views clear, beginning with his thoughts on the “bubble and squeak” tones of continental organs.

Is it really proposed that we should abandon in favour of this unpleasant sound the noble diapasons and rich soft ‘mixtures’ of our best church organs?

He particularly admired the organ at Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill (Hill; Rushworth & Dreaper), presided over by his friend Harold Darke, and believed it possessed the ideal English organ tone.

The works for organ

This essay offers not so much analyses but comments on Vaughan Williams’s music. For structural and thematic analyses of the organ works see the excellent articles by Hugh Benham [See “Sources and further reading,” B/2] and Relf Clark [See “Sources and further reading,” C]. It would seem that Vaughan Williams’s major organ works were conceived or written at Saint Mary’s Church, Saffron Walden, where he spent a great deal of time practicing while stationed there in 1915. The late Michael Kennedy, the chief authority on the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, cites the following as “The Organ Works:”

• Three Preludes Founded On Welsh Hymn Tunes, published in 1920 by Stainer & Bell. The second prelude of the set, Rhosymedre, was played at Vaughan Williams’s funeral in 1958. Clark observes that the registrations in the score likely reflected the organ at Trinity College. He further suggests that Vaughan Williams first encountered these tunes when editing The English Hymnal (1906). The preludes are likely among the first works completed after his leaving the army in 1919.³⁸

Bryn Calfaria is at once the most interesting musically and, although fun to play, nonetheless the most challenging to bring off at the organ. It is dramatic and improvisatory; fragments of the tune are given out through a thick and tangled texture. Like many other fine organ works (some of Alain’s come to mind) the piece involves the player as interpreter: adding musical imagination to the text.

Rhosymedre is the most well liked and often played of the three. Simple, quiet, and gently dance-like, it states the tune twice, in a straightforward manner.

Hyfrydol makes a bit of an odd conclusion to the set: a very thick-textured setting of the tune (difficult to play, especially for those with small hands) above a constantly moving pedal part that romps over two octaves (get out your Gleason book to help your feet prepare).

• Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, composed in 1921 for orchestra and first performed in that year at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. The orchestral version was performed first (conducted by the composer). The piece was then arranged for organ between 1921 and 1930 (completed in 1921, revised in 1923, published in 1930). Vaughan Williams told the dedicatee Henry Ley that the work was modeled on Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 546.³⁹ Ley (pronounced “Lee”), then organist at Christ Church, Oxford, commented on the piece’s difficulty. According to Ley, Vaughan Williams said that the work was written in 1915 while he was stationed at Saffron Walden using the organ at Saint Mary’s Church.⁴⁰ The prelude and fugue together occupy some ten minutes.

The Prelude is very well written for the organ. Vaughan Williams was attentive to details of registration (including frequent use of manual 16′s) and manual divisions. The piece has quite a lot of bitonal dissonance. Ley was right: it is not easy play, due to the constantly changing chord colors, large amount of chromaticism, and fast contrapuntal passages. Vaughan Williams employed chords in parallel sweeping lines, often in contrary motion. Thick homophonic passages alternate with longer sections of thinner, busy counterpoint, generating an ABABA design. The quick B sections are terrifically fast at the specified tempo of quarter = 120 beats per minute. Thinking I could not play it that fast, I initially suspected a case of “composer tempo overreach.” David Briggs, however, manages these brilliantly on the two-CD set of the complete organ music (original and transcriptions) of Vaughan Williams, Bursts of Acclamation. (Albion ALBCD021/2, available from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, https://
rvwsociety.com).

The prelude is somewhat impressionistic in sound, using parallelism, tonal vagueness (often resulting from mixed modes), the use of ninth and major-seventh chords, as well as tetra- and pentatonic scales. The result: the prelude clearly sounds like Vaughan Williams. It ends suddenly in C major, a somewhat astonishing tonality not really heard before in the piece.

For someone who was a master at contrapuntal writing and an ardent admirer of Bach, Vaughan Williams seems not to have written very many fugues. This fugue is a good one, a double fugue in fact, whose two subjects are first treated separately and then combined at the climax. It begins not so much in C minor but C Aeolian. The omnipresent triplets against duplets, which get a bit wearing (to this player, at least), is an element in both fugue subjects. Parallel chords in contrary motion, drawn from the prelude, occasionally interrupt the rather dissonant fugal entries.

