The Ypsilanti Organ Festival

William D. Gudger is Professor of Music History and Theory at the College of Charleston (South Carolina) and organist of the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul (Episcopal).

In time for the third Spoleto Festival USA in 1979, a companion festival, Piccolo Spoleto, was organized in conjunction with the City of Charleston’s Office of Cultural Affairs. The first meeting about this took place in Ben Hutto’s apartment on Montague Street in Charleston. Ellen Dressler Moryl was the newly-appointed Director of Cultural Affairs for the City of Charleston, and the first coordinators for music series were Hutto, Emily Remington, William Gudger, and David Lowry. We decided to make something of a sandwich of the Spoleto day, with organ recitals in the morning before the “big” Festival’s first chamber concert at 11 am, and chamber concerts in the afternoon. In keeping with the founding of the Festival by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti, we named our 10 am organ series “L’Organo: The Organ in Recital.” It is the only music series that has run through the entire 25 years of Piccolo Spoleto in its original form (though there was no L’Organo series in 1990 in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo). Larry Long, who played in the 2003 series, gave the first recital on a Saturday morning in May, 1979, at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul, whose historic organ case was featured on our poster in 1979 and again on the cover of the Spotlight Chamber series in 2003. Recitals were held daily except Sundays. We soon found that organ recitals worked best on Mondays through Fridays, and for the entire series over the years it is safe to say that average attendance at each recital has been over 100. With Spoleto usually running for two weeks, most years we presented ten performers. For many years in 1980s one program was devoted to “Kids Meet the King of Instruments,” capturing the undivided attention of 200-300 Charleston schoolchildren. Performers were local organists or guests from out-of-town, featuring regional performers, the goal of Piccolo Spoleto. But a number of national and even international figures have played, in some cases due to the generosity of local patrons. A complete list of performers is found at the end of this article. It reads like a Who’s Who of the organ world. Some of the more prominent performers were featured on special events, some of these late at night. There were often annual midnight recitals (beginning at the hour, or ending at that hour). At first these were benefit galas of a humorous nature (“Nuptial Nuggets”; a 300th Birthday Party for Bach in 1985 [with the composer present!]; and the like), and in other years such outstanding performers as the Chenaults and David Higgs played late at night to catch the Spoleto Festival crowd after operas and dance programs.

The 10 am solo recital has been the backbone of our series, though often organists have been joined by other performers (also listed at the end). A number of premiere performances have been given, and the repertory for organ has covered the gamut from Bach to Bolcom (Alain to Zipoli would be a better description!), representing the most popular organ classics as well as introducing much unfamiliar literature including transcriptions and avant-garde works. Some special events have included our wonderful Charleston Symphony Orchestra. In 2003 the first week of the Festival had the regular 10 am series. In the second week, everything on the organ series was a special event with a totally different schedule in order to accommodate the 250 organists attending the American Guild of Organists Region IV 2003 Convention. Besides solo recitals by Timothy Tikker, Charles Boyd Tompkins, and Calvert Johnson, the Miller/Lowry trumpet/organ duo was heard. The Charleston Symphony Orchestra played twice, with Scott Bennett for a concert which included Joseph Jongen’s Symphonie concertante and Stephen Paulus’ Mass for Chorus, Organ, and Orchestra, and with Stewart Wayne Foster for music of William Bolcom and Allan Ontko.

Performers on the Piccolo Spoleto L’Organo Series, 1979-2003

Charleston organists: Warren Apple, Deborah Bagwell, Mark Bebensee, C. Lynn Bailey, Paul Batchelor, J. Scott Bennett, Paul Blanchard, Nancy M. Callahan, Thomas B. Clark, Christopher Cotton, Capers Cross, Alan Davis, Lee deMets, Stephen Distad, Stewart Wayne Foster, Robert Gant, William Gudger, Julia Harlow, Ann Hood, Benjamin Hutto, Gregory Jones, Seung-lan Kim, Hazel King, Brian Kittle, Francis Kline, Lee Kohlenberg, Larry Long, Douglas Ludlum, George Mims, James Polzois, David Redd, Emily Remington, Timothy Shepard, Preston Smith, Arlon Sunnarborg, Randall S. Thompson, Timothy Tikker, Thomas White, Alan Wingard, Sarah Younker

