Maxine Thévenot at University of New Mexico

The Holtkamp Organ at the University of New Mexico

A native of Los Angeles, Arlene DeYoung Ward is currently coordinator of the piano lab and the piano proficiency program, and teaches organ along with John Clark at the University of New Mexico, Department of Music. Ms. Ward is a veteran of more than 100 solo organ and harpsichord recitals, including the complete works of J. S. Bach. In addition, she has published articles in both The American Organist and The Diapason on the subject of the Orgelbewegung. Most recently, she has completed two CDs, featuring music of J. S. Bach and organ music of Spain and Spanish America. Current recordings in progress are Music for Flute and Organ, with flautist Laura Dwyer, and Nineteenth Century Masterworks for the Organ. Ms. Ward has been a featured organ concerto soloist with both the Symphony Orchestra of Albuquerque and the Los Alamos Sinfonietta, has been heard nationally on The Pacifica Foundation Network as soloist in the American Guild of Organists (Los Angeles Chapter) 20th-century organ music series, and has toured in Oulskapar, The Netherlands, and Darmstadt-Eberstadt and Hamburg, Germany.

“Most of what I have learned about organs has come from working on organs or from observing organs. But I have had two principal teachers. The first was John Swinford of Redwood City, California. He taught me about organ tone. The second was Walter Holtkamp, Sr. He taught me that an organ should be articulate above everything else. And he did a fair job of teaching this lesson to the country as a whole.”--Charles Fisk1

“Someday people will realize that the organ is a keyboard instrument and not just a big vat of sound.”

--Walter Holtkamp, Sr., 19542

Any discussion of organs designed by Walter Holtkamp, Sr., must begin with the profound influence of the Orgelbewegung (Organ Renewal) movement in Germany during the first three decades of the twentieth century, as well as its French manifestations with Nadia Boulanger. The Orgelbewegung strongly influenced the work of Walter Holtkamp. One of Holtkamp’s organs, designed shortly before his death in 1962, resides in Keller Hall at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and is the organ featured and pictured in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001), Volume 18, page 635.3

But before we trace the history of this instrument, its visual impact and articulate good sound, here follows a history of the movement that inspired its creation.

The Orgelbewegung (Organ Renewal) Movement

The portrayal of 20th-century church music’s regeneration, effected primarily in Germany in the 1920s, should be viewed only as an attempt to trace the outlines of an age which justifiably has been called “the Renaissance of church music” (O. Sohngen). As the Renaissance of Humanism stood upon the shoulders of its predecessors, so does this newest epoch of Protestant church music have its roots in the past. Consequently, we are obliged to shed light upon the diverse historical determinants and principal features in the development of the “Renaissance,” whose influence extends to the present and perhaps even into the future. The rebirth owes a great deal more to the hymnologists, liturgists, restorers of church music, and liturgical reformers in musicology, as well as to one or another 19th-century creative musician, than was immediately apparent to the new generation around 1930.4

--Adam Adrio

The various trends and movements that characterize the music of the 20th century are usually considered under the heading of New Music.5 New Music may perhaps be regarded simply as anti-Romanticism. One group particularly known is Les Six in France, a group that formed a front against the romantic concept of things artistic. Another manifestation is the movement generally known as neo-Classicism. Although Ferruccio Busoni is usually considered its prime mover,6 neo-Classicism experienced its real beginnings with Igor Stravinsky in his Octet for Wind Instruments (1923). Perhaps the chief exponent of neo-Classicism was Paul Hindemith, with his mastery of contrapuntal technique. Heinrich Strobel, a major biographer of Hindemith, shows the affinity of the neo-Classical movement to the aims of Les Six.7 [Briefly summarized, neo-Classical works exhibit a kinship with Bach and earlier composers through the consistent use of contrapuntal texture and imitative procedures; a decided preference for motor rhythms; the choice of comparatively short themes with sharply defined rhythms; the reduction of orchestral resources and color; and the rejection of the idea of program music. Thus, compactness and structural clarity are principal aims of neo-Classicism.]

Since it came into being at about the same time as neo-Classicism, exhibits a similar reaction to the excesses of the 19th century, and shares its retrospective nature, the German “Renaissance of church music” and within it the Orgelbewegung8 must be regarded as parallel movements within a more limited sphere. Rochus von Liliencron stated in 1900: “The New . . . can be discovered only through reverent contact with the old church art of the 16th century and the Protestant of the 18th; but for the purpose of permeating the music to today with the exalted, genuinely religious spirit of the old art, rather than of imitating it insensitively.”9 The Orgelbewegung, then, was primarily a reaction against the Klangideal of the 19th-century organ, a return to the organ music of the Baroque masters, and a renewal of interest in polyphony and the organ as a vehicle for compositional activity.10

Albert Schweitzer, in his 1906 essay “Deutsche und franzosische Orgelbaukunst und Orgelkunst,”11 favored a reform in organ construction to make available an organ that would be more compatible to the works of J. S. Bach and his predecessors. As history often has a habit of doing, the political turmoil in Europe culminating in World War I prevented the idea of reform in organ building until the 1920s. A major step in the direction of the Orgelbewegung was taken when Willibald Gurlitt, together with the organbuilder Oskar Walcker, undertook the construction of the Praetorius-Orgel in 1921 at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau. This instrument was constructed according to the specifications which Praetorius set down in his Syntagma Musicum II:  Organographia (1619).12 In the aftermath of the Praetorius-Orgel, a number of other old organs in Germany were discovered, including those built by Arp Schnitger (Jakobi-Orgel, Hamburg, 1688-1692) and the Silbermann-Orgel in Freiburg.

Beginning in 1925, several organ conferences were held in Germany, with the purpose of clarifying the direction of the Orgelbewegung for organbuilders. As Friedrich Hogner has suggested, however, the effect of these would have been lost if they had ended with a mere revival of the classical organ masters, important as that was, and had not operated as a fruitful stimulus to contemporary composers.13 The French were not only aware of the efforts of their German neighbors; beginning in the middle of the 19th century they had experienced their own renewal of composition, organbuilding and, through the Lemmens school, brilliant technique. Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), arguably the most influential teacher of composition of the 20th century, was not only aware of the efforts of the Orgelbewegung, she became deeply involved in it. An organist herself, Boulanger was an organ recitalist of considerable fame as well as a composer and one of the first professional female conductors. An important figure in American musical life as well, she toured the country as an organist in 1925, giving the premiere of Copland’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra,14 and lived here during World War II, conducting the Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic, and teaching at Wellesley, Radcliffe and Juilliard.15

The Holtkamp Family--Early Works

In the United States, wave after wave of German immigrants arrived during the second half of the 19th century, settling through the American Midwest with especially large communities in the Dakotas, the Texas hill country and the Ohio River valley. For generations they remained faithful to their religious heritage, language and customs. In fact, during the 19th century, so many new Americans spoke German rather than English that German almost became the official language in several areas, losing, for example, by only one vote in the Texas legislature as the language of that state.

Several members of the Holtkamp family emigrated from Ladbergen, Westfalen, Germany to the United Stated in the 1850s and 1860s. Heinrich Herman Holtkamp settled in Illinois;16 Heinrich Wilhelm and his brother came to New Knoxville, Ohio. The latter Heinrich Holtkamp and his wife Mary produced eight children, and it is their son Herman Heinrich “Henry” Holtkamp (d. 1932) who was the first organbuilder in the family.17

The Holtkamp Organ Company traces its lineage back to 1855, when G. F. Votteler established a shop in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1903, the first organbuilding Holtkamp, Herman Heinrich “Henry,” moved to Cleveland to join the then retiring Henry Votteler. Briefly named the Votteler-Holtkamp-Sparling Company, control of the firm eventually passed to Herman’s son, Walter Holtkamp (1894-1962), in 1931.18

The young organbuilder Walter had already been profoundly influenced through contact with musicians who had in turn been inspired by their teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Chris Holtkamp, in a phone interview, spoke of his grandfather’s musician friends who had worked with Boulanger. Exposing her students to the real literature of the French and German Baroque and the new ideas about organbuilding, these young organists and composers returned from Paris, sought out Walter Holtkamp and encouraged him to “look into this,”19 and a new era of organ building in the U.S. began. Although of German descent, Walter Holtkamp, Sr. had never attended any of the famous Orgelbewegung conferences in Hamburg or Freiburg, but learned about the new movement and its “sound ideal” through his French connections.

After 1918 and the end of WWI, the American economy was experiencing a “boom” cycle in the decade referred to as the “Roaring Twenties.” “The craze for ever-larger, more opulent organs, filled with luxury stops designed to tickle the ear, and conceived as one-man symphony orchestras, seemed to take over. The competition was on for possession of the largest and most extravagant instrument. The pipes of these organs were then buried in chambers out of sight, sometimes behind heavy curtains or carvings. This development tended to lose sight of the classical nature, its functional character, its . . . dignified tradition.” In addition, American organists tended to play transcriptions of symphonies in their recitals, to a great degree ignoring the great literature composed for their instrument in previous centuries.20

Walter Holtkamp, now strongly influenced by the new ideas and rediscovery of early music, advocated several seemingly radical notions: Pipes, he said, should be out in the open, clearly visible to the eye. To bury them in “chamber-tombs” is like asking a violinist to play from a closet backstage with the door closed, “like trying to woo a lady by correspondence,” he said. With pipes displayed in the open, fewer would be needed. Holtkamp’s success in obtaining very open positions for his organs gave them a presence and spontaneity that made him famous. So he insisted on smaller, leaner instruments, carefully designed to make each rank distinctive in its own right but essential to the total ensemble of tone--as his German contemporaries called it, the Werk-Orgel. Moreover, he demanded the highest quality materials and workmanship. The metal pipes were to have a high content of pure tin, the ivory on the keys was to be thick-cut and heavy, as ivory absorbs perspiration while other materials allow moisture to collect in puddles, to the distress of the player. (It is duly noted that it is now illegal to import pure ivory into the U.S.)