• Two Organ Preludes, founded on Welsh Folk Songs, published in 1956. These are Romanza (“The White Rock”) and Toccata (“St. David’s Day”). These works are generally regarded as being less than indicative of the composer’s skill and imagination and not very “organistic.”

• In 1964 Oxford University Press published A Vaughan Williams Organ Album (still in print) consisting of transcriptions as well as the two organ preludes of 1956. Various composers, including Henry Ley, have made organ transcriptions of several of Vaughan Williams’s orchestral works.⁴¹

• Kennedy mentions an Organ Overture, from 1890 (the manuscript of which is in the British Library).⁴²

• A Wedding Tune for Anne, 1943 (contained in A Vaughan Williams Organ Album).

• Various incomplete sketches left at the time of his death.

Returning to the opening question

There are two Vaughan Williams organ works of relatively major stature, dating from during and just after the time of the First World War: the preludes on Welsh hymns and the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor. A generation later would come Benjamin Britten’s comparable opus, Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria (1946). They have not much in common, save being one of few examples of their masters’ contributions to the canon of organ music. Both composers wrote for situations or performances: Vaughan Williams for the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, for example; Britten’s was a commission from Saint Matthew’s, Northampton (for which he had earlier written the cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, containing some of the most original and dramatic writing for organ in any choral work). These preludes and fugues, valued for their singular stature, are nonetheless not entirely representative of their composers’ genius, language, invention, and musical imaginations.

Douglas Fairhurst suggests that Vaughan Williams, as a great artist, was more at ease and naturally expressive having a larger canvass for his music. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams commented that, while it was unorthodox to consider canonization for a non-believer, the Christian church owed a great deal to him for his contributions.⁴³ In any case, after his death in 1958 Vaughan Williams’s ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey, appropriately near those of Stanford and Purcell. Of special note: his was the first funeral service held in the Abbey for a commoner since that of Purcell, nearly 300 years earlier.⁴⁴

Supplement I: some other works in which the organ is prominent

The organ has played a central role in many centuries of choral music. Vaughan Williams realized the expressive and dramatic powers of the organ and used them to good effect in some of his orchestral works as well.

• Job, A Masque for Dancing. In Scene VI (the Dance of Job’s Comforters) we see/hear a vivid representation of Satan and his retinue in Hell. Included is a part for “Full Organ with Solo Reeds Coupled,” supplementing the full orchestra.

• A Vision of Aeroplanes⁴⁵ is a substantial late work (1956) for chorus and organ, setting familiar words from the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. It opens with a dramatic, dissonant organ solo that, as with subsequent organ interludes, reminds one of the organ’s use in Howells’s A Sequence for St. Michael, to be written some five years later.

• A Sea Symphony includes passages for organ, more for support, as a member of the orchestra, than for effect.

• However, the dramatic blast of chords occurring about 3/4th through the “Landscape” (Lento) movement in Sinfonia Antarctica, shows the organ as hair-raising, important, and soloistic.

Supplement II: selected choral works in which the organ has a prominent role

[These lists extracted from Neil Butterworth: Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Guide To Research. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990.]

Vexilla Regis (for the Cambridge B.Mus), 1894

Mass (for the Cambridge D.Mus), 1899

Toward the Unknown Region, 1907

Fantasia on Christmas Carols, 1912

Sancta Civitas, 1923–1925

Three Choral Hymns, 1929

Flourish for a Coronation, 1937

Six Choral Songs: To be sung in time of war, 1940

England, My England, 1941

Thanksgiving for Victory (later A Song of Thanksgiving), 1945

Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, 1949

Fantasia (Quasi Variazione) on the “Old 104th Psalm Tune,” 1949

Hodie, 1953–1954

Supplement III: some choral music for the church

O Clap Your Hands, 1920

Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Refuge, 1921

Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (The Village Service), 1925

The Pilgrim Pavement, 1934

O How Amiable, 1934

Festival Te Deum in F, 1937

All Hail the Power (Miles Lane), 1938

Services in D Minor, 1939

Hymn for St. Margaret, 1948

The Old Hundredth Psalm, 1953

Te Deum and Benedictus, 1954

A Vision of Aeroplanes, 1956

Notes

1. In this he does not stand alone, of course. The same could be said of RVW’s best friend, Gustav Holst (who around 1930 started what he hoped would be an organ concerto). We wish Alain and Distler could have had longer lives in which to continue their composing for organ. And, although the organ parts in many of Benjamin Britten’s choral works are tour de forces of rhythm, texture, and organ color, Britten, too, left us a regrettably small number of organ works (which reveal relatively little of his musical genius).