Out-of-town organists: Albert Ahlstrom, Donald Armitage, Richard Apperson, David Arcus, Edward Artis, G. Dene Barnard, Ann Bauer & Kristin Johnson (duo-organists), Diane Bish, David Bowman, David Brensinger, James Russell Brown, David Chalmers, Raymond and Elizabeth Chenault (duo-organists), Raymond Chenault (solo), Sally Cherrington Beggs, Andrew Clarke, Douglas Cleveland, Rodney Cleveland, Marty Cloninger, John Conner, Giles Cooke, Benton Craig, William Crane, Gregory d’Agostino, James Darling, Jolene Davis, Ted Davis, Emma Lou Diemer, Jonathan Dimmock and Jane Dimmock Cain (duo-organists), Jonathan Dimmock (solo), Shane Doty, Ricky David Duckett, Peter Dubois, Edward Dunbar, Wayne Earnest, David Eaton, Ray Ebert, Ronald Ebrecht, Natalie Eubanks, Trudy Faber, Richard L. Falk Jr., John Farmer, Kristin Gronning Farmer, Andrae Felton, Janette Fishell, Faythe Freese, Deborah Friauff, Robert Gallagher, Bruce Glenny, Steve Godowns, J. Michael Grant, Joseph Golden, Bruce Gustafson, Cheryl Hamilton, Stephen Hamilton, Andrew Hayler, Kim Heindel, Felix Hell, David Higgs, Frederick Hohman, George Hubbard, Harry Huff, Eileen Hunt, Janet Hunt, Mark Husey, Lawrence Jenkins, Calvert Johnson, Edie Johnson, James Johnson, Jeffrey C. Johnson, Florence Jowers, Michael Kaminski, Stephen Karr, Charles Kennedy, Robert Burns King, James Kosnik, Andre Lash, Arthur Lawrence, David Lawrie, David Lowry, David Lynch, Peter Marshall, Thomas Marshall, Sarah Martin, Lenora McCroskey, Russell Meyer, Charles Miller, William Mills, J. Thomas Mitts, Susan Dickerson Moeser, John Mueller, Margaret Mueller, Thomas Murray, David Oliver, William O’Meara, David Ouzts, Dorothy Papadakos, Kathryn Cain Parkins, Robert Parkins, Robert Parris, Karel Paukert, Richard Peek, Roberta Poellein, Samuel Porter, Robert Powell, Stephen Powers, Simon Preston, Debra Ramsey, Peggy Kelley Reinburg, Porter Remington, Robert Ridgell, Schuyler Robinson, John Rose, Clair Rozier, Cj Sambach, Christopher Samuel, John Schaeffer, Stephen Schaeffer, David Schelat, John Schwandt, Keith Shafer, Edmund Shay, Robert Simpson, Sherryl Smith-Babbitt, Jeffrey Smith, Timothy Quay Smith, Hazel Somerville, Murray Somerville, Thomas Spacht, Vincent Stadlin, Richard Tanner, Mickey Thomas Terry, Edward Tipton, Charles Boyd Tompkins, William Trafka, Beverly Ward, David Weadon, John Weaver, Steven Alan Williams, Robert Wisniewski, Searle Wright

Assisting artists: Samuel Adler, conductor; Suzanne Fleming Atwood, soprano; Rhett Barnwell, Celtic harp; J. Michael Barone, lecturer; Birmingham Brass Quintet; William Bender, actor; Cantalope the Clown; Charleston Symphony Orchestra; Kathleen Conner, soprano; Fort Worth Early Music Ensemble; Van Tony Free, percussion; Kathy Harty Gracy Dance Theatre; Ellen Dressler Moryl, cello; Allen French, horn; Kim French, flute; Robert Ivey, choreographer (dancers from the Robert Ivey Ballet); Elizabeth Lyman, percussion; David Maves, percussion; Marcia Newman, soprano; Nuptial Nuggets Chorus; Brian Osborne, trumpet; Anders Paulsson, saxophone; Michael Rhodes, tenor; The Schola Cantorum of the University of Northern South Carolina at Goose Creek; Gregory Schoonover, trumpet; Edith Simmons, mezzo soprano; Nancy Eaton Stedman, mezzo soprano; Caesar Storlazzi, oboe and English horn; Elizabeth Tomorsky, English horn; Adele Marie Taylor, harpsichord; Claire Teuber, soprano; Matthew Walker, cello; Marianne Weaver, flute

Coordinators and associates: Deborah Bagwell, Mark Bebensee, Jane Bradley, Stewart Wayne Foster, William Gudger, Benjamin Hutto, Hazel King, Francis Kline, Lee Kohlenberg, Larry Long, Gary Loughrey, David Lowry, Douglas Ludlum, Loving Philips, James Polzois, Emily Remington