In 1933, Walter Holtkamp addressed the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Pipe Organ Builders with a pronouncement that is regarded as the starting point for a return to integrity in organ design in the U.S. He said, “The watchword should be smaller organs of finer quality, in advantageous positions. They are more of a pleasure to build and certainly more of a pleasure to listen to. The mammoth thing may satisfy the ego of the purchaser, but it sins against all the dictates of good taste and the laws of musical sound.”21

Following the philosophy of the early Orgelbewegung and the ideas of Boulanger and her disciples, Walter Holtkamp first designed several portativ organs for use in smaller church buildings--a vision for a rich, authentic pipe organ sound at a price that could compete with the newly-emerging electronic organ. The result was a totally self-contained, single-manual, three-stop pipe organ. Holtkamp said that the portativ organ was typical of his urge to natural, functional expression. Besides adapting the pipe organ to the smaller setting, the early portativs incorporated design features that were to become hallmarks of even the largest Holtkamp organs.

In several early Holtkamps, tracker key action was used (this was by no means the only action for later organs). Most important, however, was the placement of the organ pipes within the space where they would be heard, rather than in rooms or chambers adjacent. Only about a dozen of these early Holtkamp portativs were built; several, though, are still in use and can be seen and/or heard at the Smithsonian Institution, the Cleveland Museum of Art and (still in constant church use) at Faith Lutheran Church, Jacksonville, Illinois. This latter instrument has been recently enlarged by  Chris Holtkamp, who saw to it that the visual design of the new pipes complemented the design of the existing, that the woods and finishes of the cabinetry were carefully matched, and the integrity of the original portativ was not compromised.22

As the Holtkamp Organ Company became ever more famous, another surge of organbuilding came after the Second World War. This time, colleges and universities around the country were demanding high quality organs. The upsurge in serious historical musicology in the 1950s and ‘60s would result in many institutions of higher learning greatly desiring organs that brought to life the excitement of the early music so avidly being rediscovered, and which could, in addition, do justice to new music as well. Among those institutions with funds newly available to achieve these goals were such prestigious schools as Amherst, UC, Emory, Furman, Hollins, Indiana, Juilliard, MIT, Northwestern, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Salem, Sweet Briar, Syracuse, Wellesley, Yale and Duke.23 Is it any wonder that the University of New Mexico should desire the same for their new performing arts complex of several halls?

The University of New Mexico and its Holtkamp Organ

Following World War II, universities around the country were again booming, along with the economy. UNM was certainly no exception, as students poured in. For a time, the various departments in Fine Arts were scattered around campus. By the middle 1950s Tom Popejoy, President of the University from 1948-1968, Edwin Stein, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, and Joe Blankenship, Chairman of the Music Department, had determined that the university needed a true Center for the Arts, with several performing and exhibit halls, rehearsal halls, an art museum, classrooms, libraries, faculty offices--in fact, everything that a first class university should have. Even more astonishing to those of us working in universities today, there were funds available to make all of this happen, and fairly quickly: a 2000-seat auditorium (Popejoy Hall) and a 324-seat Recital Hall (later named Keller Hall in memory of Walter Keller, Music Department Chair (1967-70). Any music or art department needs seem to have been funded within the 10-year period that the Center for the Arts was conceived and built. This included a fine organ for the Recital (or Keller) Hall, with 51 ranks and 2,471 pipes.24

At a time when university music departments across the country were sharing the excitement of musicological research and the rediscovery of neo-Baroque organbuilding principles, this was a rare opportunity for a brilliant builder, Walter Holtkamp, to work together with the architect Edward Holien and acousticians Bolt, Baranek and Newman, to build what was considered to be the very best possible marriage of instrument and building--a contrast to the problems innate in building an organ for an already existing space.

Accordingly, Edwin Stein contacted Walter Holtkamp in March 1960; Holtkamp was retained as the designer of the organ in January 1961 and completed the design between January and April, 1961. Several other organs were at various stages of design and building during this same time, and a comparison of their specifications shows where Walter Holtkamp’s creative energies had taken him. Tragically, Walter Holtkamp died in February of 1962, at the relatively young age of 68, while still realizing his considerable creative powers. Organs conceived during the late period in addition to the one for UNM included St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, Lakewood Presbyterian Church, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Mountain Brook, Alabama, the Unitarian Church in Arlington, Virginia,25 and Westwood Lutheran Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

This final project was another opportunity to work with the architects (Sovik, Mather and Madsen) and once again with the acoustical engineering firm of Bolt, Baranek and Newman. The organ at St. John’s Abbey was the last large contract, completed in November, 1961, before Walter Holtkamp’s death.26 St. John’s organ was placed in a monastically austere, not to mention large, church, and the brothers felt that the organ might be dwarfed by the scale of the room. Never conceived for concert use, but rather to serve the monastic community at prayer, the pipes were placed behind a red cloth screen, acoustically transparent, chosen primarily for architectural considerations. The brothers at St. John’s Abbey consider this organ to be Walter Holtkamp Sr.’s magnum opus. One should comment, however, that the Holtkamp at St. John’s was first played by the great Flor Peeters at its inaugural.27 It is most useful, now, to compare the specifications of this sister organ with the one in Keller Hall at UNM--only slightly smaller, but in this instance, one meant to be played in concert and to be seen.

At this point in the creation of the organ in Keller Hall at UNM, some construction delays occurred, and the organ was not completed until December of 1967. St. John’s was indeed the final opus totally designed and installed by Walter Holtkamp, Sr. These last half dozen or so organs designed by Holtkamp were then completed by his son, Walter Holtkamp, Jr., who insured the integrity of his father’s design. Another important figure, then, in this installation at UNM came to be the new Department Chair, Walter Keller, who was a keyboardist (harpsichord, piano and organ) and musicologist of some note. Thus there was a virtual guarantee that the vision of those 20th-century builders of the Orgelbewegung would come to fruition at UNM.28

Our Holtkamp in Keller Hall was inaugurated in grand fashion, with a conference and series of lectures by the composer-author William Schuman. The inaugural recitals in what was then called Recital Hall, now Keller Hall, were given in February and March, 1968. Featured artists were Catharine Crozier, Wesley Selby and the UNM choirs, brass and string orchestra together with Wes Selby.29 The original recordings of those programs are now available on CD, thanks to recording engineer Manny Rettinger (UBIK Sound).

I am pleased to report that our newest generation of young students, particularly those in our Music Appreciation courses (more than 1,000 of them in several sections!), really love our Holtkamp organ. It is exciting to me as both teacher and performer to have a full house of excited 18-year-old students come to organ recitals--our new audience of the future for the next generation of concert organists.

The Holtkamp at UNM is in marvelous condition, helped by the temperature control designed into the building and the commitment of the Music Department to preserve the organ with the help of the Mountain States firm for tuning and maintenance. It has been continuously played since its installation, by numerous students of Wes Selby and Wes Selby himself, now Professor Emeritus of Organ and Theory, as well as numerous guest artists over the years, organ instructor Edwina Beard, and by myself. With our excellent recording system in the hall, new CDs continue to be made with this instrument. The author is grateful to Wes for his oral history and contributions to this article. It is Wes’s picture that accompanies this article, playing the instrument in its, and his, early days at UNM. The author is also grateful for the extensive interviews and oral history contributions by Professor Emeritus Dr. William Seymour.

Ann Labounsky, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Organ and Sacred Music at the Mary Pappert School of Music, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Author of Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, she studied with André Marchal and Jean Langlais in Paris from 1962–1964.

Performance artists are most often remembered after their deaths through the compositions that they leave behind. Organ students learn to play works written by J. S. Bach or Franz Liszt, César Franck or Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen or Jean Langlais; and thus their names and their works live on from one generation to another. For the rest, great performers are remembered during the lives of audiences who heard their memorable performances—great teachers, through the lives of their students.
David Craighead, legendary organ performer and now retired professor at the Eastman School of Music, has often lamented about the fleeting nature of fame. Some, like Arthur Poister, are remembered principally through competitions named for them, as in the Poister competition sponsored annually by Syracuse University where he taught; but even now, a few short generations after his death, there is included in the competition application a biographical sketch telling of his life and work.
For very many, there is no immortality of memory. In the words of the hymn: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” It is a sad dictum that those who do not compose most often decompose without leaving a mark on succeeding generations.
There are exceptions, of course. One thinks, for example, of opera singer Enrico Caruso or conductor Arturo Toscanini, great artists whose names continue to resound with their successor performers and audiences beyond specialists in music history. In those cases, they were people who transcended the limitations of the performance practices of their day, and thus left the arts they served transformed forever. For organists, the name André Marchal, the thirtieth anniversary of whose death is commemorated in 2010, must be added.

Marchal’s legacy
There are reasons for which André Marchal will be remembered as a transformational figure in the history of organ building and organ performance. He had an important impact on the organ reform movement in France, and subsequently in America—an influence that is only now beginning to be understood.
In particular, he influenced the Neo-classical style of organ building and aesthetics, through his association with the French organs of Victor Gonzalez. These instruments, in turn, influenced the aesthetics and registration practices of later twentieth-century French organ composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen. At the same time, Marchal was a forerunner in the formation of the performance practice now common today, especially in the interpretation of earlier organ works.

Life
André Marchal entered the world at the end of the French Romantic era and lived until 1980. He was born without sight to middle-class parents in Paris, February 6, 1894. Both his father and grandfather noticed his musical talent at a very early age and encouraged his study of the piano.1 At the age of nine he enrolled at the Institute for the Young Blind (Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles–INJA) in Paris, where he studied organ with Adolphe Marty, and harmony with Albert Mahaut, both students of César Franck.
At the age of seventeen he entered Gigout’s organ class at the Paris Conservatory, obtaining first prize in organ and improvisation two years later. In 1915 he succeeded Augustin Barié as organist at Saint-Germain-des-Près. In 1917 he received the Prix d’excellence in counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatory, in the class of George Caussade. Four years later he was hired as an organ teacher at INJA, where he continued to teach from 1919 until 1959. He succeeded Joseph Bonnet as organist at the Church of Saint-Eustache in 1945, where he remained until 1963.

