John Rutter turns 70

Sean Vogt attended Central College, Pella, Iowa, where he was a winner of Central’s Concerto/Aria competition, and named a Cox-Snow distinguished scholar. He also studied in London, serving as assistant organist/choirmaster at St. Cuthbert’s Church in Woodgreen. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in choral conducting from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and Michigan State respectively. While at Michigan State, he was the director of the 100-voice Men’s Glee Club, assistant conductor of the MSU Chorale, artistic director and conductor of the Steiner Chorale—a semi-professional choir based in Lansing—and was music director at St. Jude’s Catholic Church. He was also one of the featured conductors at the Oregon Bach Festival. In addition to degrees in choral conducting, Vogt worked on a doctorate in organ at the University of Iowa, holds a diploma in organ from the Haarlem Internationale Zomeracademie voor Organisten (The Netherlands) and a master’s degree in organ from SMU. He has given solo recitals at the National Cathedral (Washington, D.C.), St. Philip’s Cathedral (Atlanta), and Fourth Presbyterian Church (Chicago), and has performed for the American Guild of Organists’ education video series. Dr. Vogt has served on the faculty for the Leadership Program for Musicians serving small congregations, and as the American Choral Directors Association’s Repertoire and Standards Chair for Music and Worship for the state of Iowa. He is currently Department Chair and Director of Choral Activities at Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota.

Gloria in excelsis deo, et in terra
pax hominibus (“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to all people”), Luke 2:14, was likely the first carol ever heard, sung by the angels over the fields of Bethlehem. It would be more than a millennium before the next documented account of carol singing. In this case, it happened in Greccio, Italy, where St. Francis made the first Christmas crèche (crib) in 1223, in response to the Manichaeism1 of the eleventh and twelfth centuries—recreating the stable, even obtaining an ox and ass. People from around the village began to gather around St. Francis’s biblical re-creation. As a result, the people “poured out their hearts in praises to God; and the friars sang new canticles…”2
The dawn of the Protestant Reformation brought carol singing—amongst a myriad of other activities—to an abrupt halt. The Reformation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resulted in a fragmented church. The Lutherans viewed the feast of Christmas as a popish abuse. Since the Calvinist movement was quite popular, Christmas was consequently unpopular in England. Christmas Day was abolished by Parliament from 1644–1660; The Book of Common Prayer had no seasonal hymns. It was not until the Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms (1700) that interest in carols was rekindled. Only one Christmas hymn was included in the supplement: “While shepherds watched.”

A brief history of the carol
Interestingly, Christmas thrived more in secular society than it did in the church during this time. One of the first examples of music printing in England is an anthology from c.1530 that contained, among other things, carols by Ashwell, Cowper, Gwynneth, and Richard Pygott.3 Carols were primarily used in the home and private chapel. It wasn’t until later that they became a part of the parish church. This is likely why carols from plays (the ‘Coventry’ carol, being one example) and carols for domestic use appear to be in constant use. Two domestic carols from Poor Robin’s Almanac (1700) are as follows:

Now that the time has come wherein
Our Saviour Christ was born,
The larder’s full of beef and pork,
The garner’s filled with corn.4

And we do hope before we part
To taste some of your beer,
Your beer, your beer, your Christmas beer,
That seems to be so strong;
And we do wish that Christmas-tide
Was twenty times as long!5

For England, the eighteenth century was the “Golden Age of Hymnody” under Isaac Watts and the Wesleys. Hymns gained popularity over metrical psalms. The reason for the hymn’s popularity was that the congregation could finally have a participating role in the worship service. Carols became increasingly hymn-like to fit the current trend.
By the nineteenth century, thanks to the efforts of the Methodists a century earlier, carols began finding their way into many ecumenical books like Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), the first universally accepted hymn book of the Anglican Church.6 A renewed interest in the past, coupled with the Oxford Movement,7 provided the opportunity for John Mason Neale, an Anglo-Catholic cleric, to promote the ancient texts and music found in the Piae Cantiones (1582). The Victorian revival of the carol produced numerous new books, some devoted solely to the carol: Some Ancient Christmas Carols (1822), Carols for Christmas-tide (1853–54), and Christmas Carols New and Old (1871) being just a few examples.
From the Piae Cantiones, which itself contained medieval carols, to the Victorian carol books, twentieth-century composers could now build on the carol tradition that dated back hundreds of years. John Mason Neale, in his preface to Carols for Christmas-tide, described the method that twentieth-century English composers would also follow:

It is impossible at one stretch to produce a quantity of new carols, of which words and music shall alike be original. They must be the gradual accumulation of centuries; the offerings of different epochs, of different countries, of different minds, to the same treasury of the Church.8

The notion of carol singing was heightened significantly with the service of Nine Lessons and Carols. Originating at Truro Cathedral, Cornwall, on Christmas Eve (1880), the service retells in scripture and song the Redemption story of Christ—moving from the mystery and wonder of Advent to the miracle and joy of Christ’s birth. The service was modified and introduced by Eric Milner-White, the newly appointed Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, in 1918. It is this modified service that has been adopted by scores of parishes in England and abroad. Since its initial broadcast in 1928, the service of Nine Lessons and Carols has been heard by millions of people all over the world. An order for the service can be found in the back of Oxford’s 100 Carols for Choirs. A look at this book also reveals a multitude of English composers who have made carol arrangements. Among the more well known are Holst, Britten, and Rutter.

Gustav Holst
It was the simplest of compositions by Gustav Holst (1874–1934) that would become one of his best-known: In the Bleak Midwinter (1905). Holst arranged the text by Christina Rosetti (1830–1894) while staying at a cottage9 in the Cotswold village of Cranham; it is also the reason why the tune is entitled Cranham. Just one year later, having gained significant popularity, his carol arrangement appeared in the English Hymnal (1906).
In the Bleak Midwinter is simplistic in that it is set like a standard four-part hymn: regular meter (4/4), homorhythmic, and functionally tonal harmonic motion. The choice of F major links Holst with the past, since F major was a common key in the Renaissance and Baroque eras for themes of a pastoral nature.
One way of preserving several items of importance is to collect them. Choir partbooks and the multiple compilations of carol books have accomplished the art of preservation. Holst did something similar, but on a smaller scale, when he wrote Christmas Day, a choral fantasy on old carols with accompaniment for orchestra or organ.
Dedicated to the music students of Morley College, the work is a compilation of four well-known Christmas carols: “Good Christian Men Rejoice,” “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen,” “Come, Ye Lofty, Come, Ye Lowly,” and “The First Noel.” With the exception of two simultaneous carols occurring at the same time, the rest of the work is homorhythmic throughout.
Much like Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols, this work by Holst opens with a soloist who sets the ambiance as if about to tell a story around a fire. The carols provide the form of the composition. Ascribing numbers to the carols—1) Good Christian Men Rejoice, 2) God Rest You Merry Gentlemen, 3) Come, Ye Lofty, Come, Ye Lowly, 4) The First Noel—the form is 1, 2, 1, 3 and 4, 1, 2 and 4, and 1. True to rondo form, “Good Christian Men Rejoice” always appears in the tonic key, E-flat major. The simultaneous occurrence of two carols also provides unique contrast to the homorhythmic sections. The orchestral accompaniment is equally accessible, having many of the same attributes of the chorus parts, making it appropriate for amateur ensembles.
Like many English composers, Holst was influenced by folksong. In regard to carol settings and collecting them, it was his Four Old English Carols (1907), for mixed voices and piano, that embraced the “tender austerity”10 inherent in the songs of the English countryside. Although inspired by folksong, these tunes were of Holst’s own creation. A Babe Is Born, Now Let Us Sing, Jesu, Thou the Virgin-Born, and The Saviour of the World Is Born make up this mini-collection.
The medieval text Jesu, Thou the Virgin-Born, the third carol from Four Old English Carols, was infused with plainsong and simple polyphony (largely homorhythmic). The use of both plainsong and polyphony in this particular work is not surprising, given the fact that Holst had been spending time copying Victoria and di Lasso motets for St. Paul’s Girls’ School.
As evidenced above, Holst seemed drawn to set multiple carols within one work. This mini-collection of carols is equally true in his Three Carols for unison chorus and ‘ad lib.’ orchestra. Holst was clearly thinking of the symbiotic relationship between music and people with this work. There are scarce examples of a significant choral work with orchestra that includes a unison chorus and an orchestra that can be made up of as many or few instruments as available (‘ad lib.’) and still be a viable work of art. “Holst was a conductor who allowed all genuine amateurs to play in his orchestra ‘if humanly possible’.”11 The three carols include the following: Christmas Song: On This Day, I Saw Three Ships, and Masters in This Hall.
There is one carol by Holst that does not exist in a set: Lullay my Liking for unaccompanied chorus. Like other carols, the text is medieval. Changing meters help accommodate natural text stress. With the exception of the chorus’s fourth verse, the other verses are sung as a solo, and the choir answers with the refrain “Lullay my liking, my dear Son…” This piece is also very accessible for an amateur chorus, as the refrain remains unchanged throughout the work.

Benjamin Britten
It was during the 1942 wartime months of March and April that Britten (1913–1976) wrote, while on board the ship that was taking him from America back home to England, A Ceremony of Carols.12 Scored for treble voices—three parts to be exact—and harp, the work is powerful in its simplicity.
One aspect of simplicity is the accompaniment of a single instrument, the harp. One of the first instruments mentioned in the Bible, the harp has been the symbol of the psalmists, the heavenly host of angels, and serenity. Britten was planning on a harp concerto around this time; harp manuals were just a few of the books he had on his nautical voyage. However, despite the pleasurable sonorities from the harp that audiences have enjoyed for decades, this was not the case initially. “The use of the harp as an accompanying instrument in this context was considered radical at the time of the première.”13
The simplicity is also instantly audible from the first and last movement. Plainsong settings form the musical pillars to the eleven movements. Here, Britten chose Hodie Christus natus est from the Christmas Eve Vespers to serve as a musical processional and recessional. The processional and recessional are both in A major, a key Bach often used for its Trinitarian symbolism in the key signature.
With such careful musical architecture, it is not surprising that the middle movement be solely devoted to the harp. In true pastoral fashion, the rhythm is a compound (12/8) meter. More interesting is the choice of key. Where the traditional pastoral key would be F major, Britten chooses the equidistant enharmonic equivalent, the tri-tone (C-flat major). The piece ends on the dominant F-flat, minus the third—a common medieval device.
A final aspect of simplicity is the choice of voices and the way they are set. The sound of a child’s voice, and their presence on stage, can create a sense of innocence and purity synonymous with simplicity. Musically, Britten was always careful when he wrote for children. Although the music often sounds complex, Britten generally used the technique of canon as a way to produce polyphony. What better way to produce the feeling of timelessness than with canon—where a melody could continue ad infinitum if need be? The most oft-performed extracted movement is This Little Babe, a perfect example of Britten’s canonic writing for children’s voices.

John Rutter
Perhaps the most frequently performed carol arrangements are those of John Rutter. Born in London in 1945, Rutter is arguably the most prolific and published composer of carols in the twentieth century, not only in England but also around the world. In Oxford’s 100 Carols for Choirs, nearly thirty carols are by him. There are simply far too many carols by Rutter to discuss here. However, some examples show his connection to the past while writing in a modern romantic language.
“Joy to the World” is one of the most common carols in the Western hemisphere. Rutter could not have chosen a carol with more links to England’s past than this one. The text is by Isaac Watts (1674–1748) and the original tune by Lowell Mason (1792–1872). Rutter modeled the accompaniment for the carol from the orchestral writing of Handel. Complete with descant, the Handelian orchestration to Lowell Mason’s tune on John Wesley’s text is one of Oxford University Press’s most rented carols during the Christmas season.
Rutter wrote several other carols for chorus with orchestra or organ: Wexford Carol, Jesus Child, Donkey Carol, Angel’s Carol, Nativity Carol, Star Carol, Candlelight Carol, Shepherd’s Pipe Carol, and others. It is arrangements like Candlelight Carol, which can be classified as both a carol and an anthem, that have made Rutter a wealthy man. They contain the qualities necessary for any carol—a verse followed by a refrain, or burden.
In addition, the melodies and their respective accompaniments tend to be very sweet-sounding and melodious. It is this latter trait that has brought Rutter fame and fortune. In this music one can hear the influence of Fauré-like orchestration, Vaughan Williams-inspired melodies, and the often-used flattened seventh that is so common in popular music.
Many of the above-listed carols are Rutter originals. As in Shepherd’s Pipe Carol, for example, both the music and the text are by Rutter. The same is true of Jesus Child, Donkey Carol, Angel’s Carol, Nativity Carol, Star Carol, and Candlelight Carol. Of the composers discussed thus far, none wrote as many original texts and tunes as Rutter. His contributions to the carol genre alone have brought significant attention to the choral world.

Herbert Howells
No discussion of the English carol would seem complete without mentioning A Spotless Rose by Herbert Howells (1892–1983). Herbert Howells wrote the piece,

After idly watching some shunting from the window of a cottage…in Gloucester which overlooked the Midland Railway. In an upstairs room I looked out on iron railings and the main Bristol-Gloucester railway line, with shunting trucks bumping and banging. I wrote it for and dedicated it to my Mother—it always moves me when I hear it, just as if it were written by someone else.14

With its parallel thirds and fourths, the piece evokes a sort of impressionistic quality. The irregular meters (3/4, 7/8, 5/4, 5/8, etc.) give the piece a fluidity of plainsong-like phrases not found in other carols. The fourteenth-century text also provides a subtly respectful timelessness to the piece. A Spotless Rose is mostly in four parts except at cadences where it breaks into five or, in the case of the final cadence, six parts. It is this final cadence that was much beloved by Vaughan Williams and Patrick Hadley. Since the work’s creation (1919), Howells received a postcard every Christmas thereafter from Patrick Hadley that contained the cadence and these words, “Oh Herbert! That cadence!”15

Summary
Holst, Britten, and Rutter represent the carol in their own unique way. Each had a distinct musical vocabulary that can be heard in their music. Some used the traditional approach of setting plainsong to their own time. Others, especially Rutter, have set melodies that are distinctly their own. Nearly every composer, it would seem, has taken a traditional carol and adapted a “modern” accompaniment to the otherwise traditional melody.
In terms of texts, it would be difficult to find an English composer who never set an already established text. From these examples, it is clear that the medieval carol is among the more popular. Rutter, although there are others not listed here, chose to write melodies and accompaniments to his own texts.
Carols functioned as a social outlet, as Poor Robin’s Almanac illustrates. Interestingly enough, although mention is made of Jesus, plenty is also made of food and drink. Like folksong, carols were for the people. It is for this reason that they continued to exist outside church walls.
Carols were also devotional. For those who had their own private chapel, one could find them being sung there. In the parish church, it would take the efforts of the Victorians to regiment them as part of the liturgical service. It would not be until 1918 that the entire world would be affected by the Nine Lessons and Carols service at King’s College, Cambridge, which is perhaps the most influential reason for the popularity of the carol today.
Besides being both social and devotional, carols have served as sparkling gems in choral concerts. Carols are “art music.” Like many things throughout history, it is the way in which something is used that gives it definition. It does not seem out of place when a carol is sung in a secular location or by a secular ensemble. They exist for the betterment of music as a whole. Therefore, in this case the carol would be more closely linked with the social classification. As a result, the carol is one of those enigmatic genres that exist both liturgically and secularly—neither side taking issue with the other.
The main reason why the carol can dually exist is its simplicity. There is nothing to muddy the waters and create controversy, even when the subject matter is based on religious/biblical themes. Composers throughout the twentieth century in England managed to evoke their own voice while remaining true to the inherent simplistic quality of the carol.
Holst’s simplicity came as a result of the element crucial to the carol: the people. He wrote for them. Simple melodies, textures, and accompaniments meant that nearly every amateur could be an integral part of the carol tradition. Through simplicity of text, voicing, and accompaniment, Britten created his own form of simplicity. Rutter’s simplicity is in the way the music sounds. It is so very easy to listen to (the same cannot necessarily be said about singing or playing them!).
Following the Victorian rediscovery (and regimentation) of the English carol dating from the Middle Ages, the carol tradition in England remained strong and thrived under several great composers: Holst, Britten, and Rutter among the more well-known. Through their carols, they presented the carol through use of traditional qualities (plainsong, medieval texts, and the like) while infusing their own musical language, aligning themselves in the great carol tradition. With the carol’s multiple characteristics, it was and remains an enigmatic genre that is social, devotional, and art music, separately and all in one. With the inception of what is perhaps the greatest advocate of the carol, the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, English composers have provided the means for the carol genre to thrive, all over the world, for centuries and millennia to come. ■

Michael Barone is host and producer of American Public Media’s Pipedreams program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2007. Pipedreams can be heard on radio stations across the country, also on XM Satellite Radio Channel 133 and in Hong Kong on Radio Four. Barone is a native of northeastern Pennsylvania, a music history graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, and a nearly 39-year employee of Minnesota Public Radio.

John Weaver, one of the America’s finest concert organists, celebrates his 70th birthday on April 27, 2007. The following interview is offered in honor of this milestone.
Dr. Weaver was director of music at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City from 1970–2005, and served as head of the organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia 1971–2003, and also chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School 1987–2004.
His formal musical studies began at the age of six, and at age 15 he began organ study with Richard Ross and George Markey. His undergraduate study was at the Curtis Institute as a student of Alexander McCurdy, and he earned a Master of Sacred Music degree at Union Theological Seminary. In 1989 John Weaver was honored by the Peabody Conservatory with its Distinguished Alumni Award. He has received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2005 he was named “International Performer of the Year” by the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
In addition to his work at the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, he has taught at Westminster Choir College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Manhattan School of Music. He has written numerous articles for organ and church music magazines and has served as president of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians.
Dr. Weaver has been active as a concert organist since coming under management in 1959. He has played throughout the USA, Canada, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. He has performed on national television and radio network programs in the U.S. and Germany, and has made recordings for Aeolian-Skinner, the Wicks Organ Company, Klais Orgelbau of Germany, a CD on Gothic Records for the Schantz Organ Company, and a recording on the Pro Organo label on the new Reuter organ at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle. His most recent recording, “The Organ and Choral Music of John Weaver,” is available on the JAV label and features his own organ and choral compositions. His published compositions for organ, chorus/organ and flute/organ are widely performed.
He currently lives in Vermont and continues to concertize and lead workshops and masterclasses around the world. The Weavers love to climb the New England mountains, and have a tradition of an annual ascent of Mt. Washington. Marianne is an avid gardener, and John’s hobby is a deep fascination with trains, both model and prototype.
This interview took place July 11, 2005, at the Weaver home in the rolling countryside near West Glover, Vermont.