Curators to the series: Vernon Elliott, Allan Ontko

Churches and synagogues (name of organ builder): Advent Lutheran Church, North Charleston (Zimmer); Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul, Episcopal (Kney); Circular Congregational Church (Hutchings); Citadel Square Baptist Church (Wicks); First Baptist Church (Wicks); First (Scots) Presbyterian Church (Ontko & Young, replacing earlier Austin); The French Protestant (Huguenot) Church (Erben); Grace Episcopal Church (Reuter); John Wesley United Methodist Church (Moeller); Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (Ontko); Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church (Roosevelt); St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Mount Pleasant (Schantz); St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church (Austin); St. John’s Lutheran Church (Schantz); St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church (Austin); St. Philip’s Episcopal (Church: Casavant; and Chapel: Appleton); Second Presbyterian Church (Moeller); Summerall Chapel, The Citadel (Reuter); Trinity United Methodist Church (Hartman & Beaty)

Bill Halsey was born in Seattle, where he studied piano and composition from an early age. He fell in love with the organ after hearing a Corrette suite played on the Montreal Beckerath, and began organ lessons in his teens. While a student at the Sorbonne, he had the good fortune to gain access to the two-manual unmodified tracker-action Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint Bernard de la Chapelle, in a northern arrondissement of Paris. This fueled his interest in historic organs, and after spending fifteen years serving in organist positions at St. John Cantius, St. Peter Claver, Church of the Assumption, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, all in Brooklyn, New York, he took a permanent leave of absence to explore historic organs, first in France, and later in Italy.

The 14th Toulouse International Organ Festival (known as Toulouse les orgues) took place October 8–18, 2009 in Toulouse, France and the Midi-Pyrénées region. Concerts honored the anniversaries of Handel, Haydn, and Louis Braille (1809–1852). Performers included Elisabeth Amalric, Stéphane Bois, Gilbert Vergé-Borderolle, Yasuko-Uyama Bouvard, Anne-Gaëlle Chanon, Pieter-Jelle De Boer, Matthieu De Miguel, Tania Dovgal, Jean-Baptiste Dupont, Pierre Farago, Bernard Foccroulle, Jan Willem Jansen, Maïko Kato, Adam Kecskès, Rudolf Kelber, Eric Lebrun, Mathias Lecomte, Philippe Lefèbvre, Marie-Ange Leurent, François Marchal, Jean-Baptiste Monnot, Yves Rechsteiner, Benjamin Righetti, Juan de la Rubia Romero, William Whitehead, and others. The festival is also presenting concerts covering the entire canon of Bach’s organ works, on Sundays at 4 pm at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. The series began on September 13 and continues through June 2010. (For information:
www.toulouse-les-orgues.org.)
I had spent time visiting the historic organs of Italy, and felt the need to reconnect with my first love, French organs, both Classic (that is, pre-Revolution) and Romantic, and the annual organ festival of Toulouse-les-orgues seemed a good place to do it. Two years ago, my wife and I went to part of the festival and then spent the rest of October going from one French town to another throughout south central France, visiting different organs and being inspired by the quality of the instruments and the hospitality of the organists.

About Toulouse
Toulouse seemed both more beautiful and more foreign than I remembered, with its monumental rose-colored brick buildings spread out on the banks of the Garonne. After living in Italy, I found French formality strange but charming, almost quaint.
There is something different about the churches in Toulouse—they have been described as church fortresses, with the explanation that one of the first Crusades was against the Cathar heresy, in some ways a precursor of Calvinism, which was centered in the southwest of France, Toulouse and Albi especially. These immense and stark Gothic edifices contain a number of fine Romantic organs, their dark walnut cases and dull metal pipes looming from either the choir loft in back or sometimes above and to one side of the altar. Many were built by two nineteenth-century firms from the region, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, from Gaillac, a half-hour train ride outside of Toulouse, and the Pugets, who continued the family business into the modern era, in Toulouse itself.
There are also churches from the classical period, and in one of these, St. Pierre-les-Chartreux, is a fine Micot organ, from the end of the 18th century, barely pre-Revolutionary. One of the most impressive sites in Toulouse, oddly enough, doesn’t even have an organ—the Gothic church Les Jacobins, where St. Thomas Aquinas is buried.