Recital career
His long and distinguished career as an organ virtuoso began in 1923, when he gave the premiere performance of Vierne’s Fourth Symphony, with the composer present, at the Paris Conservatory. Two years later, he followed with his second public performance at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. In 1927 he toured in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. Again, in 1928, he gave the premiere of a work by Vierne, this time the third suite of his Pièces de fantaisie.
In 1930, he made his first tour of the United States, having no assistance from a guide and without any knowledge of English. (It was through Arthur Quimby—a student of Nadia Boulanger, and Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, who had heard Marchal perform in Paris—that the first tour was arranged.) At the Cleveland Art Museum, he played ten recitals of the music of
J. S. Bach. Seth Bingham, who taught at Columbia University, welcomed him in New York City, where he performed an improvised symphony in four movements at the Wanamaker Auditorium in New York City.2 This was followed with recitals in Chicago and in Canada. In 1938 he gave 30 concerts in the United States and Canada.
After World War II he performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. On that occasion he met the English journalist Felix Aprahamian, who became a close friend and accompanied him on the tour to Australia in 1953.
His concert career spanned half a century; between 1930 and 1975 he made 19 trips to the United States to perform and teach.3 His importance as a teacher drew students from many parts of the world to study with him in his home or at INJA. It should be noted that his first American student, Lee Erwin, who made a career as a theatre organist, came to study with him just prior to his tour in 1930 and was responsible for the first recording on his house organ. His recordings, which also spanned over four decades, likewise have had a continuing impact on organists throughout the world.

André Marchal and the Organ
Reform movement
The Organ Reform movement (or Neo-classical movement as it is called in France) began in the 1920s in Germany and France, spreading to the United States in the 1930s. Albert Schweitzer was a pivotal originator. In France, it was realized primarily through the work of three men in tandem: the performer and teacher, André Marchal; the noted historian and musicologist, Norbert Dufourcq (1904–1990); and the organbuilder, Victor Gonzalez (1877–1956).

Victor Gonzalez
Victor Gonzalez, who was originally from the Castile region of Spain, began his career with the firm of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, where he became their chief voicer. He then worked for the firms of Gutschenritter and Merklin. In 1929, after declining to assume leadership of the Cavaillé-Coll firm, he established his own firm with the help, encouragement, and financing assistance of Béranger de Miramon Fitz-James, founder of Association des Amis de l’Orgue, together with a group of de Miramon’s friends. Gonzalez’s first organ was built in 1926 for the home of Béranger de Miramon, followed the same year by an organ for the parish church in Ligugé. By 1937 there were 50 employees at the firm who worked to rebuild the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Palais de Chaillot, and in the following year to renovate the organs at the Versailles chapel and the Cathedral of Rheims.
From 1929 until 1936, Rudolf von Beckerath worked for Gonzalez on restoration projects for organs in Saint-Eustache, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, Solesmes, Bailleul, the Goüin residence, and the world’s fair in Brussels in 1935, prior to founding his own firm. Though the Gonzalez name is no longer in use, he was succeeded in the business by his son, Fernand Gonzalez, and then by his son-in-law, George Danion. Fernand Gonzalez, who was killed in World War II, was responsible for the design of the Palais de Chaillot. After his death, Bernard Dargassies was charged with the maintenance of most of the Gonzalez organs.4
In 1931 Victor Gonzalez built an organ for the Condé estate of Joseph Bonnet.5 Gonzalez built this instrument very much in the Cavaillé-Coll style of that time, with two enclosed divisions, the usual plan for his house organs. He departed, however, from Cavaillé-Coll by adding a three-rank mixture on the Swell and a series of mutations. The romantic Merklin organ at Saint-Eustache, which was rebuilt by Gonzalez, and the Gonzalez organ from 1934 in the home of Henry Goüin are landmark examples of the wedding of early music to the recreated sounds of early instruments.6 These instruments included many mutation stops and mixtures, which allowed authentic performances of early music. Under the influence of Marchal and Dufourcq, Gonzalez became the leading builder in France for half a century.

Collaboration with Norbert
Dufourcq
Norbert Dufourcq’s collaboration with Marchal began in 1920, when he became Marchal’s organ student after studying for three years with Gustave Noël at the Cathedral in Orleans. Two years after beginning his organ study with Marchal, Dufourcq became principal organist of Saint-Merry in Paris, a post that he retained until his death in 1990. Dufourcq earned a degree in history from the Sorbonne (1923). In 1927 he was one of the founding members and secretary of Association des Amis de l’Orgue. Between 1932 and 1983 he was a member of the organ division of Commission of Historical Monuments. From 1941–1975 he served as professor of music history at the Paris Conservatory. (He also taught at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, from 1935 to 1946.)
During the years 1941 to 1975 Marchal performed many concerts in which Dufourcq provided the commentary. A gifted musicologist and persuasive public speaker, Dufourcq was able to give a poetic overview of the pieces performed, so that the uninitiated listener could follow. His mellifluous voice and the frequent use of the imperfect subjunctive case were noteworthy. Included in the commentaries was a series of eight concerts, entitled The Great Forms of Organ Music, with genres including prelude and fugue, toccata, chaconne, canzona, passacaglia, the chorale, partita, and fantasia. These recitals continued and included symphonic music and program music.
By 1933, Marchal and Dufourcq had become the leaders of the French national committee for the oversight of historic organs throughout France: the Commission des Monuments Historiques under the minister des Beaux Arts. Many of the nineteenth-century Cavaillé-Coll instruments, and earlier instruments by Clicquot, which were under the control of this commission, had fallen into disrepair and required renovations. This circumstance gave the commission the opportunity to rebuild those organs using the ideals of the Neo-classic design that Marchal, Dufourcq, and Gonzalez favored. Their work could be seen in the restorations at La Flèche, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Merry (where Dufourcq was organist), Les Invalides, the cathedrals of Auch, Soissons, and Rheims, the Palais de Chaillot, and the new concert organ in the French National Radio Studio 103, among many others. Many of the foundation stops were replaced with higher-pitched ranks and the reeds re-voiced. Marchal recorded on many of these instruments in the 1960s.
Influence on the Holtkamp Organ Company
This three-part collaboration among André Marchal, Norbert Dufourcq, and Victor Gonzalez, which affected the Neo-classical organ movement in France, subsequently came to the United States through the work of both Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and his son Walter Holtkamp, Jr., who wrote:

André Marchal came to the microcosm that is the Holtkamp Organ Company soon after World War II. While he had been in this country prior to the war, it was not until after that he brought his many talents to us with such marvelous results…. Both my father and I traveled to many cities of our country to sit with André Marchal at the console to evaluate our instruments. He would play and discourse upon the merits and demerits of that particular organ. From every encounter we came away with a new perspective of our work and our ideas.7
A transcript of one of these conversations with Marchal and the two Walter Holtkamps, Senior and Junior, which was recorded following a Marchal recital on the Holtkamp organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland, on May 10, 1957, gives an example of how the Holtkamps relied on Marchal’s advice regarding voicing:
WH (Walter Holtkamp, Sr.): André, we heard last night no 16′ Principal or 8′ Pedal Octave. My son and I would like to go to St. Paul’s and have a lesson on the use of the 16′ and what is lacking in this one.
AM (André Marchal): Your 16′ Principal is too large. There is too much gap in dynamic between the 16′ Subbass and the 16′ Principal. It is too big to be used without the reeds, and when the reeds are on the Subbass does just as well as the 16′ Principal.
WH: Perhaps this is a result of the 16′ Principal being placed against a stone wall rather than in the buffet as in the French organs.
AM: No, I noticed this same character at Baltimore, where the 16′ stands in the open. This is true on all your organs. The 8′ Pedal Octave is also too loud at St. Paul’s, Oberlin, Berkeley, Baltimore.
C (Walter Holtkamp, Jr.): I would like to know Mr. Marchal’s idea of the relationship as to loudness and quality between the Great 8′ Principal and Pedal 8′ Octave.
AM: In theory, the Pedal 8′ should be larger in scale than the Great 8′, but in use I really like the Pedal 8′ to be a little milder than the Great 8′. It could be a little more flutey.8

It is possible that Walter Holtkamp, Sr. heard Marchal’s series of ten recitals of the music of J. S. Bach at the Cleveland Museum of Art in March of 1930. In August of 1956, Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and Walter Blodgett, Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, drove to Methuen to hear Marchal play during the Summer Organ Institute, organized by Arthur Howes, and again the following year to hear him perform and record on the Holtkamp organ at MIT. Along with Fenner Douglas, in the early 1960s Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett traveled to France to study the historic instruments there, including many by Gonzalez. In later years Marchal performed and taught frequently on Holtkamp organs at Syracuse University and Oberlin College. (Despite his love of Holtkamp organs, he often spoke of the similarity between the American builder G. Donald Harrison’s reeds and the French reeds that he loved.)

Giuseppe Englert
The composer Giuseppe Englert, another of Marchal’s students, who in 1954 married Marchal’s daughter Jacqueline, served as translator for the Holtkamps and Marchal during Marchal’s tours to the United States and the Holtkamps’ trips to France. The Englerts’ apartment in Paris, across the street from Les Invalides, was home to a Gonzalez organ, with a similar design to one in Marchal’s home. Maurice Duruflé admired this instrument and was inspired by it for the specification for the Gonzalez instrument in his own apartment. (The organ in Marchal’s home was originally a Gutschenritter, which was enlarged by Gonzalez.)

