Introduction

Robert Noehren will celebrate his 91st birthday on the
16th of this month. He has enjoyed an unusual musical career and is perhaps the
only serious organist in history who became an organ builder and skillful
voicer as well. This past year witnessed the release of a remastered CD of his
recordings on the large organ he built for St. John's Cathedral in Milwaukee
(The Robert Noehren Retrospective, Lyrichord LYR-CD-6005) and the book, An
Organist's Reader: Essays (Harmonie Park Press). He was for many years chairman
of the organ department and University Organist at the University of Michigan,
has made more than 40 recordings, authored numerous articles, and built more
than 20 organs throughout the United States.

Once upon a time when I was about seven or eight years old,
my father asked me if I should like to take piano lessons. I can't remember
that I was very happy with the prospect. My play hours after school with
baseball and my bicycle seemed pretty precious to me those days. My father was
a family doctor, and one of his patients was an attractive young lady, I doubt
that she was over 21 years old, who was beginning a career as a piano teacher.
She lived a long way from home, and I had to take a streetcar many miles to her
studio. Well, with much persuasion I began my lessons. After two or three
sessions it became obvious that there wasn't much rapport between my teacher
and me. She was very strict and was determined that from the beginning I would
have to maintain a hand position which was just so. I guess in most
circumstances there is nothing wrong with that, but I felt I was being put in a
strait jacket. We worked together at each hand alone, but all my efforts seemed
to trouble her even when I tried to play a very simple series of notes with one
hand alone. We struggled on, and it seemed like weeks before we tried anything
with two hands together. I had decided by this time that my coordination was
poor, and I felt very clumsy. Piano was not for me. I practiced just as little
as I could get by with. The whole year passed and, so far as my music was
concerned, it was an unhappy one. I constantly fretted about my lessons and
wanted to go back to baseball wholeheartedly.

Late in the spring I was getting off the streetcar on the
way to my lesson when I was struck by an automobile and run over. By some
miracle the wheels of the car missed any part of my body. I stood up almost
immediately and, except for some scratches, seemed to be quite unhurt. I even
continued on to my lesson. Needless to say, my parents were terribly upset when
they heard of the accident, and at this point it was not difficult for me to
persuade them that I should give up music.

The summer passed and a few weeks after school had begun
again, my father gently approached me telling me he had another patient who was
a piano teacher living very close to our home, and would I like to try again? I
must have been in a very receptive mood, for I said, "why not." This
woman was one of two maiden ladies who had a studio together. Each had her own
class of students. The one who was to be my teacher was named Clara Schwarb.
Again I began lessons, but this time it was quite a different story. Miss
Schwarb had a very attractive way with children, and I liked her at once. In
fact, she made a serious effort to interest me in music. I can no longer recall
the details of our lessons, but I do remember that she spent some time at each
lesson telling me about the great composers and assigned me little pieces which
they had written. I began to respond with enthusiasm and after only a few weeks
had passed I was playing rather difficult pieces for a beginner such as
Träumerei of Robert Schumann. Miss Schwarb was not very strict, nor was
she very critical. She did not slap my hand as had the first teacher, and did
not even try to correct wrong notes. And she had such a happy disposition. I
soon looked forward with much pleasure to my lessons and, I believe, by the end
of that year had already made up my mind to become a musician. I remember Miss
Schwarb with affection and owe a great deal of gratitude to her for her
patience and persuasion.

I have never ceased to wonder about talent. Perhaps
sometimes the teacher has more talent than the student. In any event, my
strange introduction to music may give us something to think about and perhaps
another slant at the meaning of talent.

St. John's Episcopal Church, Buffalo

During my early 20s I became organist and choirmaster of St.
John's Episcopal Church in Buffalo, the city where I had been brought up. It
was a lovely church designed by the famous architect, Bertram Goodhue, and
recently built in Tudor gothic style with fine stained glass and a ceiling
richly decorated with polychrome colors. I was there eight years, and spent
three and even four hours at the organ nearly every morning. It was a time when
I learned a great deal of repertoire from Bach to Tournemire.

In those days the church was open every day for prayer and
meditation. Occasionally someone would enter the church, unknown to me. One day
as I came to a concluding cadence, I was interrupted by an old man who came up
to the console and said, "Young man, I have been listening to your music,
and you are in a very strange mood. I see dark colors and something is
depressing you." I was taken aback and a little shocked to hear someone
remark about my mood, especially from a complete stranger, for, as I recall, I
really hadn't been concerned with how I was feeling and surprised that it would
be evident in my organ playing. For a moment I suddenly wondered for what
purposes I had been working all this time. He was a very old man, in his
eighties or nineties with a strong will. From time to time he returned and
would sit in the church listening to me practice and then tell me what he had
heard. Sometimes we would have discussions. He talked as though he were
planning to live forever, but I couldn't imagine why. Well, I was too young and
unsympathetic to appreciate his point of view. I felt sorry for him, for to me
he looked very old and I wondered if he would even live to reach the outside of
the church again.

Ernest Mitchell

A few years earlier, after high school, I had entered the
Institute of Musical Arts in New York (now the Juilliard School). During the
first weeks I explored the city and visited the fabulous Wanamaker store that
in those days had an enormous organ. Later, as I left the store I saw before me
a large and beautiful Gothic church. I entered and at once heard the organ. I
walked quietly forward toward the chancel where I could see an elegantly
dressed man sitting at a very large four-manual console. He was playing Karg-Elert's
Now Thank we all Our God. The organ sounded magnificent, and what I heard and
saw at once impressed me as a model of perfection. The organist was Ernest
Mitchell and the church was Grace Church, and both were to have a profound
influence on me.

Grace Church in those days was an enormously wealthy church.
If you approached the church on a Sunday morning you would see at least a score
of Rolls-Royces and Pierce-Arrows parked along Broadway with their respective
chauffeurs in black suits guarding the cars. When I entered the church the
small congregation, elegantly dressed, in that lovely gothic nave suggested
that here was a chapel just for millionaires. I had the feeling that I was not
supposed to be there and hesitated to remain for the service. Nevertheless, I
remained. The choir was highly paid, and it was my introduction to Mr.
Mitchell's unique boy choir. The soprano section, consisting of 20 boys, had a
most beautiful and unusual tone quality with intonation and phrasing that
seemed faultless. There were also eight men representing some of the finest
voices in town. Donald Dame, the tenor soloist, was also singing with the
Metropolitan Opera. The choir boys lived in a  very well appointed boarding school and rehearsed every day.
It was the finest boy choir I had ever heard, and even now the quality of that
wonderful choir remains in my memory. The organ in the church was enormous. It
was a double organ: the organ in the chancel had 80 stops and was built first
by Hutchins-Votey and then E.M. Skinner; the gallery organ was more recent
having been built again by E.M. Skinner, and it contained 60 stops. There were
five 32¢s in that church!

Mr. Mitchell, who had been a student of Widor in Paris,
played superbly. He was particularly interested in French music and played the
Widor and Vierne symphonies, Roger-Ducasse, Duruflé, and was the first
organist to play Tournemire in this country. He played many of the suites of
Tournemire's famous work, L'Orgue Mystique, and two of his works were dedicated
to Mr. Mitchell. I found it difficult to decide in what he excelled: his
magnificent choir or his wonderful organ playing. Several years later I was to
become his student.

Some 20 or 30 years later on a visit to New York, I again
wandered into Grace Church and discovered Mr. Mitchell practicing again at the
console of a new organ. He was now retired and apparently in his seventies. A
new organist and choirmaster had been engaged, and a new organ had replaced the
old which reflected the incumbent's baroque taste. I was surprised though that

Mr. Mitchell still continued to practice, especially on an
organ which obviously did not suit his tastes. This I could not understand. I
said to myself why doesn't this old man give up and simply enjoy his
retirement. His professional life seemed to me to be at an end, and I couldn't
imagine what in the world he was practicing for.

A different view

Well, here I am at the same gate post, and the scene looks quite
different from my point of view today. Now I realize how I had completely
misunderstood those two old men who had come into my earlier life, and I see
clearly that some of us wish to live forever and carry on the same desires and
ambitions of our youth. In fact, for me the next recital or recording is still
my zenith. The urges for artistic accomplishment are even greater than ever and
are nourished by many years of experience. Of course, at this late date I no
longer look forward or backward except as a point of reference. Now I must live
only for the moment with all its challenges and problems. Nevertheless, I must
confess, there is always the future. This can't last forever. Well, I simply
couldn't understand all this when I was a young man.

Lynnwood Farnam

I have never forgotten those two old men. They are two of
the many influential figures that came into my young life. Lynnwood Farnam was
another and probably the greatest of them all. My ambitions as an organist were
probably linked to the influence Farnam had over me. His approach to organ
playing remains unique in my memory, and he set a standard of quality in
performance that was surely unprecedented and from my perspective today
re-mains unchallenged.

Farnam was unusual; his conception of a musical work was
never confined by the limitations of the organ. He sought to realize all its
musical possibilities in spite of tonal and mechanical
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  limitations. He was of course concerned
about the quality of the instrument he had to play, as are all good performers.
He had immense enthusiasm for the organ; he understood its traditional
qualities and had a strong instinctual feeling for it.

On one occasion I remember hearing him play a Magnificat of
Titelouze and was struck by his handling of the registration and his style of
playing. He seemed to re-create the atmosphere of that period, even though the
organ was hardly appropriate for the purpose. He realized, for instance, that a
great work of Bach must finally sound as if it thoroughly belonged to the organ--it
must, after all, be completely idiomatic. Thus, by combining a rich musical
feeling with a passion for the organ, he succeeded in realizing an unusual
conception of such a work on the average organ, even a mediocre one.

He was, first of all, one of the most accurate of all
keyboardists I have ever heard. I am sure that this was not because he had
great pride in his technical ability. To the contrary, he believed that a wrong
note, no less a poor sound or a weak rhythmic figure,  spoiled the texture of the music and thus distracted from
the total impression. Accuracy was fundamental to his efforts to interpret the
music.  In the end it was this high
quality of Farnam's playing, musically and technically, which set such an
unusual standard for me to follow.

Josef Hofmann

Another of the great influences
of my life was the pianist Josef Hofmann, who was the head of the piano
department and, in fact, dean of the Curtis Institute when I was a student
there. Some say that Hofmann was the greatest pianist of the 20th century. His
chief contender in those days was Sergei Rachmaninoff, but both men were good
friends who seemed to stand in awe of each other. Like Farnam, Hofmann set the
highest possible standard; he was one of the most consistently accurate keyboard
players, and had the most remarkable mechanism of any  pianist I have ever heard. And it is interesting to know
that he was not only a great pianist but also a remarkable mechanical genius.
He had his own machine shop and had acquired several patents for devices he had
invented, including the shock absorber.

Over the years I have studied
Hofmann's technique at the piano; it was based on a system of leverage
involving the upper and lower arms. I came to understand that by using leverage
of the arms, it is possible to develop great skill and power at the piano and
still play with considerable ease. Of course, we organists do not need this
kind of power unless we are playing a large tracker organ with manuals coupled.
With this kind of technique the hands and fingers do not strike the keys. The
feeling is more like a pushing away from the keyboard.

Hofmann did little practice, and
I can understand why it is said that his technique required no maintenance. He
did most of his work mentally away from the piano. He could learn a big work
simply by studying the score, bring it to the instrument, and then play it at
once in a finished form. In the use of his technical system he developed a
unique touch with a tremendous control of dynamics. He not only played all the
right notes, but seemed to play the right notes better than other pianists. You
have to hear his playing to believe it.

Hofmann had one of the most
remarkable ears in musical history. One day when he was still a boy, he heard a
tuning fork supposed to be A-440 at the Metropolitan  Opera and said it was a shade sharp--and it was. With his
remarkable ear he could play back music correctly without ever having seen the
score. Not a week passes that I am not listening to one of the many Hofmann
recordings in my collection.

The Rev. Walter Lord

My early years of professional
life in Buffalo as organist at St. John's Church were memorable ones. The
Rector of the church, Walter Russell Lord, was a sympathetic influence in my
career. He was a personality of unusual culture with far reaching interests in
literature, the arts and music. His wife was a fine  painter who had exhibited at the famous Armory Show of 1913
in New York. They travelled constantly in England, France and Italy. Dr. Lord
and I sometimes had differences of opinion about the hymns and anthems, but he
nevertheless was a great inspiration to me, and my interest in painting and
gothic architecture began at this time.

Walter Holtkamp

Soon after I began my career at
St. John's Church in Buffalo, I became aware of an unusual organ builder in
Cleveland, Walter Holtkamp, the father of Walter Holtkamp, Jr., and grandfather
of Chris Holtkamp, who is now successfully running that company today. Walter
Holtkamp was apparently forging an unusual and even daring path which would
have a profound effect on the future of organ building in America, and I soon
became excited with what he was trying to do. I started going back and forth
between Buffalo and Cleveland to play and study his instruments. Early in the 1930s
he even had invited me to take part in a recital and reception in his shop
where he had set up one of his instruments. Holtkamp was aware of the new
movement in German organ building; he had also been reading and studying the
writings of Albert Schweitzer and had been corresponding with him. He had seen
how the modern American organ had lost almost all vestiges of its traditions.
His first interest, I believe,  was
to restructure its casework, so its speaking pipes could be brought forward
into the room and placed in an open position where they could be heard by the
listener just as all other musical instruments. He was the first builder in
this country to introduce the Rückpositiv, a division typical of North
German organ building, and his first example was installed in the original
organ built for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Holtkamp became another strong
influence in my life, and much of my feeling for the organ today goes back to
my experiences with Holtkamp.

Paul Hindemith

Toward the end of my tenure in
Buffalo it came as quite a surprise to hear that the composer, Paul Hindemith,
had been engaged to teach at the University of Buffalo, and there was a lot of
excitement in town in musical circles. My wife and I had been married for only
a year and lived in a small apartment just two blocks from the hotel where
Hindemith lived. Unfortunately, Hindemith only remained in Buffalo for several
months, mainly the spring of 1941, before he accepted a position at Yale
University. But during those 
months we saw a great deal of him. I became a student in a small class
for composition. Hindemith was very generous with his time. For a man with all
his accomplishments he had a very easy going manner and behaved as if he were
lazy and lonely. It seems he never turned down a request for his help or a
social invitation.