2. Many have pondered this seeming contradiction between belief and the creative settings of sacred texts. One factor: he had, of course, a life-long love affair with Elizabethan English.

3. Church Music and the Christian Faith, by Erik Routley. Carol Stream, Illinois: Agape, 1978, p. 105.

4. Quoted in Aldritt, p. 55.

5. Francis/2. [The booklet pages are not numbered.]

6. RVW/3, p. 42.

7. Palmer.

8. Reference to the famous remark about Darwin is irresistible. As a child, VW asked his mother what was all the fuss about Great-Uncle Charles? She replied that the Bible says the earth was created in six days; Great-Uncle Charles believes it took somewhat longer.

9. Palmer.

10. Ibid.

11. Aldritt, p.30.

12. Palmer.

13. VW/3, p.258.

14. Ibid., p. 28.

15. As stated by J. Ellis Cook, son of the gardener at Leith Hill Place; quoted in Tributes, p. 25.

16. VW1, p. 134.

17. Aldritt, p. 37.

18. Palmer.

19. “Our friendship survived his despair at my playing and I became quite expert at managing the stops at his voluntaries and organ recitals.” And then wrote Alan Gray: “I cannot tell him that I think he is justified in going in for an organist’s career which is his pet idea. He seems to me so hopelessly ‘unhandy.’ I can never trust him to play a simple service for me without some dread as to what he may do.” Aldritt, p. 55. VW clearly achieved significant improvement by 1898, when he passed the F.R.C.O. exams!

20. The British title “organist” usually implies “organist and choirmaster.”

21. VW/1, p. 146.

22. Clark, p. 9.

23. In addition to services, these included four choral rehearsals each week as well as giving occasional organ recitals. Kennedy, p. 41.

24. Heffer, p. 18.

25. Ibid., p. 19.

26. VW/1, p. 71.

27. VW/4, pp. 5–6.

28. F/5, p. 9.

29. VW/1, p. 122.

30. Ibid., p. 123.

31. Ibid.

32. Mellers, p. 158.

33. F/2 (pages unnumbered).

34. Vicar of Saint Mary’s, Primrose Hill, where his organist was Martin Shaw.

35. Hymns Ancient & Modern, first published in 1861, continues to be found, in subsequent editions, in some British church pews today, often next to The English Hymnal.

36. All listed in B/3, Personalia, pp. 315–345.

37. Clark, p. 7.

38. Ibid., p. 10.

39. F/4, p. 8.

40. F/3. p. 16.

41. For details of these, see Randy L. Neighbarger’s, “Organ Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Descriptive List of Original Works and Transcriptions,” The Diapason, October 1991, p. 10.

42. K/2, p. 3.

43. Palmer.

44. Ibid.

33. Written for RVW’s good friend Harold Drake, organist at the Church of Saint Michael’s, Cornhill, the work sets the dramatic account of the whirlwind, cloud, and fire from the book of Ezekiel.

Sources and further reading

A: Aldritt, Keith. Vaughan Williams: Composer, Radical, Patriot—A Biography. Ramsbury, Wiltshire: Robert Hale Books, 2015.

B/1: Barber, Robin. “Vaughan Williams in Hamburg, 1938: A Brush with Nazi Germany.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 66, June 2016.

B/2: Benham, Hugh. “Music for Solo Organ by Ralph Vaughan Williams.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 55, October 2012, 3–8.

B/3: Butterworth, Neil. Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Guide to Research. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990.

C: Clark, Relf. “Vaughan Williams and the Organ: An Anniversary Review.” Organists’ Review, August 2008, 7-15.

F/1: Francis, John. Vice-Chairman of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society (UK) in correspondence with the author.

F/2: Francis, John. Notes in the booklet accompanying Bursts of Acclamation, two CD recordings of organ works by RVW published by Albion Records.

F/3: Francis, John. “Composers of the Great War Revisited.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 65, February 2016, 15–16.

F/4: Francis, John. “Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Organ.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 63, June 2015, 3–11.