Marchal and performance practice
In the early 1920s Marchal continued to play in the style he had been taught by Gigout, a uniformly legato touch and a non-interpretive approach to the music of Bach and the Romantic composers. Gigout followed the tradition of the Lemmens school, learned from Widor and Guilmant. During his study of the music of the early masters, in preparation for a series of recitals of early music in 1923, Marchal rethought his approach to technique and interpretation. He was the first, in 1929, to play the two complete Masses of François Couperin. In an interview with Pierre Lucet for a series of recitals on the French National Radio in 1979, Marchal explained the process by which he changed his approach to early music and the organs upon which it could be performed:

Pierre Lucet: Maître, permit me to inquire first of all about your approach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach:
Marchal: It [his approach] was made at two times. I was admitted to the Conservatory and at that time I listened to what was told to me, I learned technique; I was greatly in need of it. And it was from that point of view that I studied Bach. Ten years later [1921], in establishing my repertoire, I began to concertize, and relearned Bach in a completely different manner. This time I studied each piece in depth, trying to understand it in the best way possible; and having assimilated it, I tried to bring out the beauty of each piece by certain ways of playing; for example, the phrasing, the breaths, the registration. Obviously, at that time, there were few organs on which one could register well the music of Bach; we were still in the full Romantic period. But one could still look for lighter stops, clear in any case, which would permit the beauty of Bach’s counterpoint to emerge.
After having obtained my prize in organ [1913], while continuing to play the organ I worked a great deal on piano. Paul Braud, a student of Franck, took an interest in me. I became then more oriented toward the piano, which permitted me to know more music and to play more chamber music. I worked relentlessly . . . I purchased a small mechanical organ to practice my repertoire. It was at that time [1921] that I really tried to express Bach. My colleagues said: “Marchal? He plays the harpsichord”—and that was almost true, since my interpretations that were closest to what I hoped them to be were like the marvelous ones of Wanda Landowska on her harpsichord.9

This process of searching for the appropriate style for early music and the instruments that would bring it to life continued for him through the early 1930s, when he gave a series of recitals of early music on Neo-classical instruments built by Gonzalez. After 1930, Marchal played very differently from his teacher, Gigout, and the other blind teachers from INJA. It was as if he grasped the essence of the music from within himself. His style was powerful, lyrical, and always convincing. His personality was also very strong. There was a radiance about him and a “joie de vivre” that came through in every piece that he played.
His touch was a radical departure from the 19th-century seamless legato that was carried on by Marcel Dupré and his predecessors. He had an infinite variety of touches. By the 1940s Marchal had become one of the most popular performers in France. The public related easily to the musicality of Marchal’s playing and to his vibrant personality. It is not surprising that such a different style—full of authentic poetry and lyricism—would win the hearts of the French public as well as those from other countries. It must also be said that with him and all the other blind organists, there was also something captivating at seeing a blind person being led onto the stage and then left alone to play the instrument, no matter how large, completely independently. When one contemplates the style of playing during the 1920s through the 1950s, which was completely dominated by the legato Romantic style, what is utterly amazing is this new, radically different sound and interpretation. Begun by Marchal, it was later adopted by Marie-Claire Alain and others.
Guilmant and Pirro, in the monumental Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue, 1897–1910 (volumes 1–10 available online), made available for the first time, at the end of the 19th century, the music of Couperin, de Grigny, Clérambault, and many others. Although Guilmant and Pirro recommended the use of the Cornet registration, their grounding in the 19th-century style of playing and registration prevented them from recommending for this early music a complementary early style and registration. Likewise, the six volumes of Joseph Bonnet’s Historical Organ Recitals series, published between 1917 and 1940, continued the same style of playing and registrations. Bonnet’s role in the movement, however, should not be ignored. He was intensely interested in early music but played it in the manner that he had been taught by Guilmant.
Although he had substituted for his teacher, Eugène Gigout, as organ teacher at the Paris Conservatory, Marchal was never connected to any school in France except at INJA and the summer school of Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau. Nonetheless, so many students requested Fulbright grants to study with him, that by the 1950s he agreed to be referred to as a school himself. In America, many other organists fell under his influence through the many masterclasses he gave at Oberlin College, Syracuse University, Union Theological Seminary, Northwestern University, the universities of Illinois and Indiana, the Eastman School of Music, and the Organ Institute in Methuen.

Marchal’s recordings
In the release on CD (Arbiter, 2003) of his first recordings, originally recorded between 1936 and 1948 at Saint-Eustache and the Goüin residence, one can easily understand Marchal’s interest in early music and in the type of instrument that would be well suited to the music of earlier periods. The lyricism, so unlike the usual style of playing during the 1940s, was notably displayed in his performance of the Bach chorale prelude O Mensch bewein dein Sünde gross. His use of free trills, so unlike the measured trills found in the playing of his contemporaries, was quite a departure from the traditional style of playing.
The subtle rubato in all the playing is striking. In the Bach Passacaglia and Fugue, the phrasing of each variation gives life to the great work. The articulation of the pedal line and the variety in the registrations gives much interest to the form of the piece. What is compelling in all of his playing is the strength of the rhythm, especially noticeable in the fugue of this work. While listening to his performances, one senses that it should not be performed otherwise, that it is right.
What we understand today of the stylus fantasticus can already be heard in Marchal’s opening performance from 1948 of Buxtehude’s Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Minor. There is considerable contrast between the free sections and the fugal sections. His personality comes alive in his commentary for demonstrating each stop, with brief improvisations that give fine examples of this style of organbuilding. The Blow Toccata in D Minor brings out the bass in the reed registers with great clarity. Listening to these improvisations on the individual sonorities of the Gonzalez house organ in the Goüin house gives a clear picture of this aesthetic: a Neo-classical organ that, in America, we would call an eclectic organ.
Other recordings include:
Chefs d’œuvres pour orgue de J.S. Bach “10 de répertoire” en 1989. Zurich, Grossmünster 1964. MUSIDISC 203412 AD 650.
Orgues et organistes français du XXè siècle (1900–1950) by EMI Classics (2002) as well as Jeux et registrations de l’orgue, Improvisations, Toccata de Gigout, Final de la 4ème Symphonie de Vierne, Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle de Messiaen, Choral dorien de J. Alain, Saint-Merry, 1958 et 1976. EMI Classics, 1 CD, 71716 2 (1997), Saint-Merry et Saint-Eustache.
The Organ Historical Society website lists the two recordings available through Arbiter (135 and 111) with these annotations:
The works by Buxtehude, Bach, Blow, Purcell, Sweelinck and Vierne were recorded by André Marchal (1894–1980) in April 1948, on the organ at St. Eustache in Paris, then a Merklin which had been rebuilt by Victor Gonzalez in 1927–32. In 1936, the Pathé firm released a 12-disc set entitled Three Centuries of Organ Music from which Marchal’s performances of Cabezon, Santa Maria, Landino, and Palestrina are taken. These first recordings of these early works are performed on an organ designed especially for early music and completed in 1934 by Victor Gonzalez at the home of Henry Goüin in Paris. Marchal also demonstrates the organ stop-by-stop, and narrates his demonstration. Available on Arbiter-135.
Arbiter 111 is described:

This unique CD reissues the 1956 stereo recordings made by André Marchal on his 3/28 house organ built by Gonzalez. The fidelity of the recording is unusually fine, capturing Marchal’s way with 12 of the Bach Orgelbüchlein, BWV 603–612, 614–615, and Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C, BWV 564. There are no revelations here for most of us, and the organ is located in an anechoic environment. The CD is a must for Marchal fans, who will revel in his spoken description and demonstration of the organ.
Although more difficult to locate, it is possible to find in libraries the Lumen recordings of Franck and early French music (Grand Prix du disque 1952); the Bach large fantasies and fugues by Ducretet Thomson; the Clérambault recordings at Auch Cathedral, by LDE 3231; many of these recordings contain the commentaries by Norbert Dufourcq. The Unicorn recordings from MIT (UNLP 1046–1048) of Bach and early French music on the large Holtkamp organ there from the 1950s are excellent.
Marchal’s Complete Organ Works of César Franck, originally released by Erato, has been reissued by Solstice ([email protected]). This recording was awarded the coveted Diapason d’Or. There are many unpublished recordings (some from Syracuse from 1960s, and two recordings from his last American tour in 1974 at the Church of the Assumption in Bellevue, Pennsylvania and in Rochester, New York) as well as many given on the French National Radio.

His teaching and legacy
His system of teaching usually began with having the student play a chorale prelude from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. He usually heard a piece only one time giving all his ideas in the one lesson. For the early French music he did not use “notes inégales” during the 1960s, but by the 1970s he realized that this was, in practice, the style of this music, and adopted its use. His mind was always engaged and he heard every phrasing and nuance. His use of agogic accents to bring out the shape of a phrase was notable. Above all, he made each part sing independently of the other voices regardless of the period in which it was written. He was demanding especially with his more gifted pupils, desirous that each one achieve his/her highest potential.
His influence is continued not only in the legacy of performance practice and organbuilding. A number of publications and prizes have appeared since 1980: a thesis by Lynn Trapp at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, 1982), “The Legacy of André Marchal;” “Tribute to André Marchal” reprint of the L’Orgue Dossier I in 1997, with the addition of tributes by many American students who did not have the opportunity to be included in the original document; and prizes at the biennial Marchal competition in Biarritz.
The Académie André Marchal was founded in Biarritz, France in 1982 by Denise Limonaire to perpetuate the memory of this musical giant, his innovative style of performance, his neo-classical influence on organbuilding, and his rediscovery of early music. Susan Landale serves as president of the Académie, with Jacqueline Englert-Marchal as honorary president. Among other projects, the Académie has partnered with the town of Biarritz to sponsor the “Prix André Marchal,” an international organ competition with prizes in interpretation and improvisation. The competition is held every two years and has grown in quality and size. The ninth competition, held in 2009, accepted eighteen candidates of twelve nationalities. Americans desirous of supporting this valid and significant mission are strongly invited to become members; dues of $80 for two years may be mailed to Ralph Tilden at P.O. Box 2254, Banner Elk, NC 28604. André Marchal awards are given at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for excellence in organ performance.
His impact as a teacher was important. His blind students who obtained the first prize in organ at the Paris Conservatory included: André Stiegler, 1925; Jean Langlais and Jean Laporte, 1930; Gaston Litaize, 1931; Antoine Reboulot, 1936; Xavier Dufresse, 1952; Georges Robert, 1953; Louis Thiry, 1958; Jean Wallet, 1963; Jean-Pierre Leguay, 1966 (who had studied with both Litaize and Marchal). Two other pupils who obtained the first prize who were sighted were Noëlie Pierront, 1925, and Anne Marie Barat, 1976.
His other pupils included Corliss Arnold, Linda Clark, Craig Cramer, Philip Crozier, Alan Dominicci, Norbert Dufourcq, Giuseppe Englert, Lee Erwin (the first American pupil before 1930), Robert Eshenour, John Fenstermaker, Philip Gehring, Emily Gibson, Lester Groom, Jerald Hamilton, Ruth Harris, William Hays, Allan Hobbs, Howard Jewell, Elna Johnson, Margaret Kemper, Ralph Kneeream, Suzanne Kornprobst, Marilou Kratzenstein, Charles Krigbaum, Ann Labounsky, Susan Landale, David Liddle, Denise Limonaire, Robert Lodine, Alan Long, Robert Sutherland Lord, Chamin Walker Meadows, Kathryn Moen, Earline Moulder, Margaret Mueller, Arsène Muzerelle, Lois Pardue, Garth Peacock, Stephen Rumpf, Daniel and David Simpson, Robert Sirota, Rev. Victoria Sirota, Carl Staplin, Roger Stiegler, Edith Strom, Haskell Thompson, Ralph Tilden, Parvin Titus, Robert Judith Truitt, Marie-Antoinette Vernières, Gail Walton, Nicole Wild, and Mary Alice Wotring.