It so happens that I had
prepared my choir at that time for a concert which was to be held by
coincidence shortly after Hindemith's arrival. At the second or third meeting
of our class he called me aside and said that he had heard I was giving a
concert with my choir. He then added that he rarely attended concerts but that
he would like to attend the final rehearsal. What could I say?! A final
rehearsal is difficult enough under normal conditions, but for the great
Hindemith to attend my modest efforts with a volunteer choir put me in a trying
circumstance, to say the least. Well, of course he came.

The program was to open with a
short Buxtehude cantata with strings, and this was my only rehearsal with the
strings. It was the first work on the agenda, because I only needed the strings
for that one work. Here I was having to handle my choir in an already difficult
situation and then contend with the presence of one of the foremost musicians
of the day and one, moreover, who only a few weeks earlier had provoked
considerable attention by standing up against Hitler and the Nazis. You can
imagine how I felt!

Nevertheless, the rehearsal
began with the short introduction of the Buxtehude cantata which involved the
strings. We hadn't played more than eight bars when Hindemith interrupted the
rehearsal telling us he wasn't satisfied with the sound of a certain ornament.
Of course, ornaments are controversial, and it was well-known that Hindemith
had a strong interest in early music.

Moreover, it should be
remembered  that Hindemith was a
conductor who later in his life toured with and conducted many of the major
orchestras in Europe and America. He also had a special talent for playing instruments
and could play virtually all the instruments of the orchestra. He was a
virtuoso on the violin and viola.

He asked to see the score and
then suggested we begin again. After we had passed the point in question I
stopped and waited for Hindemith's appraisal. He was silent for a moment or so
and then admitted that what we had first played was, after all, the best
solution. The fact that he had nothing to offer relieved some of the tension
and made me feel somewhat more comfortable. The rehearsal proceeded and there
were no  more serious problems.

Incidentally, I had grown up
with the impression that such great men try to remain obscure in their private
lives and, in any event, do not waste a whole evening on small-town organists
and volunteer choirs. I wondered how he could afford the time for such
excursions! If he was looking for entertainment, I should think a movie might
have been more appropriate than to contribute to the nervous breakdown of a
young man still in his twenties. Nevertheless, I lived through that rehearsal and
at least had the comfort to know that he would not attend the concert.

Nevertheless, Hindemith was very
helpful to me during those months, and we also had many good times together. He
was a fascinating person. He had a dozen hobbies--gardening, model railroads,
timetables, maps, walking, etc.--in addition to his comprehensive activities in
music. He walked five miles every day, and by the time he had been with us for
two weeks, he knew Buffalo far more thoroughly than I who had
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  been born and brought up there. He
always seemed to take his time, and it is still a mystery to me how such a man
accomplished what he did and yet appeared to give one the impression he was
lazy. In fact, one day when asked about his well-being he said, "I have
just been walking around feeling stupid."

Eventually I had a lesson on how
Hindemith handles his time. One day my wife and I happened to have lunch in the
dining room of his hotel. We saw him there alone reading his book on Kepler in
preparation for an opera he was planning as he was having his lunch. We
returned home and about three o'clock received a phone call from Hindemith
announcing to us that he had just completed the score of the slow movement for
a new organ sonata. He asked if he might come over to the apartment so that we
might try it out on the piano. Of course, and we played it. I was much
impressed. He told us he had written it in 20 minutes, and, in fact, the score
was beautifully written all ready for the publisher. He wrote the first
movement the following morning and the final movement that afternoon. I
surmised that these pieces had probably been swirling around in his head during
those long daily walks and by the time he sat down at his desk, there was
little more to do than write out the scores. This then was the story of the
Third Sonata for organ. But there is still an interesting sequel to that story.

Hindemith knew that I owned a
recording machine. It was, of course, before the day of tape decks and the
proliferation of amateur recording. One had to go to some trouble to own a
recording machine of any kind those days, and my machine was a complicated
affair; the recording was made by actually cutting a disc with a needle. If it
went bad during a session, it was not so simple to try again, for it was fairly
expensive to begin again with a new disc. In any event, when Hindemith brought
me the final score he suggested we make a recording of it. I was pleased with
the idea, of course, and I agreed to do so. He asked me when we should set up a
date, for he wanted to be on hand. I looked at the sonata rather superficially
and thought to myself that learning this piece is going to require some hard
work. I brought out my little book and suggested a date about two weeks off. At
that, Hindemith exclaimed,"What! Are you going to go into hibernation and
sleep with this piece? Come on, let's do it the day after tomorrow!" Well,
I was flabbergasted, to say the least. I had never in my life tried to learn a
piece of such difficulty in so short a time, but it seemed that I had no
choice. My pride was such that I could not muster the nerve to disagree with
him. Somehow I managed to learn that sonata and make the recording according to
Hindemith's wishes. I never forgot that experience, and it taught me a lot
about how to practice. It also told me something about the handling of time and
why Hindemith was able to squeeze so much from his life.

Squire Haskin

Among my friends was a very
unusual man named Squire Haskin, who came to Buffalo as the director of music
at the First Presbyterian Church two or three years after I had become
choirmaster at St. John's Church. It didn't take me long to realize that Squire
was a musician of formidable talent, who, if I was going to react normally,
could give me some real competition. Squire had recently graduated from the
Eastman School of Music where he had been the first student in the history of
the school to do a double major, in organ and piano. In fact, for graduation he
had played both an organ recital and a piano recital from memory during the
same week. Soon after he arrived in Buffalo he played a very fine recital at
his church which included the Duruflé Toccata, the Bach Passacaglia and
a Franck Chorale all learned and memorized within a week's time.

I soon discovered that Squire
was also an amazing sight-reader; at the piano he could read at once a piece as
difficult as a Chopin Étude and, with one or two more readings, have it
memorized. Because of his musicianship and sight-reading ability he was soon in
demand as an accompanist for singers and instrumentalists around town. He was
often called back to Rochester to fill in as a last minute substitute at the
Eastman School. On such occasions, he could learn and play a Hindemith,
Bartók or Schoenberg work in a morning rehearsal with a violinist for
performance the same evening.

I didn't begin to have this kind
of talent, a formidable one, to say the least. However, I soon became aware
that Squire did not have the ambition nor did he espouse a career the equal of
his talents as pianist, organist or accompanist. Life had too many other
interests for him to settle down and concentrate on an artistic career. He was
content with his position as director of music of a large city church, and he
remained there for the rest of his life.

Over the years, as organist, he
played in recital or as voluntaries at the church services the complete works
of Bach, Franck, Vierne and Widor, and many of the works of Messiaen and
Langlais. He knew and played the piano literature as well. His quick
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  mind took to languages and he spoke
French fluently and at least some Italian. His interests embraced an extensive
awareness of painting and architecture, and he was an avid reader as well.

Squire, by his example, taught
me the art of living. He was a real gentleman and seemed to me to be a modern
example of the Renaissance man. He surrounded himself with fine books,
paintings and many other beautiful things. He listened to music and attended
concerts and galleries, intimately knowing the paintings of Buffalo's Albright
Art Gallery and many other galleries around the country.

But Squire essentially was a
modest person, not ambitious, and was never simply trying to extend his
knowledge to show off his ability. What he knew and loved was there only
because of his interest in such things. This made a strong impression on me. He
could be tough on occasion when necessary, but he never developed the arrogance
of so many college professors. He became an important influence in my life, and
we became life-long friends.

Years later I built him a large
new organ of 80 ranks for First Presbyterian Church. It brought us both a lot
of pleasure. In many ways, his life was too good to be true, and sadly he was
murdered in his own home by a thief on the eve of a celebration for 50 years of
service at the church. I had come to Buffalo to join in the celebration. It was
one of the saddest and most frustrating moments of my life, and I am still
haunted by that unfortunate occasion.

Teaching

I chose to be an organist by the
time I was 21 years old, and have been practicing and playing ever since.
During the 12-year period when I was teaching full time at the University of
Michigan, I played many recitals, including the complete organ works of Bach. I
don't remember how I did it, for my responsibilities in running the organ
department, teaching, committee meetings and the many interruptions of such a
schedule limited the hours I had for practice. Then, at the height of this
career I began organ building and a few years later gave up teaching. I had
liked teaching and I especially enjoyed the students, but I was somewhat
demanding and I am sure some of them did not entertain such an impression. But
I found teaching the most difficult work of all. To listen every day to the
great organ works played by someone who is just beginning his career, often
played well and sometimes very well, yet never quite the way one conceives
them, is not easy. Very few students at that age have reached a level with what
I call an artistic attitude, and it is very tiring to listen every day to such
playing. I doubt that the students ever stopped to think of how I felt about my
playing. After all, I was never satisfied with my own efforts. In fact, I was
so critical of myself that I didn't dare play for them seriously at lessons
when I should have. I finally had to perform at recitals, of course, and then I
tried to do the best I could. I was not one blessed with too much talent.
Technical skill did not come easily for me. I had to work, and learn to teach
myself.

Rhythm and nuance

In the performance of any
musical instrument rhythmic nuance is an indispensible means for musical
expression. The organ is the most mechanical of all musical instruments and it
tends to discourage nuance. Yet, nuance is the lifeblood of musical expression;
it is the means for making subtle distinctions with dynamics and rhythm.
Traditionally the organ has a very limited means for expression; dynamics
cannot be affected directly at the keyboard. With the invention of the swell
box, it at least became possible to control the dynamic level of one or a group
of stops by opening or closing such an enclosure by means of shutters. It is
easy enough to learn to play in a simple, equally spaced order of beats and
measures but the very nature of the organ with its rigid and uncompromising
sound seems to inhibit a serious attempt in the handling of nuance.
Nevertheless, with effort it is possible.

We organists have developed a
mode of playing which stresses one dynamic at a time and a simple approach to
rhythm by playing too much in strict time. Of course, on a baroque organ we can
have only one dynamic at a time, and thus we have found it easy to believe in a
tradition of playing concerto movements and preludes and fugues from beginning
to end with but one registration and, of course, only one dynamic, more or less
in strict time. But I am not sure that this is a kind of playing typical of
good organ playing in earlier times. Moreover, I find many people who really
enjoy music have learned to stay away from organ recitals.

With practice, I find that even
playing the simplest kind of organ, even one with tracker action built in an
old style, it is possible to become involved with a much more subtle kind of
rhythm by practicing a touch inspired by imagination for dynamic variation.
Although they cannot be altered, just the attempt to feel where dynamics occur
with the touch will affect and alter the rhythm and even suggest a variation of
dynamics. This is the kind of playing typical of a sensitive pianist. However,
because of his instrument he is able to affect both dynamics and the rhythm at
the same time. The two go together in a very natural way. Nevertheless, we
organists should be able to develop a touch which approaches this kind of
playing and which will produce subtle nuances of rhythm which in turn suggest
variation of dynamics.

I have read very much from the
18th century which suggests that performers then were far more sensitive to the
expressive quality and touch of their instruments than we now believe. For
instance, J.J. Quantz, a friend of Bach, wrote:

Good execution must be varied.
Light and shadow must be constantly maintained. No listener will be
particularly moved by someone who plays in the same colour. Thus, a continuous
alternation of forte and piano must be observed. The alternation of piano and
forte heightens some notes at one time, at another arouses tenderness.

Of course, Quantz is mainly
speaking of playing the flute or the violin, not the organ. However, I have
tried in vain to find information from that time which suggests that organists
should play in a special style which is expressionless. Organists in our time
have too easily come to the conclusion, for instance, that even registration in
its simplest use should never be changed in the performance of a prelude and
fugue. To the contrary, I am persuaded that Quantz is quite right when he says
that no listener will be pleased by someone who plays without change of color
or dynamics, and that intrigues me far more than blindly following a tradition
which offers so little and is obviously questionable. I could quote many more
passages which confirm the statement of Quantz, but I shall include one more
which suggests that some players apparently played as expressively as we do
today. This passage describes the playing of one of the foremost players of the
viola da gamba during the 17th century, Nicolas Hotman, and is found in a study
book written by Jean Rousseau in 1687:

One admired him often more when
he played tenderly some simple little song than in the most learned and
complicated pieces. The tenderness of his playing comes from those beautiful
bowings which he animated, and softened so cleverly and properly that he
charmed all those who heard him.

I go back to the 18th century
because, as organists, we play an instrument which was favored by the great
J.S. Bach, and whose organ music is the cornerstone of our whole repertoire.
The music of Bach is wonderful, and I am convinced it should be played far more
expressively that it is. None of us really knows how Bach played, and I don't
understand why we should be so determined to make his music fit all the rules
of a vague tradition probably created after Bach was gone and, in any event, so
little understood in our time. Dom Bedos, who authored a famous work on organ
building during the 18th century, wrote:

There is a manner of conceiving
music entirely different from the one taught in all the treatises upon this
art: it is founded upon the execution itself.

I agree with this. It suggests
that there is an obligation for me to study the score itself, explore it, and
using my intuition, find for myself the best possible way to make it sound.

Organ design

Finally, we need good organs to
perform expressively. The organ is a very complicated instrument, and this may
in part account for our inability as organists and organ builders to reach the
high musical standards of the pianist or the violinist. In truth, the
expressive possibilities of the organ are much greater than we seem to believe
they are.

A good pianist sits down at a
fine Steinway piano and is able to perform a Chopin Ballade or a delicate
Debussy Prelude with ease and conviction. Both the player and the instrument
are sensitive to musical and instrumental problems and understand together the
function of their instrument.

Now, I do not find this kind of
rapport true of the organ. I am rarely convinced that the player and the organ
builder are even talking to each other. Consider how organs are designed. The
procedure, it seems, tends to be haphazard. For instance, the organist will
provide a list of stops, but the builder rarely understands the musical
implications of what that list means in terms of registration. The builder
then, on his own, inadvertently proceeds to design the instrument from his
point of view and with far different motives than the organist. Both know too
little about each other's art.