F/5: Francis, John. “A Question of Chronology.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue No. 74, February 2019, 9.

H/1: Heffer, Simon. Vaughan Williams. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000.

H/2: Holmes, Paul. Holst; Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers. London: Omnibus Press, 1997.

K/1: Kennedy, Michael. The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964; 2nd edition,1996.

K/2: Kennedy, Michael. A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

M/3: Manning, David, ed. Vaughan Williams on Music. Oxford University Press, 2008.

M: Marshall, Em. Music in the Landscape. London: Robert Hale, 2011.

M/2: Mellers, Wilfrid. Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1989.

N: Neighbarger, Randy L. “Organ Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Descriptive List of Original Works and Transcriptions,” The Diapason, October 1991, 10–11.

T: Tributes to Vaughan Williams: 50 Years On. A reprint of The RCM Magazine, Vol. LV, No. 1, Easter Term 1959.

P: Palmer, Tony. O Thou Transcendent (a video commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s death). Isolde Films, 2007.

VW/1: Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, With Writings on Other Musical Subjects. London: Oxford University Press, 1953.

VW/2: National Music and Other Essays. London: Oxford University Press, 1987.

VW/3: Vaughan Williams, Ursula. R. V. W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964.

VW/4: Heirs and Rebels: Letters written to each other and occasional writings on music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Edited by Ursula Vaughan Williams and Imogen Holst. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Photograph of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Frank Chappelow (used with permission)

Let All the World in Every Corner Sing: The Yale Institute of Sacred Music Celebrates Fifty Years

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) is an interdisciplinary graduate center for the study and practice of sacred music, worship, and the related arts. Its students pursue degrees in choral conducting, organ, and concert voice with the Yale School of Music, or they engage in ministerial or academic studies in liturgy, religion and literature, music, or visual arts with the Yale Divinity School. The ISM is essentially a sequel to the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary (New York City), which lost its funding in the early 1970s and closed its doors. Robert Baker, then organist and dean of the School of Sacred Music at Union, relocated three faculty and one administrator from the Union school to Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, after securing funding from the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller foundation of Columbus, Indiana. This family foundation was headed by Clementine Miller Tangeman, whose late husband was a musicologist at Union, and her brother J. Irwin Miller, who was serving as senior trustee of the Yale Corporation. With its strong programs in divinity and music, Yale was deemed the perfect place to reconstitute a school or institute of sacred music. In 1973 inaugural director Robert Baker, together with chaplain and liturgical scholar Jeffery Rowthorn, musicologist Richard French, and administrator Mina Belle Packer, migrated to New Haven. After a year of intense preparation, the Yale ISM welcomed its first class of students: five in music and five in divinity. In 2024 the ISM celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of that momentous occasion.

The School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary

The roots of the ISM begin with Union Theological Seminary. Music was an important component of the curriculum at Union since its founding in 1836. That this ecumenical Protestant seminary held such value for music and the arts can trace some of its inspiration to Anglican and Roman Catholic instantiations of liturgical renewal stemming from the Oxford and Solemnes movements. Church musicians were regularly appointed to the theological faculty at Union to teach music history, hymnody, and related musical subjects to complement the theological education of seminarians.

In 1928 Clarence Dickinson (who had been teaching music to the seminarians at Union since 1912), together with his wife, Helen Snyder Dickinson, met with seminary president Henry Sloane Coffin to discuss establishing a separate entity at Union: a school of sacred music. This school would specifically train church musicians within the context of the seminary. Since the “joining of music and theology, of divinity students and music students, did not seem at variance with the Seminary’s history,” Union began admitting musicians into the seminary, granting them the degree Master of Sacred Music. One sees similarity of vision with that of the Schola Cantorum in Paris, founded by Dickinson’s teacher, Alexander Guilmant.

Clarence and Helen Dickinson were the quintessential interdisciplinary couple. Clarence was an organist, choir director, composer, and teacher whose profound influence earned him the moniker “Dean of American Church Musicians.” His wife Helen, the first woman to graduate with a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University, was an art and liturgical historian who taught alongside her husband at Union. Together they envisioned a curriculum in which the church musician would acquire not only musical skills, but also the theological and pastoral skills needed to successfully navigate the complex ministry of church music. The Dickinsons also understood the benefits of having musicians and clergy interact with each other at the seminary: “In such an atmosphere, the church musician . . . and the minister meet and train together in much the same way as they will work together in actual parish situations.” Interdisciplinary study and collaboration between clergy and musicians were hallmarks of the School of Sacred Music at Union, and it is upon this foundation that the Yale Institute of Sacred Music was built.