Influence on subsequent
composers
His influence on subsequent composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen in their approaches to organ registration is likewise important to this reflection of André Marchal upon the 30th anniversary of his death. Jean Langlais studied organ with Marchal at INJA and at his home and was influenced by the work of Gonzalez in these two venues, as well as the organ at the Palais de Chaillot, where he performed his first symphony in 1943. His choice of the Schwenkedel organs of Neo-classical design, which he installed in his home and at the Institute Valentin Haüy, next door to INJA, shows this influence. The stops that he added to the organ at Sainte-Clotilde in 1962 included a Larigot 11⁄3′ on the Positif, a Prestant 4′ and Clairon 2′ on the Récit, and a Prestant 4′ and Doublette 2′ on the Pédale.10
The many Neo-classical registrations in his pieces likewise show this influence. For example, even the titles of a number of his pieces refer to these types of registrations: Dialogue sur les mixtures (Suite brève, 1947) and all the movements of Suite française (1948), which are based on titles found in classical French organ music such as Prélude sur les grands jeux and Contrepoint sur les jeux d’anches, and Suite baroque (1973).
As I have already mentioned, Maurice Duruflé often visited the home of Giuseppe Englert to study the specifications and dimensions of the Gonzalez organ, which inspired him for his house organ, also built by Gonzalez. Englert’s house organ was based on the specifications of Marchal’s house organ.11 In Duruflé’s organ works, even starting with the Scherzo from 1926, his registrations depart from the normal 19th-century models.
Marchal and Jehan Alain’s father, Albert Alain—an amateur organbuilder—were close friends and worked together on ideas for the specifications for their house organs. Similarities can be seen in the specifications of each.12 When Marchal had built his organ with a rather classic Positif, Albert Alain wanted to do the same thing.13 Jehan Alain’s first experiences of organ music in his home were influenced by the aesthetics of Marchal and Gonzalez. Jehan Alain and Marchal enjoyed playing and improvising together in Alain’s home. A very early work, Variations sur un thème de Clément Jannequin, demonstrates registrations that call for Neo-classical stops as well as the recall of early music in the title of the piece. Another work of Jehan Alain, Le Jardin suspendu, calls for a typically classical French stop, the Gros Nasard 51⁄3′ on the Positif. Marchal was among the first organists to perform Alain’s music, including Litanies, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin, and Danses à Agni Yavishta, and had them transcribed into Braille notation.
Olivier Messiaen was also influenced by the Neo-classical trends in France. He changed the Cavaillé-Coll organ at La Trinité, where he was organist from 1930 until 1991, to include many mutation stops that were not part of the original specification. Even his earliest organ work, Le banquet céleste (1928), is a departure from the normal registration practices of the period, including Flûte 4′, Nasard 22⁄3′, Doublette 2′, and Piccolo 1′ for the pedal line. As he continued to compose, his works called more frequently for higher-pitched sonorities, often to imitate birds. One could say that it was a far cry from D’Aquin’s imitative harpsichord piece mimicking the cuckoo, but these sounds were all part of an interest in both the future and the past.

Conclusion
It is time to re-evaluate André Marchal’s contributions to the organ reform movement in France; his impact on organbuilding in the United States, particularly in his relationships to Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett as well as Fenner Douglas; and his influence on the leading organ composers of the 20th century: Langlais, Alain, Duruflé, and Messiaen. In light of the development of early organ techniques and the number of publications that have been published and used in the thirty years since his death, it is time to listen again to Marchal’s recordings with a discerning mind and ask where his place is in the development of performance practice.
One certainly hears a wide variety of touches in all his playing. What was his “ordinary” touch? What were the main differences between his style and that of Joseph Bonnet, Alexandre Guilmant, and Marie-Claire Alain? Robert Noehren admired the sensitivity of his touch both on tracker and electric actions. It is also time to re-evaluate his influence on organ building; for example, in the composition of the Plein jeu mixture, which reserved the breaks until after middle C to enhance the clarity of the polyphonic line, and his use of different mixtures for each polyphonic composition that he performed.
Consider, too, the changes in the organ registrations in the music of Duruflé, Alain, Messiaen, and Langlais as compared to many other composers of the 20th century. The required foundations plus reeds on each manual, as a given for organ registration, changed as a result of Marchal’s impact on the Neo-classical organ in France. There is, indeed, much to ponder.
Perhaps Norbert Dufourcq, who was the most eloquent of his collaborators, best expressed the essence of his artistry:

André Marchal seemed to have found by himself the sources to which he probed the depths of his rich and attractive personality: the discovery of the works of the French organists of the 17th and 18th centuries, that of the complete works of Bach (he played almost all of it), of Cabezón, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude . . . It was for André Marchal to penetrate the secrets of a page of music, to discover the tempo, in searching the phrases, in marking the strong pulses, the weak pulses, without ever breaking the melodic line nor the polyphonic structure, without ever losing a rhythm which gave a work its forward motion, its line. One has praised the sensitivity of the Maître. It is better perhaps to speak of his sense of poetry.
To this static but mysterious and majestic instrument, he knew how to assure a poetic and lyric “aura” that he insisted on creating in a convincing phrasing with thousands of details in a style made more subtle by the use of minimal retards; of suspensions slightly brought out or by the imperious accents thrown into the center of the discourse. Goodbye to the inexpressive and neutral legato, André Marchal sought to impose on his instrument a suppleness with the use of imperceptible tensions—jolts of the soul—which did not stop. It is in this that he transformed the lens of the entire school of the organ, in France as in America . . . Under his fingers the organ no longer preached in an impersonal manner; under his fingers, the melodies rushed into the nave to touch the heart of each person. But it was never he who descended upon us. It was us, whom he seized with love, and attracted us to him.14 ■

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in Organ Performance/Church Music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song are available through Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts. Lisa Byers received master’s degrees in music education and organ performance from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from the University of Toledo, Ohio. She is retired from teaching music in the Jefferson Public Schools in Monroe, Michigan, as well as from her position as organist/choir director at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Tecumseh, Michigan. She currently subs as organist in the Monroe area.

This year’s gathering marked the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Michigan Conference on Organ Music, directed by its creator, Marilyn Mason. Organists from France, Germany, Poland, and the U.S. performed on the Aeolian-Skinner on the stage of Hill Auditorium. The shimmering golden pipes of this organ made this year’s theme especially appropriate: “Pure Gold: Music of Poland, France and Germany.” The conference was dedicated to the memories of Erven Thoma, a Michigan DMA graduate in church music, and William Steinhoff, Professor Emeritus of English at U-M and husband of Marilyn Mason.

Sunday, October 3
Frédéric Blanc, 43-year-old native of Angoulême, opened the conference with a program of all-French music. He introduced his program by saying that Fauré, Ravel, and Debussy are never far away in nineteenth and twentieth-century French organ music. Their influence was undeniable in the works Blanc performed, a mix of well-known and loved repertoire—Franck, Choral in A Minor and Cantabile; Vierne, Carillon de Westminster and Méditation Improvisée (reconstructed by Duruflé), repertoire that is occasionally heard—Prelude in E-flat Minor (from Suite, op. 5) by Duruflé and Allegro (from Symphony VI) by Widor, and repertoire that is rarely heard—Introduction et Aria by Jean-Jacques Gruenwald, Toccata (from Le Tombeau de Titelouze, on Placare Christe Servulis) by Dupré, and Prelude (from the suite Pélleas et Mélisande) by Debussy, transcribed by Duruflé.
Blanc’s technique is formidable and his choice of registration was both poetic and daring; however, his playing became more impassioned and inspired in his improvisation—a Triptych Symphony based on three submitted themes: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, Hail to the Chief, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. His imagination and creativity were dazzling as he altered rhythms and keys of the submitted themes, seamlessly moved from dark and somber to warm and brilliant colors, from pensive to ebullient moods, and ending with a bombastic pedal toccata. He delighted in making the instrument hum, growl, and break forth in glorious trumpeting.

Monday, October 4
On Monday afternoon Frederic Blanc gave a lecture entitled “A Mind’s Eye.” He spoke informally of how his life as a musician has been shaped and influenced by unique circumstances, his teachers, and his views on improvisation. While he was a student at the Bordeaux Conservatory, Xavier Durasse heard him play and persuaded him to come to Toulouse, where he was then asked to be organist at St. Sernin. There he had all his nights to play the organ, and there he met Jean-Louis Florentz, André Fleury, and Madame Duruflé. When she heard him improvise, she said, “I will take you to Paris and I will make you work very hard.” He told how he was not prepared to play Dupré’s Variations on a Noël, one of the required pieces for the Chartres competition, and she told him he had to be able to play it from memory in fifteen days or she would never see him again. She was delighted when he came back in fifteen days and played it from memory. Blanc said that the most important thing he learned from her was that “each piece has its own way to be played, you must express yourself, your sensitivity must flow through the music.”
Blanc’s candid answers to questions about his own improvisation left me feeling that here is a man whose life is charmed, who is fully conscious of the rare gift he has been given, and is fully committed to nurturing it. When asked who taught him how to improvise, he answered: “I wasn’t. I listened to Madame Duruflé, Pierre Cochereau, Jean Langlais, and to recordings of Tournemire. Nobody can give you the gift. If you are not given the gift you will never be able to improvise a symphony . . . I heard Cochereau at Notre Dame and it was like magic, like being pierced by a sword, raised to heaven. He was at one with the organ.”
When asked about the state of organ building in France today, Blanc lamented that there are no organs in concert halls, and the organist cannot be seen in the lofts in churches. He commented that Cavaillé-Coll was a builder who turned toward the future and restored his own organs for new music, especially those organs in Notre Dame and Sacré Coeur.
Blanc’s final dictum concerning how to play French organ music: “After historicism, it must be the music and what you have inside.”
Charles Echols, Professor Emeritus of St. Cloud State University, lectured on “Observations on American Organ Music 1900–1950,” covering a large variety of topics: the movement of American composers to create “American” music; changes in musical style and organ building between 1930–1950; approaches to researching organ music by American composers; and an introduction to the organ music of René Louis Becker, whose scores have been given to the University of Michigan by his family, who were present at the lecture.
On Monday evening Martin Bambauer, 40-year-old organist and choirmaster at the Konstantin Basilika in Trier, played Dupré’s Poème héroïque, op. 33; Tournemire’s Triple Choral, op. 41; Liszt’s Eglogue (from Années de Pèlerinage), transcribed for organ by Bambauer; Karg-Elert’s Partita Retrospettiva, op. 151; Iain Farrington’s Fiesta!, plus his own improvisation. He played with great precision and refinement. His performance of Tournemire’s Triple Choral, op. 41 was an Ann Arbor premiere. Farrington’s four-movement work, Fiesta!, was a bit of fresh air, conjuring up all sorts of secular venues, from a stripper’s stage to a cocktail lounge.