Day one
Our first event was a series of three student concerts at Saint-Pierre les Chartreux, Saint-Nicolas, and the Institut Catholique’s modern Bonfils organ. The best concert was the one at Saint-Nicolas, on a really interesting transitional 1844 Daublaine et Callinet, by Matthieu de Miguel, an organist with a bright future ahead of him. I especially liked his rendering of the Intermezzo from Widor’s Sixth Symphony.
That day, in addition to the memorial concert for the fall of the Berlin Wall, which we didn’t attend, there were two concerts on the recently restored Puget (1888) at Notre-Dame la Dalbade, with three manuals, 50 stops, and two expression pedals, this last very unusual for organs outside of Paris. In the afternoon was a choral concert by the Maîtrise du conservatoire de Toulouse, directed by Mark Opstad and accompanied by William Whitehead, and in the evening an organ recital by Philippe Lefèbvre.
The Maîtrise is a chorus of children, mostly girls, and their program consisted of four Misse Breves, by Delibes, Fauré, Caplet, and Leighton, done in chronological order. The Delibes (1875) was a revelation, full of dramatic, almost operatic, contrasts. The Fauré is a minor work, and the Caplet and Leighton had interesting moments but did not seem like very distinguished pieces. The children were very well trained, but although it was possible to admire their skill in the more contemporary pieces, they were really at their best in the Delibes, where the quasi-operatic nature of the vocal writing allowed their resonance to blossom. William Whitehead’s accompaniment was masterful—gently supportive for the kids and making exuberant full use of the organ on the codas.
The evening concert by Philippe Lefèbvre, one of the three titulaires of Notre Dame de Paris, was excellent. He started with Franck’s Trois Pièces pour le Grand Orgue, of which the best was the first, the Fantaisie en la, where he showed off the wonderful power of the organ’s monumental reeds. He then played the Choral from Vierne’s Symphony No. 2, Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, and Duruflé’s Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain, concluding with a vast improvisation. Lefèbvre made expert use of the organ’s tone colors and the (two) swell pedals, but I wish he had played more music, like Widor or Guilmant, that was really designed for such a grand instrument.

About the festival
Toulouse-les-orgues offers a wide variety of events, from formal evening concerts to more relaxed afternoon events and lunchtime concerts, two of which I attended. The first, on October 13, was by William Whitehead on the Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Sernin entitled “Bayreuth Aftershock!” and the theme was Wagner’s influence on French organ music. Whitehead played two transcriptions by George Bennett of selections from Parsifal, a Scherzo by Edward Bairstow, and two pieces by César Franck. His playing was wonderful, but the Wagner seemed thin without the orchestra. Even a Cavaillé-Coll organ is no substitute for a Wagner orchestra!
The other noon concert I attended, also at Saint-Sernin on October 16, was all improvisations, played by Juan de la Rubia Romero: first, chorale variations in the style of Bach, then a fantasy in the style of Mahler, and finally chorale variations done in a modern style. These improvisations seemed weak, especially considering Romero had the leisure to plan them; they weren’t true improvisations in the Franz Liszt sense, where the artist is given a subject from the audience and has no time to prepare beforehand.
The Toulouse festival is also known for offbeat concerts that pair the organ with dancers, brass ensembles, spoken word, etc. I saw two of these on October 11: an organ suite with narration, written for children, entitled Parade of Animals, and inspired by Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, and a concert of works for organ and instruments, with many either Toulouse or world premières. The Parade of Animals, by Iain Farrington, played at Saint-Sernin by William Whitehead, with spoken verses about different animals, followed by musical portraits that drew on the organ’s vast tonal repertoire, was well done; the children present certainly seemed to eat it up. The other concert’s new pieces seemed a little dated—surely this type of modernist writing, the Nadia Boulanger plus a little Stravinsky and atonalism school, is passé by now?

Events outside Toulouse
Toulouse les orgues festival also always has several “Journées-région,” excursions by bus to various sites near Toulouse. I joined one to the Frontonnais, with visits to Verdun-sur-Garonne (Lépine organ, 1767), Fronton (B. Feuga organ, 1852), Vallemur-sur-Tarn (Maurice Puget organ, 1960), and Moissac (Cavaillé-Coll, 1864). The most interesting was the Feuga—the only Feuga organ apparently still playable. It is in need of restoration, and there was a group from the community, the “friends of the organ,” who have been trying to raise money to restore the instrument and wanted to use the event to evaluate the state of the organ and get advice from Jan Willem Jansen, the festival director, whose baroque-style improvisations on an organ he had never seen were brilliant. The organ obviously did have major problems; one of the front pipes had even fallen out of the case—luckily, no one had been standing underneath at the time! But the core of it seemed very solid, with nice flutes, a stentorian trumpet, and an oboe full of plangency and character.
The Lépine organ seemed a little tinny. Benjamin Righetti played pieces by Du Mage and a sonata by Mozart. The Du Mage was nice enough if a little perfunctory; the Mozart worked fairly well. It’s always a challenge that devotees of the French Classic organs face, to prove that this instrument can do justice to other music besides French Classic music. The modern Puget just didn’t seem like a very good instrument. The Cavaillé-Coll in the Moissac monastery church was wonderful, powerful, and somber by turns, and the building itself—even in a region of wonderful churches—was amazing.
The concert, however, suffered from being entirely composed of lugubrious music and also from the numerous program changes announced by Jansen, who wasn’t audible past the first few rows of seats. The selections were organ solos and songs for mezzo-soprano and organ, including some of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. The organist was Matthieu de Miguel, and Marylin Revel was the vocal soloist. De Miguel, who had been so excellent at St. Nicolas, didn’t seem to have properly prepared the music. Everything sounded underrehearsed.
On the way to these events, we had a wine tasting with snacks at Chateau Caze, in Villaudric, followed by a recital of pieces for soprano, French horn and piano, and then an excellent lunch of regional specialties at Fronton. On the whole, the day was disappointing; too many of these concerts seemed less than well prepared, and the festival’s concerts of Romantic and modern repertoire contained too much music in minor keys that didn’t really seem to go anywhere.