MICHAEL BARONE: How did John Weaver stumble into the world of the organ?
JOHN WEAVER: We moved away from the little town where I spent the first four and a half years of my life. I have very few recollections of that place, except one of them that’s very strong—the organ at the church where my father was the pastor had a wonderful sound on low E. Something about the 16' stop on that organ resonated in the room in a glorious way, and I fell in love with that. As soon as I learned how to play a few notes on the piano, my favorite thing was to hold down the sustaining pedal and play an arpeggio—slowly at first—and just listen to it ring like an organ. Something in me has always been attracted to that sound.
MB: With whom did you study and how would you characterize those years?
JW: My first organ lessons were with a wonderful organist in Baltimore, Richard Ross. He died at age 39 shortly after having given me a lesson on a Saturday afternoon—just failed to show up the next day at church. Ross was becoming one of the best-known and finest organists in the country. When I first went to him, at the age of 15, instead of auditioning me at the organ, he told me to go up onto the stage of the Peabody concert hall and play for him on the piano. Well, there was a big Steinway up there, but the thing that really interested me was the 4-manual E. M. Skinner. I could hear air escaping from it, and I coveted playing that instrument so badly that I can feel it still today.
Nevertheless, Ross told me that he wanted to hear me play something on the piano. So, I stumbled through my Mozart sonata that was not really very good at that point, and afterward he said to me, “I don’t want you to study organ yet. You need to study at least another year of piano and really work at it very hard.” And then he also said something that I’ve always remembered: “If in the meantime you study organ with anybody else, I will never teach you.”
Well, I took his advice, and I went back to my piano teacher and really did work for a year—then came back the next year and played for Ross again. This time I played the Beethoven “Pathétique,” and I played it pretty well. Ross said, “OK, now you can start studying organ, but you must continue to study piano as well.”
Fortunately I had a very good piano teacher, and I studied with Ross for about a year and a half, until his death. The Peabody Conservatory brought in George Markey as an interim to fill out the rest of that academic year. While I was studying with Markey, at this point as a senior in high school, he said “Where are you going to go to school next year?” I just assumed I would go to Peabody because we lived in Baltimore, and Markey said, “Well, have you considered auditioning for the Curtis Institute of Music?” And I remember asking him, “Where is that?” I was soon to find out a lot about Curtis and also about the great teacher there, Alexander McCurdy. I did audition and was accepted, and had four glorious years in Philadelphia.

MB: McCurdy is something of a legend, and the stories about him are numerous. I expect you have more than a few.
JW: I’ve described him on numerous occasions as an Old Testament figure. He was someone you both loved and feared at the same time—certainly, not one to suffer fools. If you went into a lesson unprepared, you were sure to get a dressing down that would do a drill sergeant credit. But when words of praise came, they were so precious and so rewarding that they could light you up for a whole week. He was a very liberal teacher in that he did not insist on playing any piece of music in any certain way. Within that department at that time we had about six students—there was one student who was very much a disciple of E. Power Biggs, and there were others of us who were much more in the Virgil Fox camp. That was sort of the nature of the department, but McCurdy was as enthusiastic about the fellow who was a Neo-Baroquist as he was about the rest of us. That person, by the way, is Temple Painter, who is one of the leading harpsichordists in the city of Philadelphia and still plays organ as well.

MB: What were McCurdy’s techniques to get the best out of students? What did he create in you that might not have been there before? And then how did you take what you learned from McCurdy and shape that with your own personality?
JW: McCurdy had several ways of getting the best from us. I’ll never forget my first lesson: he assigned a chorale prelude from the Orgelbüchlein, which I had not played, and he said, “Mr. Weaver, I’d like you to play this next week from memory in organ class.” Well, right away it was jump-starting; and seven, eight hours a day of practicing became the norm. At my second lesson, he assigned the Vierne Cantabile, from the second symphony, and said, “I’d like you to play that next week in organ class in front of your peers.” Well, that was really a struggle. And he did that for about three weeks at the beginning of the four years. After that, he never assigned a piece again. But he got me into the habit of learning—I knew he expected that kind of production from week to week.
That’s a Curtis tradition that was started by Lynnwood Farnam, continued by Fernando Germani and by McCurdy, and I believe is still the case—each student comes every week with a new piece memorized to play in class. This could be a little one-page chorale prelude for manuals alone, or it could be a major prelude and fugue, a big romantic work, or a modern work—you could repeat something from previous classes, but you always had to have a new piece also. It got us into the habit of assuming when you started to learn a piece that you were eventually going to play it from memory. There are some pieces that I have never been able to play from memory. I’ve memorized a fair amount of Messiaen, but with more atonal pieces, I find that I am just not comfortable playing without the score.

MB: The challenge for the organist, of course, is that each instrument is different from the next and requires its own learning process. The traveling recitalist comes to a church, gets used to the instrument, gets used to the instrument’s response in the room, and then tries to make music with the repertoire that you’ve brought to town. Perhaps it’s no wonder that fewer organists want to memorize these days, but there’s still something about a performer totally connected to and deeply involved in the music that is missing when a score is being read.
JW: There is always the problem of the page-turner—or, if one turns one’s own pages, that has its risks as well. Page-turners can sometimes pull music down off the rack inadvertently, or pull a page right out of the book, or turn two pages—there are lots of risks. Page-turners also have a tendency sometimes to hum or to tap their foot. I’ve even known some who think it’s safe to step on the pedalboard to reach a page that’s far out of the way—that really does produce a catastrophe.
I guess it doesn’t make a lot of difference if the console is completely hidden. I wouldn’t know if someone was playing from memory or not, but pianists, violinists, singers are expected to walk on stage and play from memory. It’s harder for organists, yes. I like to have 12 to 15 hours at an instrument before I’m ready to play a recital on it. If I had 20 hours it would be better still. If I had 25, I would find a few more things to make that instrument come across in the very best possible way and the music to be the best that I could do. That kind of time is rarely available, but 12 to 15 hours is a norm.

MB: I always get the sense watching you that you really enjoy playing. Now is this actually true or are you just a very good actor?
JW: If it looks like I’m having fun, I’m glad for that because in a way, I am. I also am constantly aware of the pitfalls—how many things might happen that you don’t want to happen and sometimes do. But I do enjoy playing. I love playing recitals, though it scares me, and five minutes before the recital I ask myself “Why did I ever agree to do this?” But once I start playing, why, that departs and I really do settle down and enjoy what I love about the music that I play—hoping that people will catch something of what I’m feeling about that music and my devotion to it.

MB: How did you, a former student at the Curtis Institute, come to be the head of the organ department at Curtis?
JW: One fine day Alexander McCurdy called me up and said, “Mr. Weaver, I’m going to retire from the Curtis Institute, and Rudolph Serkin would like to meet with you and see if you might be an appropriate successor.” (Rudolph Serkin at that point being the director of the Curtis Institute.) Needless to say, I went down to Philadelphia and met with Serkin, and he suggested that I play a recital in Curtis Hall—it was never called an audition recital, but I think they wanted me to clear that hurdle before giving me a green light. Curtis Hall is one of the hardest places to play. It is totally dry acoustically, with a 118-rank Aeolian-Skinner in a room that seats about 200 people—probably more pipes per person than any place else in the world. But it’s an instrument that can, if one works with it, do remarkable things. So I did play the recital and did get the job, and was there very happily for many years. I started in 1971 and retired in 2003—32 years.

MB: How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?
JW: I’ve tried to follow the McCurdy mold. When I was at Curtis we continued the tradition of the organ class—memorization and new pieces each week. I also tried to not impose my own interpretation of any given piece upon the students that I was fortunate enough to teach, both at Curtis and at Juilliard. I do believe that everyone should somehow sound like themselves, that there is some part of themselves and their own musical personality that will affect the way that they perform any piece.
I’ve had students who were extremely flamboyant and almost overdone. I’ve tried to curb that a little bit sometimes, but I certainly don’t want to squelch the enthusiasm and the very strong personal interpretations that a student like that can bring. Sometimes I find a student’s playing to be too conservative, just dull note pushing, and then we talk a lot about the music and about its nature—its liveliness or passiveness or serenity or agitation—trying to have the student project something in the music other than just the notes on the page.

MB: Who were some of your outstanding recent students?
JW: Well, without naming any priority, certainly Paul Jacobs, who succeeded me at Juilliard; Alan Morrison, who succeeded me at the Curtis Institute; Diane Meredith Belcher, who’s on the faculty at Westminster Choir College; Ken Cowan, who is on the faculty of Westminster Choir College and is now the head of the organ department there—and a whole host of others. Those are four that are under management, nationally known, and do a great deal of playing—I’m very proud of them indeed.

MB: How did you come to be at Madison Avenue Presbyterian? What are the different demands, delights, and challenges of being a church musician as opposed to being a fancy-free artist in the world of recitals?
JW: For eleven years, I was at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York. While there, my wife and I started the Bach cantata series that continues to this day, and we really made that church known for performances of the music of Bach. In 1970, I knew that the position at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church was vacant. It never occurred to me to apply for it. But one day, a gentleman came into the church office unannounced, no appointment, and asked to see me. When we met he said, “We,” meaning the search committee at Madison Avenue, “were hoping that you would apply.”
Well, having the door opened by him at that point, I decided to follow through with it, and I did so with a great deal of doubt because I had grown up in a Presbyterian church, where the din of the congregational chatter before the service completely drowned out anything that could possibly be done on the organ. And I had the impression that Presbyterians generally did not place a very high value on the quality of the worship, the sermon being the centerpiece of the whole Sunday morning experience. But I met with the committee at Madison Avenue and particularly with their pastor David H.C. Reed, in whom I found a Presbyterian with wonderfully high regard for worship and high expectations for the quality of worship. My fears were allayed. I did go to Madison Avenue in the fall of 1970, and immediately we began changing the nature of the worship service there. The congregation began to sing a great deal more—four hymns every Sunday, plus they began to sing the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.
That progressed until the congregation tended to draw people who liked to sing, and so the congregational singing was strong and is to this day. David Reed was followed by Dr. Fred Anderson, who was a musician—his first degree was as a music major—and a great lover of music and of worship. Now one could go to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and the worship experience would be very ecumenical. You would not be certain if you were in a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or an Episcopal church. It’s very much Presbyterian, but at the same time very ecumenical and very rich liturgically.
MB: Have you considered yourself an organist who composes or have you always thought of yourself as a composer who had to make his way as an organist and a teacher?
JW: Very definitely the former: I’m an organist first and foremost, but I’m an organist who loves to compose. Many composers who try to write for the organ don’t understand the instrument and therefore write pieces that get a premiere performance and are never heard again. In fact, the organ literature that does become mainstream is almost always written by people who play the instrument. One great exception is Paul Hindemith, but he of course was able to write for any instrument, and he always did his research and knew what he was doing—he wrote three wonderful organ sonatas and a concerto.
Years ago, when I was in my early teens, I started going to Vermont in the summer to a music camp for theory. No lessons were taught on piano or clarinet or violin or anything like that. There was no applied music—it was all theory. We had counterpoint classes, form and analysis, and harmony and such, and the result of it was that the students of the camp composed because we had been given the tools of the musical language.
So I’ve gone to Vermont every summer of my life to compose, and now that I live here I hope to do a lot more composing. I’ve also composed primarily things that I myself could use. Although everything I’ve composed for the last 15 years has been on commission, I’ve always written something that I could use in my own work, either in recitals or in church services. I’ve written a lot of choral music and a lot of organ solo pieces and also several pieces for organ and flute because my wife is a very good flutist and we like to be able to play those pieces together.

MB: Do you have any favorites among the pieces that you’ve written? JW: My favorites tend to be the ones that have been performed a great deal. The Passacaglia on a Theme of Dunstable—it may not in fact be by Dunstable, but it was thought to be by him, namely the tune Deo gratias—was composed for the 25th anniversary of the state trumpets at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and I played the premiere performance there. It’s a set of variations in passacaglia form, and one variation is designated for that magnificent state trumpet at the west end of that huge cathedral. Nevertheless, the piece works on instruments that don’t have that particular kind of stop available. The piece has been recorded by a number of people and has been played all over the world—that gives me a lot of satisfaction. It’s also one of my favorite pieces.

MB: How many compositions have you’ve written up to this point?
JW: I’ve probably composed about 20 choral pieces, that is, anthem-length pieces. I’ve also composed all four gospel settings of the Passion story, and probably a dozen solo organ pieces.

MB: And other than the commission that you just received on Friday, the future is an open book at this point?
JW: Yes, actually that’s the only commission I have in hand right now, but I am trusting that others will come in. And if they don’t I’ll write anyhow.

MB: Someone wanting to commission you would do what? Do you have a website?
JW: .

MB: Do you enjoy the process of recording? You’ve made some notable recordings. It ends up sounding as though you’re having a good time, even if you might not be.
JW: No, I hate recording. [laughter] There’s something a little bit antiseptic about it. First of all, one does not get that sense of response from a live audience. You simply do the playing, and then there are people sitting around with scores and dials and they’re wanting to do this over again and that over again—or a siren will go off or there’ll be a clap of thunder; things like that can make it very frustrating. When they listen to a recording, people have no idea about how long it takes to make that, because street noises or other interruptions can destroy what otherwise would have been a perfect take. It’s very hard.

MB: You’ve been performing in Portland on the Kotzschmar organ—well, you must have been a boy in knee pants when you started.
JW: It was in 1956—at the end of my first year as a student at the Curtis Institute of Music—when I first played the instrument that had been given to the city of Portland by Cyrus H. K. Curtis, whose daughter was the founder of the Curtis Institute. So there was a wonderful connection there. And I’ve been back every year since. [Editor’s note: Dr. Weaver played his 50th recital on the Kotzschmar in August 2005.]

MB: The organ is a challenge as a musical instrument—it is this device with so many opportunities for color and dynamics, and yet is an incredibly complex machine, which even at its best seems to be intractable. Is this something that organists don’t think about, they just do? Or is making music on the organ as difficult as it might appear to a layman, seeing all of those controls to be manipulated and the separation between the console and the pipework and all of that?
JW: Michael, I believe every instrument has its challenges. For pianists, the way in which the key is struck is so critical, and a pianist’s hands must cover a large key compass, whereas organs have a shorter keyboard, 61 notes as opposed to 88; and organ music tends to stay in the middle register, so, in a way, that’s much easier. Violinists have tiny strings and a fingerboard, and it amazes me that they can play a C major scale. Violin virtuosos are just astonishing. The challenges of the organ are mastering the pedals, mastering console technique that enables you to draw upon the resources of the instrument—and then also to a very great extent, the imagination that you can bring to bear with so many different colors available. Each person will choose sounds to produce the right color, if I might use that word, for the passage that they’re playing in a way that pianists and violinists couldn’t possibly do.

MB: In the 21st century young organists face not only sustaining the presence of their instrument but actually rebuilding an audience for organ music. I see this as a real challenge.
JW: Yes, it is. Every now and then though, one sees very hopeful signs—one of those being the recent installation within the last five to ten years of a great many organs in the concert halls of this country—something that’s fairly standard in Europe; for instance, the renovation of the wonderful Ernest Skinner organ in Severance Hall in Cleveland, a new organ in Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the restoration of the organ in Boston Symphony Hall, the new Disney Hall instrument in Los Angeles. One could go on and on and name any number of places where new instruments have been installed or old instruments have been restored—to me this suggests that the organ will take, again, its place as a concert instrument and not just a liturgical instrument.
On the other hand, it must be said that concert halls are often not the most perfect, acoustically, for organs. Great organ music was written to sound its best in places with fairly substantial reverberation, such as a large stone church. So concert hall organs are wonderful, and I’m glad they’re being built, and they enable us to do organ concerti and sometimes organ solo recitals. But the church, particularly one that has a long reverberation period, is still where the organ seems most at home.

MB: How would you compare the scene for organs and organists in your day? Was this a peak of energy with that marvelous—some would say divisive, some would say energy producing—polarity between the historicists and E. Power Biggs on one side, and the theatricalists and Virgil Fox on the other? We don’t have quite that type of energy today. I daresay the man in the street, if asked to name a concert organist today, might be hard pressed, whereas back in the ’60s and early ’70s, the names of Biggs and Fox were very much in the public ear.
JW: Biggs and Fox, both of them very talented, extraordinary musicians, had a great advantage of working right at the time that the LP recording was becoming common in the American home. RCA Victor and Columbia were the big producers of LP recordings at the beginning of that time in the early ’50s. And there was Biggs and there was Fox, and these two polarities were represented in the recording industry—that did a great deal for the visibility of the organ and the popularity of organ music.

MB: It could be argued that now is both the best of times and the worst of times—there are far more organ recordings available, representing a much larger panoply of artistry and instruments both new built and historic, marvelously represented—and yet there is so much that the focus is lost to some degree.
JW: Yes, I think that’s right. When it was Biggs and Fox, you could expect to find their names in the crossword puzzle. No organist today has that kind of visibility. Another name that was right up there at the top was Marcel Dupré because of his extraordinary playing and also the fact that he had been the teacher of so many organists in the U.S. through the Fulbright program. There isn’t anyone who has really achieved that kind of star status in the organ world, which is not to say that there aren’t a great many wonderfully talented and brilliant performers. Maybe there are just too many.