I am appalled that so few
organists have more than a superficial understanding of their instrument, its
design, tone and action. The voicing of organ pipes still remains somewhat of a
mystery to organists and even some organ builders. There are apparently few
organists too who really revel in the tonal colors of their instrument.
Exploring and exploiting the various sounds of an organ requires at least a
little skill in improvisation and can be a source of inspiration.

Look again at the piano; its
casework is always the same and simply constructed to contain the elements
which produce its tone. Organ cases also are constructed to contain the
pipework and mechanism of the organ, but the organ builder is too often more
concerned for the appearance of the organ and its casework than its tone
quality. Walter Holtkamp back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s was a builder who came
the closest to such an ideal. He insisted on building a organ which first could
be placed properly within the room and then designed his cases to expose the
pipework, allowing the sound to be projected directly to the listener. Today,
it is the fashion to build cases in the style of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Much of this kind of casework is redundant, burdened with heavy woodwork, and
unnecessarily expensive.

It is also the responsibility of
the organist as well as the builder to give more serious thought to the
wind-chest and action to provide a sensitive and responsible touch for the
player, and one which will encourage nuance. The voicing of the pipes and the
construction of the action are closely related to each other. The finest
voicing favors pipes which speak promptly. The design of the chest and its
valves must be sympathetic to this kind of voicing. The voicing and the speed
and precision of the valve must work together. The valves in various types of
windchests are often too fast or too slow for the voicing, but with modern
technology it is now possible to design and adjust the opening and closing of
the valve to suit the voicing of the pipe. There is an urgent need for
discussion of this kind among organists, for it is only the organist with some
knowledge of voicing and the playing mechanism who can really understand the
kind of responsiveness he desires and translate his desires to the organ
builder. And it is he who should be responsible for the whole organization of
the instrument, one which is carefully designed to create an organ for the
finest kind of performance. The organist and the organ builder have common
interests and need to become involved more closely with each other.

The function of musical
performance is to play music for the enjoyment of music. That's the purpose of
a symphony concert, a piano recital, a performance of lieder or an organ
recital. Simply said, that is our goal. But all of these means of performance
can only be judged by the fine art of listening to music. If we go to an organ
recital simply to find out if one of our colleagues is using correct tempos or
is playing a chorale prelude in a proper style, both we and our recitalist
colleague really belong back in the classroom. Fortunately, we still enjoy a
musical culture in which there are magnificent symphony orchestras, wonderful
string quartets, pianists, violinists and, of course, some organists, where the
goal of musical performance, plain and simple, is to make beautiful music for
the listener.

During these last years I have discovered
more than ever the great joy of listening to music. It's a gold mine. I try to
set aside an hour or so each day just to listen to music. I try not to let
myself be distracted by reading or conversation. I just try to remain quiet and
relaxed without making any undue effort to concentrate, for in my life
listening to music is one of its greatest joys.

Ronald J. Swedlund is a specialist in German romantic music. He earned the DMA degree in organ performance from the University of Michigan and the MMus and BMus degrees from Wichita State University. His principal organ mentors have been Robert Glasgow, Marilyn Mason, and Robert Town. Additional keyboard study has been with Edward Parmentier (harpsichord) and Robert Hamilton (piano).

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) began composing his Variations on a Recitative, op. 40 for organ on August 25, 1941 and completed the work forty-eight days later on October 12. The work was premièred by Carl Weinrich at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City on April 10, 1944. It was published by the H. W. Gray Co. in 1947, after six years of quarrelsome negotiations.

Altogether Schoenberg wrote seven sets  of variations. Four of these are relatively brief movements in larger works; the other three are self-contained pieces of substantial length. The movements in larger works are the Litanei of String Quartet No. 2, op. 10 (1908); the passacaglia titled “Nacht” in Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1912); the Variationen from Serenade, op. 24 (1923); and the Thema mit Variationen from Suite, op. 29 (1926). The independent pieces are Variations for Orchestra, op. 31 (1928); Variations on a Recitative, op. 40 (1941); and Theme and Variations, op. 43a for band (1943). These sets traverse Schoenberg’s four stylistic periods, moving from the tonality of the second string quartet to atonality (or, as Schoenberg would say, “pantonality”1) in Pierrot Lunaire, to serialism in the serenade and the suite, and finally returning to tonality in the organ variations and the band variations.2 The Variations on a Recitative is Schoenberg’s final and most extensive keyboard work, and his only completed work for organ.

The primary sources for a study of Schoenberg’s organ variations are the composer’s personal correspondence, articles by Robert Nelson and Marilyn Mason, two recordings of the work by Mason, and a letter from Max Miller to Paul Hesselink. The items from Schoenberg’s personal correspondence pertaining to the organ variations are published in an article by Paul Hesselink, which appeared in the Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute; a review and abridged version of this article later appeared in The American Organist. Hesselink’s articles both present a single paragraph from an important letter Schoenberg wrote to René Leibowitz on July  4, 1947—the full text of this letter appears in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Erwin Stein. The Nelson article summarizes the content of six two-hour lectures presented by Schoenberg early in 1949 (and attended by Nelson) which dealt with Schoenberg’s variation sets. Marilyn Mason writes,

during the summer of 1949 I was privileged to have several lessons with Mr. Schoenberg at his home in Beverly Hills, California. Three lessons, in composition and in an analysis of the Variations, were so inspiring and stimulating! One of his special requests was that he hear the Variations on the organ, so I made arrangements to play them for him at a Los Angeles church. He was transported by car and  wheelchair to the church, where he heard, as he told us afterwards, the work performed for the first time on the organ. To my knowledge this was the last time too, for in two summers he had died.3

Mason’s article describes her session with Schoenberg at the Los Angeles church and reports Schoenberg’s wishes regarding the performance of his piece. Mason recorded the variations in 1951 and again around 1968.4 Hesselink’s first  article presents an excerpt of a letter to him from Max Miller5 who, as a graduate organ student in the fall of 1950, took a lesson with Schoenberg for “help . . . on interpretation” and “tempi, etc.”6 in the organ variations.

An important secondary source for a study of Schoenberg’s organ variations is an article by Martha Foltz, which presents a detailed analysis of the piece.7 The purpose of the present study is to present data from primary sources relating to the performance of Schoenberg’s Variations on a Recitative, op. 40. This data will address the areas of 1) edition choice, 2) articulation and phrasing, 3) tempo and rhythm, 4) registration, and 5) instrument choice.

Schoenberg’s Variations on a Recitative is available in two editions, the first published by the H. W. Gray Co., Inc. in 1947 and the second published by Belmont Music Publishers in 1975. Edited by Carl Weinrich, the first edition is written in conventional organ music notation and contains copious registration suggestions intended for the large, early 20th-century organ at Princeton University. The second edition is purged of Weinrich’s editorial suggestions and is written in Schoenberg’s original music notation, in which the pedal part is notated at actual (16¢) pitch instead of one octave higher.

Prior to the initial publication of his organ variations by the H. W. Gray Co., Schoenberg wrote the following comments concerning the forthcoming edition:

Now there is another problem: You know probably that since 1917 (when I published my Four Songs for Orchestra, Op. 21 [8]: “Vereinfache [sic] Studier-und Dirigier-Partitur, mit Vorwort”) I have excluded every transposition of my scores, even that of double bass, contra bassoon [sic] and piccolo.

Now I would like to publish also this work in the same manner. That is, writing exactly how it must sound and leaving it to the player to know how it has to be played. But as I do not want to produce this time more difficulties than those produced by the artistic conditions of my style, I am ready to allow this time to use the old fashioned notation. I know, organ players belong to the most conservative group among instrumentalists, and I assume they would not even try to play this.

I leave the decision about the problem to the publisher.9

[Letter to Donald Gray of the H. W. Gray Co.] There are now in my belief two possibilities how you could publish it:

(1) Without editorial additions, exactly as my original manuscript was written, which is quite possible because Mr. Weinrich . . . who has played it recently was able to do it without such remarks.

or

(2) Ask Mr. Weinrich whether he can edit it.10

The H. W. Gray Co. chose to ask Weinrich to edit the score. Upon Weinrich’s acceptance of the task, Schoenberg wrote to him:

I am also glad that you are going to edit the piece for H. W. Gray Co. . . .

I do not know whether my friends, Mr. Steuermann and Mr. Kolisch informed you about the one peculiarity of my writing, which might have seemed unusual to you at first: I write always the pitch which I want to hear: never transpositions are used, also not in the upper or lower octave; not in the manuals, nor in the pedal.11

After the publication of his organ variations in 1947Ï, the tone of Schoenberg’s comments changed:

Through the registration of a Mr. Weinrich, who has an unusually large organ in Princeton, the whole picture of my music is so confused that most people cannot make it out: but Mr. Stein has promised to give me a list which shows my original version. I will send it. The registrations by Weinrich I absolutely cannot judge. They appear to be invented entirely by an “organ churn.”12

[Letter to Donald Gray] . . . Mr. Weinrich’s registration is not understandable for other organists than himself.

I think it was not very good that my work was published in his version. . . . I must ask you to do something in this respect. I don’t want this work to be suppressed by such a mistake. Will you please tell me what you consider doing. I would say the best thing would be to have a second version without any registration and deliver this to the organist.

Complaints which I receive stem from prominent German, French and American organists.13

The registration of my organ variations is apparently perfectly designed for the Princeton University organ. This does not suit me at all and so many people have complained about it. I have also asked my publisher to bring out an unregistered edition so that each player can make his own registration. For me, an edition in which the bass is often higher than the tenor is really unreadable. It seems unmusical to me, and, besides, I believe that a well-educated musician doesn’t need this at all.

In my original draft, I included an occasional indication of sonority. But the point was to say whether something should be played tenderly and contabile [sic], or more roughly and staccato, or energetically—nothing more than that.14

. . . This Mr. Gray seems to be a hard-boiled man and he seems to be also very insolent. . . . . . . he charges so much . . . because he includes the fee which he has probably paid to Mr. Weinrich for his terrible registration . . . I had many complaints from Germany and from England and from France about this registration—all say that it is unuseable [sic], it seems to be made for a special organ and this is the organ of Princeton.

. . . I want . . . absolutely Mr. Weinrich’s registration to be taken out and my own version restored, with a remark that I give only the sound and every organ player might register it according to his own organ.15

[Letter to Donald Gray.] Weinrich made his registration exclusively for his Princeton organ. I have received many complaints about that, and questions whether American organs are different from European. And I have also heard a record made by an organist . . . [whose playing was based] on Weinrich’s ideas, and I tell you, it’s terrible. This fact that this version is not applicable to other organs, might be the reason why Weinrich himself, in an organ recital here in Los Angeles, did not play this piece; he, the editor!16

The 1974 Belmont edition apparently would fulfill Schoenberg’s wishes.17

According to Marilyn Mason, the phrasing indications in the H. W. Gray edition correspond exactly to the original manuscript. She writes that one of Schoenberg’s chief dictums to a performer of his music was “strict adherence to the score, especially regarding phrasing—all phrasing indications were to be strictly observed.”18 She notes that Schoenberg “was especially interested in clarity of performance, and this colored all his remarks to me.”19 During 1936 and 1937, the Kolisch Quartet recorded Schoenberg’s four string quartets under his coaching and supervision. Eugene Lehner, the quartet’s violist, writes that

one word was constantly repeated by . . . [Schoenberg]—clarity, clarity, clarity. For him, that was the alpha and omega of music making. His dictum was that you must play music so that the last person in the hall should be able to write up in the score what you do.20

A letter of Schoenberg to the conductor Fritz Stiedry describes how to achieve clarity in phrasing. Schoenberg writes,

phrasing is not to be used ‘emotionally’ as in the age of pathos. Rather it must

1. distribute the stresses correctly in the line

2. sometimes reveal, sometimes conceal the motivic work

3. take care that all voices are well-balanced dynamically, to achieve transparency in the total sound.21

Schoenberg observes that “an outstanding soloist (Kreisler, Casals, Huberman, among others) has a way of working at his part; he tries to make even the tiniest note sound, and to place it in correct relationship to the whole.”22

Consider for a moment the three soloists cited by Schoenberg. All were string players. Pablo Casals’ playing, compounded equally of fire and tenderness, “was memorable as much for beauty of tone as intellectual strength.”23 Time factors were

consciously chosen, avoiding a robotic pulse. Casals instinctively understood the dramatic value of delay—if only by a millisecond. He would speak of “posing” a note. He would “sculpt” every note dynamically . . . Casals’ playing [was] distinct from the unguency of a cello-playing dedicated to a seamless flow of beguiling sound.24

Bronislaw Huberman’s playing was, according to Flesch,25 “the most remarkable representative of unbridled individualism.”26 Huberman was “a towering personality who could fuse glowing intensity and visionary sensitivity into a grand design. His tone had a haunting quality, particularly in infinite shades of pianissimo.”27

Fritz Kreisler played without exertion, achieving a seemingly effortless perfection without

conscious technical display. The elegance of his bowing, the grace and charm of his phrasing, the vitality and boldness of his rhythm, and above all his tone of indescribable sweetness and expressiveness were marvelled at. Though not very large, his tone had unequalled carrying power because his bow applied just enough pressure without suppressing the natural vibrations of the strings. The matchless color was achieved by vibrato . . . Kreisler applied vibrato not only on sustained notes but also in faster passages which lost all dryness under his magic touch. His methods of bowing and fingering were equally personal.28

Kreisler had an unconventional bow arm: he disregarded the traditional . . . spun-out long bow, considered an important tool in a violinist’s technique; instead, he preferred short, intense bow strokes, changing the bow frequently and holding his right elbow rather high. He also tightened the bow hair far more than customary.29

According to Flesch in the mid-1890’s, Kreisler’s cantilena “was an unrestrained orgy of sinfully seductive sounds, depravedly fascinating,  whose sole driving force appeared to be a sensuality intensified to the point of frenzy.30 A photograph also taken about 1895 shows Kreisler and Schoenberg (the latter playing ’cello) as members of a whimsical instrumental ensemble called the “Fröhliches Quintett.”31

Hence, the artists Schoenberg admired, while noted for their clarity, were far from being the faceless automatons one might imagine from a superficial knowledge of Schoenberg’s style and aesthetic. To the contrary, each approached the rhetorical art of articulation and phrasing with blazing originality harnessed to intense communicative power.