Early years at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music

The 1975 Bulletin of the Yale Divinity School includes a succinct description of the ISM: “The curriculum will lay particular stress upon organ playing, choral conducting, historical aspects of the church’s musical development, the liturgical framework of religious worship of all faiths, and practical musical techniques, and will be of a highly participatory nature.” Three early graduates of the program, however—Steven Roberts, Patricia Wright, and Walden Moore—paint a broader, more colorful picture of the nascent ISM and its early years. Steven Roberts was an organ student in the first class that arrived at the ISM in 1974; he later taught organ at Western Connecticut State University and was music director at Saint Peter Church in Danbury before retiring to Bolivia. Patricia Wright was also an inaugural organ student at the ISM, receiving her Master of Musical Arts degree in 1976 and Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1982. An adjunct organ professor at the University of Toronto, Wright was director of music at Toronto’s Metropolitan United Church, where she played Canada’s largest pipe organ for thirty-five years before retiring in 2022. Walden Moore came to the ISM in 1978. Not long after graduating in 1980, he was appointed organist and choirmaster of Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven. Although Moore retired from Trinity in 2024 after forty years of distinguished service, he and composer/organist Mark Miller continue to teach service playing to organists at the ISM. These three remarkable church musicians share common threads in reminiscing about their time at the ISM in the 1970s: the importance of interdisciplinary study, the emphasis on church music, and the benefits of studying at one of the great research institutions of the world.

Interdisciplinary study in the 1970s primarily involved the study of worship and liturgy. Wright and Roberts both highlight the importance of Jeffery Rowthorn’s liturgy class, Wright going so far as to describe the course as “life changing.” In many ways, it is this study of worship and liturgy—that is, the church at prayer—that unites the musician, seminarian, and scholar. Liturgical studies has become a part of the very DNA of the ISM; it was inherited from the School of Sacred Music at Union, and continues to play a seminal role in the work of the ISM today.

When director Robert Baker brought the ISM to Yale, the School of Music already had an established and prestigious program in organ performance led by university organist Charles Krigbaum. Baker added to the mix an emphasis specifically on training organists for work in the church. Roberts recalls that “Dr. Baker taught me about being a church musician, not just an organist.” Wright remembers Baker teaching conducting from the console. Students were taught the art of leading congregational song and accompanying anthems. Moreover, Baker encouraged students to learn this craft from multiple experts. Moore recalls the director sending him to observe Vernon de Tar on a Sunday morning at Church of the Ascension in New York. Moore was so impressed with this experience that he always welcomed ISM students to observe his program at Trinity.

Yale added a more rigorous academic vision to what had been offered at Union, says Moore, and organists took full advantage of all that Yale had to offer. Roberts took courses on Scarlatti and Couperin with harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick; Wright studied Schenkerian analysis with Allen Forte. Trips to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library were commonplace. With a profusion of courses and resources at their fingertips, organists were able to tailor their education to their specific interests while acquiring a solid grounding in church music. “It was up to us organ students to take advantage of the myriad of opportunities Yale afforded us,” says Wright. The opportunities have only increased over time.

The Institute of Sacred Music today

The ISM has grown exponentially over the past fifty years; the original community of three faculty and ten students now numbers well over a hundred individuals. Successive directors have expanded the program. John Cook (1984–1992) created a robust program in religion and the arts at the ISM, a development that undoubtedly would have delighted Helen Dickinson. Under Margot Fassler (1994–2004), the music program expanded from organ and choral conducting to include a major in early vocal music and oratorio (James Taylor, program coordinator). Current director Martin Jean (2005–) has fostered a fellowship program in which international scholars and practitioners join the ISM community for an academic year to further their work while collaborating with the ISM community. Together with the Divinity School, Jean also launched an interdisciplinary program in Music and the Black Church (Braxton Shelley, program director).