MB: Yes, it could be argued that the performance quality of the 21st century is higher than it’s ever been. Do you think that it’s possible with so much talent around for someone to distinguish themselves or do they have to almost jump beyond mere artistry and do something odd in order to be discovered? JW: Perhaps it would be best to think in terms of naming names. The name of Cameron Carpenter who studied with me at Juilliard comes to mind. Cameron is extraordinarily flamboyant, both in dress and personality and in playing. His playing annoys the purists terribly, but certain people are simply mesmerized by his performances. And he is a genius—there’s no question about that. Another name that gets a great deal of visibility these days is the young German organist, Felix Hell, whom I also had the honor to teach. Felix, at first, was famous because he was so very young when he was playing recitals all over the world, literally, as he still does. But now he is taking his place among the more mature artists of the younger generation and plays very well indeed—and has made numerous recordings. So these two are a little bit like Biggs and Fox—Felix tends to be a fairly conservative player, not extremely so but more middle of the road, whereas Cameron is way out there in show biz land.

MB: Presuming it’s something different from that marvelous, resonate low “E” that had you mesmerized as a child, when you play and hear the organ, what sort of thoughts go through your mind? What is it about the instrument that still captures your heart and soul?
JW: Who could not be seduced by the instrument itself? Just the mechanics of it and this great collection of pipes, some of them enormous, much larger than most people realize, and most of them very much smaller. I think when a layman sees the inside of a pipe organ for the first time, they’re always astonished—even if it’s a small instrument, it looks amazingly big and complex. And the large ones, of course, are simply mind-boggling. So there’s something about the instrument: its bigness, its history. When I’m playing an organ, if I’m playing Bach I’m thinking about instruments I’ve played that Bach may have played—there’s this great history and great repertoire, and frankly the sound of the instrument has always seduced me.

MB: How would you characterize your playing style?
JW: Probably other people should do that. I would say that I am in the middle someplace. I probably am a little bit on the extrovert side of dead center, but I also am not one to completely disregard the knowledge that musicologists have brought to us of performance practice, of historic instruments—but sometimes I will just say “this piece that I’m playing on this particular instrument cannot be played in a good, authentic, 18th-century style.” Something must be done to make the music and the organ come together in a way that is satisfying and gratifying. And sometimes that means just throwing the rulebook out the window.

MB: Did you set out with goals? You probably didn’t begin your study imagining you would go to Curtis, and then after having studied at Curtis, you probably hadn’t thought that you might end up teaching there, or at Juilliard for that matter. You’re like a natural surfer who has swum out into the sea and found a fantastic wave and you’ve been able to ride that wave through your career with skill, with accomplishment, certainly with a sense of pride. How do you look back at your career from this point?
JW: I would have to say that as with many careers, a great deal of it has to do with being at the right place at the right time, but also having ability to do the job that is required. I’ve often thought that if I had been five years younger, the Curtis Institute would not have thought me an appropriate age to head that organ department. If I had been five years older, it’s likely that they would have chosen someone else from among Alexander McCurdy’s students.

MB: You have moved on from three prestigious positions and you’ve now settled in what used to be your summer home in rural Vermont, up in the marvelous rolling countryside in the northeast corner of the state. Somehow, I can’t think of you as retiring. What projects have you set for yourself for the future?
JW: The mail recently brought a new commission for a new organ piece—that’ll be one of the things. I do want to continue to compose. I’m playing a number of recitals this year including two that I’m extraordinarily excited about, because I will be reunited with the instruments that I had my first lessons on. One of them, the Peabody concert hall Skinner, was put in storage for about 40 years, and then set up at a big Roman Catholic Church in Princeton, New Jersey. A week later I will be playing a recital on the wonderful Skinner organ at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, where my teacher Richard Ross was the organist, and before him, Virgil Fox—a beautiful, perfectly untouched Ernest Skinner that really is quite a marvelous instrument. And I’m playing some other recitals and some dedications around the country.

MB: So, you keep your organ shoes polished and ready to go?
JW: Indeed so.
[Editor’s note: Dr. Weaver has announced that the 2007–2008 concert season will be his last for regular concert activity.]

MB: Tell me about some of your memories from being “on the road.”
JW: The wonderful occasions that I love to think back upon are two recitals that I played—one in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, for a national convention of the American Guild of Organists, in which everything went the way I wanted it to. I loved the instrument, the audience was wonderful, the acoustic was great. And the other one was the Mormon Tabernacle—a recital I played when the Tabernacle was having a three-day symposium to celebrate the restoration of the organ there. Everything was fun, and the instrument was to die for, and of course the acoustics are world famous.

MB: Tell me about your railroad fascination. Where did you grow up? Mauch Chunk?
JW: Yes, Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, is a little town north of Allentown and Bethlehem, about 20 miles up into the Pocono Mountains—it’s in a ravine cut by the Lehigh River, and there was a railroad on both sides of the river that ran through the town. The town is now called Jim Thore, but its historic name of Mauch Chunk has great importance. Anyhow, it was a railroad town, and being in this mountain ravine, day or night you could hear the sound of a steam locomotive. The bells and the whistles and the smell of coal smoke were a constant feature of that place. I can remember standing by the railroad track and holding my father’s hand and counting the number of cars on a freight train as it rolled through. It became a part of my life—a very strong hobby, and we are seated right now in the midst of a model railroad that I’m creating that is 26 by 36 feet and has 390 feet of track in it. This is my last model railroad—if I live to 150 I might actually finish it.

MB: And you had one in your office at Madison Avenue Presbyterian.
JW: Yes, unfortunately when I retired from Madison Avenue that meant the end of that railroad, but all of those trains and the structures and the little people and the automobiles and all that are now a part of the railroad here.

MB: I’m sure the compositions that you created for Madison Avenue Presbyterian remain in the files there for the choirs to sing. It’s too bad that your railroad installation in the office wasn’t kept by your replacement.
JW: In the search for my replacement, a fondness for railroads had nothing whatsoever to do with their choice. So.

MB: What of your siblings and in what directions did they go?
JW: My older brother took piano lessons from the same teacher that I had, and he could see that I was making faster progress, so he switched to violin and became in his high school years a reasonably good violinist—he played second chair, first violin in what was at that time a very good high school orchestra. My younger brother is a wonderful tenor, does a lot of solo work in the western Massachusetts area, teaches mathematics at Mount Holyoke College, has an abiding passion for music and even does some composing—he has been published.

MB: And your parents’ musical backgrounds?
JW: Both of my parents played the piano, my father better than my mother. My father had also studied organ for a year or two, and could get through a hymn—knew how to use the pedals a little bit for hymn playing. My mother was an artist, did a master’s at Carnegie Tech and then studied for a year at the Sorbonne—the walls of our houses are covered with paintings that she did over the years.

MB: With your family’s church affiliation and your being a church organist, it’s maybe not surprising that some of the most lovely works that you’ve created have been fantasies on or settings of hymn tunes. You certainly do respond to the church’s song in your compositions.
JW: Well, I love playing hymns. I especially love hymns when a congregation is stirred to sing really well—that’s a wonderful experience. Very often the reason for writing pieces based on hymns has to do with the nature of a commission that I have received. In fact, almost always when I have composed a piece based upon a hymn tune, it’s been requested by the person who commissioned the composition.

MB: Did your parents live to see the honor accorded their son who went on to great things?
JW: My father was very gratified to live to see my appointment to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. It was one year later that I was appointed to Curtis. By that time, my mother had died, and my father was not at all well. My father did not particularly encourage my desire to be a professional organist. He, as a minister of a medium-size church, saw that as being at best a part-time job, which would mean having to do something else on the side, and that’s always a difficult life. I think he was very happy to see that I had the security of a full-time church position that was also in a church of great prominence within the denomination.

Michael Barone adds: When I first heard John Weaver play, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for the AGO convention in 1984, I was charmed by his physical presence (Mr. Clean in a dinner jacket!), awed by his control of the instrument (and himself), and beguiled by his musicianship. Subsequent convergences have confirmed my first impressions. John is a modest man of major accomplishments, a patrician artist and persuasive virtuoso who has fostered and encouraged the talents and individuality of an inspiring array of youngsters. He is a musician whose own playing leaves a lasting memory, and whose compositions touch the soul. He’s a guy I’ve been both honored and delighted to know. Happy birthday, John!

John Weaver will be the featured guest/topic of a Pipedreams broadcast (#0717) during the week of April 23, 2007, which will remain available 24/7 in an online audio “programs” archive at www.pipedreams.org.

Michael Barone's John Weaver interview

See the interview here.

Other items of interest:

John Weaver honored by Juilliard

John Weaver honored by Union Theological Seminary

Honoring John Weaver's 80th birthday

John Weaver dies at age 83

John Weaver honored by long time representative

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Each one of us surely has an individual concept of sin, generally from direct personal experience: I sometimes describe it as “anything that is more fun for the doer than for someone else!” Defining commission might be slightly more difficult. For the purpose of this narrative, I choose to define the term as “the solicitation of a new musical composition, whether or not money is involved.” In my nearly half-century of commissioning new music, much of the time I have been the recipient of extraordinary generosity: most of my composers have donated their music, while others have asked for only modest fees.

Calvin Hampton

The first time I solicited a composer to write something specifically for me was in 1957, when I asked my Oberlin classmate and fellow organ major Calvin Hampton if he would provide an offertory for a summer service at First Presbyterian Church, Canton, Ohio--my first major (if only month-long) church “gig.” His response came in the form of a lovely three-minute aria, titled Consonance. While not a major work by this important composer, it does illustrate the advantage of choosing the right friends; namely, ones who go on to become well-known, thereby considerably increasing the value of their manuscripts. Equally useful, subsequently such friendships may provide one with material for articles about “what they were like before they became well-known”--a perfectly good academic topic indeed, if one includes the proper footnotes.

Neely Bruce

In the fall of 1960 I moved to Rochester, New York to begin graduate study. There I met the next of my composer friends. On my second day at the Eastman School, as I waited in the fourth floor corridor to meet with my advisor Dr. M. Alfred Bichsel, head of the newly established Church Music Department, a striking younger student walked up to me and asked, with lilting southern inflection, if I could tell him where to find Dr. Bitch-el. I was captivated by Neely Bruce, a freshman who had come to audition for the Polyphonic Choir, a new choral ensemble established for this sacred music area. As Dr. Bichsel’s rehearsal assistant, I saw young Bruce regularly. We became friends, and Neely, a precociously talented pianist and composer, eventually supplied the concluding piece for my 1961 master’s recital Organ Compositions Based on the Kyrie fons bonitatis.

When he left Eastman after that single year to attend the University of Alabama, I was devastated. I wrote sad poems (a la Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dame Edith Sitwell)--filled with lines such as:

Our night for love designed, speeds silent on and on,

And time, which only breathless seconds since had seemed so kind,

Is gone.

Neely didn’t answer letters or write poetry. He did, however, write music, and some months later I received the penciled score of his first work for harpsichord--Nine Variations on an Original Theme. The piece held such emotional intensity for me that it was not until 1979 that I copied it out while on my first sabbatical leave, prepared it for performance, and then gave the premiere the following year. Whatever one may think now of such a youthful endeavor, the work certainly is well-crafted for harpsichord--one result of Neely’s frequent opportunities for experimenting with the instrument’s textures at the small two-manual Sperrhake harpsichord, shoehorned into the third-floor dormer room I rented at one of Rochester’s “organ student houses,” 20 Sibley Place.

During my seven years of teaching in Virginia I played a fair amount of 20th-century harpsichord music: Ned Rorem’s Lovers, the Falla Concerto, the Martinu Sonate. But there I was primarily a choral conductor and organist (and enjoyed premiering several new works written for choir or organ by St. Paul’s College colleague Walter Skolnik and New York composer Robin Escovado). My only harpsichord “commission” of this period went to the builder William Dowd, along with almost half a year’s salary, for my first truly first-rate harpsichord, one of his early Blanchet-inspired instruments, delivered to Norfolk in January 1969.

Rudy Shackelford

Shortly after moving to Dallas in 1970, an unanticipated package reached me at Southern Methodist University. This contained Virginia composer Rudy Shackelford’s piece Le Tombeau de Stravinsky. Since my SMU colleague Robert Anderson was a devoted exponent of wild and wooly new organ music, it seemed fitting for me to take on Rudy’s serialism. I also liked the work, and included it on my first Musical Heritage Society disc, The Harpsichord Now and Then, released in 1975.

Ross Lee Finney

Another challenging work, more thorny than I usually care to learn, is Ross Lee Finney’s unique essay for the instrument, Hexachord for Harpsichord. In four movements (Aria, Stomp, Ornaments, Fantasy), the 12-minute work was commissioned for me to play at a Hartt School of Music contemporary keyboard music festival scheduled for June 1984. Drawing few registrants, the event was cancelled, so I gave the first performance that fall in Dallas, not playing it in the composer’s presence until a concert in Hartford the following year.

Working with Finney was quite daunting. A most distinguished and individual composer, he basically disregarded my several suggestions as to texture, and provided me with a nearly-illegible score, the successful realization of which absolutely required a damper pedal, unfortunately not available on most harpsichords. I struggled to read his chicken scratches and tried to parlay his ideas into something that made sense on a plucked instrument. Eventually I wrote him a detailed letter filled with questions and suggestions for possible improvements, not knowing if I would be ignored, despised, or possibly even removed from the project.

Instead, this generous and intelligent man wrote back that it was all very helpful--reminding him of the careful editing his Piano Sonata had received years earlier from its first performer, John Kirkpatrick. For Hexachord’s last movement, the most unplayable of the four, he promised a revision, although current work on his opera left him little time. When the promised revision arrived, it was accompanied by this note: 

I don’t know whether this is better or worse. I’ve spent the vacation week on it and now am so loaded with commitments that it’s the best I can hope for. . . . I tied my right leg to the piano stool so I hope I didn’t think in terms of pedal. . .

Responding to a tape of the first performance, Finney wrote,

I like immensely your performance . . . It seems to me that you have done a wonderful job of projecting the music and it sounds better to me than I feared it would. I like all of your revisions, particularly the ending of the last movement, and I will see that your corrections get in the copy with Peters so that when it is published, they will be included. . .

Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. The printed score from Peters does not present the preferred ending, but rather a more-protracted, rather anemic one.

Herbert Howells

A major commission from the 1970s was Herbert Howells’ Dallas Canticles, the unique Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis composed for St. Luke’s Church, where I was organist and choirmaster from 1971 until 1980. This lovely work was first performed there in 1975. The dedication and copyright of the work, basically a gift from the generous English composer, led to some early adventures in music publishing and the nurturing of  professional and personal connections with the American composer, church musician, and publisher Gerald Near.

Gerald Near

Undoubtedly the most ambitious of my commissions thus far is Near’s three-movement Concerto for Harpsichord, composed for performance at the 1980 national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Minneapolis. Gerald, a Minnesota resident at that time, had not been included in the group of composers invited to provide new works for the gathering, so I asked him to write a concerted work for my program in Orchestra Hall. He took on the project, and, most generously, accepted no fee for this major work.

The performance was carefully prepared, with the composer conducting a superb string ensemble comprising players from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The work was greeted with warm applause and considerable affection by the large crowd of attendees. And why not? The piece is very appealing, with memorable melodies, lush harmonies, and an appropriately balanced scoring. Critic Byron Belt, writing in The American Organist for August 1980, concentrated his remarks on the plethora of new scores heard during the convention. Of the Near he commented “ . . . its obvious popular appeal was instantly audible in a splendid performance by Larry Palmer (to whom it is dedicated) and the orchestra under the composer.” In The Diapason (August 1980), Marilou Kratzenstein opined, “The Distler [Allegro Spirituoso e Scherzando] and Near works are both very idiomatic to the medium. By skillful orchestration, the harpsichord part comes through clearly even when accompanied by a 22-piece string orchestra. Both of these attractive works were given clean, crisp performances. It was a pleasure to be present at the premiere of the Gerald Near concerto, which will likely become a favorite with harpsichordists in the near-future.” A future “for the Near” has taken considerably longer than anticipated, but, at last, Gerald’s lovely work had its second performance in October 2004, this time with the SMU Meadows Symphony under Paul Phillips.

Ever peripatetic, Near lived in Dallas for a time, where he held several church positions. When I needed a piece to conclude a program given in conjunction with the Dallas Museum of Art’s major show of El Greco paintings I turned again to Gerald. He spent some time at my house trying various ideas on the harpsichord. The resulting Triptych, completed in 1982, was first played in public at the Museum in January 1983. It certainly achieved its requisite Spanish flavor in the concluding movement, a brilliant neo-Scarlattian romp. Before that Final there are two lovely miniatures--an impressionistic Carillon, and the lyrically Italianate Siciliano (inspired by the composer’s love interest at the time). All three movements are idiomatically conceived for the instrument.

Vincent Persichetti

Dear Vincent Persichetti responded to questions concerning his then-unpublished 1951 Harpsichord Sonata by sending a copy of the manuscript. I loved the work immediately, and still find this first essay for harpsichord to be Vincent’s most arresting and accessible work for the instrument! By the time I was engaged to play a harpsichord recital for the Philadelphia gathering of the International Congress of Organists in 1977, his Sonata was available in printed form. The concert was scheduled to be played in historic St. George’s Methodist Church in the central city, so Persichetti, who lived in Philadelphia, planned to attend, but heavy rain that afternoon delayed him. (It also knocked out power to many venues, causing consternation, and cancellation, for some concurrent organ recitals.) The composer arrived at the church just as my program ended, so I offered to play his Sonata for him after the audience departed. I did so, he made cogent comments (some of them concerned keeping steady tempi and he advised playing the work exactly as he had notated it), and he autographed my printed score (“Thanks to Larry Palmer for a meaningful Benjamin Franklin performance in my own city.” [The reference to Franklin refers to the bridge bearing his name. St. George’s is adjacent to the bridge access road, allowing considerable noise every few minutes from public transit vehicles.]). Then he drove me back to the hotel.

Thus began an acquaintance, nurtured by a Sonata commission from me, occasional piquant notes, or the random, unexpected telephone call from the composer. When he published an incorrect wording of the dedication in my commissioned Sonata VI (crediting Southern Methodist University with payment of the commission fee, an error that I feared might cause problems with some of my academic colleagues), Vincent assured me that he would think of some way to make it up to me. A year or so later, he telephoned with the news that his latest piece, Serenade Number 15, would bear the inscription “Commissioned by Larry Palmer.” “To make it official,” he said, “send me a check for one dollar.” Because this was a time of high inflation, I sent him a check for two dollars, eliciting the response, “How wonderful--this is the first time I’ve ever had a commission doubled!”