These “outstanding”32 performers also played with beguiling rhythm and pronounced, individualistic rubato. Concerning rhythm and tempo, Schoenberg in 1948 wrote that

today’s manner of performing . . . [art] music . . . , suppressing all emotional qualities and all unnotated changes of tempo and expression, derives from the style of playing primitive dance music. This style came to Europe by way of America, where no old culture regulated presentation, but where a certain frigidity of feeling reduced all musical expression. Thus almost everywhere in Europe music is played in a stiff, inflexible metre—not in a tempo, i.e. according to a yardstick of freely measured quantities. Astonishingly enough, almost all European conductors and instrumentalists bowed to this dictate without resistance. All were suddenly afraid to be called romantic, ashamed of being called sentimental. No one recognized the origin of this tendency; all tried rapidly to satisfy the market—which had become American . . .

. . . As an expression of man it [music] is at least subject to such changes of speed as are dictated by our blood. Our pulse beats faster or slower, often without our recognizing it—certainly, however, in accommodation to our emotions. Let the most frigid person be asked a price much higher than she expected and feel her pulse thereafter! And what would become of the lie-detecting machine if we were not afflicted by such emotions? Who is able to say convincingly “I love you” or “I hate you,” without his pulse registering? . . .

Why is music written at all? Is it not a romantic feeling which makes you listen to it? Why do you play the piano when you could show the same skill on a typewriter?33

Schoenberg continues,

Change of speed in pulse-beats corresponds exactly with changes in tempo. When a composer has “warmed up” he may feel the need of harmonic and rhythmic changes. A change of character, a strong contrast, will often require a modification of tempo. But the most important changes are necessary for the distribution of the phrases of which a segment is composed. Over-accentuation of strong beats shows poor musicianship, but to bring out the “centre of gravity” of a phrase is indispensable to an intelligent and intelligible presentation of its contents . . . To people who have never heard  those great artists of the past who could venture far-reaching changes of every kind without ever being wrong, without ever losing balance, without ever violating good taste—to such people this may seem romantic.

It must be admitted that in the period around 1900 many artists overdid themselves in exhibiting the power of the emotion they were capable of feeling; artists who considered works of art to have been created only to secure opportunities for them to expose themselves to their audience; artists who believed themselves to be more important than the work—or at least than the composer. Nothing can be more wrong than both these extremes. Natural frigidity or artificial warmth—the one not only subtracts the undesirable additions of the other, but also destroys the vital warmth of creation, and vice versa.

But why no true, well-balanced, sincere and tasteful emotion?34

As one might expect, Schoenberg admired the conductor Furtwängler. Sounding slightly jaded by conductorial egos, Schoenberg writes that Furtwängler “is certainly a better musician than all these Toscaninis, Ormandys, Kussevitzkis [sic], and the whole rest. And he is a real talent, and he loves music.” 35 What sort of musician was Furtwängler?

He has been described

as “an ambassador from another world, a world holding him firmly in its power; he broke free of it only because he had a message to impart” (Kokoschka). “In listening to him, it is the impression of vast, pulsating space which is most overwhelming” (Menuhin). Such language is an attempt to put into words the almost mystical effect that Furtwängler’s conducting had on those who experienced it. He seemed to be searching for music’s essential being at a deeper level than anyone else. As Neville Cardus put it, “he did not regard the printed notes as a final statement but rather as so many symbols in an imaginative conception, ever changing and always to be felt and realized subjectively.”

. . . Furtwängler was a product, perhaps the supreme expression, of the interpretive tradition of Wagner and von Bülow. In Germany his conducting was regarded as the synthesis of Bülow’s spirituality and Nikisch’s improvisatory genius and sense of colour. Furtwängler’s performances combined in an extraordinary way lofty thought and spontaneity, impulsiveness and long meditation. Nothing for him was fixed and laid down. Each performance was a fresh attempt to discover the truth; rarely was one like another, or even like the rehearsal that had just preceded it. He deliberately cultivated an imprecise beat, so as to achieve a large, unforced sonority, growing from the bass. (The improvement of the cello and bass section, with the consequent enrichment of the whole body of string tone, and the introduction of continuous vibrato into German and Austrian orchestras, were among his important contributions to the development of orchestral playing.)

The freedom of tempo that he allowed himself was the opposite pole from Toscanini’s insistence on the sanctity of the printed score as a medium of the composer’s intentions (the interpretative tradition of Berlioz), in the light of which Furtwängler’s fluctuations of tempo struck many as arbitrary and unacceptable. Yet they were an inevitable concomitant of Furtwängler’s method, his constant quest for music’s inner meaning and hidden laws. He aimed at achieving, at the profoundest level, an organic unity which should be the result not of conformity but of a concentration on each particular expressive moment within a deeply considered general idea of the work. He was a master of transition, of the art of moulding musical phrases and periods into a spacious design, varied but grandly coherent . . . [his conducting had] a sweep, an urgency and tragic intensity that silenced objections.36

Schoenberg often paradoxically suggested in his compositions—through note values, changing meters, metronome markings, and tempo indications—the rhythmic freedom of a Furtwängler, Huberman, Kreisler, or Casals. The performer thus creates the impression of such freedom by taking fewer liberties in a Schoenberg work than in the work of an earlier composer.37

In the fall of 1950 Max Miller, then a graduate organ student at the University of Redlands, took a lesson on the performance of Schoenberg’s Variations on a Recitative with the composer. Concerning tempo and rhythm, Miller writes that Schoenberg

was upset by a too prolonged hold on the fermata on page 11 [m. 88] . . . It was clear that he wanted the variations grouped into larger sections as the music itself shows. In general, his whistling of the music was slower than his indicated tempo markings.38

For Schoenberg, as noted above, the most important concern of a performer of his organ variations was clarity. “Regarding actual sounds, he was interested in having clearness and precision above everything.”39 Schoenberg states that

the highest principle for all reproduction of music would have to be that what the composer has written is made to sound in such a way that every note is really heard, and that all the sounds, whether successive or simultaneous, are in such relationship to each other that no part at any moment obscures another, but, on the contrary, makes its contribution towards ensuring that they all stand out clearly from one another. . . . [This clarity] is the precondition of all music making.40

Elsewhere Schoenberg states, “If I was doing the registration [of the organ variations], I should work it out only in such a way that all the voices come out clearly.”41

How does Schoenberg achieve clarity of timbre? To answer this question, one must turn to his orchestration. In 1925, Schoenberg transcribed J. S. Bach’s chorale preludes “Komm, Gott, Schöpfer, heiliger Geist,” BWV 63142 and “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,” BWV 65443 for orchestra; in 1929 he transcribed as one piece J. S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E-flat, BWV 55244 for orchestra. In 1937, Schoenberg transcribed Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G Minor, op. 25 for orchestra. Speaking of the Bach prelude and fugue, Schoenberg writes,

I have, so to speak, modernized the organ, replaced its slow, rarely occurring change of colours with a more richly varied one that established precisely the rendition and the character of the individual passages, and I have given attention to clarity in the web of voices.45

Speaking of Brahms’ op. 25, Schoenberg writes, “I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved.”46 Schoenberg discusses in more detail his reason for transcribing the Bach chorale preludes:

the purpose of the colours is to make the individual lines clearer, and that is very important in the contrapuntal web! . . . Our modern conception of music demanded clarification of the motivic procedures in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. That is, we do not find it sufficient to rely on the imminent effect of a contrapuntal structure that is taken for granted, but we want to be aware of this counterpoint in the form of motivic relationships. . . . [Otherwise] our powers of comprehension will not be satisfied . . . We need transparency, that we may see [the motivic procedures] clearly!47

Thus, Schoenberg achieves clarity of timbre by placing timbre in the service of motivic and contrapuntal delineation. Urging players of Bach’s instrument to strive for such clarity, Schoenberg commands: “The organist must use all registers and change them frequently.”48

December 16, 1910-August 4, 2002

J. Bunker Clark is editor of Harmonie Park Press. He taught organ and theory at Stephens College (1957-59), was organist and choirmaster at Christ Church Cranbrook (1959-61), taught music history and harpsichord at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1964-65), and music history at the University of Kansas from 1965 until retiring in 1993.

William Osborne holds three degrees from the University of Michigan. He serves Denison University in Granville, Ohio as Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts, University Organist, and Director of Choral Organizations.

Haig Mardirosian is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Music at American University. He is also Organist and Choirmaster at the Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes, Washington, DC, and a recitalist, recording artist, writer, and consultant on organ building.

Ronald E. Dean is on the faculty of Centenary College, Shreveport, Louisiana.

Robert Noehren died on August 4 in San Diego, California, at the age of 91. (See "Nunc Dimittis," The Diapason, September 2002, p. 8.) International recitalist, recording artist, author, scholar, professor and university organist at the University of Michigan, and organbuilder, Noehren enjoyed a long and remarkable career, and was clearly one of the major figures of our profession in the 20th century.

His many recordings and recitals evidenced a special kind of organ playing: the highest standards of musicianship, devoid of superficial excesses, quiet and controlled console manner; indeed, his technique seemed to become quieter and easier the more difficult and virtuosic the music became. He continued to practice the organ daily and record up until his death, carried on extensive correspondence, had plans for another commercial recording on his organ in Buffalo, was preparing a talk for the AIO convention this month, was working on a cookbook of his favorite recipes, and continued to enjoy music, art, fine wine, good food, and friends from all over the world.

Below follow tributes in Noehren's honor, by William Osborne, Bunker Clark, and Haig Mardirosian, and a review by Ronald Dean of Noehren's Bach CD which was released last year, in addition to a listing of his articles and news releases as featured in The Diapason. Requiescat in pace.

--Jerome Butera

Robert Noehren: A Remembrance

When Jerry Butera, Ron Dean and I shared a meal during the Organ Historical Society gathering in Chicago on the final day of June, we regaled ourselves with tales about and from the man who had had such a seminal influence on us and a host of others, assuming that he would endure virtually forever, little anticipating the shocking news of his sudden death only weeks later. He had suffered the loss of his devoted wife only months earlier, but on the evidence of telephone conversations had seemed quickly to reconcile himself to this new phase of his incredibly rich life, determined to get on with his latest passions, energetically practicing daily at age ninety-one on his electronic [sic!] house organ, wrestling with what he could possibly say to a conclave of pipe organ builders in Los Angeles during an upcoming invited lecture, listening intently to CDs drawn from his immense collection, having been recently attracted particularly to the playing of pianist Ivo ogorelich.

A consummate man of the organ, he was nonetheless not preoccupied with the instrument, always fascinated by a wide range of human understanding.  For example, when the Noehrens made the decision to relocate to suburban San Diego after a particularly harsh Ann Arbor winter, the significant tragedy of their transfer was a wayward moving van stranded in the desert heat of the Southwest, a delay that turned the man's substantial and valuable wine collection to vinegar. I suspect that in retrospect he might have preferred to express himself through a medium other than the organ, since he was constantly dissatisfied with so many examples of the instrument, especially his inability to make music on them to his satisfaction. In fact, he suggested that his students could learn more about elegant music-making by observing a fine singer, violinist or pianist, and, when time permitted, he practiced Chopin or Debussy at the piano, although never in public.

It seems a bit incredible that he retired from studio teaching at the University of Michigan more than four decades ago, and that at least a few of his students have preceded him in death. I, for one, found him a rather reluctant pedagogue. When provoked, he could be enormously enthusiastic and insightful, but one had to work to attract his attention. He loved to tell a story that he attributed to George Faxon, but which I suspect was meant to mirror his own predicament. Supposedly Faxon had in his Boston studio a very comfortable upholstered chair where he ensconced himself as he directed a student to play straight through a big Bach prelude and fugue. As the piece proceeded, he would brush the lint off his jacket, adjust his shoelaces, settle back, and gradually fall completely asleep. The student, having finished his performance, would turn expectantly, at which point Faxon would suddenly rouse himself and blurt out: "Bravo! Play it again!"

Robert Noehren also frustrated and even infuriated many in a profession rife with calcified credos by remaining in a constant condition of quest. I joked that it was impossible to ride a Noehren bandwagon because, as his would-be disciples were clambering on one side, he had already jumped off the other and moved on to some new position. Recall the man's seminal role in the organ Renaissance in this country. He was one of the first to study the classic European instruments to the extent that he was able to understand and explain what made the instruments of Schnitger and Cavaillé-Coll tick. Those of us privileged to experience his organ design course can vouch for that wisdom. It was also Robert Noehren who was crucial in bringing to this country in 1957 that groundbreaking von Beckerath instrument in Cleveland's Trinity Lutheran Church. I can remember driving from Ann Arbor to Cleveland in a snowstorm to experience the incredible revelations that it offered. So, how did a man devoted to the principles the Beckerath manifested become a builder of instruments based on direct electric action and incredible amounts of borrowing and duplexing? Hard to say, except to acknowledge that he later pretty much disavowed that facet of his career, although expressing annoyance over those attempts to redress some of the mechanical problems he bequeathed the instruments' owners. He did assert that his foray into organ building resulted from his failure to find an established builder who was willing put his ideals into practice. Recall also that the best of his instruments were and are ones of distinction, and that he was a pioneer in considering the possibility of computer-driven combination systems, even though the clunky, punchcard system that he and a Michigan Engineering colleague devised seems hopelessly antiquated now.

Even though he has left us physically, his legacy will surely survive in the form of his immense discography and the many provocative, sometimes quixotic writings published in this journal and elsewhere.