An abundance of courses awaits organ students admitted to the ISM. In addition to weekly instruction in organ performance from Martin Jean and/or James O’Donnell, students are invited to lessons and masterclasses with visiting artists. Church music skills, originally taught by Robert Baker during lessons, now include courses in choral conducting (Felicia Barber), liturgical keyboard skills (Walden Moore and Mark Miller), and improvisation (Jeffrey Brillhart). Musicological study has expanded to include both historical musicology (Markus Rathey) and ethnomusicology (Bo kyung Blenda Im). Offerings in liturgical studies comprise courses in historical and contemporary issues taught by an expanding and increasingly diverse faculty. Students wishing to broaden their knowledge in religion and the arts can take courses in religious poetry, architectural history, and other related arts.

Ten concert and liturgical choirs are supported by the ISM, the newest of which is the Yale Consort, a group of professional vocalists who sing evening liturgies (Choral Evensong or Vespers) in local parishes under the direction of James O’Donnell. Organ students accompany these services, acquiring liturgical service playing skills in a unique pedagogical setting from one of the world’s finest and most recognized church musicians.

International study tours, typically every other year, take the entire ISM student body around the globe to study the ways in which sacred arts are manifested in areas of the world not our own. The organ faculty often extend the study tour for their students, to allow them to visit and play the significant organs of the region.

In recent years the ISM has offered a week-long summer Organ Academy, in which advanced undergraduate organ students study with some of the nation’s top organists. Participating students receive daily lessons and attend workshops and recitals, all while interacting with their peers from around the country.

What began as Robert Baker’s humble continuation of the noble interdisciplinary program at Union has blossomed into an extensive program of sacred music, religion, and the arts at one of the world’s leading research institutions. As the ISM celebrates fifty years at Yale, Robert Baker’s stately anthem on the hymn text “Let all the world in every corner sing” provides an apt motto. The interdisciplinary, ecumenical, and expansive vision of the ISM, shaped by faculty, students, performers, and fellows, is indeed one in which all the world in every corner sings. May this glorious vision continue for many years to come.

Organ professors at Yale, 1973 to the present 

Charles Krigbaum had already been at Yale for fifteen years when the Institute of Sacred Music arrived in 1973. His legacy at Yale includes acquiring the Rudolf von Beckerath organ for Dwight Chapel (1971), premiering the newly discovered Neumeister Chorales of Bach in Battell Chapel (1985), and recording the organ works of Widor and Messiaen on the Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall.

An advocate of the organ reform movement, Krigbaum was well versed in all organ music, his seminars covering composers from Titelouze to Tournemire. He promoted well-roundedness, so that students who came to him with a solid background in the North German Organ School left with an admiration for Widor, and those with knowledge of the Romantic schools left with appreciation for Scheidt.

A student of Clarence Dickinson at the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, Robert Baker was the quintessential church musician. In addition to teaching the standard organ literature, he instructed students in the practical skills of the church musician. Baker loved the Newberry Memorial Organ and enjoyed teaching in the Romantic style. He would tell his students to always include a “gum drop” (something sweet that people will enjoy) in every recital. Baker’s arrival at Yale complemented the organ performance program directed by Charles Krigbaum.

Thomas Murray came to Yale in 1981 from the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Boston. An organ student of Clarence Mader at Occidental College, Murray became one of the most renowned and field-changing organists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is best known for his interpretation and transcriptions of the Romantic repertoire. He has concertized around the globe, and his multiple recordings have earned him universal acclaim.

On the Newberry Organ at Yale, Murray taught students the art of registering exhilarating crescendos and dramatic diminuendos. His transcriptions often required manipulation of two enclosed divisions at the same time to gracefully bring out a melody. The Newberry Organ, however, was not merely a symphonic organ for Murray; his teaching of the other Romantic repertoire, whether Rheinberger or Mendelssohn, was most authoritative. Indeed, he brings integrity to every musical style and period.

Martin Jean joined the Yale faculty in 1997. A self-professed generalist, Jean brought with him particular expertise in the north and central European Protestant organ repertories but also sustained a love for the French symphonists. With an earnest interest in historic performance, Jean led the project with Thomas Murray and Margot Fassler that resulted in the meantone organ (Opus 55) of Taylor & Boody in Marquand Chapel. Jean accrued some formal training in theological studies, which made him a natural partner at the ISM.