It was even more gratifying for me, since I gained two works from a significant composer for a total fee of $502.

Persichetti’s concise Serenade consists of five short movements: the moody Prelude, marked desolato; a quicker Episode; the even faster Bagatelle; a gentle, cantabile Arioso; and the closing Capriccio--made up of a delicato single line, in the texture of a Bach composition for solo stringed instrument. The seven-minute work reminds that, while Persichetti was a distinguished academic, whose mind espoused complicated serial techniques, his soul remained true to the song-inspired expressivity of his Italian heritage.

Rudy Davenport

The 1990s saw a veritable spate of harpsichord writing by Texas-based composer Rudy Davenport. First introduced to me in 1992 through Fr. Tom Goodwin, a harpsichord-playing Catholic padre on Padre Island, Rudy provided me with nine unique works for solo harpsichord or small ensemble with harpsichord. His first national exposure came at the combined 1998 Southeastern and Midwestern Historical Keyboard Societies’ meeting in Texas, where a program devoted to Davenport’s harpsichord writing concluded with the haunting Songs of the Bride, the composer’s settings of texts from The Song of Solomon for solo soprano, oboe, and harpsichord. (Six of these works comprise the program for the compact disc Music of Rudy Davenport, issued by Limited Editions Recordings in 2003.)

Some of my most enjoyable concert experiences have been those involving making music with others, and none has offered more delight than performing music for multiple harpsichords (usually two prove difficult enough to nudge into some semblance of compatible tunings). A Davenport work of exceptional charm, but one not graced with a completely written-out score, is his At Play with Giles Farnaby, a set of seven variations and a fugal finale on Farnaby’s For Two Virginals (Number 55 in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book). Rudy heard this short piece when it was performed by colleague Barbara Baird and me during our 1994 summer harpsichord workshop in New Mexico. His jaunty take on it, as well as the delightful and crafty contrapuntal ending have been an audience favorite on the two occasions we played together. This duo harpsichord work was an especially intensive collaboration, in its creation as well as its performance. Since the divergence of our ways after 1999, I have missed such exuberant music making, as well as the active involvement in fine polishing and editing Rudy’s engaging works.

Glenn Spring

But that void has been filled by the reintroduction into my artistic life of the Denver-based composer Glenn Spring, first encountered at the 1990 Alienor Harpsichord Composition competition finals in Augusta, Georgia. There his William Dowd: His Bleu was one of the winning works. Eventually Spring’s composition was published in The Diapason’s February 1992 tribute to the eminent harpsichord maker. A short while later Glenn’s son Brian moved to Dallas, giving us yet another reason to “stay in touch.” After Brian’s departure from this part of Texas there were years of diminishing communication, a situation suddenly reversed by Brian’s “out-of-the-blue” early morning call from Korea, where he was employed as an English teacher. He must have told his father about this call, for shortly thereafter I received a copy of a 1999 keyboard work, Glenn’s seven-movement charmer Trifles (now a prize winner in the most recent Alienor Competition, 2004). I liked it, learned it, and began playing it in recitals here and there.

A special confluence of friends occurred when Charles and Susan Mize, having contracted for Richard Kingston’s opus 300 Millennium harpsichord, a spectacular nine-foot Franco-Flemish instrument with contemporary brushed steel stand and computer-compatible music desk, asked me to play the Washington, D.C. dedication concert on the instrument. I thought it desirable that Charles should play on his new instrument at that event, so I commissioned Glenn Spring to write a work for two players at one instrument. The pleasing result was Suite 3-D, comprising Denver Rocket, Big D[allas] Blues, and D C Steamroller (honoring the three D’s of our home cities), interspersed with two quiet, lyrical movements (Romance, Night Thoughts). For a second performance on my home concert series (Limited Editions), long-time colleague Charles Brown brought both his musical and histrionic skills to the work, serving as collaborative harpsichordist as well as creator and reader of witty verses before each movement.

The most recent sins of commission, from the year 2004, have included another ensemble work by Spring, Images from Wallace Stevens for Violin and Harpsichord, first performed February 13 in celebration of the 20th season of house concerts (program number 60). Meeting Glenn’s wife, violinist Kathleen Spring, at the Mize harpsichord dedication program, I invited her to join me in this anniversary season, and inquired about possible violin and harpsichord pieces from her husband’s catalog. He responded by offering to compose something for us. Consisting of seven movements, the Images are inspired by short bits of Stevens’ poetry, so much of which evokes musical connections.

Tim Broege

Tim Broege’s score Songs Without Words Set Number Seven, composed for the SMU Wind Ensemble’s conductor Jack Delaney and me, had its first performance by the group and mezzo-soprano Virginia Dupuy on April 16, 2004. The most notable and prominent part for harpsichord is Broege’s reworking of the famous Lachrimae Pavan by John Dowland as each section is presented by the solo harpsichord, then reprised by the full ensemble, heard as the fifth of the work’s nine movements. (This setting may be extracted and played as a solo harpsichord composition).

Simon Sargon

My 35th annual faculty recital at SMU in September 2004 featured the first public hearing of composition professor Simon Sargon’s harpsichord reworking  of Dos Prados (“From the Meadows”), another lovely pavan, originally conceived for the single-manual 1762 Iberian organ in SMU’s Meadows Museum, and now, with a few changes of texture and tessitura, effectively adapted for solo harpsichord.

Involving composers in our performing lives is one of the most rewarding actions we can take. For us it provides the excitement of adding new pieces to our repertoire; for them, it is an affirmation of their necessary contributions to the ongoing vitality of our art; and perhaps not least, this is one pleasure that is neither life-threatening nor fattening! I urge each of you to join me in committing some sins of commission in the near future.

Sources

Calvin Hampton: Consonance remains unpublished; however an increasing number of his organ works are available from  Wayne Leupold Editions (available through ECS Publishing).

Neely Bruce: Nine Variations is available from <[email protected]> (or 212/875-7011).

Rudy Shackelford: Tombeau de Stravinsky is published by Joseph Boonin (B.319).

Recording: The Harpsichord Now and Then (Larry Palmer, harpsichord), MHS LP 3222.

Ross Lee Finney: Hexachord for Harpsichord is published by Edition Peters (67034).

Herbert Howells: Dallas Canticles, Aureole Editions (available from MorningStar Music).

For additional information about the commissioning of this work, see my article “Herbert Howells and the Dallas Canticles” in The American Organist, October 1992, pp. 60-62.

Gerald Near: Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings 1980 (Aureole Editions 149; performance materials on rental only) and Triptych for Harpsichord (Aureole Editions 02) are both available from MorningStar Music.

Recording (Triptych): 20th Century Harpsichord Music, vol. 2 (Barbara Harbach, harpsichord), Gasparo GSCD-266.

Vincent Persichetti: his nine Harpsichord Sonatas and Serenade 15, are published by Elkan-Vogel.

For additional information see my article “Vincent Persichetti: A Love for the harpsichord (Some Words to Mark his 70th Birthday)” in The Diapason, June 1985, p. 8.

Rudy Davenport: Scores are available from the composer at <www.RudyDavenport. com>.

For additional information, see my article “Rudy Davenport’s Harpsichord Music of the 1990s” in The Diapason, April 2004, p. 18.

Recording: Music of Rudy Davenport (Patti Spain, soprano; Stewart Williams, oboe; Larry Palmer, harpsichord), Limited Editions Recordings LER 9904.

Glenn Spring: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Tim Broege: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Simon Sargon: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Expensive as national conventions of the American Guild of Organists have become, it was still a bargain to be in eastern Minnesota enjoying an extensive program of musical treasures from France, England, and Germany, without the financial challenges of elevated euros or precious pounds. Add the Twin Cities advantages of near-perfect cool summer weather, many events scheduled within walking distance of the central city hotels, and a well-organized charter bus transport package available for travel to sites farther away, for further incentives to participate in the morning-to-midnight musical marathon detailed in the lavish (and heavy) 252-page program book.
Each of the nearly 1800 registrants attending the AGO’s 49th biennial gathering (held June 22–28 in Minneapolis and St. Paul) will have unique impressions of the meeting, based not only on individual tastes, but also on which of the presentations were heard. Many recitals and all workshops were offered concurrently. This report describes what I chose to experience, in this, my 50th year of attending such national meetings. Comments about several events I did not attend are treated as “convention buzz.”

From France: Messiaen Plus
France was represented with quite a lot of music by Olivier Messiaen: it is, after all, the centennial year of his birth. The first organ recital heard on Monday, the first full day of the convention, was played by Stephen Tharp, who gave a masterful account of Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecôte as the climax of his all-French program on the bright and forthright 2001 Lively-Fulcher organ in St. Olaf Catholic Church. Tharp’s brilliant playing recalled again the visceral shock of this music when first encountered at Oberlin, presented by Fenner Douglass as very recent music. Even now it is not possible to hear the most evocative and accessible movement of the cycle, the Communion Les Oiseaux et les Sources (The Birds and the Springs) without remembering Douglass’s trenchant, if acidic, review of a 1972 performance in a non-reverberant Dallas sanctuary: “The birds . . . called out weakly as they died on the branch, and the drops of water more resembled curds of old cottage cheese.”1
I suspect the late, lamented Professor Douglass would have been happier with Tharp’s account! This time the birds sang jubilantly and chirped ecstatically before flying off into the stratosphere, while the springs burbled gently as they descended to subterranean depths at the piece’s ending.
Following a riveting performance of the final movement from Widor’s Symphonie Romane and works by Jeanne Demessieux, the Mass served as a bracing reminder of just how much hearing a dose of Messiaen’s organ music helps to balance some of the pabulum so often served up as modern church music. But it does remain difficult listening, and oft times more fun to play than to hear. Tellingly, a perusal of the entire convention program revealed no other organ works by Messiaen listed for performance during the entire week! For National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance [NYACOP] contestants, for the Rising Stars organists, as well as for more established recitalists, the French notes of choice were most often penned by Langlais, Dupré, or Naji Hakim.

. . . at Orchestra Hall
Kudos to the convention program committee for making certain that nearly everyone got some exposure to works by one of the 20th century’s most eminent masters when the entire convention attended the most discussed program at Orchestra Hall on Tuesday evening. All-Messiaen, the concert contained no organ music at all (not surprising, since there is no organ in this major symphonic space); live music was followed by a post-concert showing of Paul Festa’s mesmerizing 52-minute documentary film, Apparition of the Eternal Church.
For more than two hours the assembled church musicians and organists heard readings of three poems by the composer’s mother Cécile Sauvage and secular pieces by Messiaen, performed almost exclusively by women. These were all early works: Theme and Variations for violin and piano, 1932; voice (selections from Poèmes pour Mi, (1936); three of the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus for solo piano (1944); and, best of all, two of the eight movements from the composer’s chamber masterwork, Quartet for the End of Time (1940–41)—Abyss of the Birds for solo clarinet; and the final eight-minute transcendent Praise to the Immortality of Jesus, for violin and piano—performed with maximum expressivity and intensity by clarinetist Jennifer Gerth and violinist Stephanie Arado with Judy Lin, piano.
Programming the 35-minute closing piece, Festival of Beautiful Waters (1937) for a sextet of Ondes Martenots, provided a probable once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear this work expertly played by L’Ensemble d’Ondes Martenot de Montréal. The delicate electronic instruments, their sounds inspired by the changing frequencies of radio dials, produced tones somewhat like Benjamin Franklin’s eerie glass harmonicas (tuned water goblets). Capable of playing only single notes, the keyboard instruments have considerable dynamic and touch-sensitive possibilities. The audience dwindled markedly as the clock approached ten, and passed it: sad, because the short explanation and demonstration of the Ondes Martenots following the performance was both instructive and charming.
I missed the first part of the subsequent film showing while attending a posh Eastman Organ Department reception in the Orchestra Hall Green Room, an especially celebratory event since the first place NYACOP winner this year was current Eastman doctoral student Michael Unger. Something—perhaps as simple as not wishing to walk back alone to my hotel—led me to look in on the film in progress. I stood, totally engrossed, for the remaining third (arriving just as the late harpsichordist Albert Fuller described an early life-changing experience in the low C pipe of Washington Cathedral’s Skinner pipe organ. The unexpected sight and story grabbed my attention!).
A program book disclaimer read, “Please note that the film deals frankly with sex and violence in explicit language . . . However, DVDs are available for sale [at an Exhibition booth], should curiosity get the better of you afterwards.” The filmmaker, Paul Festa, writing of his creation, explained that Messiaen regarded one of four tragedies, or “dramas” of his life experience, to have been that “he was a religious composer writing, for the most part, for nonbelievers.” This film concerns “what . . . the nonbelievers see when they hear his music,” in this case the 1931 organ composition Apparition of the Eternal Church. The film shows responses to Messiaen’s creation by 31 individuals. They range from Yale professor Harold Bloom and filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell to fringe culture and drag figures, as well as Fuller and the composer Richard Felciano, a student of the French composer.2

. . . and in workshops
Messiaen’s music was the featured topic for a pedagogy track during the workshops, a new concept implemented to replace the pre-convention pedagogy workshops of previous years. Charles Tompkins filled in as master teacher for the indisposed Clyde Holloway. His “Windows on Lessons” featured students Brent te Velde (Trinity University), Tyrell Lundman (University of Montana, Missoula), Julie Howell, and Erin MacGowman Moore (both from the University of Iowa).
Youthful scholarship was represented in two juried papers, selected by the AGO Committee on Continuing Professional Education (COPE). I attended the presentation by Yale student Christopher White—“Creating a Narrative in Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur”—in which he assigned certain extra-musical associations to various individual pitches and chords (an example: E=Jesus, E Major=Jesus on earth, as human) and made a convincing case for such an analysis of Messiaen’s nine-movement Christmas cycle. The University of Iowa’s David Crean followed with a complex discussion of “Messiaen’s Sixty-four Durations” (from the extraordinarily complex Livre d’Orgue, possibly the composer’s most abstract organ work).
Indiana University faculty member Christopher Young gave a workshop on “Understanding the Theory Behind the Art in Messiaen’s Organ Works.” However, it may have been the quiet mysticism of the Frenchman’s lush Communion motet O Sacrum Convivium, sung as the opening work at Thursday’s finale concert, that made the most friends for Messiaen’s elusive art.
A fully subscribed workshop (on a non-Messiaen topic) was musicologist John Near’s “The Essence of Widor’s Teaching: Interpretive Maxims.” I arrived slightly after the appointed starting time, learning later that I had missed a brief recorded example of Widor’s voice! Pithy exhortations from the composer—“Let’s learn to breathe,” “Derive tempo from the space in which you are performing,” and an oft-repeated “Slow down” (borne out by each subsequent lowering of the metronomic indications for the composer’s signature work, the Symphonie V Toccata) as well as his instruction to “Respect the work, not the performer”—all ring as true today as they did in the previous century! Dr. Near, currently working on a biography of Widor to complement his stellar editions of the composer’s organ symphonies, continues to do service to our profession by reminding us of the basic root values underpinning the French symphonic tradition. Nearly all the auditors stayed on to engage in further questions and comments.

A French recitalist
French organist Marie-Bernadette Duforcet Hakim’s opening de Grigny Ave Maris Stella was more effective than a jolt of double-strength espresso as a wake-up aid for her early-morning recital on the House of Hope’s large C. B. Fisk magnum opus. This organ’s Grands jeux, weighty, noble, and thrilling, provided a filling mass of sound in this Presbyterian Gothic edifice, which unfortunately lacks an extra five seconds of reverberation that would allow the loud and brilliant organ to bloom. That virtual coffee may have had an adverse effect on the recitalist, resulting in an overly brisk tempo for Franck’s Pièce Héroïque (after all the composer did mark it Allegro maestoso). Mme Hakim’s nuanced performance was stylistic, but any majesty was decidedly of the jet age. It seemed perverse, as well, to be hearing this beloved Romantic work on such unforgiving sounds, when directly before us stood the sanctuary’s other organ, an 1878 instrument by Merklin, created in exactly the same year and country as Franck’s composition.
Like most fine instruments, the Fisk took on the character of its player and served her especially well in her own composition Vent Oblique. After hearing an abundance of bright upperwork, it gave pleasant aural relief to encounter warm and lovely 8-foot sounds in the mid section of Jean Langlais’ Jésus, mon Sauveur béni, based on a hymn popular in his native Brittany. The program concluded with a set of well-crafted short variations on Pange lingua by husband Naji Hakim, and an improvisation that seemed to be based on the Ave Maris, but with an unexpected appearance, near the end, of the hymn tune Ein’ feste Burg as an offering, apparently, to the many Lutherans who call Minnesota their home.