What will survive as well for those of us privileged to know him is the memory of a man with a generous sense of humor (I will never forget the look on his face when asked in a studio class by a pompous doctoral student how one properly mounts the bench); an immense, eclectic repertory (e. g., as I recall, virtually nobody on this side of the Atlantic was aware of Tournemire when Noehren began to champion the man); an intense musicality at his chosen instrument that nonetheless refused curtailment by any of the various performance "isms" by which the profession lives (Furthermore, I, as one who was privileged to assist him often, for example in the series of sixteen all-Bach programs he played in Hill Auditorium before such marathons became fashionable, was always amazed that, while he advocated marking scores extensively, he always seemed to play from pages untouched by a pencil.); an incredible range of experiences (e. g., as a young church organist in Buffalo being asked to play the two existing Hindemith sonatas for their composer, thereby indirectly provoking the writing of the last of the trilogy); a man of immense principle who retired from active teaching prematurely when confronted with a Michigan dean who asked him to create the country's largest organ department (he seems to have been prescient enough to have anticipated the future state of the profession and thus suggested as an alternative the country's finest, albeit compact organ program); and, last, but hardly least, the sense that organists are all too often insular in their perspective, encouraging all with whom he was associated to seek out and embrace the full  range of human experience.

RN, we will miss you.

--William Osborne

From his editor

"Gee, it's hard to play the organ, isn't it?"--cliché by Robert Noehren after hearing a student trying to play a difficult piece.

"Gee, it's hard to produce a book about the organ"--my cry in the process of working with Bob on An Organist's Reader.

Bob had been talking about doing a book for some years, but I'm proud of persuading him to begin in earnest in 1995. He sent a box two years later, and after two more years of phone calls and letters concerning the details, the box was sent to Harmonie Park Press in February 1997, and the result appeared in November 1999.

I'd known Bob since going to Ann Arbor in 1950, but after my piano days unfortunately never took organ with him. Nonetheless, I was lucky to audit several of his classes on the history of the organ--which, in retrospect, helped considerably in checking details of historic instruments. Even then, it was embarrassing to both of us to have a good friend point out the omission of thirteen pedal stops from the 1576 organ of  the Georgenkirche, Eisenach. (Harmonie Park Press has an errata slip, or get it at .) But this omission had not been discovered when that article had previously been published in the Riemenschneider Bach Institute's Bach no fewer than three times, 1975, 1985, and 1995! It's only logical that an organ associated with Bach would have more than two pedal registers, no?

He correctly defended Grobgedackt, against my proposal of Großgedackt. As for another detail, does one use the modern German "K" for Katharinenkirche, or the original spelling Catharinenkirche, Hamburg? (we used the latter). Lüdingworth has an umlaut; otherwise it would seem to be a village in England. So does the composer Jean-Jacques Grünenwald, even though he was French. The foregoing represents a survey of some 54 pages of letters on my computer, which also has comments on a trip to Italy; Eloise's new hip, fall 1997; and his bout with cancer, early 2000.

I had attended many of his Ann Arbor recitals, and have seen the two-story end of the Noehren living room in Ann Arbor which housed his Hausorgel. But Lyn and I really got to know Bob much better when he taught at the University of Kansas, fall 1975; we had Thanksgiving and several other similar occasions together. What a wonderful human being! I already miss our more recent phone chats, in which he described his interest in a proper diet (indeed, published as an article in these pages last year), in our mutual enjoyment of a pre-dinner drink, his interest in audio equipment and recent recordings (usually not of organ music), and in a joke. And I miss his Christmas cards (the design of one is on the cover of his book).

Bob Noehren was very modest--but a hard worker when preparing a recital. He was not vain, but I'm certain he was very proud of the discography and recitals (a representation of programs appears in his book). Above all, in spite of and perhaps due to, his quiet and unassuming manner, his playing never highlighted the performer, but always the music, as if to say "I've studied this piece hard, and here is what I found out."

--J. Bunker Clark

Letters from Noehren

I never met Robert Noehren, yet I am humbled to be able to call him a friend. In the last three years of his life, Noehren and I had corresponded regularly through a series of letters, a thread of correspondence initiated somewhat coincidently.

In my academic administrative capacity, I was at work during 1997 with a project team charged with drafting a self-study report to my university's regional accrediting agency. Our member from the university's publications office, Trudi Rishikoff, saw to the style and editing of the finished document. At some stage of the process, Trudi mentioned that she had learned that I was an organist. Did I know her Uncle Bob?

Uncle Bob, it turned out, was Robert Noehren. With what must have been obvious mirth at this serendipitous news, I told Trudi of my high esteem for Noehren, the thrill of having played a recital on one of his instruments, the honor of having reviewed several of his recordings for both The American Organist and Fanfare, but even more, of the inspiration that I had derived from listening to him perform, both on disc and live, early in my career. I asked Trudi to convey those sentiments and my kindest respects to her uncle.

About the same time, my editors forwarded for review a CD comprising reissues of various Lyrichord recordings by Robert Noehren. These amounted to seminal performances on several of his instruments (as well as others) and an assortment of repertoire attesting to the performer's all-embracing musical interests. The disc merited its title, "A Robert Noehren Retrospective."

Months later, a long letter arrived from Robert Noehren, the first of many in which we discussed issues of mutual interest--musicians, repertoire, organs. Noehren's beautifully composed and printed texts (for openers, I marveled at the deliberate care in writing these and his obvious fluency at computing, something quite remarkable for a man about to turn 90). The composition and printing mirrored what one heard in his meticulous musicianship and performance. His critical but calculated opinions about music matched his gifted and insightful interpretation of music. His thoughts about the music and musicians of his early years in particular bespoke his own deference to tradition, origins, and lineage in composition, organ building, and pedagogy. In sum, these letters represented valedictory notes to a new friend, but they were frank, surprisingly modest, and very generous in tone and spirit. Noehren, it turned out, had wanted to contact me for some time and he had done his research too. He had gone out and found recordings by his correspondent and he had closely read any number of reviews of books and recordings. He was sizing me up!

I had just released a recording of the Suite for Organ, by Paul de Maleingreau. I had not known that Noehren regularly played the toccata from it back in the 1930s. He clearly missed the piece adding that " . . . since it is no longer in my head I am glad to be able to hear it again . . ." Of our mutual interest in Maleingreau, he observed that "it [the toccata] is such a fine work and no one else seems to be interested in Maleingreau." A second little coincidence had sealed a friendship. With that our correspondence grew more personal as well with talk about his wife Eloise, and illness, and aging. He was very sympathetic and supportive at my family's story of senior care, and the intellectual and physical changes brought on with age.

A major part of our conversations concerned organs. For two years, Noehren and I exchanged many words on organ design, organ building, and organ builders. I had made the analytical (but not malicious!) observation in my review of his Lyrichord recording that certain of the organs he built were idiosyncratic. My observation was based on experience. I had played a recital at St. John's Cathedral in Milwaukee where, in preparation, I had spent hours punching out registrations manually on the IBM data cards that comprised the combination action's memory. I had also remarked on the various subunison registers that played only to tenor C. Noehren graciously observed that "It was right for you to comment on the design of my organ in Milwaukee." He continued with a treatise on the economics of organ building, tight budgets, and resource maximization. It may have been a musician/instrument builder speaking, but it was also the voice of someone who had taught at a university and worked for the church!

Noehren tempered economic exigency with art. "I designed the organ [at St. John's Cathedral] always thinking how it was to be used musically." Saving the cost of the bottom twelve pipes of the Great 16¢ Principal on that 1965 organ allowed Noehren to add a string and some mutations to the specification. "If . . . you look at the music of Vierne, you will often see that the Gambe on the Great Organ is required in many pieces. . . . Look at most American organs. There is rarely a string on either the Great or Positiv (or Choir) organs. Indeed, there is usually an Unda Maris set. To be sure, a beautiful sound, but not very useful in much serious organ music." He questioned both his own tonal choices and those advocated by others. Robert Noehren had taken this critic earnestly, drew no offense from the opinions in print, and used the opportunity to engage in a dialog on the merits of respective tonal choices.

I later asked Noehren about Paul Hindemith, adding that my own conception of the organ sonatas was formed mainly through Noehren's recording of them. That prompted a meticulous response concerning Noehren's association with the composer. He outlined meeting Hindemith in Buffalo, where the composer lived after arriving in the United States before going to teach at Yale University, and where the organist played at a small Episcopal parish. Because Hindemith would sometimes visit the church, Noehren eventually got to know the composer well. They spent many hours together discussing interpretation and registration of the then only two sonatas, for Hindemith had just begun composing the third.

I had commented about the respective merits of romantic, colorist and dryer, abstract interpretations of the sonatas. In fact, I told Noehren that I had rebelled against my own teacher's insistence on an orchestral approach to these scores. That rebellion led to my  willful imitation of Noehren's old LP recording. He replied, "Like your teacher, I had been playing them in a rather romantic way, and I have to thank Hindemith for helping me with my musicianship during those early days. I still remember how dissatisfied he was with my performance of the last movement of the first sonata."

Noehren also voiced curiosity about instruments on which I had recorded and consulted. I had asked him about a couple of stoplists on which I was working and received immediate, candid, and helpful responses. At the time, the new organ at my own parish, the Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes in Washington, was under construction by Orgues Létourneau. I had confided in Noehren that our hope was for an instrument reflecting English tonal heritage and had sent him specs and scalings. In the end, when I sent him a recording of one of the opening concerts, his approval overjoyed me.

What was most remarkable about Robert Noehren in his last few years was the zeal with which he still played the organ on a daily basis. He had been hard at work revisiting the Orgelbüchlein, a book he felt "appropriate at my stage of life." He had just been diagnosed with serious illness and seemed to find particular comfort in the brief movements. But, he acknowledged their musical difficulties. "I might feel a bit safer in the great G-minor fugue than in the prelude on 'Heut triumphieret Gottes Sohn' with that wicked pedal passage at the end!"

While he missed access to a good pipe organ near his home in San Diego, he did own a custom electronic organ, and his curiosity and aptitude with technology had led him to electronically revoice that instrument and add several MIDI sound modules to it. This fulfilled both his need to play on a daily basis and his ongoing instinct to build "better" organs. He was carefully apologetic, but not defensive about this instrument. "I fear that you might be one who believes we have been poisoned by the advent of the electronic organ!" But, he added, that this instrument "assuages some of my frustrations." As proof--extraordinary proof--he enclosed a cassette recording of some Bach, Karg-Elert, and the Roger-Ducasse Pastorale as recorded on his house organ. Of the dazzling and poetic performance of the latter piece, made when Noehren was in his late 80s, he commented, "it is perhaps the most difficult work I have ever encountered, and it has been a constant challenge. It is technically difficult and choosing and executing the registration is no easy task." Of the thousands of organ recordings in my collection, this one, performed by an octogenarian on an electronic organ in his living room and recorded on his little cassette machine, is the most prized.

Robert Noehren had also published a book of memoirs that I had reviewed, and some of the letters to me may have well been an elaboration or gloss on the book. At one point, Noehren sent a long list of all his teachers--piano, organ, theory, composition. This early 20th century Who's Who of our profession contained several names that interested me greatly.

One of these was Charles Courboin for, as a boy, I would sit in the choir loft at St. Patrick's Cathedral and watch Dr. Courboin play for the 11:30 "organ mass." In those pre-Vatican II years, the Cathedral maintained the tradition of a low mass (rendered mostly silently by the priest at the east end) accompanied by organ music (rendered not at all silently by the virtuoso at the west end). I would, on my own, take the bus and the subway and travel down to 5th Avenue on Sunday mornings in order to hear the Solemn Mass at 10 o'clock. I would always remain for Courboin's organ mass at 11:30. It was a splendid dessert to the sung mass. Courboin would graciously welcome me to the gallery and even ask me what I would like to hear. Courboin's phenomenal memory was legendary and I don't ever recall naming a piece of repertoire that he could not simply rattle off.

One of the reasons that Courboin fascinated us both was his atypical profile for an organist. He loved fast cars and boats. He was dashing and, in Noehren's terms, "could have been mistaken for a government ambassador." While a student at the Curtis Institute during the early 1930s, Noehren had coached with Courboin. One morning, Noehren and his friend Bob Cato, Lynnwood Farnam's favorite student, were walking downtown. They ran into Courboin. "He behaved at once as if we were his best friends and suggested we all have lunch at Wanamaker's. It was then about 11:00 o'clock, and he invited us to meet him at noon at the front of the store. When we finally entered the dining room it became apparent that the luncheon had turned into a big party in a private room with at least 15 people. All I can remember of the food is that for dessert there was a great flourish as the party was presented with a huge baked Alaska prepared for the occasion."

Robert Noehren also recalled his meetings with Fernando Germani (with whom he became friends and who introduced him to Italian food and garlic), André Marchal (who influenced him musically but was "distracted by the ladies," such that, in a meeting along with Marilyn Mason, Marchal paid no attention to Noehren), Gaston Dethier (who had the most formidable technique of anyone and whose pedaling was "really phenomenal" although he eventually no longer took the organ seriously), and Lynnwood Farnam (whose playing "simply put everyone I had ever heard in the shade"). These reflections were all the more vivid as several of these legendary performers were still active in my own youth. As Noehren put it about our swapped recollections, "what a difference a generation makes!"

How does one summarize the enormous range and analytical insights of Robert Noehren? It is difficult task to be certain. His musical life spanned East Coast and West, with a long stop in between. He could be, at once, a Classicist and a Romantic. He studied old music and old organs, built modern instruments capable of playing the old, and championed scores by composers of his own day. He was the recitalist who built instruments to overcome the defects he perceived in the instruments upon which he had to play. He studied with the legends of his youth and passed that tradition on to generations of fortunate students in one of the country's most important universities. He agglomerated seemingly far-flung and inconsistent concepts, all the while making sense of their synthesis. His world was expansive and never shrank, for his all-embracing curiosity disclosed an adroit mind that slowed little even in its ninth decade. Robert Noehren zealously coveted the truth--truth as discovered, revealed, debated, or developed in theory and creativity. He grappled with and reconciled art and technology decades before such would become commonplace. He generously communicated his remarkable journey to a large audience in his writing and teaching, and even to a grateful correspondent late in his days.