Tuesday, October 5
On Tuesday, Martin Bambauer began his lecture, “Tournemire’s Triple Choral,” by saying that it was Tournemire’s first major organ work, and he had learned it in a week (!) and played it for the fourth time in public yesterday, and that it was not a very popular piece. Truly, I would have thought he had been playing the piece for years. This early work of Tournemire is introspective and cerebral, and at the same time hints at the other-worldliness that would characterize his later work. Bambauer mentioned that in 1896 the Liber Usualis became Tournemire’s constant companion, and when he became Franck’s successor at the Basilica of St. Clotilde in 1898 he only improvised on chant in the services. He thought sacred music was the only music worthy of the name, and when Langlais questioned him, asking what about the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, he said it didn’t matter! Bambauer recommended listening to Tournemire’s eight symphonies, among them Search for the Holy Grail and Apocalypse of St. John. Tournemire was drawn to the mysterious and supernatural, apparent not only in his music, but in his biography of Franck in 1931, and the naming of his two cottages “Tristan” and “Isolde”—his Opus 53 bears those names.
Bambauer pointed out that Tournemire was recognized as a great improviser, and Vierne described him as being “impulsive, enthusiastic, erratic, and a born improviser.” Tournemire’s Five Improvisations, recorded in 1930 at St. Clotilde and transcribed by his student, Duruflé, are his most popular works. His L’Orgue Mystique, fifty-one liturgical sets of five pieces each, was composed between 1927–1932 and is the Catholic counterpart to Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. Bambauer explained that the first edition of L’Orgue Mystique was dedicated to César Franck and states in the preface that the performer is free to choose the registration; however, in the second edition Duruflé includes registration and manual changes.
Bambauer’s insightful analysis of Tournemire’s Triple Choral not only focused on his compositional techniques—use of imitation, paraphrase, and inversion—but how and when Tournemire used the same harmonic vocabulary as Franck. Bambauer illustrated the meticulous craftsmanship in this early work of Tournemire based on his newly created chorals entitled “The Father,” “The Son,” and “The Holy Spirit,” and discussed how the prose with which Tournemire prefaced each choral was mirrored in the music. Tournemire’s prose offers a poignant testimony of his profound faith and allows the listener to participate in Tournemire’s personal vision.
Bambauer commented that the highlight of the piece occurs at the end as the three chorals softly merge together. Bambauer treated us to another performance of Tournemire’s Triple Choral and “the knowing made all the difference.”
Tuesday evening James Kibbie, Professor of Organ at U-M, presented a stunning memorized recital. He has a special affinity for the music of Marcel Dupré, Jehan Alain, Dan Locklair, and Jirí Ropek. He played Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in B Major, op. 7, no. 1, with conviction and assurance. The pleasure of hearing Alain’s rarely played Two Preludes was heightened by being able to read the texts that accompany them. Kibbie’s sensitive interpretation made the images of the text take on a life of their own.
Dan Locklair’s Voyage was another kind of tone poem, providing a journey to fantasy lands filled with sounds of the ebb and flow of tides, jazz, bird song, chimes, and billowing waves evoked by hand glissandi. Kibbie managed to weave together these disparate elements into a fabulous and entertaining voyage.
It was a pleasure to hear Kibbie speak of his meeting Jirí Ropek when he won the Prague Organ Competition in 1979 and of his continuing friendship with this celebrated organist/composer who suffered greatly during the Communist oppression. Kibbie related conversations he had had with Ropek that offered insight into his music. Of the three Ropek pieces on the program, Kibbie said that the Toccata and Fugue (dedicated to Kibbie) was the most complex and dissonant, and mirrored in the work is Ropek’s philosophy: “Life is not only one melody, but many and dissonances, but in general I’m quite melodious. No frightening the audience.” To hear this account made Ropek’s Toccata and Fugue, filled with haunting and aggressive motives, a kind of musical autobiography. Kibbie also explained the compositional process of Ropek’s Fantasy on Mozart’s Theme. In 1775 Mozart improvised a work in a monastery, and only the first 57 measures were written down. Ropek was asked to play it and he added a cadenza. He worked on it over the years and finally he attached his own music to Mozart’s original piece. It was one of the last things he wrote before he died and is dedicated to the students of James Kibbie at the University of Michigan. It was published in 2009.
Kibbie mentioned that he had just played Ropek’s Variations on “Victimae Paschali Laudes” in Prague the week before and made a recording for the radio at the Basilica of St. James where Ropek was organist for 35 years. This beautiful work has become a signature piece for Kibbie.

Wednesday, October 6
Five recitals were performed on Wednesday, an intense day of listening.
The first recital of the day was played by Andrew Lang on the Létourneau organ in the School of Public Health. Lang is a student of James Kibbie and commutes from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His program was well suited for the room and instrument: “The Primitives” and “Those Americans” (from Five Dances for Organ) by Calvin Hampton; Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot, BWV 678, Fughetta super Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot, BWV 679, and Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, BWV 544, by Bach. Lang played with verve and energy; the contrapuntal lines were electric with clarity and precision.
The day’s second recital was played at Hill Auditorium by Józef Kotowicz, who received his doctoral degree in 2001 from the Music Academy in Warsaw. He is active, playing recitals in music festivals throughout Europe, producing a radio program devoted to organs of northeast Poland, recording on the organ in the Cathedral Basilica (Bialystok), and teaching and serving as organist at St. Adalbertus Church. Two of the most interesting pieces of his ambitious program were works by Mieczyslaw Surzynski (1886–1924), Improvisation on the Polish Sacred Song “Swiety Boze,” and Stefan Lindblad (b. 1958), Espanordica. Kotowicz explained to me that “Swiety Boze” is a very popular hymn in Poland and is sung often during funeral services. A translation of the first line reads: “Holy God, Holy [and] Mighty, Holy [and] Immortal, have mercy on us.” The hymn has inspired many composers.
After hearing the performance of Surzynski’s Improvisation, it is easily understood why he is the most revered Polish composer of organ music. The work began with a statement of the hymn, and six dramatic variations followed, with variations one and five being the most riveting. In variation one, thundering chords are played in the manuals while the cantus firmus is heard in the pedals. In variation five, a fiery toccata is in the manuals while the cantus firmus thunders in the pedals.
Kotowicz’s performance of Lindblad’s Espanordica was electrifying. Each of the three movements—Rhapsodia, Nocturno, and Litanies—is built on Spanish dance motifs. Kotowicz told me that Stefan Lindblad lives in Göteborg, Sweden. Lindblad has composed two large works for organ, Hommages and Espanordica, which Kotowicz has performed in Ann Arbor. Both of these pieces have never been printed and he is the only Polish organist who has the scores. He also commented, “It’s interesting that Lindblad is almost completely unknown in Sweden, so I feel like his promoter. I know him personally because I often play in Sweden.”
In honor of Chopin’s 200th birth year, Arthur Greene, Professor of Piano at U-M, performed an all-Chopin recital. It was truly a gift to hear such great artistry.
His program provided a rich and tantalizing view of Chopin’s brilliant oeuvre. Greene drew sounds out of the piano like a magician—singing, soaring, langorous melodies, and thunderous, tumultuous chords. Greene is a master in knowing how to use his body in eliciting such sounds, and in controlling the exact timing of each key and creating suspense through poignant pauses. The audience was captivated by the huge gamut of emotions, from laughter to dark despair, that were portrayed in Greene’s memorized recital. In his hands each piece became a sort of microcosm of its own, glowing with its own unique beauty. His program included three short Mazurkas (op. 67, no. 3; op. 24, no. 3; op. 24, no. 4), the well-known Nocturne in E-flat Major, op. 9, no. 2, Écossaise, op. 72, and four Ballades (op. 23, op. 38, op. 47, and op. 52).
The 4 o’clock recital featured graduate students of James Kibbie and Marilyn Mason. Each performer played with such artistry, conviction, and joy. Their discipline and dedication to their art was obvious. Those performing from Kibbie’s studio included Joseph Balistreri (In Organ, Chordis et Choro by Naji Hakim); Susan De Kam (Partita sopra “Nun freut euch” by Lionel Rogg), and Richard Newman (Final from Symphony No. 5, op. 47, by Louis Vierne). Mason’s students included Timothy Tikker (Pièce Héroïque by César Franck) and Louis Canter (Adagio, Fugue from The 94th Psalm by Julius Reubke).
The final concert of the conference was played by Charles Echols. His entire program was devoted to the music of René Louis Becker (1882–1956). In his notes, Professor Echols described Becker’s career as a musician in the Midwest, and commented that among the many churches Becker served as organist were Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit and St. Alphonsus Church in Dearborn, Michigan. Echols also indicated those pieces that have been published and those that are in manuscript form. Echols’s playing was flawless, and he is to be thanked for advancing this composer’s work, which recalls the music of Mendelssohn.
Professor Marilyn Mason has been responsible for the organ conference at the University of Michigan, a “happening” in Ann Arbor for 50 years. When I asked her what inspired her to begin this incredible conference she told me: “I began the conference for our students; my then manager, Lillian Murtagh, urged me to sponsor Anton Heiller, who had never played in Ann Arbor. Further, I realized since the students could not have a European experience there, we could provide it for them here: especially to hear organists who had not played in Ann Arbor. Some firsts in Ann Arbor were the Duruflés, Mlle Alain, Anton Heiller, and many more. This contact also provided a window of opportunity for the students, many of whom went on to study with the Europeans after having met them here.” This gathering together of world-class performers and teachers continues to nurture and inspire. We are indebted to Marilyn Mason for literally bringing the world to us.