James O’Donnell came to Yale in 2022 after a forty-year career leading two of the most prominent London choral foundations. As organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey, he presided over such state occasions as the wedding of Katherine Middleton and Prince William, which was broadcast to millions. One of his final acts in London was to lead the music for the funeral liturgy of Queen Elizabeth II, which 4.6 billion people were said to have heard, comprising arguably the largest single broadcast audience in history for an event featuring classical music. An internationally acclaimed concert artist, O’Donnell is a model for many students at the ISM: organist, conductor, liturgical musician.

The pipe organs at Yale

The Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall ranks among the finest symphonic organs in the world. The original instrument was built by the Hutchings-Votey Organ Company in 1902. Expanded in 1915 by J. W. Steere & Sons, it was rebuilt and expanded again in 1928 by Skinner Organ Company, all through the generosity of the Newberry family. University organist Harry Jepson, who played in the inaugural recital of the original build (it is reported that there were 3,000 people in attendance despite a drenching rainstorm) as well as both rebuilds, curiously programmed Franck’s Pièce Héroïque in all three recitals.

The final Skinner rebuild is a glorious four-manual Romantic organ with 142 stops, 197 ranks, and 12,641 pipes. While Romantic organs fell out of favor in the decades that followed, many such organs falling victim to replacement or alteration, the Newberry Organ remains in its original condition to this day, a stunning instrument lovingly maintained by the A. Thompson-Allen Company. (The Woolsey Hall organ is featured on the cover of the November 2016 issue of The Diapason.)

The 1951 Holtkamp organ in Battell Chapel is a fine example of the mid-twentieth-century Orgelbewegung. The main three-manual transept organ is complemented by a two-manual apse organ (one organ, two consoles). This organ was designed by university organist Luther Noss together with Walter Holtkamp. Yale’s organ curator, Joe Dzeda, recalls that during Sunday services at Battell Chapel, Noss would often play the prelude and postlude from the transept while assistant university organist H. Frank Bozyan would accompany the choir from the apse console. Built on the principles of low wind pressure, balanced registers, and exposed pipework, this three-manual organ has 71 ranks and 3,740 pipes.

In his History of the Yale School of Music, 1855–1970, Noss, who was later dean of the Yale School of Music, wrote: “With the availability of the Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall, an outstanding example of the 19th- and 20th-century ‘romantic design,’ and the classic Holtkamp instrument in Battell Chapel, organ students at Yale would now have the rare and valuable opportunity of studying the organ literature of all periods on the appropriate instrument.” (The Battell Chapel organ is featured on page 1 of the June 1950 issue of The Diapason.)

H. Frank Bozyan was appointed instructor in organ in 1920 to assist Harry Jepson in teaching an organ class that averaged twenty-five students. At the time of his death in 1965, he was university organist and organ instructor emeritus. The three-manual, 54-rank Beckerath in Dwight Hall is named in honor of Bozyan’s forty-five years of dedication to the organ program at Yale. Charles Krigbaum, who followed Bozyan as university organist, had Rudolf von Beckerath design and build this colorful tracker. Notable stops include the Terzian, Trichterregal, and Rankett. Krigbaum adored this organ, presenting a series of five Bach recitals after its installation. Some fourteen years later, on March 21, 1985, Krigbaum, along with nine other organists from Yale and New Haven, performed an all-day Bach marathon to celebrate Bach’s 300th birthday. (The Dwight Chapel organ is featured on page 1 of the December 1971 issue of The Diapason.)

Thomas Murray, Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Organ, likes to speak of Yale’s collection of pipe organs as the “goodly heritage.” The most recent addition to this goodly heritage is the Charles Krigbaum Organ in Marquand Chapel. Martin Jean was the impetus behind this three-manual tracker in meantone temperament built by Taylor & Boody. Modeled on the 1683 Arp Schnitger organ in the St. Jacobi Kirche, Lüdingworth, this instrument is ideal for teaching early organ music. Its seventeenth-century design, however, does not preclude it from playing contemporary organ music; indeed, the ISM commissioned Matthew Suttor to compose a new work, Syntagma, which was premiered by Martin Jean in 2007 as part of its year-long celebration to welcome its newest pipe organ.

For further information

To explore the many opportunities at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, visit ism.yale.edu. For information about the various degree programs, contact admissions manager Loraine Enlow at [email protected]. For information about long- and short-term fellowships,  contact assistant director Eben Graves at [email protected].

—Glen J. Segger, Yale ISM ’95

Lecturer, Yale Divinity School