Can all of this, then, amount to anything less than the absolute and comprehensive definition of professional and personal intellect, art, and, above all, integrity? I would argue not. Integrity, furthermore, takes courage, the courage to pursue truth and to assert the convictions to which one's work leads. As such, Robert Noehren was nothing less than a genuine hero. I thank God for having had a moment to know him. Requiescat in pace.

--Haig Mardirosian

Robert Noehren bibliography in The Diapason

Robert Noehren is organist and choirmaster of St. John's Church, Buffalo. November 1940, p. 22.

Robert Noehren takes up new work in Grand Rapids. September 1942, p. 3.

"Organ Building an Art Not to be Limited by Definite Styles." February 1944, p. 12.

Robert Noehren leaves Grand Rapids for war duty. March 1944, p. 23.

Famed Dutch Organ Used in Broadcast by Robert Noehren. November 1948, p. 2.

"Poitiers Cathedral Has Famous Cliquot Organ Built in 1791." June 1949, pp. 28-29.

Noehren appointed to post in Ann Arbor. September 1949, p. 4.

"Historic Schnitger Organs Are Visited; 1949 Summer Study." December 1949, p. 10; January 1950, p. 10.

Bach recitals by Noehren in Ann Arbor and Buffalo. June 1950, p. 40.

"Famous Old Organs in Holland Disprove Popular Fallacies." March 1951, pp. 8-9.

"Organ Cases Objects of Beauty in Past and Return Is Advocated." June 1951, pp. 14-15.

Michigan "U" course reorganized to make all-around organist. November 1951, p. 38.

"Schnitger Organs That Still Survive Teach New Lessons." December 1951, p. 24.

Robert Noehren on fourth tour of recitals in Europe. September 1953, p. 17.

Robert Noehren is winner of prize for his recording. November 1953, p. 1.

Robert Noehren to play in Duesseldorf. June 1954, p. 1.

"Commends Opinions of Dr. Schweitzer to Organ Designers." February 1954, p. 22.

Robert Noehren is awarded doctorate. June 1957, p. 1.

"How do you rate? Test yourself on this final exam." July 1959, p. 16.

"Music Dictates Good 2-Manual Organ Design." September 1960, pp. 12-13.

Robert Noehren . . . Northwest regional convention. April 1961, p. 16.

Noehren to act as judge at Haarlem Competition. December 1962, p. 3

"The Relation of Organ Design to Organ Playing." December 1962, pp. 8, 42-43; January 1963, pp. 8, 36-37.

Robert Noehren to give dedicatory recital on the Schlicker organ at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. March 1963, p. 24.

"The Organ and Acoustics." March 1964, pp. 26-27.

"Architectural Acoustics as related to Church Music." November 1964, pp. 40-41.

"Taste, Technique and Tone." April 1965, p. 49.

"Schnitger, Cliquot and Cavaillé-Coll: Three Great Traditions and their Meaning to Contemporary Organ Playing." November 1966, pp. 40-41; December 1966, p. 28; January 1967, pp. 48-49; February 1967, pp. 44-45.

Robert Noehren appointed Rose Morgan Professor of Organ for the fall semester of 1975 at The University of of Kansas. September 1975, p. 18.

Robert Noehren, professor of organ at the University of Michigan, retired in January 1976. June 1976, p. 2.

Robert Noehren named professor emeritus. January 1977, p. 5.

Robert Noehren elected Performer of the Year by New York City AGO. May 1978, p. 19.

"Squire Haskin--a tribute." February 1986, p. 2.

"The discography repertoire of Robert Noehren." March 1990, pp. 12-13.

"Robert Noehren at 80: A Tribute." December 1990, pp. 12-14.

"Organ Design Based on Registration." December 1991, pp. 10-11.

"A Reply to the Tale of Mr. Willis." January 1997, p. 2.

Robert Noehren celebrates his 90th birthday. December 2000, p. 3.

"Enjoying Life at 90." September 2001, pp. 15-17.

"Reflections on Life as an Organist." December 2001, pp. 17-20.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Organ Works. Robert Noehren, Organist. Previous unreleased recordings from 1980 issued in celebration of Robert Noehren's ninetieth birthday. Noehren organs of The Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and The First Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York. Fleur de Lis FL 0101-2. Available from The Organ Historical Society, P.O. Box 26811, Richmond, VA 23261; 804/353-9226; $14.98 plus shipping;

.

Program: Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542; Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein, BWV 668; Wo soll ich fliehen hin, BWV 646; Partita: O Gott, du frommer Gott, BWV 767; Partita: Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig, BWV 768; Fugue in G Major ("Gigue"), BWV 577; Prelude and Fugue in D Minor ("Violin"), BWV 539; Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543.

This new issue, like the previous Robert Noehren Retrospective produced by Lyrichord (see this journal, December, 1999, p. 11), is the result of expert remastering by Hal Chaney of analog recordings done on tape many years ago. As in the CD mentioned above, this issue features organs designed and built by Robert Noehren.

For those who are familiar with Noehren's tasteful and flexible organ playing, this issue should come as a welcome addition to his already considerable discography. Noehren was never one to endorse or follow "trendy" or merely currently fashionable playing ideas; instead, he always makes the music come alive through thoughtful application of scholarship and study of the scores to determine both just the right tempos and appropriate registrations for convincing musical communication. These features are in abundance on this new issue.

Another important facet contributing to the pleasure of this CD is the fact that the same person is both the artist and the organ builder. His clearly articulated philosophy of organ tone (see An Organist's Reader, reviewed in this journal, September, 2000, p. 10) is demonstrated here all the way from gutsy and brilliant (but never strident) principal and reed choruses to subtle smaller ensembles and solo combinations appropriate to the musical requirements. One can imagine that Noehren was able to bring forth the very sounds that were in his "mind's ear" by performing on these two rather large instruments of his own design.

All the pieces except for the two chorale partitas are performed on the 1966 organ in the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, while the partitas show off the varied smaller ensembles and solo combinations of the instrument in The First Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, built in 1970. Both instruments are of similar size, with the Buffalo instrument (somewhat larger) notable by its frequently pictured hanging Positiv division.

Seasoned players and students alike will be inspired by the apparently effortless execution of the more demanding works and should take note of the way Noehren uses subtle rubato to point up the structure of the various forms. His elegant approach to trills and other ornaments reveal that the artist regards these items as integral parts of musical expression and not simply as whimsical and mechanical additions to the musical line.

Blessed with both an astounding playing technique and impeccable musical taste, Robert Noehren's playing as revealed on this CD should bring feelings of recognition to those who have head him in past years and should also serve as a revelation to the younger generation. Highly recommended.

--Ronald E. Dean

Centenary College

Shreveport, Louisiana

Sarah Mahler Hughes is Associate Professor of Music and
Chair of the Department at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where she teaches
organ, piano, music history, and directs the Collegium Musicum. She is the
author of articles on French Baroque dance rhythms in Couperin's organ Masses
and the piano works of Veronika Dussek Cianchettini.

The music of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), like that of her
older contemporary Johannes Brahms (1836-1897), simultaneously embraces the
language of Beethoven and Schumann and the contrapuntal techniques of J.S.
Bach.  Although works for organ
comprise but a small part of their respective oeuvres, both Smyth and Brahms
composed a set of chorale preludes for organ. Whereas Brahms' settings have
been widely studied and remained in print as a staple of organ repertoire,
however, Smyth's disappeared and were only recently reprinted.1 This discussion
will focus on the relationship between Brahms and Smyth and examine their
respective settings of the chorales "O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid," and
"O Gott du frommer Gott," comparing and contrasting Brahms'
well-known settings with Smyth's much less familiar ones. The question of whether Smyth's works were merely overshadowed by Brahms', or were relegated to
obscurity because she was outside the musical establishment and,
coincidentally, a woman (her own view) inevitably arises in the context of such
a discussion.

Ethel Smyth, in the course of her long life, distinguished
herself as a composer, suffragette, and writer whose best-known musical works
are the monumental Mass in D (1891) for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, and
the opera, The Wreckers (1902-04). She counted the leading musical figures of
her day--Grieg, Tschaikovsky, Brahms, Clara Schumann, Bruno Walter, Sir Thomas
Beecham--among her friends, and she moved comfortably in aristocratic circles
despite her radical views on women's suffrage. Smyth's achievements were recognized in Britain by the universities of Durham, Oxford, and St. Andrew's, all of which conferred honorary D. Mus degrees upon her. In 1922, she was made a Dame of the British Empire, the equivalent of knighthood. In 1877, however, Ethel Smyth was a merely a young and very determined Englishwoman who had
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  embarked on a course of study at the
Leipzig Conservatory after overcoming the opposition of her equally determined
father. Upon her return to England in 1884, she became interested in the organ
and its repertoire. Her works up to that point had consisted of piano pieces
and chamber music.  In her own
words, "I became bitten with organ-playing, which, as a sort of athletic
exercise, appealed to me far more than the violin, not to speak of the prospect
of tackling Bach on his own instrument."2 A friend took her to Bramshill
where Smyth heard Sir Frederick Ouseley, a pupil of Mendelssohn, improvise on
the organ. Smyth found his improvised fugues "Immensely musical and
effective . . . I was much impressed." 3 Smyth subsequently studied organ
with Sir Walter Parratt (1841-1924) of St. George's Chapel in Windsor. Smyth's
organ studies resulted in the composition of Short Chorale Preludes (1884,
published 1913). In this collection, Smyth set five chorales: "Du, O schönes Weltgebäude!", "O Gott du frommer Gott" (2 settings), "Schwing dich auf zu deinem Gott," "Erschienen ist der
herr-lich' Tag," and "O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid."

Johannes Brahms was at the height of his career when Smyth
began her studies in Leipzig. She had heard Brahms' music for the first time at
a Saturday "pops" concert in London on which the
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Liebeslieder Walzes were performed by a
solo quartet. She wrote afterwards with characteristic enthusiasm, "That
day I saw the whole Brahms; other bigger and . . . more important works of his
were to kindle fresh fires later one, but his genius possessed me then and
there in a flash."4 Smyth later met Brahms at the home of Heinrich and
Elizabeth (Lisl) von Herzogenberg, two of Leipzig's most prominent musical figures. Herzogenberg composed and, with Philip Spitta, founded the Bach Society (Bach Verein) in Leipzig. Lisl was a gifted amateur pianist and, next to Clara Schumann, Brahms's closest musical confidant. Lisl von Herzogenberg also became Smyth's confidante and dearest friend (As Time Went On, 300.) for a number of years. Brahms was a frequent guest at the Herzogenbergs, where Smyth heard him play the piano.

I like best to think of Brahms at the piano, playing his own
compositions or Bach's mighty organ fugues, sometimes accompanying himself with
a sort of muffled roar, as of Titans stirred to sympathy in the bowels of the
earth. The veins in his forehead stood out, his wonderful bright blue eyes
became veiled, and he seemed the incarnation of the restrained power in which
his own work is forged. For his playing was never noisy, and when lifting a
submerged theme out of a tangle of 
music he used jokingly to ask us to admire the gentle sonority of his
"tenor thumb."5

Smyth, the neophyte composer, writes, "To me
personally, he was very kind and fatherly in his awkward way, chiefly, no
doubt, because of the place I held in his friend's [Lisl's] heart; but after a
very slight acquaintance I guessed he would never take a woman writer
seriously, and had no desire, though kindly urged by him to do so, to show him
my work." Smyth's instincts proved correct. One day Lisl von Herzogenberg
showed Brahms one of Smyth's unsigned fugues, and when Smyth came into the room
she heard Brahms analyzing it, "simply, gravely, and appreciatively."
In her delight and surprise she revealed her authorship, asking eagerly,
"Don't you think if I feel it that way I have a right to end on the
dominant?". The result was electrifying:

Suddenly the scene changed, back came the ironic smile, and
stroking his moustache he said in a voice charged with kindly contempt: "I
am quite sure, dear child, you may end when and where you please!" There
it was! he [sic] had suddenly remembered I was a girl, to take whom seriously
was beneath a man's dignity, and the quality of the work, which had I been a
obscure male he would have upheld against anyone, simply passed from his mind.6

After the above encounter, Smyth continued to
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  admire Brahms' music while understandably deploring his views on women. She accused him of subscribing to a
"poetical variant of the Kinder, Kirche, Küche axiom" then
prevalent in Germany, "namely that women are playthings."7 On the
occasion of a dinner party at the Herzogenbergs' she wrote a sarcastic little
poem whose last verse ran:

Der grosse Brahms hat's neulich ausgesprochen:

"Ein g'scheidtes Weib, das hat doch keinen Sinn!"

D'rum lasst uns einsig uns're Dummheit pflegen,

Denn nur auf diesem Punkt ist Werth zu legen

Als Weib und gute Brahmsianerinn!

(As the great Brahms recently proclaimed:

"A clever woman is a thing of naught!"

So let us diligently cultivate stupidity,

That being the only quality demanded

Of a female Brahms-admirer!)8

Brahms enjoyed this diatribe hugely and showed the poem to
everyone who approached him that evening to praise his work, insisting they
read it.  For his part, he liked to
say that everyone resembles some orchestral instrument, and he called Smyth
"the oboe."  Smyth's
portrait of Brahms in the first volume of her memoirs is candid and fair-minded
and totally devoid of hero worship. 
She wrote:

From the very first I had worshipped Brahms's music, as I do
some of it now; hence was predisposed to admire the man.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  But without exactly disliking him, his
personality neither impressed nor attracted me, and I never could understand
why the faithful had such an exalted opinion of his intellect. . . I saw
integrity, sincerity, kindness of heart, generosity to opponents, and a certain
nobility of soul that stamps all his music; but on the other hand I saw
coarseness, uncivlizedness, a defective perception of subtle shades in people
and things, lack of humor, and of course the inevitable and righteous
selfishness of people who have a message of their own to deliver and can't run
errands for others.9

Their relationship, although uneven, remained cordial even
after Smyth left Leipzig in 1884; she once called on Brahms in Vienna in later
years and he urged her to come back for a meal on her return trip.
Unfortunately he was away, and the two never met again.