English visitors
From St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, the choir of men and boys was in residence for three convention appearances, repeating a highly successful visit to the 1980 national meeting in the Twin Cities. Mark Williams, a former assistant sub-organist and director of music at the Cathedral School, stood in as the choir’s conductor, replacing an indisposed Andrew Carwood. Visually arresting in black cassocks, with bright red stoles and music folders, all seemed in good shape chorally (save for the occasional trumpeting tenor), and organist Tom Winpenny displayed his sensitive musicianship over and over again, both as soloist and impeccable choir accompanist.
The Monday evening concert took place in the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul—the most apt of venues, a magnificent 1907 Wren-like domed structure blessed with ample reverberation. Major offerings of early English motets by Weelkes, Peter Phillips, Orlando Gibbons, and the Mass for Five Voices by William Byrd were interspersed with organ works: Fantasia in G by Byrd, and the Fantasia of Foure Parts from Parthenia by Orlando Gibbons. The cross relations in these Tudor pieces sounded forth pungently from the three-stop portative organ in the chancel.
Employing the cathedral’s gallery and chancel organs for maximum surround sound, the second part of the concert offered Judith Bingham’s Cloth’d in Holy Robes (2005), an entirely engrossing and striking setting of a poem by Edward Taylor, with spinning wheel-evoking accompaniment supporting both the opening lines and subsequent allegorical references to clothing in this beautiful text. Anthems by Gerald Hendrie (Ave Verum Corpus, sung by the men of the choir) and Stephen Paulus (Arise, My Love) were separated by Paulus’s challenging Toccata for Organ, given an absolutely flawless and viscerally exciting performance by young Mr. Winpenny, who then returned to his accompanying duties for Benjamin Britten’s cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, a performance made particularly memorable by the male treble soloists in the fourth and fifth sections “For I will consider my cat Geoffrey” and “For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.”
Is there anything more sublime in Britten’s choral output than the quiet “Hallelujah” that ends this memorable setting of Christopher Smart’s idiosyncratic poetry? It provided an inspired conclusion to an enchanting concert.
Back on the other side of the river, the choir sang both Matins and Evensong in the Minneapolis Basilica of St. Mary. The afternoon program on Tuesday gave us baroque music of John Blow (Cornet Voluntary in D Minor) and his prize pupil Henry Purcell (Hear My Prayer, the anthem Jehova Quam Multi Sunt Hostes Mei, and Evening Service in G Minor) with responses by Thomas Tomkins. The hymn, Bishop Thomas Ken’s 1695 text “All praise to Thee, my God, this night” was sung to the familiar Tallis’ Canon tune (for one retrospect of the Renaissance), the psalm to a 20th-century chant by Walford Davies, and the closing voluntary brought us back to the baroque with music by Purcell’s Danish contemporary, Dieterich Buxtehude, his oft-played Praeludium in G Minor, BuxWV 149, in a stylish, virtuoso performance by Winpenny. The basilica was overflowing with rapt conventioneers who had arrived by bus before our walking group made it to the church. Seated in a far rear pew that was probably in another zip code, it was difficult to hear much except a soothing, but beautiful, wash of reverberated sound.
Matins, early the next day, was quite another matter (conventioneers like to party till the wee hours, so there were only a third as many worshipping at this morning service). I found a pew with good sight lines only several rows back from the chancel; both sound and repertory were worth the early rising! A full program of British 20th-century cathedral music, from Herbert Howells’s Rhapsody in D-flat, complete with a seamless decrescendo at its conclusion; Edward Bairstow’s I Sat Down Under His Shadow, the ecstasy of Bernard Rose’s responses, one of William Walton’s most inspired canticle settings, Jubilate Deo for double chorus (who would not be joyful in the Lord with such music as this?), and the somewhat less inspired, but serviceable Te Deum in G of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord was the anthem, its extended organ introduction beautifully rendered, and the service concluded with organist Winpenny’s brilliant traversal of Fernando Germani’s Toccata, opus 12. That evening the Londoners flew back to Britain, these three convention appearances their sole purpose for the trip across the Atlantic.

Otherworldly Holst
What a gem of an organist is Peter Sykes! Perhaps even better, what a fine musician, whatever instrument he plays or music he chooses to program!3 His own transcription of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets was beautifully made and impeccably realized in a Wednesday recital at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. From the lowest rumblings of the opening movement (Mars, the Bringer of War), with growling reeds and a flawless quick crescendo, to the final Vox Humana above strings (a most satisfactory sound for evoking Holst’s wordless female chorus) as Neptune, the Mystic subsided in echoes of the spheres, Sykes missed nary a nuance with his clever use of organs fore and aft (perhaps most fittingly in Mercury, the Winged Messenger). The Welte/Möller/Gould and Sons organ was an apt partner (continuing this convention’s fine record for careful pairing of instruments and players), but then, how could one go wrong with an instrument possessing a Divine Inspiration stop?4

A welcome German recitalist and some Americans playing
German music
My second recital of the convention introduced an outstanding German artist new to me, Elke Voelker (whose U.S. connections include study with Wolfgang Rübsam at the University of Chicago). Ms. Voelker is the first to record the complete organ works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert. Her program in the Basilica of St. Mary utilized a good-sounding four-manual Wicks organ (1949), greatly enhanced by the spacious six-second reverberation of this domed, marble-interior building, America’s first basilica (according to pew cards in the church). Two major works by Karg-Elert, his Symphonic Chorale: Ach, bleib’ mit deiner Gnade and the monumental Passacaglia (55 Variations) and Fugue on BACH, opus 150, were flanked by Wagner’s Festival Music from Die Meistersinger and Bach’s celebrated Air from Suite in D, BWV 1068, both in arrangements by Karg-Elert: so, in essence an entire program of music by the German impressionist.
Elke Voelker made convincing music from these many notes, handling the organ with panache and ease, managing her own page turns, and giving us many thrilling moments. The opening Wagner brought chills to the spine at the pedal entrances in familiar music from the opera, and the addition of the Chamade Trumpet to the final chord was a capping effect. The Symphonic Chorale, one of the composer’s better-known works, is of a reasonable length and very appealing. As for the lengthy BACH work, I am pleased to have heard it, but would not seek to repeat the experience in the near future.
Further musical highlights of this “German theme” were provided by the sterling American artist Stewart Wayne Foster (winner of the first Dallas International Organ Competition). I have never heard Foster play poorly, and his concert for the convention (heard in its second iteration on Thursday) was another example of superb results made possible by his carefully calibrated articulation always employed in service to the musical line. Foster’s attention to each voice, including the bass, reflects his extensive background in harpsichord continuo playing.
Partnered with the 2004 Glatter-Götz/Rosales two-manual organ of 50 stops, Foster showed what a small number of keyboards could be made to accomplish with skillful use of a sequencer coupled to an ear for color and utilizing stops in various octaves. Karg-Elert again, this time three of his lovely Pastels from the Lake of Constance (not necessarily what one would expect to be played so idiomatically on a two-manual tracker instrument) were prefaced by an attention-gripping reading of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 535, and a rhythmically infectious treatment of Buxtehude’s baroque dance-based chorale fantasy on Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, brightened with two appearances of the Zimbelstern, the second as counterpart to an improvised cadenza leading into the final cadence.
Three North American works, especially Rising Sun by Brian Sawyers, provided the “wow” factor for this program. It was good also to hear two of Samuel Adler’s Windsongs, and the winning work of the AGO organ composition competition, Canadian Rachel Laurin’s Prelude and Fugue in F Minor, with its reminiscence of the Dupré opus 7 work in the same key. Foster’s overall theme for the program, “Atmospheres: A Prayer for the Environment,” demonstrated his special affinity for unusual thematic programming. The organ, with both 16-foot flues and reeds on all divisions, and added 102⁄3 flue and 32-foot reed in the pedal, possessed a gravitas that was welcome in the favorable acoustic of Augustana Lutheran Church, St. Paul.
More German offerings were, of course, to be found in various convention programs. One could characterize Carla Edwards’s program as Germanic (Buxtehude, Bach), or German-inspired (Planyavsky’s lively Toccata alla Rumba, neatly dispatched on the recent two-manual Fisk organ in Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Shoreview; and Petr Eben’s astringent take on the ubiquitous Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C, his Hommage à Dietrich Buxtehude). A non-Teutonic exception was provided in Triptych of Fugues, an early work by Gerald Near. Though Minnesota-born, Near seems often to be curiously under-represented in programs featuring Minnesota composers. His three lovely contrapuntal movements were played here without the requisite suppleness of line needed for this composer’s idiosyncratic amalgam of lyricism with strict fugal form.
And, of course, the convention buzzed about Cameron Carpenter’s version of THE Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, an arrangement using selected added material from Romantic-era transcriptions by Busoni, Friedman, Godowsky, Grainger, Liszt, Tausig, Stokowski, and Sir Henry Wood, that turned the possibly-not-by-Bach work into a “ . . . sort of cumulative celebration flinging wide the gates of possibility.”5 I did not hear Mr. Carpenter’s program (there were simply too many concerts in one day), but his awesome technical prowess and showman’s style may mark a return to ”the good old days” of the Virgil Fox versus E. Power Biggs opposites in America’s concert life. Carpenter’s popularity seems a positive development if it signals a healthy resurgence of bankable diversity in organ playing. Anyone who can attract more people to organ concerts has my admiration and support. And having fun at a recital? What a great concept!

Final concert: Siegfried Matthus’s Te Deum (2005)
At 8:40 trumpets from the rear gallery sounded the opening fanfare to the ten-minute opening movement of Matthus’s monumental work, composed for the dedication of the reconstructed Frauenkirche in Dresden. One hour later the same trumpets signaled the start of the final movement (Amen), with most of the same music, though some appeared in different sequence. Most magical of all, the cathedral tower bells were used in the very last measures, gently dying away as the chorus quietly intoned over and over again Te Deum laudamus.
English visitors having departed, it was left to local singers to provide the choral forces for this great work. Magnum Chorum, the Minnesota Boychoir, the National Lutheran Choir, and VocalEssence Ensemble Singers and Chorus, each group garbed distinctively, comprised the voices assembled under the confident baton of conductor Philip Brunelle. There were six vocal soloists, plus John Scott (ex London St. Paul’s) playing the significant organ part, not the least of which was his fine rendition of the Bach Toccata in D Minor, above which composer Matthus had set a text from The Organ by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae, beginning “Listen to the rushing wind in the silently expecting organ which it is preparing for its sacred song.” Herr Matthus was in attendance for this highly successful first American performance. Ovations were lengthy, loud, and deserved.
The first third of this closing concert united the three European national strands together with a fascinating selection of choral music: the Messiaen motet mentioned earlier and an excerpt from Dupré’s early De Profundis; the curiously moving avant garde work by John Tavener (“Verses Written on an Ecstasy” from Ultimos Ritos) in which four soloists in the chancel, the Magnum Chorum behind us in the nave, with larger forces split on both sides of the transepts, provided a cruciform arrangement of choral forces. The singers mused in ever more significant phrase fragments based on an underlying taped performance of the Crucifixus from Bach’s B-Minor Mass, at first barely audible, but ultimately overwhelming by the end of this effective work. An intense rendition of Stephen Paulus’s modern choral masterpiece, the Pilgrims’ Hymn that concludes his church opera The Three Hermits, realized the exquisitely chosen harmonies that find the simplest of resolutions in the work’s octave unison Amens.
John Scott played a convincing first performance of an appealing organ work commissioned for the convention. Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi took his inspiration from a poem by Emily Dickinson, And Hit a World, at Every Plunge. In program notes the composer mused, “. . . it is certainly not a comfortable piece. At some point I realized that I was . . . harking back to the very first time I heard an organ piece by Messiaen.” Organized as variations on an underlying twelve-tone row, the piece is “restless.” In a disarmingly honest description the composer noted that “the variations are very different in character and length, from funeral march to moto perpetuo. Although [the piece] aspires to a triumphant ending, it never quite seems to get there.” Indeed the work ended with three tonal chords, interrupted by cluster-crashes, leading to an ultimately quiet culmination. I found it engrossing, a work I would definitely want to hear again.6
Another convention choral commission, The Love of God by Aaron Jay Kernis, suffered from pitch problems in its first performance. The pre-Matthus part of the concert ended with an audience sing-along of Hubert Parry’s O Praise Ye the Lord (1894), cementing the English choral music arc of the week.

Organ concertos, American and “Jacobean”
Benson Great Hall of Bethel University was the site of this convention’s organ concerto program: four works for organ and instruments, conducted by Philip Brunelle, with organists Stephen Cleobury and James Diaz. A fine American eclectic three-manual 67-stop instrument by Blackinton Organ Company dominated the ample stage and was well balanced in this large, yet intimate-feeling, auditorium.
Ron Nelson’s Pebble Beach, commissioned for the 1984 AGO national convention in San Francisco, opened the program. Diaz’s sparkling playing was abetted by brass and percussion in this loud, lively curtain-raiser. Winner of the 2000 Dallas International Organ Competition, Diaz was also the brilliant soloist for Stephen Paulus’s Grand Concerto (Number 3), a Dallas Symphony commission first heard in 2004 (with the most recent Dallas Competition winner, Bradley Hunter Welch, as soloist).
Paulus is a composer who not only knows his craft, but one who has something to say with that facility. This major work has many impressive moments from its beginning with the organ and lower strings, through a second movement featuring the organ’s Harmonic Flute, then orchestral flute and strings, and finally the organ’s strings—a lovely blend of timbres. Building to a climax, the movement ends with a reference to the hymn Come, Come Ye Saints (a favorite of the composer’s father) and pizzicato lower strings. In the final movement (marked Jubilant) there is joy in virtuosity, especially in the rapid jumping between manuals, a lovely bit of lyricism when the high strings introduce the folk melody O Waly, Waly, and a knock-your-socks-off pedal cadenza. The audience loved this piece, the only one requiring a complete symphonic complement of instruments. Woodwinds and brass having joined the strings, the orchestra made its best showing of the day in this culminating performance. Cheering and ovations were deserved.
The other two concertos were in the capable hands of Stephen Cleobury, who had a rather thankless assignment in Calvin Hampton’s Concerto for Organ and Strings. Understandably, the program committee chose this work commissioned for the previous Twin Cities national meeting in 1980. Preparing at that time for my own concerto program in Orchestra Hall, I did not hear this work by a dear friend from undergraduate days at Oberlin, although subsequently I learned that Calvin himself did not regard the piece highly. Hearing it now I did not find the string writing particularly apt, and I am sad that this was the only piece to represent such a gifted American composer during this 2008 convention. The ending, at least, is memorable, with organ arpeggios providing a bit of filigree above orchestra strings, which were, unfortunately, not well tuned.
Cleobury’s second stint on the organ bench was as soloist in Judith Bingham’s convention commission, Jacob’s Ladder—Concerto for Organ and Strings. (In her notes for the program book, she wrote that her inspiration was derived from the first view of a photograph showing the laddered effect of the attractive organ façade.) Four brief movements bearing programmatic titles showed a fine correlation of component parts to produce an appealing ensemble work. Once again the upper strings were quite messy.
Hindsight is, of course, always more successful than foresight, but it did seem as if three ensemble works rather than four could have allowed more rehearsal time for each, and in a day jam-packed with musical events, would have been quite enough for the audiences as well.
Pipedreams Live (and program long)
We all owe much to Michael Barone for his continuing contributions to the public awareness of the pipe organ, its wide range of literature, and many diverse styles of instruments, as heard weekly in the successful Minnesota Public Radio series. The service he renders to the profession is unparalleled in today’s media. That said, it was fortunate that this Wednesday evening audience in Wooddale Church consisted almost exclusively of the already convinced. Anticipatory at the beginning, fatigued or comatose after a two-hour and fifteen minute program without intermission, many of us would have appreciated an earlier employment of the organ’s cancel button.
As for repertory, it was a program in which the oldest piece heard was Joseph Jongen’s 1935 Toccata, opus 104, the program opener, given a brilliant rendition by this year’s NYACOP winner Michael Unger. Then followed a steady stream of new and unfamiliar pieces played by first-rate players who slid on and off the bench either of the movable console or of the attached mechanical-action one of the large Visser-Rowland organ: Herndon Spillman, Calvin Taylor, Barone himself, splendid jazz player Barbara Dennerlein, Ken Cowan, Aaron David Miller, and Douglas Reed (who brought the marathon to an end with William Albright’s Tango Fantastico and Alla Marcia, aka The AGO Fight Song!).
Along the way, Jason Roberts, winner of the National Competition in Organ Improvisation, perhaps sensing the encroaching weariness, gave a brief example of his art in a French Classic idiom; well-loved Lutheran church musician Paul Manz was warmly applauded after the playing of his chorale-improvisation Now Thank We All Our God by Scott Montgomery; and Isabelle Demers, in the penultimate program slot, played with consummate musicianship a gentle and moving Prelude in E Minor by Gerald Bales and Paulus’s As if the whole creation cried.

AGO business/The business of music
The business meetings of the Guild during national conventions have been fun and musically rewarding during the six years of outgoing president Fred Swann’s administration. This time the afternoon event was held at Central Lutheran Church, where Marilyn Keiser gave first performances of a prize-winning work and a commissioned movement to be featured at the Organ Spectacular (officially scheduled for 19 October 2008) during this International Year of the Organ: Bernard Wayne Sanders’ Ornament of Grace for organ and solo melody instrument (published by Concordia Publishing House) and Stephen Paulus’s Blithely Breezing Along, a seven-minute solo organ piece (available from Paulus Publications).
An impressive number of exhibitors (102) displayed their wares in the exhibition spaces of the Minneapolis Hilton Hotel. From Nada-Chair back slings (for organists with “Bach Pain”) one could wander to composer Stephen Paulus’s booth, often manned by father and son Andrew; or stop by the AGO national headquarters table, where a newly released compact disc of Conversations and Lessons with David Craighead preserves some taped lessons with Judith Hancock as well as more recent responses to queries about various pedagogical topics as posed by an unidentified interviewer. (Buzz has it that the interlocutor is Richard Troeger.) The purchase of this disc also triggered the bonus gift of “A Grand Occasion,” an AGO cookbook from the past. This brought on extreme nostalgia for several familiar figures who contributed some favorite recipes: Robert Anderson [caramelized carrots], Howard (Buddy) Ross [Shrimp Howard], and L. Cameron Johnson [Philly-Miracle Whip Dip]!
Some random items of interest found in various publishers’ displays: the recently republished Distler organ works in an “Urtext” edition at Bärenreiter; a reminder via a special brochure from Breitkopf that 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth; Calvert Johnson’s valuable new edition of Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali (with variant chromatic alterations from the Torino Manuscript) at Wayne Leupold; from ECS Publishing, free copies of their prize-winning anthem heard at the opening celebratory service, Stephen R. Fraser’s Rejoice, the Lord is King (SATB and organ), with its especially haunting, chromatic shift from a melodic F-sharp to F-natural between the second and third measures of the idiomatic and very effective organ accompaniment; from Oxford University Press, a special brochure on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, in commemoration of this year’s 50th anniversary of his death.
A pre-convention mailing had brought advance word of a special recording titled Real French Sounds to be had at the convention, the promotional gift from the Association of French Organ Builders. This two-compact disc set comprises an elegant set of performances by various French organists, including such well-known players as Olivier Latry, Daniel Roth, Thierry Escaich, and Pierre Pincemaille, playing fifteen historic instruments (restored by the firms Atelier Bertrand Cattiaux, Jean-Baptiste Gaupillat, Michel Jurine, Patrick Armand, Giroud Successeurs, Nicolas Toussaint, and Jean-Pascal Villard). It is, overall, a useful demonstration of some lovely organs.
American pipe organ builders were well represented here, as were makers of digital instruments. The Twin Cities provided good examples of outstanding organs from many of the exhibitors, as identified throughout this report. Happily, I acquired only one new trinket, a black stop knob key chain from the Wicks Organ Company. It joins useful previous white ones, giving my collection some needed diversity. A year’s worth of compact discs and DVDs were available for purchase, and all this commerce, especially that transacted during late night hours, was made more pleasant by an accessible cash bar.