•

These articles represent the ten sessions that I reviewed (each session is designated by roman numerals I–X).
I. Sunday, October 3, 4 pm, A Grand Night for Singing, Hill Auditorium
This inaugural event was a multi-choir extravaganza led by conductor and artistic director Professor Jerry Blackstone. He was assisted by other U of M faculty conductors, vocalists and instrumentalists. Six U of M student auditioned groups participated, with approximately 650 students. Composers ranged from Monteverdi to Sondheim, fourteen in all, and many various ensembles, representing a variety of musical genres. Each of the sixteen presentations, including choirs, solos, opera, theater, and musicals, was greatly appreciated by the audience, which rendered a standing ovation.

II. Monday, October 4, 10:30 am, dissertation recital by Jason Branham, at Moore Hall, the School of Music, on the Marilyn Mason Organ built by Fisk
Branham’s recital featured Buxtehude’s Praeludium in E Major, BuxWV 141, Bach’s Liebster Jesu, wir sind heir, BWV 731, and Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major, BWV 529, Clerambault’s Suite du deuxième ton, and Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major, op. 65. Branham performed with an understanding of musical forms, in a sensitive and confident manner. The variety of works presented allowed him to demonstrate well many registration possibilities of this unique instrument. This performance was acknowledged with great applause.

III. Monday, October 4, 4 pm, dissertation recital by Christopher Reynolds at Hill Auditorium
Cantabile by Franck, Passion, op. 145, No. 4 by Reger, Prelude on Picardy by Near, Meditation on Sacramentum Unitatis by Sowerby, Elegy in B-flat by Thalben-Ball, Praeludium in g, BuxWV 149 by Buxtehude, from Zehn Charakteristische Tonstücke, op. 86, Prologus tragicus by Karg-Elert, and Concert Variations on The Star-Spangled Banner, op. 23 by Buck. Reynolds appropriately approached and performed well the pieces that required a reflective and meditative interpretation. His registrations, musical sensitivity, and facility made his selections interesting for the listeners who aptly responded with approval.

IV. Tuesday, October 5, 9:30 am, Organs of France
IX. Wednesday, October 6, 9:30 am, Organs of Bach Country
X. Wednesday, October 6, 10:30 am, Organs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Janice and Bela Feher presented three narrated photographic summaries of the European pipe organs visited and played on University of Michigan Historic Organ Tours, 2005–2009.
Organs of France were viewed via a PowerPoint presentation of pipe organs from various regions of France. The Fehers showed examples of French Baroque, Classic, Romantic, and Symphonic organs, and they highlighted sites and instruments associated with important organists and composers. Instruments included organs built by Dom Bedos, François-Henry, Louis-Alexandre, and Robert Clicquot; Jean-Pierre Cavaillé (grandfather), Dominique (father) and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (son); and Moucherel. The photographs of the organs were enhanced by illustrations of their settings; highlights of the organs included historical cases, consoles, and principal internal components.
Organs of Bach Country traced the life of Bach, with photographs of the places where he grew up, the churches where he worked, and the organs he designed and played, along with additional photographic documentation of the organs of Andreas and Gottfried Silbermann, and Arp Schnitger.
Organs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire included pipe organs of Hungary (Budapest, Esztergom, Tihany, Zirc), Austria (Vienna, Melk, St. Florian, and Salzburg), and the Czech Republic (Prague). Historic and modern organs were presented from a variety of churches, cathedrals, abbeys, and concert halls. The photographs showed churches and organs associated with Mozart, Bruckner, Haydn, and Liszt. The photographs and information about these organs and their sites will be available in the near future from the University of Michigan Organ Department website.
The photographs described above and information are contained in several books available through <blurb.com>. The Fehers, along with Marilyn Mason, have produced a photo book about historical organs of Germany and Demark related to Bach and Buxtehude, entitled Sacred Spaces of Germany and Denmark. Their second book on the organs of Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic is entitled Sacred Spaces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They are beginning to work on another book about the organs of France and Northern Spain. All books may be previewed and ordered from <blurb.com>.

V. Tuesday, October 5, 10:30 am, lecture by Christopher Urbiel, “The History of the Frieze Memorial Organ at Hill Auditorium, The University of Michigan”
Urbiel’s interesting history of this grand organ housed in Hill Auditorium began with the early instrument at Festival Hall at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Farrand & Votey organ, 1876 and 1893. Albert Stanley purchased the instrument for $15,000 during U of M President Angel’s tenure. It was placed in University Hall and named for Professor Frieze, founder of the University Musical Society and Choral Union, in 1894. In 1912 it was moved from University Hall. The organ has been changed, modified, and “rebuilt” through the years: Hutchings (1913), Moore, Palmer Christian, E.M. Skinner (1928), G. Donald Harrison, Noehren/Aeolian-Skinner (1955), Koontz (1980), renovated in 1900s, and rededicated to Frieze in 1994. Urbiel was very detailed and thorough in his presentation on the Hill Organ, a large unique instrument, and the audience showed great appreciation for his informative and delightful lecture and pictures.

VI. Tuesday, October 5, 11:30 am, lecture by Michael Barone, “Louis Vierne (1870–1937): The ‘Other’ Music (songs, piano pieces, chamber and orchestral works).”
Michael Barone presented the audience with a detailed listing (seven pages), containing comments, performers’ names, disc identification, and other information of Vierne’s “other” music as described in his lecture title. He discussed Vierne’s life and provided insight into the interpretation of his music based on the tragedies and pain Vierne suffered in the losses of his brother and son, coupled with the difficulties Vierne endured in his career, health, and home life. Barone provided more than 20 recorded excerpts, with verbal descriptions and information in an entertaining and interesting manner. Near the end of the seven-page compilation, Barone listed a disc summary of Vierne’s non-organ repertoire. The audience appreciated Barone’s thorough work, sense of humor, and sensitive presentation.

VII. Tuesday, October 5, 1:30 pm, lecture/demonstration by Michele Johns, “Organ ‘Plus’”
Dr. Johns began her lecture/demonstration by sharing some down-to-earth tips when deciding to use the organ with other instruments in services and concerts. She discussed conducting from the organ, getting funding, how to pay performers, ways to obtain band and orchestra members, vocalists, planning rehearsals, and rehearsing. Her program featured three pieces written for organ, two trumpets and two trombones, which she conducted from the organ. In celebration of this 50th annual University of Michigan Conference on Organ Music and in honor of the Organ Department, an arrangement of “Angels We Have Heard on High” for congregation, brass quartet, tympani and organ was premiered. This was a welcomed and enjoyed opportunity for the conferees to participate in this rousing and exciting setting written by Scott M. Hyslop. Dr. Johns received thanks for her expertise.

VIII. Tuesday, October 5, 2:30 pm, lecture by Steven Ball, “Music of René Becker”
Dr. Ball gave a brief history of René Becker, son of Edouard, who was an organist at Chartres Cathedral. Born in 1882, Becker and his four siblings trained at Strasbourg’s Conservatory of Music. In 1904, Becker moved from France to St. Louis and taught piano, organ, and composition at the Becker Conservatory of Music, which he formed with his brothers. He later taught at St. Louis University and Kendride Seminary. In 1912, Becker and his wife moved to Belleville, Illinois, where he became organist at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. It was at this time that son Julius was born, the only living child of René. Julius, a retired banker, presently lives in Birmingham, Michigan.
René Becker became the first organist of the newly built Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit in 1930; an AGO member, he helped to establish the Catholic Organists Guild, and with his son founded the Palestrina Institute. Becker retired in 1952 at the age of 70 from St. Alphonsus Church in Detroit. He left over 160 compositions for organ when he died in 1956. Dr. Ball shared some pictures of René Becker and introduced Becker’s son Julius and his family to the conferees. It was a delight to see Julius Becker (keeper of some of Becker’s compositions) in person. Steven Ball received a four-year grant to record René Becker’s compositions. 

New faculty members, choral reading sessions, fellowship and more at this year's conference

The 63rd annual Sewanee Church Music Conference, directed by Robert Delcamp, president of the board and university organist at the University of the South, welcomed three ‘first-timers’ as music faculty this year: Richard Webster, Maxine Thévenot, and Edmund Connolly. The Reverend Barbara Cawthorne Crafton returned as chaplain, to the great delight of those privileged to hear her in 2011. Webster is director of music and organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston. Thévenot and Connelly, in addition to their extensive performing and re-cording careers, serve as organist-choir director and assistant organist-choir director, respectively, at the Cathedral of St. John’s in Albuquerque. Reverend Crafton, author, counselor, and spiritual director, has served several churches. She heads the Geranium Farm, an institute for the promotion of spiritual growth.

The scope of the conference allows for many essentials: learning, worship, fellowship, spiritual enrichment, and the proverbial “re-charging of batteries.” This year’s gathering accomplished all this and more. In the first rehearsal, Webster took the 138 singers through all the music to give them a taste of what was in store, while getting acquainted with the ensemble at his disposal.

On Tuesday evening, the annual Gerre Hancock Concert was presented by Thévenot and Connolly in All Saints Chapel. Thévenot played Marcel Dupré’s Placare Christe Servulis from Le Tombeau de Titelouze, op. 38, Sweelinck’s variations on Ballo del Granduca, and selections by Bruhns, Hampton, Messiaen, McNeil Robinson (Homage to Messiaen), and Phillip Moore. The inclusion of Gerre Hancock’s Air was most fitting, as many of those present personally knew of his long-time relationship with the conference. Thévenot showed sensitive accompanying skills on three songs by Hugo Wolf offered by Connolly; Vaughan Williams’s beloved “The Call” was a perfect match for his expressive baritone voice. Thévenot concluded with Vierne’s Carillon—the pulse of the piece could have set the carillon in the Shapard Tower above tolling.  

Choral reading sessions were spaced throughout the week: Richard Webster, Alvin Blount, and Peggy Lyden shared proven winners from their own church programs, with anthem packets provided by Elizabeth Smith of Lois Fyfe Music. A highlight of the conference is the presence of this store on campus all week for browsing, professional advice, and conviviality of shoppers. Mark Schweizer of St. James Press previewed its latest collection, and Maxine Thévenot presented organ music from her native Canada.

Long-time attendee Richard Moore offered two workshops on the use of computer programs especially geared towards the work of church musicians. To judge from the overflow crowd he drew, this was obviously filling a need for many.