O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid

Similarities and contrasts between
Smyth's and Brahms' settings of the same chorales become readily apparent upon
examination. Both composers used the chorale, "O Traurigkeit, O
Herzeleid" (anonymous melody, 1628; text, Johann Rist, 1641) as the basis
of a prelude and fugue. Each composer placed the chorale melody in the soprano
in the preludes, which are brief (Smyth, 11 measures, Brahms, 16). Both Smyth
and Brahms rely on Baroque models for their settings and use the rich harmonic
language of late Romanticism to color their works. Beyond these similarities,
however, individual stylistic traits emerge for each composer.

Brahms had composed his Prelude by July 1858. He presented
an autograph manuscript of it to his piano student Friedchen Wagner before
leaving Hamburg that summer but made no arrangements to publish the piece.
Fifteen years elapsed before Brahms composed a companion Fugue, which he gave
to Philipp Spitta (without the Prelude). Spitta praised the Fugue, which he
classified as a Choralfantasie, finding it "worthy of its great Sebastian
Bach models in its art and pensiveness, in its warmth."
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Spitta hastened to add that the piece
seemed no "mere copy" but was "a self-reliant imitation."10
By 1878 several of Brahms' friends, including the conductor Hermann Levi and
Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, had obtained copies of both the Prelude and Fugue,
and it was probably during this period that Brahms revised the Prelude. In
1881, Brahms submitted both pieces to E.W. Fritzsch for publication in the
journal Musikalisches Wochenblatt, modestly describing the pair as "really
not too bad."11

Throughout the Prelude, Brahms uses flowing triplet figures
in the left hand to accompany the unadorned cantus firmus, thus creating a
unified setting in the manner of the Orgelbüchlein chorales. These
"drooping melismata" 
reinforce the sorrowful Affekt of the text ("O sorrow deep, who
would not weep with heartfelt pain and sighing?/God the Father's only Son within
the grave is lying").12 Brahms scholar Vernon Gotwals hears in these
opening measures an echo of the beginning of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, a
resonance reinforced by the shared tonality of E minor and the triplet
figuration.13 (Example 1)  The following fugue in three voices over a pedal cantus firmus uses as its subject a
descending stepwise figure that is "only tenuously connected with the
chorale."14 This subject is answered by its inversion, revealing Brahms'
economy of means and contrapuntal mastery. A muscular, ascending countersubject
(alto, m. 2, beat 3; inverted in the soprano, m. 5, beat 3), balances the
sighing subject (Example 2). The Prelude's "intricate and peaceful
counterpoint" in three parts is confined to the manuals while the chorale
sounds in the pedal.16 An intricate sixteenth-note figuration that begins in m.
4 carries the music steadily forward to its serene conclusion over a tonic
pedal point.

In her four-voice prelude on this chorale, Smyth places a
highly ornamented cantus firmus against 
supporting parts in the left hand and pedal. Interestingly, Smyth's
setting is a fourth lower than Brahms (E minor versus A minor).16 The
accompanying voices begin imitatively in the manner of Bach and continue in
like manner throughout the piece (Example 3). Rather than exploit a single
motive, however, Smyth underpins each phrase of the cantus firmus with a new
figure. The integration of this point of imitation technique into a smoothly
flowing whole reveals a degree of control over  musical material as great as Brahms' economical
counterpoint.

The four-voice fugue which follows Smyth's prelude treats
each phrase of the chorale melody imitatively. A textural crescendo (reinforced
by the composer's directions of "piu f") begins with the appearance
of the third and central phrase in m. 23. Rhythmic activity intensifies at this
point with the introduction of triplets against the cantus firmus. The climax
of the fugue occurs in m.32ff with the fortissimo entrance of the chorale in
the pedal (Example 4). As an 18-measure decrescendo begins in m. 36, the fourth
phrase of the chorale appears but is interrupted by the reappearance of a
now-subdued phrase three. Fugal activity comes to a gradual halt over a
dominant pedal (m. 49-51) and a half cadence. The last section of the piece,
marked 'Adagio', recapitulates the entire chorale in a simple, homophonic
texture (Example 5). Smyth demonstrates skill in her handling of the musical
materials of this piece. The contrapuntal writing is deft, building to the
climax of the piece halfway through and subsiding thereafter, and the
pianissimo ending captures the intensely sorrowful nature of the text. Smyth's
fugue is impassioned and full of contrasts, whereas Brahms' reflects peaceful
resignation and a uniform gravitas. Smyth's setting bears the same dramatic
stamp as her subsequent  Mass in D
and her works for the stage.

O Gott, du frommer Gott

Both Brahms and Smyth use a "salient thematic
motive"17 in pervasive imitation throughout their respective settings of "O Gott, du frommer Gott" ("O God, Thou Faithful God"). This
motive, derived from the first four notes of the chorale, appears in a slightly
different guise in each prelude (Example 6).

Brahms uses vorimitation to prepare the entrance of the
chorale in measure 7. The first phrase of the chorale (A of the AAB bar form)
appears in unornamented half notes in the soprano (m. 7-10). Vorimitation
intervenes again before the repeat of A in m. 17. This entrance is accompanied
by a Baroque-like harmonic sequence and a disjunct, energetic bass line
à la Handel. The vigorous figuration of Brahms' setting reflects the
text, which prays for good health, a pure soul, and a clear conscience.

Brahms maintains the pattern of presenting unornamented
chorale phrases separated by passages of vorimitation throughout the remainder
of the prelude. The beginning of the B section is heralded by "impressive,
trombone-like chords" with a chain of thirds in the bass.18 The texture,
heretofore strictly three-part, thickens momentarily in anticipation of the
majestic closing measures (58-62) of the piece. Thirds, both falling and
rising, figure prominently in the intricate texture that Brahms weaves
throughout. Brahms reveals his Titanesque nature in this stirring conclusion
when the pedal enters, for the first time, in thundering counterpoint with the
chorale in the soprano. The unusual and dramatic dynamic markings in this piece
(introduction and interludes are 
forte, whereas until the last phrase, the chorale is piano) have been
remarked upon by Gotwals, who maintains that the pedal "supports the forte
[of the last phrase] that must follow the dying away after ein unverletzte Seel
(a Soul inviolate).19 Brahms' debt to Bach is apparent in the Baroque
techniques of vorimitation, harmonic sequences, rhythmic figuration, terraced
dynamics, and pervasive imitation based on a single motive derived from the
cantus firmus.

Smyth likewise reveals her assimilation of Bach's
Orgelbüchlein techniques in both settings of "O Gott du frommer Gott." The brevity of these pieces (hereafter referred to as G1 and G2), at 15 and 16 measures respectively, reflects the careful organization of material  characteristic of counterpoint exercises. In G1, Smyth places the unadorned cantus firmus in the soprano, which is supported by a three-part (manuals and pedal) imitative texture (see Example 6). This setting, in plain common time, is straightforward and compact, without the cushions of vorimitation used by Brahms. G2 is cast as a canon between the soprano and bass. The alto and tenor voices engage in pervasive imitation in flowing eighth notes. These rhythms in the
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  12/8 meter and quicker tempo marking
("Andante con moto" rather than G1's "Andante larghetto")
give a lilting, steady swing to the piece. The choice of C minor, a darker key
than the A minor of Brahms' setting, imbues Smyth's settings with a quality of
solemn introspection--perhaps earnest soul-searching for the path to a healthy
life and clear conscience. If G1 reflects, however, G2 strides purposefully
forward.  Echoes of Smyth's
vigorous, intense personality which was always subject to "the pull of
life and the constant longing for calm, the fascination of difficulties and
barriers, the need of human contact and affection, the love of one's own
ways--in short, . . . Lebensteufel,"20 may be heard in her settings of
"O Gott du frommer Gott." Because they complement each other, a
strong argument may be made for performing them as a unit.

In formal terms, G2 displays one rather odd feature: the second A section of the chorale is not repeated. Colette Ripley, in her prefatory notes to this edition, states, "Because of the use of the canonic
compositional device, Smyth does not repeat the opening line of the melody as
is done in the chorale."21 Since both canonic voices finish at the same
half cadence in m. 5, however, this opening material can be repeated with no
discernable effect on the canonic structure.22 (Example 7)
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Perhaps Smyth was experimenting--she
prided herself on originality in all things--or perhaps she simply neglected to
write out the repeat.

Without a doubt, in their chorale settings for organ both
Brahms and Smyth were influenced by Baroque models. The Orgelbüchlein of
J.S. Bach, in particular, is the musical and spiritual ancestor of these
late-nineteenth century pieces. Brahms' esteem for the music of Bach and
Handel, as well as that of earlier composers, is well-known, and his
scholarship advanced the fledgling field of musicology.23 Brahms frequently
performed Bach's organ preludes and fugues on the piano in recital and in his
youth studied counterpoint assiduously with his friend Joseph Joachim. Smyth's
participation in the Leipzig Bach Verein and enthusiasm for the works of Bach
have already been noted. She was profoundly moved by the St. Matthew Passion,
which she first heard at the Thomaskirche on Good Friday, 1878. The following
year Smyth participated in the same annual performance (playing in the second
violins!).  She recalled later that
"the church seemed flooded with the living presence of Bach . . . I
suppose that every artist can say of one or two hours in the past that in these
he touched the extreme height and depth of his emotional life; such hours were
mine during a certain Passion performance . . . "24 The massive choruses,
religious intensity, and dramatic structure of this work are echoed in Smyth's
own Mass in D.

German-speaking composers from Mozart onward studied the
extant works of Bach as contrapuntal and affective masterpieces, and Brahms and
Smyth were nourished in that tradition. The admiration that both composers
sustained for the music of Bach indubitably led them to compose for the organ
even though neither became proficient organists or indeed, showed a lasting
interest in the instrument. Much has been written about Brahms' choice of the
organ as a medium for his early and last works with an intervening fallow
period.25 In a striking parallel, Smyth, after her early chorale settings,
turned to other things (principally opera, choral, and chamber music) but
returned to the organ in her last published work, the Prelude on a Traditional
Irish Air, written for Edith Somerville in 1938.

Why did Smyth's chorale preludes disappear from sight for so
long? Their length (useful for service music) and modest technical demands
should have assured them a place in late-Romantic organ repertoire alongside
the chorale preludes of Brahms and the op. 67 and 135a chorale preludes of Max
Reger, which they resemble stylistically. The answer may lie partly in
historical circumstances:  Smyth
came of age during an era in which several well-established (male) composers
dominated the field. This phenomenon has occurred in every age, but one
critical difference distinguishes the nineteenth century from preceding eras.
The creation of a musical canon during the course of the century, incipient in
the efforts of the Bach Gesellschaft in the 1830s and nurtured by the
musicological studies of Spitta, Chrysander, and others, secured the posterity
of composers like Brahms and Wagner. Lesser composers, male as well as female,
were relegated to a secondary status. In addition, British-German antagonisms
during the Boer War and World War I played no small part in the disruption of
Smyth's career, forcing the cancellation of performances and severing contacts
in Germany.

Smyth felt herself an outsider on several counts:

Now it may be said that hundreds of artists are called on to
endure the like [neglect of their work], but in my case was a disheartening
element no man has to cope with . . . that given my sex, my foreign musical
education, and the conditions of English music life as I was coming to know
them, if I were ever to win through at all it would not be till I had one leg
in the grave.26

In 1933, assessing her career during the past fifty years,
she elaborated upon the "conditions of English music life":

The difficulty in my case has been that from the very first
. . . for some reason or other what I call 'the Machine' was against me.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  If you ask me, "What is 'the
Machine'?"  I can only answer,
"I don't know," but apparently it is a complex construction, made up,
say, of units from every section of our music life; heads of Musical Colleges,
leading publishers, dominant members of music committees throughout the
country, the Press, and so on.27

Despite these and other (admittedly self-imposed) obstacles,
Smyth did achieve a high degree of success and recognition as both a composer
and writer, reflected in the honors bestowed upon her during her lifetime and a
revival of some of her works in our time.28 Contemporary opinion of her
large-scale works varies,29 but Smyth's chorale preludes for organ, indebted to
Bach and late-nineteenth-century German Romanticism, bear an original stamp and
certainly compare favorably with those of Brahms. It is tempting to speculate
what he might have thought of her chorale preludes had he seen them in an
anonymous manuscript. (There is no indication that Smyth ever showed Brahms
these or any other of her works--the result would have been too predictably
patronizing.) The Titan's endorsement might not have made that much difference
to her, however. Throughout her career, Smyth refused to be deterred by any
real or perceived lack of approbation of her works. With characteristic
firmness, she penned encouraging words for future generations: "I do not
think the future looks too black for women composers who have something to say
and are not afraid of saying it after their own fashion
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  . . . All one has to do is go straight
on and pay no attention!"30    

Part 1 was published in the May 1996 issue of THE DIAPASON, pp. 10-13.

The Introduction of Organ Voluntaries: The Organist as Solo Performer

Despite the emphasis on the organist as an accompanist in
the first half of the nineteenth century, the playing of voluntaries did not
suddenly commence in 1850.  The use
of voluntaries became common in some churches after about 1810, although in
other churches (particularly those in rural locations) voluntaries were not
played until much later in the century. In 1835, Musical Magazine in New York
City published an article complaining about abuses in voluntary playing, which
contained the following comments on the problem of inappropriateness:

Every real proficient on the organ, knows that voluntaries
upon that noble instrument, ought to consist of broken passages, scattered
chords, etc., etc., which will not seize upon the attention of the listener but
rather soothe his mind, into calm collected meditation. Any thing like a
regular air would here be out of place. Even the learned harmonies of the
Germans, impressive and beautiful as they are, prove for the most part too
spirit-stirring, in their influence, for American voluntaries. Some of our
organists, however, have but little invention, and others but little taste. So
when they should either be silent or be endeavoring merely to soothe the
worshipers into devout meditation, they rouse them by a march, an overture, a
sonata, or a thundering chorus. . . . Such abuses, if tolerated, will bring
voluntaries into disrepute; if not lead to the expulsion of the organ from our
churches.57

Orpha Ochse adds wryly that if the situation was so bad in
the cultural and intellectual climate of New York City, one could only imagine
what sorts of things the untutored village organists were playing for
voluntaries.58

The common complaint of too much showmanship, which had been
levelled at the performance of interludes, was also carried over to
voluntaries. For example, Jane Rasmussen notes that Episcopal churches were
often the first in an area to get an organ, and whenever possible they would then hire a competent organist from Europe, New York, or Philadelphia. The organists often played virtuosic voluntaries as a form of advertising in order to attract students to supplement their church salaries.59 Whether justified or not, this virtuosity was generally considered distracting to the tone of the
service.  In non-Episcopal (or less
wealthy) churches, this problem would probably have occurred somewhat later in
the century due to the later technical development of native players, but it
became a problem nonetheless.