Summary thoughts
I heard it expressed several times that “this was Philip Brunelle’s program.” The wide-ranging, often challenging exploration of new music (seventeen commissions and competition prize-winning works were listed on the Convention Evaluation Form), plus the programming of other recent works surely new to a majority of the convention goers, reflected both appetite and taste of the prodigious program chair, this year celebrating his 40th anniversary as organist-choirmaster of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. Brunelle certainly generated a great deal of musical excitement, not only as planner, but also as conductor for the two major orchestral and choral/orchestral programs.
That the music of Stephen Paulus held such a prominent place at this convention was particularly gratifying. Currently AGO’s composer of the year, the Minnesotan is one of America’s finest, an artist who consistently produces challenging music for organ and for choral forces as part of his ongoing artistic efforts. He is also a genuinely kind person whose many interactions with convention-goers was much appreciated.
A personal regret was that there was not at least a tad more celebration of Hugo Distler’s centenary, which actually occurred on Tuesday, June 24, right in the midst of this gathering. One workshop, one choral composition (the motet Singet dem Herrn, heard on two days at one of four concurrent worship services presented on Monday and Thursday), and that was all. In Lutheran territory? (At least St. Paul’s Luther Seminary had presented a March symposium on the composer’s life and works!)
Appreciated amenities: possibly the easiest to see, least self-destructing name tags of any convention in my experience, and a many-pocketed, multi-zippered convention tote bag with an external water bottle holder, the whole a classy production that also ranks with the best ever: no expense spared here, and usable at home, too.
And, certainly not least, a smoothly functioning hospitality/information center at the hotel, staffed by Twin Cities AGO chapter volunteers. There one could find nibbles, coffee and water, transportation schedules, gay pride guides, and the occasional leftover workshop handouts, among which two of the more interesting were on Latin American Organ Literature from Cristina Garcia Banegas and Organ Music from Czech Composers from Anita Smisek.

And finally . . .
A tally of convention events from Saturday afternoon through Thursday evening gave these numbers: three open performance and improvisation competition rounds; four evening concerts plus two performances of the daytime concerto program; fifteen organ recitals, each performed twice, plus two carillon concerts and nine Rising Stars organ programs; sixty-six workshops including choral reading sessions; an opening evening church service, four individual daytime worship opportunities, each given twice, plus Evensong and Matins services. [For complete details, refer to the convention website <www.ago2008.org&gt;.]
My apologies to artists whose programs I was not able to attend. Many are friends, or friends of friends, or students of friends. It must be obvious that no one person, not even the proverbial little old one in tennis shoes, could cover as large and event-filled a gathering as this national convention. The time in the Twin Cities remained enjoyable primarily because I did not attempt to do everything.
Throughout the week there were many cherished meetings with people not encountered often enough, individuals who trigger memories of shared experiences, ones who make such professional gatherings personal. To mention a very few of them: Marjorie Jackson Rasche, FAGO, now of Galveston, TX, whom I met at my very first AGO regional convention 52 years ago when both of us were young Ohioans; Carl and Kathy Crozier, of happy Honolulu memories; professional colleagues Jim Christie, Susan Marchant, and Cal Johnson; and new acquaintance, Alexander Schreiner’s son John.
Of memorable chats while traveling on the buses two stood out in particular: one with West Point organist Craig Williams; and another with Patricia Scace from Maryland, who told of acquiring a John Challis instrument that turned out to be the first harpsichord I ever played.
And finally, the realization that as the Twin Cities 2008 national convention became part of AGO history on Friday June 28, there remained only 735 days until the July 4 opening of the 2010 meeting in our nation’s capital city. Start saving up for it now!

David Kelley is Director of Music at Concordia Lutheran Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and Assistant Conductor of CoroAllegro, Delaware’s premier chamber choir. His compositions have been included in The Crowning Glory, a collection of hymn descants, and the Delaware Organ Book, a collection of solo organ works by Delaware composers. Mr. Kelley recently began doctoral study in organ at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.

An increasingly popular composer of organ and choral music, Craig Phillips was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1961. By the time he was in his early thirties, Phillips had won First Prize in the Clarence Mader Competition for organ composition (in 1994). Since then, he has published works with increasing frequency, and has completed commissions for the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, several American cathedrals, and such notable performers as the Chenaults and Tom Trenney. Phillips’s compositions are engaging and satisfying, and they demonstrate his understanding not only of the voices and instruments for which he writes, but also his audience. He recently launched a website about his work: www.CraigPhillipsComposer.com. Dr. Phillips and I spoke in February 2008.

David Kelley (DK): You have extensive musical training, including a doctorate among other things, but you were not trained as a composer.
Craig Phillips (CP): I was never a composition major; I did study composition when I was an undergrad, for two years as a minor. Then I was a theory minor at Eastman during my graduate studies. I also studied orchestration at Eastman and then coached with Byron Adams here in Los Angeles. Organ was my primary focus during my student years, but I also had been composing since the age of fourteen, and I wanted to keep it going all the time. I think I was mainly known as an organist, especially early on, and it’s just fascinating that I’ve ended up in some ways much more well known as a composer: that’s pretty much since the mid ’90s.

DK: What motivated you initially to start composing? Fourteen is a very early age to begin that!
CP: I’d been playing the piano since I was seven; I would just sit down and improvise and come up with little ditties and so forth; I decided to start writing them down on my own. Then I was encouraged a lot in that direction by the organist at the church I grew up in, a woman named Sharron Lyon, and then when I started studying organ as well, with Peter Fyfe, he also encouraged me in that direction, so that had a lot to do with it.

DK: The liner notes for your CD “A Festival Song: The Music of Craig Phillips” suggest that your theory background is a large contributing factor to the development of your style. Do you think that those studies really enabled you to grow as a composer—or do you even use theory when you compose?
CP: (laughs) You know, I don’t think about it that much at this point! It’s all in my craft, I guess, and because I studied counterpoint and all the theory courses, there is a very solid foundation.

DK: So do you use theory as a tool?
CP: As a tool? Definitely. It’s really the tool that allows you to look at and understand something of how the great masters put their scores together, which in turn can provide an underpinning and foundation for your own work. That being said, once you have that foundation, I think it ultimately frees you to “break all the rules” as it were and forge your own path.

DK: To my ear, one of the things that I admire about your style is its very fluent and mobile harmonic language. You travel very quickly to different places and move very easily.
CP: Yes.

DK: How would you describe your own style?
CP: Well, I don’t think it’s anything you could put a label on—yes, there are modal inflections and that sort of thing, perhaps a sort of romantic, lyrical leaning. I think it’s really an amalgamation of a lot of my influences: the music that I’ve loved growing up and as an organist as well. I think a lot of the organ composers influenced me to a large degree.

DK: I have often heard a little whispering of Herbert Howells, perhaps, in there; maybe a little Duruflé . . .
CP: Absolutely, others have said that as well. I play their music, I know their music—so that becomes a part of me.

DK: Are there any other composers that have been particularly influential?
CP: Of course—Bach—probably the greatest!

DK: The counterpoint?
CP: Yes, and then I’ve always loved the Romantic repertoire as well; I think that’s also a major influence on my style. And I listened to tons of pop music when I was growing up, and even that, I think, has a certain role in what ultimately makes up my style.

DK: Perhaps contributing to your ability to move from one place to another quickly?
CP: (animated) Maybe! I don’t know, because I grew up in the ’70s listening to all kinds of music, Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Bartók, and so forth, and lots of rock/pop—even film music had an influence I would say, so . . . who knows!

DK: (laughs)
CP: You know, I don’t sit down and analyze my own music that often.

DK: There probably isn’t time for that!
CP: (laughs) This is true, and I’d just as soon leave that to others! I tend to be very instinctive and intuitive about the whole process.

DK: Your organ works are very idiomatic, and they lie under the hands quite well.
CP: I hope so! (laughs)

DK: That indicates to me that you have a performing pedigree, if you will; I have to wonder if you do your composing at the keyboard, or if you do any improvisation—certain elements of the fantasy pieces, the Fantasy on Torah Song in particular, seem almost improvisatory in style. Do you bring those types of elements into your composition?
CP: Let’s see . . . I improvise, but not on that level—I really was not trained in improvisation—I could not just sit down and improvise a piece on the level of, say, the Torah Song. I have to work these things out very carefully, and usually at the keyboard; not necessarily at the organ, but at the keyboard most of the time. But yes, I do think there is an improvisatory aspect towards the way I develop a lot of my ideas—especially the fantasy pieces such as you’re talking about. So it doesn’t bother me if these pieces come off as improvisatory, I think that is just the way my imagination tends to work.

DK: It gives them a spontaneity that is very enticing.
CP: Yes, I think that’s right, and I’ve written several pieces in that same vein actually—some recently—that aren’t yet in print. It seems to be a successful formula for me in terms of organ pieces.

DK: You compose on commission quite a bit.
CP: Yes. I am lucky to have pretty much a steady stream of commissions.

DK: How do you go about tailoring a piece for a commission? I would imagine your own technical ability might lead you astray if you’re writing for a particular audience. Is that ever a problem or something you keep in mind?
CP: Sometimes they stipulate the difficulty level of a piece or specific voicing and so forth. The commissions I’ve had don’t often put limits on me—but I think it’s great discipline to be able to write something that’s very simple if that’s what they’re looking for. I remember the Torah Song fantasy: I think the rules specified that it would be a concert piece, but of moderate difficulty, which is kind of an odd combination—I think I managed to strike a happy medium in that piece.

DK: And that one won a prize.
CP: Yes, the 1994 Clarence Mader Foundation prize in organ composition.

DK: How generalized must you be in assigning registrations to organ works, and how much leeway do you imagine your performers and interpreters having? Some composers, especially French composers, are very specific; many American composers give nothing more than dynamic indications. How do you make those types of decisions?
CP: I have typically put in registrations in most of my pieces, at least as a guideline, but I’ve always told the people I have written these pieces for that they should have leeway to do what works on their instrument, or if they feel strongly about doing something a certain way I’d like to leave a certain amount of freedom to the performer. But I usually suggest various colors or the kind of sound I’m thinking about, and a lot of my pieces do have that sort of French romantic registration ideal behind them.

DK: How much does the instrument at All Saints’ [Beverly Hills] influence—
CP: Oh, probably it does! (laughs)

DK: That’s where you spend most of your time, I imagine.
CP: So it does, I think—the colors that are on that particular instrument often influence what I indicate in my pieces—it’s a pretty comprehensive instrument, I might add! But they can be expanded on.

DK: Well, every organ’s different.
CP: Yes.

DK: I know you have been commissioned by the Association of Anglican Musicians, by Washington National Cathedral, and your works are often performed at All Saints’. Do you feel that you are part of a continuing Anglican musical tradition in the church?
CP: I think I could put myself into that category. Most of my choral commissions have been from Episcopal churches or cathedrals. And the choir that I work with here at All Saints’ is one of the best—I don’t mind saying that I think it’s one of the best choirs in the country in the Anglican tradition, so that’s had a big influence on me, and on my choral writing. We perform a great deal of the English repertoire, as well as American music that flows from that tradition, and I think my own music certainly falls into that continuum.

DK: How would you describe the essential elements of that style?
CP: In terms of the way that I write for the choir, I’m used to a straight-tone sound, and really favor that sound. In the Anglican approach to choral singing there is also a great attention to word accentuation or localized word stress, and that is something that I pay a great deal of attention to in my setting of texts. And as far as texture goes, I use a combination of polyphonic and homophonic textures that ebb and flow—and not strictly one or the other.

DK: A hybrid.
CP: It is sort of a hybrid in a way.

DK: Many English organs are designed primarily as liturgical instruments and choral accompanying instruments, and that certainly has affected many of the composers coming out of those places; do you think that that’s something that you relate to as well, or are you more in that French category where the instrument is more soloistic?
CP: I think maybe I’m a hybrid as far as that goes as well, perhaps leaning to the French side. A lot of my commissions have pretty substantial organ parts—a lot of my choral pieces in general: I like to think of the organ and choir as basically equal partners most of the time, unless specifically it’s not intended to be that way. But, generally speaking, that’s the way I like to treat the organ.

DK: Do you think that there are specifically American traits to the Anglican tradition here that distinguish it from our British counterparts, and perhaps in your works in particular?
CP: I’m sure. I think we take their tradition and make it our own in certain ways, because we have our own unique set of influences—American folk tunes, jazz, spirituals, and popular music. I’m thinking of the New York composers Calvin Hampton, Larry King, and all sorts of people . . . David Hurd and others. I think a lot of that music flows out of that Anglican tradition but is also highly original and very much American, I pretty much see myself falling into that tradition.

DK: Perhaps there’s a little more adventuresome spirit in the American style?
CP: I think you could possibly say that. (pauses) Not to say anything negative about the English at all!

DK: No, no. Well, there’s that classic Anglican restraint, which sometimes we Americans don’t do quite as well.
CP: Probably we’re less restrained. Perhaps. (laughs) I don’t know!

DK: Do you have particular favorites among your own works, pieces that came off particularly well in terms of your expectations when you sat down to write them, or perhaps an organ piece that you like to play a lot?
CP: One of my special pieces is not a solo organ work, but the Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra, which was my first big commission, and it led to all sorts of other things and opened a lot of doors—I think of that as an extremely special piece. Well, I try to make every piece (laughs) something to think of in that way. The chorale preludes are in some ways among the most popular things that I’ve done, and I use those all the time. The Toccata on Antioch, for instance: I sat down and wrote that little set of pieces [Joy to the World: Three Preludes for Christmas] a few years ago, but I use them all the time, they’re very popular, they get played often. Also the Triptych [for Organ] that I wrote in the mid ’90s I use frequently. Those can be played together or separately; I use them separately all the time. They’re quite effective in the service context, and I’ve used them as recital pieces as well. Of my pieces for organ and instruments, the Suite for Organ, Brass [Quintet] and Percussion has certainly been one of the most successful for me.

DK: We spoke earlier about your Fantasy on Torah Song, which is one of my favorites; another I particularly like is your Fanfare. Can you tell me a little about the origin of that work—it was a commission, wasn’t it?
CP: It was commissioned by Pat Gillis, a parishioner at All Saints’, Beverly Hills when we installed a new fanfare trumpet on the organ. It’s a big high-pressure hooded trumpet—it’s quite a brilliant stop—and he actually was the one who paid to have it added to the organ. It was his wish to commission a piece to feature the new trumpet; also it was dedicated to his mother, who was a long-time church organist. So I designed this work to really “show off” the new trumpet stop. It’s basically a rondo with a “big tune” on the solo trumpet making several appearances, and other splashy, colorful things in between. That’s another piece that I think works extremely well as either a recital piece or in the context of a big service or what have you—if you have the right organ.

DK: So, what’s next for you? What’s on your horizon?
CP: Well, I just got today—believe it or not, it was today—confirmation of a commission for the 2010 AGO convention in Washington, D.C. This is for a new work for organ and instruments. It looks like it will be a piece for chamber organ and four winds, probably ten minutes in a single movement . . . the idea is still under development! (laughs) So, that’s kind of a big thing that’s coming up, and there are some other interesting things in the works.

DK: And I believe you told me that you’re launching a website?
CP: Yes, it’s actually up and running now, and has a complete list of my compositions, both published and unpublished, as well as a list of current commissions and other information. You can find it at
<www.craigphillipscomposer.com&gt;.

DK: When you get a commission, how do you decide what to do? I’m sure some of these commissions can be very specific, but others may be rather general.
CP: It depends. If it’s, for instance, a choral piece like what I’ve just been working on, the primary task is to come up with a good text. The people who commission a piece are usually looking for something for a particular occasion, so [we have to find] an appropriate text; usually something in the public domain, or, once or twice, we’ve done things where the text was commissioned simultaneously. So that can be fun, too.

DK: That would be a rather rare opportunity.
CP: I wrote a big Easter anthem a few years ago called On This Bright Easter Morn, which has been very popular. The text was also commissioned and written by a poet named Janine Applegate, who lives in Portland. I collaborated on two pieces with her, which was a lot of fun. But generally speaking I tend to go with things that are in the public domain.

DK: That’s always a safe bet.
CP: It’s a safe bet—less complicated. I’ve set a couple of works to texts by more recent poets—secular pieces—whose foundations, alas, don’t yet allow their texts to be set to music for publication. But they generally specify a length of a piece, and I ponder . . . (laughs) . . . ponder the text or whatever the idea for the piece is, and then just get going. Coming up with the initial idea for a piece, I think, is always the most difficult part—once you have it, and you know it’s right, things begin to flow. With most commissions usually people have a general idea of what they’re looking for. I received one recently through a church and an arts foundation: they’re going to send me some paintings from local artists to look at and then devise a set of pieces based on probably two or three of these paintings— it will be something totally different; I don’t yet know what I’ll do with that!

DK: It will be your own version of Pictures at an Exhibition.
CP: Very much; that’s the idea they had in mind. So that will be something quite different, at least something I have not done before.

DK: Is there anything that you would communicate to a young crop of organists, given the chance?
CP: I don’t know if many of them are interested in composition or not, but I would say it’s good to stay open—to new organ compositions in general, and to the idea that being an organist and a composer is a long, long tradition. Being a performer and a composer was really the norm until fairly recently in the scheme of things, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t still be that way, in my opinion. Being an organist and a performer and a composer . . . it all works together for me, so . . . (laughs) I think it’s a great combination.

DK: Well, it’s working for a lot of other people, too: they think it’s a good combination for you (laughs) as well!
CP: It’s a good combination for me, but others can do it!