The popular and invaluable “Episcopal Basics” class offered by School of Theology faculty member Susan Rupert now includes “Singing the Altar Book” and “Liturgical Planning”—pertinent topics whether one is serving a small parish or a cathedral.

While the primary focus of the music faculty is the rehearsal and performance of literature at the two main liturgies, each offered sessions on various topics. Thévenot gave a thorough and excellent overview of hymn-playing skills, demonstrating such with attendees Bill Bane, Parks Greene, and Richard Mangiagli. In her organ masterclass, coordinated by Alvin Blount, players Tim Hall, Bill Bane, Jeffrey Ford, and Stanley Workman, Jr. were each allotted 30 minutes; this allowed in-depth observations by the clinician that could be beneficial to all. She shared background tidbits to illustrate reasons for approaching a piece in a certain way. 

Edmund Connolly’s well-received classes on vocal techniques were further integrated into the group rehearsals: at Webster’s invitation, Connelly oversaw warm-ups and made suggestions for dealing with specific issues throughout the week. Such displays of teamwork were noted positively by colleagues.

Choristers from St. George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville assisted Webster in his presentation entitled “The Joy of Doing REAL Music with Children.” The topic of composing and arranging drew about 35 who read through submissions conducted by attendees Mark Janus, Stephen Schalchin, Brennan Szafron, Stephen Casurella, and Kirby Colson. Webster facilitated feedback from the observers, with each composer receiving positive and insightful suggestions on their work. A workshop on choral conducting offered Eric Vinciguerra, Jennifer Stammers, Susan Yoe, and Mark Janus (all expertly accompanied by Dory Light) the chance to show their interpretation of Howells’s Like As the Hart. In addition to Webster’s comments, others made positive and useful observations, further showcasing the collegial aspect of this conference.  

Each year one looks to bring back some pearls of wisdom to share with one’s choir: a vocal warm-up, a conducting gesture for the clean release of a final ‘s,’ a catchy phrase to drive home a point—even a good joke! Webster’s rehearsals contained many such gems, generously and respectfully shared. Later in the week, on a more personal note, he told his story of being present at the Boston Marathon when the bombings occurred, only two months previously (see The Diapason, October 2013, pp. 20–21).

The Reverend Barbara Crafton was back as chaplain—truly by popular demand! Besides deeply spiritual insights, her talents in theater and music, among others, showed forth in her profound messages—choices of words, their delivery, timing, pacing, punctuated with delightful humor. Daily morning homilies were scripture-based, with everyday examples woven throughout. Glimpses of personal stories and musical knowledge obviously resonated with her listeners, including her image of the choir as a model for the world in its blend, ensemble, unity, harmony. In addition to using her voice as a preacher, she very capably served as Precentor at Evensong. Her presence at daily choral rehearsals was further evidence of her appreciation of the conference’s focus on liturgy. It was notable that, unlike some years, attendance at morning Mass did not decrease as the week went on! The titles of her four lectures alone enticed listeners to come and hear: The Music of the Spheres; A Tree Falls in the Forest; Nude Descending Staircase; The Also-Life.

The Missa Dorica by Webster was sung at daily Eucharists, with the Durham Mass by Daniel Gawthrop used once. Organ selections provided by Dr. Thévenot on the Rodgers organ in the small Dubose Chapel ranged from Buxtehude and Bach to Boëllmann, Langlais, and Messiaen. 

This year’s commissioned organ work—Variations on ‘Ubi Caritas’ by French-Canadian composer Denis Bédard—served as the prelude one morning, with the chant later sung at the Offertory. The work consists of three statements of the chant in contrasting styles and lasts six minutes—a useful and accessible setting. Thévenot also played it during Communion at the Sunday Eucharist in All Saints Chapel.

A carillon concert by John Bordley and the Reverend Raymond Gotko beckoned worshipers to Friday’s Evensong. Both retired college professors, each took up the field of campanology as a second career in recent years. 

Canticles by Edwardian composer Charles Wood (Collegium Regale in F) were complemented by Webster’s Anglican chant for Psalm 85 and his Preces and Responses in Mixolydian Mode (nicknamed “Web in Mix” by his own singers). The musical centerpiece of the liturgy was S. S. Wesley’s major work Ascribe Unto the Lord, an amalgamation of Psalm 96 and 115 written in 1851. Webster crafted descants for Bromley and St. Clement. His drilling of the singers on diction, precise rhythms, and tuning was rewarded. Thévenot concluded the service with Victor Togni’s exuberant Alleluia! (Five Liturgical Improvisations).

The use of modal tonality in Webster’s Missa Dorica brings a fresh element to music written with a congregation also in mind. As done in many places this year, Benjamin Britten’s centenary was acknowledged; his Festival Te Deum served as the Offertory anthem. Jennifer Stammers’s soprano soared over the chorus into one of the most beautiful endings in modern choral repertoire. George Herbert’s text “The Call” was heard this time in a sweet and accessible SATB setting by Harold Friedell. This further showed the range of difficulty presented each year in choral choices. Some, like the Britten, provide a venue for clinicians to teach techniques, while letting singers experience repertoire most could not otherwise perform. John Whitmer’s professional recordings of the liturgies not only serve archival purposes, but allow the musical experiences shared by the attendees to be heard by a much wider audience.

Special note is made of the various tasks—many behind the scenes—shared by attendees: John Hobbs and the Reverend Thomas Williams at the altar, Frolic producer Jennifer Stammers, among others. Bill Bane now joins the board of directors who oversee the planning and execution of the conference. Kim Terry Agee, director of the Dubose Center, announced her retirement after 25 years. Her presence will be greatly missed.

Faculty for the 2014 conference (July 14–20) will be Todd Wilson and Peter Conte, with Bishop J. Neil Alexander as chaplain. It was announced that Todd Wilson will become the conference director beginning in 2015, the 65th anniversary of the conference. Information can be found at www.sewaneeconference.org.&nbsp;

Each registrant was presented with a 232-page book entitled "Reflections." Included in the book are over 30 essays under the subject headings "History of the Organ Department," "Scholarly Articles," "Historic Organ Tours," and "Remembrances," along with a faculty discography, lists of organ department courses and awards, organ graduates, DMA documents, compositions commissioned by Marilyn Mason, and
organs at the university. An added bonus is a CD recording by Dr. Mason, made
at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.

The festivities began on Sunday afternoon with the Autumn
Festival of Choirs at Hill Auditorium, sponsored by the American Center of
Church Music. Over 15 local churches and 200 singers participated. The festival
included the premiere of the hymn, "Come, Celebrate God's Gifts Made
Known," written by Larry Visser in honor of Marilyn Mason's 50th
anniversary, and published by Wayne Leupold Editions.

On Sunday evening a special concert of African-American
organ music was played by present and former Michigan students who are of African-American heritage. All pieces were written in this century and provided much diversity of style.

Monday morning featured five brief sessions at the School of
Music. Jane Schatkin Hettrick of Rider University led a discussion and premiere
performance of a recently-discovered concerto by Pietro Sales (just published
by Vivace Press). Former faculty member Robert Clark (now at Arizona State
University) presented an encouraging lecture on the future of organ education
as we enter the 21st century. Jerry Blackstone of the U-M choral department
presented a practical workshop on the production of good choral tone. Robert
Glasgow led a discussion of Widor's Symphony VII, which he played later that evening. James Kibbie, with the help of
Larry Visser, demonstrated the new Walgreen Organ which was built by Fernand
Létourneau for Dr. Kibbie's studio.

Monday afternoon events took place on the Wilhelm organ at
First Congregational Church. James Hammann of New Orleans, LA, presented a
lecture-recital of some of the recently-discovered works of Mendelssohn, which
have been edited by William Little and published in a five-volume set by
Novello. Delbert Disselhorst, of the University of Iowa, performed a memorized
recital of six works of J.S. Bach. The conference then moved to Hill Auditorium
for the traditional student recital. Music of Bach, Dandrieu, Vierne,
Dupré, Bairstow, and Widor was heard.

The Marilyn Mason celebration dinner was held in the foyer
of Hill Auditorium on Monday evening. The festivities began with a presentation
hosted by popular WQRS radio personality David Wagner, who is a 1980 DMA
graduate. At this session, as well as one on the following day, many accolades
and awards were presented to Dr. Mason to honor her many years of teaching at
Michigan.

Monday evening concluded with a recital entitled "Ann
Arbor Night Celebration." Works by Willan, Dupré, Geoffrey Bush,
and Widor were played by current and former faculty members Robert Clark,
Michele Johns, James Kibbie, and Robert Glasgow. The concert featured the world
premiere of a work commissioned by the Ann Arbor AGO in recognition of Marilyn
Mason. Entitled "Retablo III: Victimae Paschali," the work was
written by Pamela Decker and played by Ann Arbor organist Janice Beck.

The fifth annual Jean & Broadus Staley Hymn-Playing
Competition was the first event Tuesday morning, held at the First Baptist
Church. Kenneth Logan, a 1992 DMA graduate, was named winner. Duo
harpsichordists Thomas Marshall and Allen Shaffer, "Les Deux
Clavecins," of Williamsburg and Norfolk, VA, played a delightful program
of music by Vivaldi, Herman Schroeder, Couperin, and W.F. Bach.

On Tuesday afternoon four DMA graduates representing four
different decades played a concert at Hill Auditorium entitled "Michigan
Revisited." Donald Williams (1969), Dennis Schmidt (1978), Joseph Galema
(1982), and Ronald Prowse (1992) played music of Bach, Franck, Vierne, and
Persichetti.

The most unusual of the recitals was played at Hill
Auditorium on Tuesday evening by Alexander Frey, a U-M graduate who now lives
in Berlin, Germany. It was a recital of both organ and piano music, but the
choices seemed to be a bizarre combination of actual organ pieces,
transcriptions, and an organ/piano duet he was able to play using the new
performance-recording system on the Hill organ. The program ended with the
virtuosic "Toccata" from Jongen's Symphonie Concertante
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All in all, this was a wonderful conference in tribute to a
remarkable woman who has established enduring legacies of organ teaching,
commissioning organ works, and leading historic organ tours. Brava! to Marilyn
Mason on your 50 years of teaching at the University of Michigan.

--Dennis Schmidt, DMA

Bach Festival of Philadelphia