Other notable concerts
Thursday I went to the all-Schütz concert of the Sacqueboutiers, a pioneering early music group. The second half of this concert was much more interesting than the first, especially Fili mi Absalon, sung ringingly by Renaud Delaigue to bring the house down, and then Schütz’s masterwork, Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, which was splendidly done.
On Friday, the grand finale was the third event of the day, an evening Ciné-concert, with Jean-Baptiste Dupont at Saint-Sernin accompanying Jacques Feyder’s Visages d’enfants, a silent film from 1923–25. The film was wonderful, with beautiful outdoor shots of the Swiss Alps and excellent child actors. Dupont’s work at the organ was adequate without being inspired.

Summing up
Overall, I enjoyed the festival without thinking it really lived up to its promise. There were a number of problems, some small and some big, with the way the festival is run, the level of preparation of the artists, and probably also with the way they are selected. One minor quibble I have is the lack of information in the programs about the organs themselves, such as the builder and date of construction. This information, including complete stoplists, is fortunately available on their website, <toulouse-les-orgues.org>, under the rubric “patrimoine,” but concert programs still should include a minimal description of the organ, along with information about the music and the performers.
A bigger issue is the lack of commitment to the French Romantic organ repertoire. They do include, obviously, many works from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century organ tradition, but without much sense of context, of purpose, or of exploration. This year, the festival was severely curtailed because of their Bach cycle. But even so, it seems a shame, given that most of Toulouse’s historic instruments are from the nineteenth century, that there weren’t at least one or two concerts devoted to an in-depth look at one of that period’s composers. After all, even with the attention paid to Bach, they still managed to devote an entire concert to Schütz.
Widor and Guilmant, in particular, are fundamental to the French organ repertoire. The sonatas of Guilmant would make a fascinating cycle. They show an evolution from his early neo-classical work to the impressionism of the final sonatas, and as the hinge between early and late sonatas there is the monumental Fifth Sonata with its searing Romanticism, the skillful but never academic fugues, and the final explosion of the chorale, fugue and variations on “Ein Feste Burg.”
A real presentation of French organ romanticism—something the festival should aim for each and every year—would also include the precursors and the earlier nineteenth century, namely Rossini, Donizetti, and Meyerbeer. These three opera composers made Paris their home in the 1830s and ’40s, and created works that are essentially French. They, along with Franz Liszt, who lived in Paris and wrote his “Ad nos” based on Meyerbeer’s theme for Le Prophète, and the native French composers active at around the same time, such as Daniel François Esprit Auber and Adolphe Adam, established the foundation for the French musical culture that evolved toward the end of the century.
The Toulouse organ festival’s new-music programming also seems not as interesting as it could be. Even if a work is a première, that doesn’t by itself make it interesting and important; the new pieces programmed this year seemed already dated. One of the best “new music” events at the festival was one that, probably, the festival took least seriously—the Parade of Animals. Some of the pieces were really special, like low hums on the organ to evoke the blue whale. That piece sticks in my mind, which is really the fundamental test of new music—would you ever want to hear it again?
The quality of the concerts was also very uneven. Too many of them were obviously underrehearsed and slapdash, and this was especially true for the Romantic repertoire. In short, this festival, which has the potential to be a wonderful celebration of the history of French music, seems to almost shy away from the core of the repertoire. People don’t come to Toulouse-les-orgues for Bach cycles or the type of Baroque or Renaissance concert you can hear—often done better—in New York or Boston. They come for the core French Romantic and modern repertoire—and this includes all the wonderful works written in France by foreigners, like Rossini’s Masses and his other liturgical music—done in spaces and on instruments that really are hardly to be found outside of France.