DK: Thanks very much for speaking with me today, and keep up the good work!
CP: Well, thank you very much!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Craig Phillips Organ and Choral Works, and Recordings
Organized by scoring and title, with publisher and catalog number

Organ Solo
Fanfare (Selah, 160-640)
Fantasia on the tune Finnian (Selah, coming soon)
Fantasia on Sine Nomine (Selah, 160-676)
Fantasy Toccata (Selah, coming soon)
Fantasy: Torah Song (Yisrael V’oraita) (Selah, 160-857)
Fantasy: Terra Beata (Paraclete Press, PPM00431)
Festival Piece (Selah, 160-860)
Glad Praises We Sing (Selah, 160-814). Four Preludes for Organ: Kremser, Hyfrydol, Nettleton, Engelberg
Joy to the World (Selah, 160-815). Three Preludes for Christmas: Divinum Mysterium, Forest Green, Toccata on Antioch
Organ Music for the Seasons, Vol. 4 (Augsburg Fortress, 9780800637507). Prelude on Richmond
Partita on Lobe den Herren (Selah, 160-691)
Partita on Veni Creator Spiritus (Selah, 160-440)
Prelude on Victimae paschali (MorningStar, MSM-10-513), from Three Plainchants for Organ, ed. Lynn Trapp
Psalm Prelude (Selah, 160-875)
Toccata on Hyfrydol (Selah, 160-675)
Tribute (A lullaby for organ) (Selah, 160-682)
Triptych for Organ (MorningStar, MSM-10-941)
Trumpet Tune (MorningStar, MSM-10-926)
Wondrous Love (Fred Bock Music Co., BG0945). 12 Preludes for Organ (includes “Aria”)
25 Harmonizations and Descants (Selah, 160.731). Volume XI of series

Organ and Instruments
A Song Without Words (E. C. Schirmer, #6750), for cello and organ
March for Trumpet & Organ (Selah, 160-970)
Night Song for Oboe and Organ (or harpsichord) (Selah, in preparation)
Pastorale & Dance (Selah, 160-975), for bassoon & organ
Prelude & Exultation for Organ, Brass Quintet, and Percussion (Selah, full score 160-985, organ score 160-986, instrumental parts 160-987)
Serenade for Horn and Organ (Oxford, 0-19-386763-X)
Suite for Organ and Brass Quintet and Percussion (Selah, full score 160-981, organ score 160-982, instrumental parts 160-983)

Unpublished Works for Organ Solo or Organ and Instruments
Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra (1995) c. 13 minutes. 2 flutes, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn in F, 2 trumpets, trombone, strings. Score and parts available on rental.
Sonata for Cello and Organ (2004). Score available for sale.
Sonata for Organ (1983). Score available for sale.
Second Sonata for Organ (2001). Score available for sale.
Variations on a Kyrie (1995). Concert work for organ duet. Score available for sale.

Choral
A Festival Song (E. C. Schirmer, #5440 & #5441), SATB chorus, soprano and baritone soli, and orchestra
A True Hymn (Selah, 418-624), SATB and organ (text of George Herbert)
And I Saw the Holy City (Oxford, ISBN 0-19-386712-5), SATB and organ
Antiphon: Let All the World in Every Corner Sing (Paraclete, PPM00435), SATB and organ
The Beatitudes (Selah, 410-516), SATB and organ
Benedictus Dominus Deus (A Song of Zechariah) (Selah, 410-887), SATB and organ
Christ, mighty Savior (Paraclete, PPM00538), SATB and organ (alternate version with strings and organ)
Dies Gratiae (Requiem Reflections) (Selah, 440-901), SATB, soprano and baritone soli, and orchestra
Festival Eucharist (Paraclete, PPM00624), choral score with congregational parts, with organ
Festival Eucharist (Paraclete, PPM00624FS), SATB, congregation, descant, brass quintet, timpani and organ
For God So Loved the World (Paraclete, PPM00606), SATB a cappella with solo soprano
Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken (hymn concertato) (Selah, 425-888), SAB, 2 trumpets, timpani and organ
Gracious God (Paraclete, PPM00132), SATB, organ and flute
Great Is the Lord (Paraclete, PPM00813), SATB and organ
Hodie Christus Natus Est (Trinitas, 4502), SATB and organ
The Holly and the Ivy (Paraclete, PPM00018), SATB and organ
The House of Faith Has Many Rooms (Selah, 410-691), SATB and organ
How the Grandeur of Creation (Selah, 410-639), SATB, organ (optional strings)
I Love All Beauteous Things (Trinitas, 4610), SATB and organ
Keep Watch, Dear Lord (Selah, 420-526), SATB and organ
Light’s Glittering Morn (Paraclete, PPM00427), SATB and organ
(A version with brass quintet and timpani is also available from the publisher)
Missa Brevis (Washington National Cathedral) (Trinitas, 4583), SATB and organ
Morning Glory, Starlit Sky (Paraclete, PPM00835), SATB a capella
On This Bright Easter Morn (Trinitas, 4501), SATB, organ, brass quintet
People, Look East! (Selah, 405-103), unison, organ, and optional descant
The Preces and Responses (Paraclete, PPM00211), SATB and organ
Psalm 34 (E. C. Schirmer, 5364), two-part treble and organ
Psalm 84 (Paraclete, PPM09729), SATB and organ
Psalm 103 (Trinitas, 4507), SATB and organ
Ride on in Majesty (Trinitas, 4580), SATB anthem with organ
The Risen Sun (Selah, 420-337)
Rorate Caeli (Trinitas, 4500), SATB a cappella
So Much to Sing About (E. C. Schirmer, #5365), SATB and organ
Teach me, my God and King (Paraclete, PPM00303), SATB motet, unaccompanied
Thee Will I Praise (E. C. Schirmer, #5718), SATB and organ
Version with organ and brass quintet (E. C. Schirmer, #5719 & 5719A)
There’s a Voice in the Wilderness Crying (Selah, 422-903), two-part choir and organ
Transfiguration (Selah, 405-390), SATB and organ
Two Advent Anthems (Selah, 405-146), SATB, organ and oboe
The Unsearchable Riches (Paraclete, PPM00625), SATB and organ
We Walk by Faith (Trinitas, 4611), SATB divisi and organ

Unpublished Choral Works
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life (2005), SATB motet, unaccompanied
Lord, You now have set your servant free (2006), SATB anthem, with organ, brass quintet and timpani
Magnificat (1993) c. 9 minutes, score and parts available on rental, SATB chorus, string orchestra and organ
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D (2003), SATB canticles with organ
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D-flat (2002), SATB canticles with organ
O Light Invisible (2003), SATB motet, a cappella
The Preces and Responses (A-flat) (2002), SATB, unaccompanied
Rune of Hospitality (2003), SATB anthem, unaccompanied
Send forth your light (2002), SATB anthem with organ, based on Psalm 43
Sweet Music, Heavenly Rare (2006), SATB motet, unaccompanied
The Passion According to St. John (2008), SATB chorus, three soloists, unaccompanied
Though every tongue shall spend its fire (2003), SATB anthem with organ
You Shall Know the Truth (2005), SATB anthem with organ

Recordings
A Choral Feast (2001) (Gothic, G-49126), The Choir of Men & Boys, Washington National Cathedral, Douglas Major, conductor. “Gloria” from Missa Brevis
A Festival Song: The Music of Craig Phillips (2004) (Gothic, G-49207), The Choir of All Saints’ Beverly Hills; Tom Foster, conductor; Craig Phillips, organist.
Song of Zechariah: Benedictus Dominus Deus
Teach Me, My God and King
Serenade for Horn and Organ
Psalm 34
Pastorale for Bassoon and Organ
The House of Faith Has Many Rooms
And I Saw the Holy City
Ride On in Majesty
Fanfare for Organ
Keep Watch, Dear Lord
A Song Without Words for Cello and Organ
A Festival Song
Be Still My Soul (2006) (Gothic, G-49251), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Dale Adelmann, conductor. The Risen Sun, Transfiguration, We Walk by Faith
Blasts from the Past Century (2006) (Pro Organo, CD 7197), David Heller, organ. Fantasy Toccata
Burnished Bright (2006) (Paraclete, GDCD 040), Gabriel V Brass Quintet, David Chalmers, organ. Suite for Organ, Brass and Percussion
Easter (1997) (Gothic, G-49097), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Thomas Foster, conductor. On this bright Easter morn
On A Sunday Afternoon (2005) (JAV Recordings, JAV 149), Todd Wilson, organ; Yvonne Caruthers, cello. A Song Without Words for Cello and Organ
Organ Americana (2004) (Pro Organo, CD 7196), Tom Trenney, organ. Toccata on “Antioch,” Prelude on “Kremser,” Fantasy on “Torah Song”
Seasons of Festivity (1997) (Arkay Records, AR6162), Marilyn Keiser, organ. Prelude on “Kremser”
Silence & Music (1993) (Gothic, G-49064), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Thomas Foster, conductor. Hodie, Christus natus est
Sinfonia Festiva (2005) (Summit Records, DCD 436), Paul Skevington, organ; Washington Symphonic Brass. Psalm Prelude, Fanfare, Suite for Organ, Brass and Percussion
Small Wonder (2003) (Pro Organo, CD 7190), Christmas at St. Paul’s, K Street, Washington, D. C. The Holly and the Ivy (arr. Phillips)
Spiritual Pairs (1996) (Pro Organo, CD 7067), Marilyn Keiser, organ. If you will only let God guide you

Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh are organists/choirmasters at First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. They also direct Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia, and Mrs. Betenbaugh is chapel organist and assistant choral director at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. Mr. Betenbaugh is Dean of the Lynchburg AGO chapter. In summer 2003 they completed a 13-week sabbatical in the UK, visiting Cambridge, Oxford, London, and Salisbury. See previous articles from their sabbatical: "London Chats #1: Michael McCarthy," October 2003, p. 18; "John Tavener's The Veil of the Temple," November 2003, p. 17; "Cambridge Chats #1: Timothy Byram-Wigfield," December 2003, pp. 16-19; "London Chats #2: Patrick Russill," February 2004, pp. 20-22; and "Cambridge Chats #2: Sarah MacDonald," August 2004, pp. 18-21.

Our raison d'être normal'> for this sabbatical to England was to study the choir training
techniques and organs in cathedrals, parish churches and universities, and to
hear the music in the architectural and acoustical environment as envisioned by
many of the English composers. We spent four weeks in Cambridge, 10 days in
Oxford, and the balance of our time in London with a side trip to Salisbury. We
had contacted directors via e-mail a year before our departure, and everyone we
met was cordial and welcoming from our initial meeting in cyberspace through
our actual visit. One of the nicest amenities was having greater access than
the normal tourist to these wonderful venues.

During our time away, we kept a tally of the various
activities we attended and were surprised to discover how numerous and myriad
they were: 52 rehearsals, 36 Evensongs, 15 Eucharists, 5 Matins, 5 Evening
Prayer services, 4 Benedictions, 16 sermons, 2 memorial services and one
wedding, 16 organ recitals, 26 museums, 15 concerts, 3 theater performances, 4
interviews, 1 musical, 4 palace tours, 1 foundry tour, 1 opera, 1 mosque tour,
one botanical gardens visit, 5 movies, and last but not least, 3 choral music
premieres. Our time away was busy and intense! We returned home rejuvenated and
with a greater understanding of the English choral system in collegiate and
ecclesiastical foundations and also with memories of many new friends and
colleagues.

Thursday, May 8

We arrived in Cambridge right on time. Our B&B is
beautiful with cheerful yellow and greens. We have our own entrance and our own
patio with a lovely, lush garden. We walked into town to the visitor center to
get maps and an events calendar. Now we are set! Then we went to the public
library where Barbara gets her library card, a necessity! Over our three months
in England, Barbara makes friends with mystery writers of the British
persuasion. Then it was on to King's College Chapel for Evensong. Every
Thursday is sung Eucharist. We hear the Kodály Missa Brevis and
Messiaen's O Sacrum Convivium--what
a joy to be in this great space. It's where our hearts and souls belong.
We then head down the street to St. John's College for Evensong (Blow Mag
& Nunc in F, Gibbons We Praise Thee, O Father
style='font-style:normal'>). There's great music making in this space.
After our long flight, what a way to end the day and start off our three months
away.

Friday, May 9

8:10-9:10 rehearsal at St. John's choir school
where the boys wear red blazers, red ties and gray pants. Christopher Robinson
rehearses the Weelkes Gloria in excelsis Deo, a psalm and the Hunt short
service. Christopher says the boys see a piece only once before performing it,
maybe twice. "Some of the quicker boys are better than the weaker
men." Peter Barley from St. Pat's Cathedral Dublin was also
visiting. Christopher asks for volunteers to sing the chant. Choristers are
very helpful to each other. In the traditional English manner, any chorister that
makes a mistake raises his hand (adults and boys). It's a very orderly
rehearsal. Choristers mark music and often mark a partner's music if he
makes a mistake. There was little warm up, most of the time was spent on music.
As the piano is played, the soprano line is never played, so the boys must be
independent. This technique is used by everyone in England.

After rehearsal we take a long stroll through the campus
from "the backs." We find the Internet Café and Great St.
Mary's, a church shared by the parish and the university. There are
organs front and back. The front chancel organ dates from 1869 with numerous
rebuilds, the last in 1974 by Johnson & Sons. This organ is owned by the
church. The rear balcony organ is a 3-manual Hill, Norman & Beard and is
owned by the university. Cromwell burned the Prayer Book here outside the
church, which is now advertising for an organist/choirmaster. We hear that 17
men have applied, but no women. At 1:15 there is a free recital at Clare
College, a Mozart Clarinet Quintet which
is superb! We have lunch at the Hogshead Pub. Steak and ale pie with chips and
mushy peas is a typical meal. On to St. Benet's for change ringing. Then
to St. Botolph's (patron saint of travelers), in use since 1320. On to
Pembroke College. The chapel at Pembroke is Wren's first work. It looks
better inside than out. The organ is a 1980 2-manual Mander. Anne Page teaches
organ here. Onward to see Little St. Mary's and Peterhouse College before
hurrying back for a 5:05 rehearsal at St. John's. We enter through the
back choir door thanks to Christopher so we don't have to queue like
regular visitors. Rehearsal and Evensong were great, wonderful music making.
The previously heard Weelkes took on a life of its own. Chats after Evensong
and then to the pub. Life doesn't get any better than this for two
Anglophiles. Finally we head to our B&B in time for Barb to read a bit and
Gordon to read the piles of materials gleaned through the day.

Saturday, May 10

Walked through the old cemetery looking at dates. St. Giles
is closed, so we visit The Round Church with its great history. We explore the
town today and return early to St. John's to listen to the organ scholar
practice for Evensong. The 6:30 Evensong is sung jointly by the college choir
and members of the City of Birmingham Choir. We hear the Finzi Mag, Holst Nunc,
Vaughan Williams Rise Heart, Thy Lord Is Risen normal'> and Antiphon. Christopher has directed the Birmingham Choir for 38
years (70-80 singers present). He is a stickler about the rhythm of
dotted notes. We had a choice of six concerts today. We heard the superb
Rodolfus Choir in an all-German program at Clare College. Singers are chosen
from past and present Eton Choral Choruses. There were 23 singers (7-5-5-6).

Sunday, May 11

It's Mother's Day! We go to St. John's
10:30 Eucharist and hear Palestrina's Ego sum
style='font-style:normal'> and Victoria's O Quam gloriosum
style='font-style:normal'>. We have lunch at The Eagle, an authentic old pub
where many RAF and USAF soldiers spent their time during WWII. Their names are
signed on the ceiling in the bar. We then have a quick stroll through Jesus
College. We go back to Great St. Mary's and listen to a student practice
on the Johnson front organ as we rest our tired feet. At the 3:30 Evensong at
King's we hear the Stanford in G, Hadley My Beloved Spake
style='font-style:normal'>, Vierne Finale normal'>. At the end of the service the great West door is opened to the
"backs" for our exit. WOW! What a vista! We hear the tolling peals
at Great St. Mary's across the street, and Barb calls our children to
speak to them on Mother's Day. They can hear the bells across the
Atlantic through the red phone booth! On to St. John's for a 6:00 organ
recital by James O'Donnell of Westminster Abbey. He played the Bach
partita Sei gegrüsset with
an unfortunate cypher which disappeared quickly. At the 6:30 Evensong we hear
the Parry in D (The Great Service)
and Elgar's Light of the World.
The choir is very musical and has the best tenors in Cambridge. They sing with
a full, robust sound.

Monday, May 12

We shop and buy some CDs. We walk through
"Christ's Pieces", a big green with an arbor in the middle
with a rose garden dedicated to the memory of Princess Diana. On to the chapel
of Emmanuel College, from which John Harvard (founder of Harvard University in
the U.S.) was a graduate. We find the University Arms Hotel where we stayed in
1993. On to Christ College with a lovely modern window that shows Christ on a
cloud over the college. There was a queue for King's Evensong even in the
rain. The King's Voices (mixed choir) sing the Fauré Cantique
de Jean Racine, Noble B-minor Mag
& Nunc and RVW O Taste and
See. The mixed choir is just a good college
choir compared to the choir of boys and men. The sun just came out through the
west end windows and the birds are singing.

Tuesday, May 13

We step in Fitzwilliam College, built in the 1960s and very
modern. The chapel (1990) is in the round, and the inside is shaped to suggest
Noah's Ark. The beautiful grounds were full of blooming flowers in
yellow, purple, lavender, blue, white and pink, not to mention the roses, red
tips and rhododendrons. After a long walk to Churchill College the porter gave
us the key to the chapel that was at the far end of all the buildings on
campus. It was an unimpressive room but still had a small pipe organ. We saw
good music all around the console. A sign in the porter's lodge says: In
Cambridge "porter" means keeper of the gate, not carrier of the
baggage. On to Robinson College Chapel, which is rectangular and with very
straight lines. It had a two-manual 1981 Frobenius tracker with four general
pistons. A lot of organ lessons are taught here. On to the Cambridge University
Music School, the nice concert hall and the King's College School.

We had a late lunch in a pub and then on to Brian Jones
Music Shop where we dropped a few £s. It was still raining as we went off
to Clare College which has a 1971 two-manual Von Beckerath and an 18th-century
Snetzler used to accompany the choir in early repertoire. This superb mixed
choir sings three Choral Evensongs each week on Tuesday, Thursday and Sundays.
The choir tours are free to members of the choirs, and per diems and fees are
frequently paid to them. The psalms are sung without a conductor. A chorister
in the back row assists with coordination of the chant.

Sir David Willcocks was the guest conductor on this day. The
Clare conductor, Tim Brown, introduced Sir David to the choir. Later in a chat
he said that his young choristers probably had no idea what a great man was
conducting and what all Sir David had done for English music. As ever,
Willcocks was alert to tuning in this fine choir. It was good to chat with Sir
David after Evensong. Only 14 people were at Evensong, but no one is bothered
by the small attendance.

Wednesday, May 14

Got caught in rain and hail on the way to Magdalen College
(pronounced "maudlin"). The organ was built in 2000 by Goetze and
Gwynn and has 24 stops. The inspiration behind its design comes from Father
Smith's later instruments. The tuning is Kellner's reconstruction
of Bach's tuning from his Well-Tempered Clavier
style='font-style:normal'>. The chapel is smaller and more intimate than most
Cambridge chapels. Much of the Victorian stained glass still remains. Most of
the glass focuses on Mary Magdalen (usually with her emblem, a jar of precious
ointment) and the life of Christ. There is a slate tablet in the antechapel to
mark the centenary of the birth of C.S. Lewis (1898-1963).

We got caught in more hail on the way to the Fitzwilliam
Museum to see the Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Cyprus galleries. Some things were
four thousand years old. In the upper galleries we saw THE Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book. The display was covered to
protect it from light. It contains 297 compositions by practically every
composer of the virginalist school. The manuscript is the best and most precise
we have ever seen. The museum building is amazing, polished marble with
figurines all around, a dome gilded roof and mosaic floor. We drop some more
£s at the gift shop.

Out in the rain again to Our Lady and the English Martyrs.
This is the biggest Roman Catholic church in town. The Abbott & Smith
romantic organ in the south transept has been renovated by Nicholson. We hope
to get to hear the instrument. Sarah MacDonald of Selwyn College recorded the
Howells Evening Canticles here, and the organ sounds wonderful on the CD. At
the end of a cold and wet day we find a Pizza Hut for some comfort food before
going back to Clare College for rehearsal and Evensong, and then to Trinity
College for a delightful chamber music concert with recorder, baroque
violoncello and 1972 David Rubio harpsichord. We get back to our B&B late
and tired but with a great feeling for what all we packed into one day.

Thursday May 15

Regular tourist stuff! Lunch at the Baron of Beef Pub
(Publick House) where George Guest used to slip over from St. John's for
a pint between rehearsals and Evensong. Got a haircut at a
"Gentleman's Barber," which turned out to a hair scalping. On
to Clare College for rehearsal. The superb choir is rehearsing an extremely
difficult piece in Hebrew by a Jewish student. They rehearsed the first
American piece that we have heard (Randall Stroope's How Can I Keep
from Singing?) to be performed on Sunday
with the McMurry University Choir from Abilene. The last hymn was Lord
of the Dance, in a rather staid English
manner. Only 11 people were at Evensong. There were 15 last night. We exit by
the Fellows Garden on the backs--so beautiful! Back at our B&B we
finish our last cookies from a care package one of our favorite sopranos packed
for us for our trip. We update photos in our albums. We're doing this as
we go along, because putting together three months of photos upon our return
would be a daunting task.

Friday, May 16

It rains again all day and is chilly and breezy. The rain
doesn't bother the locals--they are always out and about. We see more
tourist sights in the morning, then drop some more £s for books and CDs
of Charles Wood's choral music. On to Sidney-Sussex College Chapel.
It's lovely with lots of carved wood. A 2-manual 1963 Harrison &
Harrison with 5 thumb pistons each to Gt and Sw, 5 toe pistons to Ped, 1 thumb
piston labeled Oboe 8'--no obligatory harmonic flute 8'.
Perhaps the Gt open flute will do the trick. The college doesn't have a
faculty organist but two organ scholars run the program. We saw yellow
"stickies" on the side jamb with circles drawn in them to resemble
draw knobs. One said "Preacher Trap Door." The two available
"buttons" read "open" and "closed." The
"closed" showed flames underneath. Another "button"
read "electrical shock for SATB." The organist here must have a fun
sense of humor.

Back to King's for Evensong rehearsal and a chat with
Stephen Cleobury. Rehearsal began
with Psalm 121 of Davies on the syllable YA, led by back row choristers on each
side. They point it differently from the way we do it. Stephen stands in the
middle with a special podium that has a mike built in so the organ scholars up
on the screen can hear his instructions. He speaks softly. All the choristers
are very focused. They sang the Wood Oculi omnium normal'>, Byrd First Service,
Rachmaninoff Blagoslovén griadiy normal'>. We didn't know the Rachmaninoff, which is a benediction text,
lovely and lush. The boy choristers keep a finger on their line of music as
they sing. For Evensong, Stephen tells the vergers we are his guests and to let
us sit on the top row which is reserved for the fellows and members of the
college only. We have a chat with the two organ scholars in the loft after
Evensong. What a treat to see the big Harrison & Harrison
"accompanying machine" up close. A Bass Flute is in the stairwell,
and the 32' goes the length of the screen. It really purrs!

We finish our day at the Internet Café where we check
e-mail and write a recommendation for one of our choristers to attend the RSCM
School at Washington Cathedral.

Saturday May 17

At 8:00 a.m. we are sitting in the rehearsal room of the
King's College School. Photos of past choirmasters and LP covers from
past years (mostly Willcocks recordings) cover one whole wall. Since it's
Saturday the boys are dressed casually. They have a short warmup. Little piano
is used, and the melody is never played. An organ scholar goes behind the boys
to remind them to sit up straight. Stephen is a stickler for final
"D" consonant even in the midst of a phrase, also a stickler for
having the choristers watch him. These 18 choristers are very disciplined.

Off to Trinity College for a LONG re-creation (performance
reconstruction) of a Morning Prayer Service and sermon from the Chapel Royal of
Charles I from April 1629. Men were seated on one side, and women on the other
to make this event more authentic. There was 1 hour and 10 minutes of choral
matins before the sermon. The Trinity College Chapel was completed in 1566, and
the music for the service was chosen with the aim of reflecting the type of
music that may have been performed at court in 1629. As the premier musical
institution in Tudor-Stuart England, the Chapel Royal had brilliant organists
like William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Tomkins. The music was performed
by the Junior and Senior organ scholars with a pick-up choir from Trinity,
King's, Gonville & Caius, Pembroke and Lucy Cavendish Colleges. The 1
hour 7 minute sermon, written by John Donne (Dean of St. Paul's, London)
was read by a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Numerous people left during the
reading of the sermon, and afterwards one can imagine the range of comments
regarding its length. This made us appreciate our 15-20 minute sermons at
home! Most people headed for the pub after the service, but it remained the
topic of conversation around town for several days.

The day ended with rehearsal and Evensong at King's.
The Introit was This Joyful Eastertide
(Charles Wood), Howells' Mag & Nunc Gloucester Service and the Wesley
Blessed Be the God and Father.
Junior Organ Scholar Ashley Grote played an organ recital at 6:30 consisting of
Wild Bells (Michael Berkeley), Psalm
Prelude Set 1 No. 1 (Howells), Sonata
No. 1 in E-flat (Bach), Chanson
de Matin (Elgar) and Pomp and
Circumstance March No. 1 (Elgar). This was
the perfect end to a long day of great music making.

Sunday, May 18 (Easter IV)

The 10:30 Sung Eucharist at King's was the
Kodály Missa Brevis. The soprano
high C's were wonderful and just floated! This was our second time to
hear the Kodály at King's. We have not yet figured out their rotation
schedule. After lunch we visited Downing College which is much newer than most.
There were two nice harpsichords in the narthex and a small 1966 J.W. Walker
tracker. The music program is run by organ scholars. Katie Collinson is the
Senior. Our B&B hostess had insisted we frequent Fitzbillie's Bakery,
but unfortunately it was closed today--some other time!

On to Peterhouse College where the case and much of the
pipework date from Snetzler's organ of 1765, rebuilt by Mander in 1963.
Five pistons to Gt, Sw, Ch and Ped, no generals. Next to Queen's College
Chapel where the 3-manual organ has a red case by Bodley from 1892. In 1966
E.J. Johnson & Son overhauled the instrument. It has 4 thumb pistons to Gt
and Sw and 4 toe pistons each to Gt and Sw.

Next stop was St. Catherine's College Chapel where the
instrument, built by E.J. Johnson & Son in 1978, retained the double case
of Thomas Garner from 1894. The scheme of the present organ was drawn up by Dr.
Peter LeHuray, Fellow of the College. We were fortunate to hear Alexander
Finch, Director of Chapel Music, practicing for his 5:15 recital. The 3-manual
instrument was very impressive in the empty room. Messiaen came off very well.

After a stop at the Internet Café, on to King's
Evensong; we hear the Mag & Nunc Fifth Service by Tomkins and the Byrd Christ
Rising again. We had a snack in the market,
and then on to St. John's for an organ recital before Evensong by Oliver
Lallemant, organ scholar at Trinity--all Bach: Fantasy and Fugue
in G minor, Trio super Allein Gott and Fantasy normal'>and Fugue in C minor. At
our second Evensong we heard the Daniel Purcell in E minor and the Byrd Victimae
Paschali. There is usually a sermon on
Sundays at Evensong, but mercifully it is short.

We found the Castle Mound on the way home; we will visit
another day. Our feet can't take any extra steps tonight. We arrived home
at last with lots of glorious music heard and architecture seen today.
We've lots to read and organize tonight.

Monday May 19

Went to the American Cemetery. It was very moving sitting in
the chapel, and we had not realized how many American soldiers are buried in
Cambridge. The visitor's center displayed two very moving poems, which we
were glad to have for our scrapbook. We took the bus tour around Cambridge and
saw three more colleges: St. Edmunds, Lucy Cavendish (for mature women) and
Darwin. Cambridge has 31 colleges and four theological colleges.

After a busy day of sightseeing we end the day at
King's Evensong sung by the King's Voices, a mixed choir. We heard
the RVW O Taste and See, the Mathias Mag
& Nunc Jesus College Service and the Hadley My Beloved Spake
style='font-style:normal'>. We later learn that Tim Byram-Wigfield of Jesus
College was the organist for this service.

Tuesday, May 20

We visit the Cambridge Folk Museum and shop before going to
Jesus College Chapel to rehearsal. The chapel is very dark, has a small nave
and a big crossing that had two grand pianos, two harpsichords and two
portative organs as well as a set of tympani. There are two organs in the nave
on the north side. The ceiling was very colorful with coats of arms and
cherubs. Tim Byram-Wigfield is the organist. They begin each rehearsal with a
hymn and then the psalm on YA-YA. Tim pushes final consonants. The choristers
are very attentive. There were 10 girls and 11 men plus one of the two organ
scholars singing. The English tradition of raising a hand if you make a mistake
is continued here. Word stress is excellent. There were only eleven people at
Evensong, but we could also hear the birds singing outside along with the
choir.

Wednesday, May 21

We went to the Classical Archeology Museum this morning.
Everything here was a plaster cast copy of pieces in London, Rome, Athens,
Paris. On to Pembroke to try to contact Anne Page who teaches organ there. On
to Corpus Christi Chapel which was locked, but we could see through the glass
doors.

We FINALLY get sweets at the famous Fitzbillie's
Bakery and then went to the library to exchange books before going to Jesus
College for the boys' rehearsal.

Thursday, May 22

We do laundry and get organized in the morning, update all
our photos in the scrapbook, etc. We then pick up some music from Tim Brown at
Clare College. We spent the afternoon at the Arts Theater where we saw Mrs.
Warren's Profession by George Bernard
Shaw. It starred Twiggy, the super-thin model from the'60s. Twiggy is no
longer a twig!

During Evensong at Jesus College we heard the Tallis O
Nata lux, Gibbons short service and
Rutter's Gaelic Blessing.
This is the first time we have heard Rutter's music in Cambridge.

Friday, May 23

Finally get to the top of Castle Mound for a photo op, the
mound being all that is left of the medieval fortification. Then we go to
Kettle's Yard Art Museum and Concert Venue which is next door to St.
Peter's 11th-century delightful tiny church. Part of the museum at
Kettle's Yard is the home of Jim Ede. He donated his house and art
collection to Cambridge. It was fascinating seeing art, china, rocks, all
together and abiding peacefully just as it was when Mr. Ede lived there. We then
went to the modern gallery where there were pen and ink drawings and some
modern paintings of graffitied walls and trash in the streets.

Lunch was back at the Baron of Beef pub and then we sat in
the yard of the Round Church and watched the world go by before our delightful
interview with Tim Byram-Wigfield at Jesus College (see The Diapason
style='font-style:normal'>, December 2003 issue). Following the interview we
went to the mixed choir rehearsal and heard Set Me as a Seal
style='font-style:normal'> (Walton), Ascendit Deus,
style='font-style:normal'>and O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
style='font-style:normal'> (Howells). The choristers are very focused. Tim
asked them to "lay the consonants on top of the vowels."

Saturday, May 24

We attended a light-hearted concert at Clare Chapel given by
The Duke's Men of Yale, 10 singers in close harmony, most of the pieces fast
and fun. Clare's men's ensemble of five also sang, and they were
even better. Back to Jesus College for rehearsal. Tim vocalized for a while.
The Psalm was rehearsed on NAH by the 13 boys. King's, St. John's
and Jesus College are the only three boys choirs in Cambridge. The Jesus boys
are volunteer choristers and are not in the same league with the other two, but
they are very good and sing a lot of rep for not having a rehearsal every day.

Sunday, May 25 (Rogation Sunday)

Went to sung Eucharist at King's (Lassus Missa
"Bell" amfitrit' altera) with sermon. At King's 3:30
Evensong we hear the Stanford Mag & Nunc in B-flat and Lord, Thou Hast
Been Our Refuge (Ives). King's always
has a large congregation at Evensong.

On to Evensong rehearsal at Trinity: Bach Nun komm, der
heiden Heiland and Fantasy and
Fugue in C minor, our first time to hear
the Mag & Nunc sung to Anglican chant. We also hear Arvo Pärt's I
Am the True Vine.

The 1975
Metzler is, of course, on the screen within the restored 1708 Bernard Smith
main case and the Chair case is even earlier. The Hauptwerk Principal 16',
8', 4', 22?3', Rückpositive 8' Principal,
and Pedal 16' Principal are from the Smith organ. The old 1913 Harrison
was used in the King's College recording of Anglican Chant Volume I with
David Willcocks playing and conducting (one of our favorite recordings). The
keyboards of the old Harrison are at the top of the stairs up to the organ. We
noticed two choir pistons engraved Clarinet and Harmonic Flute, a must for any
English organist to interpret the choral literature. The Metzler is an
outstanding instrument with a large Sw and no pistons. Director Richard Marlow
isn't here tonight, and the two organ scholars do a fine job of
rehearsing. Trinity is the silver slipper of the Cambridge colleges, the
college of RVW and Stanford with lovely windows showing George Herbert, Bacon,
Elizabeth I, Wycliffe, Tyndale. There are also many statues in the antechapel.
The mixed choir of 25 rehearsed the Stanford Coelos ascensit hodie
style='font-style:normal'> for Ascension Day next Thursday (this is our
choir's favorite Ascension Day anthem--and it was nice to hear it in
the room for which it was written). The center aisle is wider than at most
colleges, thus more separation in the two choirs. The psalms were rehearsed on "la"
or "li-la."

We left Trinity after rehearsal to attend Evensong at
Gonville & Caius (pronounced "keys") to hear the Britten
Rejoice in the Lamb, which was excellent. There was only a four-minute sermon,
hurrah! The 37-stop organ is a 1981 Klais of Bonn, Germany with a large Sw and
8 general pistons. Gonville & Caius is where Charles Wood presided. Dr.
Geoffrey Webber has recorded two volumes of Wood's anthems and organ
music.

Monday, May 26

It is a gorgeous day--sunny and not too cool or hot. We
had been waiting for this kind of weather for our next out of town trip, so we
took the bus to Anglesy Abbey. It never was an abbey, but it was a priory until
Henry VIII closed them all. The house is fabulous! The guidebook was very
helpful, and we read it thoroughly in every room. What a collection of
furniture, art, animals, birds, images of Windsor Castle, books, walking
sticks, silver and a large Steinway. There were huge beautiful gardens with
flowers and a water wheel. It was a wonderful day to relax in leisure in a
beautiful spot.

Tuesday, May 27

Another beautiful day. We visit the library to return and
check out books. We then met Richard Marlow at Trinity College for choir
rehearsal. Four of his choristers have perfect pitch. About one third of the 60
music majors have perfect pitch. We hear the Reger Benedictus and Introduction
and Passacaglia in D. The choir sings Ergebung normal'> (Wolf), O Tod, wie bitten bist du normal'> (Reger) and the Stanford Mag & Nunc in G (another of our
choir's favorites). Also hear the Davies God Be in My Head
style='font-style:normal'>. This is another excellent choir! Richard Marlow
wrote the Psalm Chant, which was a bit dissonant with close harmony. Trinity is
the only place that sings Anglican chant a cappella. Richard's wife,
Annette, brought music for us and sat with us at Evensong. Afterwards we were
invited for "a sherry" and to see Richard's rooms and then
into a private gated garden off the oldest part of the college. It extends back
to the River Cam very near St. John's College from which one can see the
Bridge of Sighs. We had a delightful evening talking shop. Trinity is the
school of T. A. Walmisley, Charles Stanford (organist 1874-93) and Ralph
Vaughan Williams. The list of "Trinity Men" is staggering with the
royal family, poets, prime ministers and other noted people, men of science and
mathematics, classical scholars, philosophers, historians, judges and lawyers,
Ecclesiastics, Divines and other writers.

Wednesday, May 28

We visit the zoology museum. We learned about Voluta musica,
one of the family of vo