Charles Zeuner

Prior to the publication of Zeuner's collections of organ
voluntaries, most organists who played voluntaries improvised them.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Zeuner presented an alternative for
those who did not yet possess this skill. Zeuner's Voluntaries for the Organ, published in 1830, was the first collection of organ music published in the United States, and consists of six voluntaries.60 Although the use of the term "voluntary" and his designation of the pieces as "Before Service" or "After Service" suggests that he intended the pieces for church use, Zeuner indicated on the score that the pieces were "composed and dedicated to the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston,"61 a secular musical society. However, his second organ publication, Organ Voluntaries, published in 1840, is clearly a volume for the church organist. This is a longer and more comprehensive work than his first collection, and consists of two parts. The first part involves 165 interludes and short preludes in a variety of keys (to be used with hymns). Part II contains "Practical Voluntaries to be used before and after services in churches," with intended uses specified for each piece.62
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  These voluntaries have no pedal parts,
and contain dynamic markings but only minimal registration indications. This
collection forms a sort of bridge between the earlier "methods" and
the forthcoming collections of music with instructive introductions: it is the
first comprehensive printed collection for church use of interludes and (more
importantly) voluntaries, which were becoming the new focus of most organists,
but it does not yet include any of the descriptions and admonishments for
performing them that the later collections include.

The opposite situation occurs in an article from The
American Journal of Music, published in Boston on February 25, 1845, and
entitled "On the Use of the Stops of the Organ."63 The anonymous
author explains that although the organ is the instrument best suited for
extemporizing (voluntaries in church), he has never seen any "practical
treatises" on this subject. Therefore, he provides stylistic and
registration suggestions for voluntary playing. In contrast to Zeuner, this
instructional treatise is all text and no music.

Thomas Loud

Thomas Loud's organ method with its extraordinarily lengthy
title, discussed briefly in the first of this series of articles, was also
published in 1845.64   As the
title suggests, The Organ Study: Being an Introduction to the Practice of the Organ; together with a collection of Voluntaries, Preludes, and Interludes, original and selected; a Model of a Church Service; Explanations of the Stops and their Combinations; Studies for the Instrument; and Examples of Modulation intended to aid the Extempore Student; accompanied by an Engraving and description of the Mechanical construction of the Organ begins with explanations of organ basics important to Loud. These include descriptions of the basic organ mechanisms and stops, as well as practical matters such as beginning and releasing chords (Loud recommends rolling the notes individually from the bottom until all notes are sounding) and playing shakes. Significantly, he uses this material to lead into pointers on accompanying, illustrated in his model service for the Episcopal Church, before turning his attention to playing voluntaries. He does include two sample voluntaries in his "model service":  an introductory voluntary (shown in Example 1) and a voluntary for before the second psalm or hymn (in other words, an offertory). These voluntaries are musically straightforward, with basic registrations provided. Both include trills (shakes), an ornament that Loud seemed to feel was absolutely essential to the church organist's success. While the first voluntary is manualiter, the second indicates that the organist is to play certain bass clef notes with the pedals. Loud, however, provides small notes at these spots for those organists whose instruments do not have pedalboards.

Loud follows his model service with many pages of hymn
preludes and interludes in a variety of major and minor keys before furnishing
15 pages of voluntaries for church use, composed by himself and a variety of
other composers (Rinck, Cross, Russell, etc.). He does include several
voluntaries which are transcriptions, principally of religious works by Haydn.
He avoids the popular music pitfalls decried earlier in this article; although
he does include one "Religious March" by Gluck, it is quite austere
in character. At the end of this section, Loud adds a page illustrating the
"fine effect" of embellishing the end of a voluntary with a simple
suspension, emphasizing again the modest nature of this music.

At the end of his method, Loud provides some interesting
directions showing how to produce registrations of increasing power on instruments varying in size from four stops to modest three- manual stoplists, as well as ways to achieve particular registrations "effects." This leads into his closing and quite notable conclusions on voluntary playing, with which he ends his method. His concern is that voluntaries be consistently used, but not abused:

The style of performing (voluntaries) on this instrument
should always be in accordance with the use made of it, as forming a part of
the service of the Sanctuary; nothing therefore, opposed to the sacredness of
the place, can with propriety be introduced: whatever may be the character of
the Stops made use of, the music should be chaste and solemn, and all the
variety of the instrument, should (in the hands of the efficient performer) be
made conducive to the same subject. . . . Voluntaries should as much as
possible be suited to the subject of the discourse or character of the service
. . . 65

Loud continues by explaining how specific divisions or stops
can help to achieve these lofty goals. He concludes by explaining how to play
"fancy voluntaries," which his text implies are improvised and
probably not for use in church. 
His final admonishment is still applicable for improvisers today: "
. . . above all, remember to stop in time--a common fault with performers is,
that they never know when they have done enough."66

Cutler & Johnson

Before returning to Johnson's important American Church
Organ Voluntaries (mentioned in the first
article), we will make a brief digression to examine another of Johnson's
publications. Johnson originally published the Voluntaries in 1852 under his
name.  When it was republished in
1856, H. S. Cutler's name was included as well (see Example 2 - portraits of
Johnson and Cutler). A discussion of Cutler and the reasons for his addition in
the second edition is beyond the scope of this article, but apparently his
contribution was minimal (it is thought that perhaps he penned the
"Remarks"). Whatever the case, Johnson had originally intended to
write a second book, apparently planned in conjunction with American
Church Organ Voluntaries, called Instructions in the Art of Playing Voluntaries and Interludes and of Composing Simple Music. This book was conceived as a combination of an organ method and harmony book. It is thought that it existed in draft form and that Johnson was using it to teach his organ students. Unfortunately for the history of organ pedagogy, it was never published.67

Instead, Johnson published in 1854 his Practical
Instructions in Harmony, upon the Pestalozzian or Inductive System; Teaching
Musical Composition, and the Art of Extemporizing Interludes and Voluntaries. This book was unique in organ "methods" published to this point in that it was directed at the more sophisticated music student.68 Basically, it is a book of music theory with practical keyboard exercises. It was probably intended as a successor to Johnson's popular Instructions in Thorough Base which had undergone at least six reprints by this time, testifying not only to the need for these types of materials but also to the growing technical sophistication of the organist.

Johnson's Practical Instructions, however, contains no
discussion concerning church voluntaries, but approaches them from a completely
technical standpoint. This is not the case in American Church Organ
Voluntaries. The volume opens with
"Remarks," wherein the editors comment that one should speak of an
"opening voluntary" rather than a "voluntary before the
service" (as Zeuner does), since this voluntary is a part of the service
and should arouse the proper feelings in the listener for the worship which
will follow. They waste no time in criticizing the commonplace habit of playing
popular music, including bits of opera, as voluntaries. They warn the organist
not to give in to popular opinion which supports this sort of music, even if
they are getting pressure from a wealthy person in the congregation who has
money but no taste, ending by saying that in such cases it is better to
"vacate your office and retain the good opinion of all whose good opinion
is worth having" rather than to give in to "depraved taste."69
In regard to voluntaries after the service, Cutler and Johnson admit that there
are differing opinions on the value of playing music while people are leaving. They justify this practice by saying that there is already unavoidable noise at the end of the service as people prepare to leave, and therefore playing
appropriate music while this is happening will remind people for as long as
possible that they are still in the House of God. "What more appropriate
monitor than the solemn Diapasons judiciously managed?"70 The
"Remarks" answer many of the contemporary complaints mentioned
earlier.

The complete pre-publication title of this anthology, Organ Voluntaries, a Complete Collection, adapted to American Church Service, and designed for the use of Inexperienced Organists who have not Progressed far Enough in Their Studies to be able to Play Extemporaneous Voluntaries (i.e., improvised), indicates Johnson's purpose in compiling this collection--providing music for amateur organists. The voluntaries are all manualiter. Numbers 1-35 are opening voluntaries, while numbers 36-41 are opening voluntaries for use on festival occasions. Twelve closing voluntaries are included. Many of the voluntaries are by either Johnson or Cutler, but works by Haydn, Muller, Rinck, and Mendelssohn are included, as well as works by lesser-known composers of that period. The pieces contain some tempo, dynamic, and keyboard indications. The tempi vary, although in both the opening and closing voluntaries the majority of tempi designations provided are moderate. The voluntaries are one to two pages in length and generally homophonic in style. There are only isolated indications of sections with solo stops, marked in tiny print "solo . . . solo ends" (see Example 3 for the first half of an opening voluntary with these frugal registration markings). Thus there is nothing about these pieces which would relate them to popular music. Pinel suggests in the Foreword to the edition that although these pieces seem very plain to our contemporary ears, they would have been harmonically innovative, even "exhilarating," to mid-19th century rural listeners.71 (The harmony, while hardly daring, is more chromatic than that of the average hymns and service music.) One reason for the lack of excess in these pieces (and those in Loud's method) may have been the fact that Protestants were still strongly affected by the recent appearance of organs and conservative views of the appropriateness of instrumental music in
general.72 

The several printings of American Church Organ
Voluntaries testify to its popularity.
Gould comments that in his travels he did visit some congregations where the
voluntaries were appropriate and therefore useful (although he had many
negative experiences as well). Thus, Johnson and Cutler's music or at least the
approach to service-playing which it and Loud exemplified was represented in
practice and was not just a theoretical goal.

Southard & Whiting

Although organ methods from the Continent, American
materials for playing the harmonium or cabinet organ, and other unannotated
volumes of voluntaries appeared after Johnson's anthology, the next significant
collection was that of L. H. Southard and G. E. Whiting, entitled The Organist (1868). This volume is also an anthology of music for service use, with an introduction discussing registration and other useful information for the church organist. However, as will soon become evident, there are many
differences between this collection and that of Cutler and Johnson, despite the
similarity of their subjects and their separation in publication by only 16
years.

In the second half of the 19th century, one can observe the
rise of concert organs and concert organists. Large organs were built at
Tremont Temple in Boston (1853) and the Boston Music Hall (1863). The
increasing popularity and professionalism of orchestras fueled the popularity
of orchestral transcriptions for organ. 
Organists adopted some of the Romantic excesses of European organists,
such as the fascination in trying to recreate "storms" on the organ.
It is noteworthy that the first piece performed on the new Walcker organ in
Boston's Music Hall was the "Overture to William Tell" by Rossini.73
At the same time, the technical improvements and expanded size of organs made
it more practical to perform legitimate organ literature of greater magnitude
than the voluntaries.  The
dedication recitals of organs in churches now were devoted exclusively to organ
solos, whereas previously these events consisted of vocal solos accompanied by
organ with perhaps a few organ voluntaries.74 Several sources mention that Bach
organ works were performed in America for the first time in this period (about
the mid 1860s). Most of the concert organists, however, were English or
European.

In examining The Organist, these changes in organ literature in the second half of the 19th century are reflected.  The subtitle of the volume indicates that it is "a collection of voluntaries, studies, and transcriptions of moderate difficulty," and includes information on registration (which will be explored shortly).  The editors explain in the introduction that "melodious and piquant Voluntaries" are part of the church organist's responsibilities, and that therefore the aim of this volume is to supply opening and closing voluntaries which meet these requirements, complete with registrations.75 Like the Cutler and Johnson volume, this collection was apparently intended primarily for less experienced players who were not yet adept enough to improvise appropriate service music.  It is interesting that, unlike Johnson who taught improvisation based on models of Bach, Southard and Whiting refer the aspiring church improviser to the piano sonatas of Mozart and Haydn as a basis of study, pointing already to a sharp difference in outlook.

The music supplied for opening and closing voluntaries by
Southard and Whiting differs markedly from that of Cutler and Johnson. Even the
titles underscore this difference: although the term "voluntary" is
used in the introduction, the pieces are entitled "Prelude" and
"Postlude" (or "Postludium"--see Example 4). This implies a
slightly different function than the term "opening voluntary" which
Johnson carefully chooses (probably something closer  "voluntary before the service"). In addition,
several of the pieces have titles like "Reverie" or
"Romanza," reflecting a strong Romantic secular influence. The pieces
are much longer than those in American Church Organ Voluntaries
style='font-style:normal'>, and all include pedal parts on separate staves.
Three of the pieces are identified as transcriptions of Haydn, Mendelssohn, and
Mozart. The pieces are very pianistic technically, and include a multitude of
interpretive marks, including articulation, phrasing, and many dynamic
markings. Big chords alternate with solo passages, with all sorts of pianistic
accompaniment figures; one prelude even has a cadenza (#4), and piece #5, a
"Pastorale," contains running scale passages in 32nd notes. The
Postludes are all loud pieces, but the style of the Preludes varies widely, and
one is not always sure which category the pieces with other titles fall
into.  There is even a
"March," one of the styles specifically attacked by church music
critics of the previous generation.

It is interesting that the final piece in The Organist is Bach's "Celebrated Prelude and Fugue in e minor" (BWV 533), as edited by Mendelssohn. This seems to be a direct reflection of the apparently successful introduction of Bach into the concert organ repertoire at this time. It also suggests that organists were no longer expected to be able to distinguish sacred music from secular or concert repertoire, since both were equally acceptable in church. Apparently the responsibility of the organist to musically interpret the text and mood of the hymns and scriptures which had been emphasized earlier in the century was no longer a principal focus.

One of the most conspicuous differences between the two
organ anthologies, however, is in the treatment of organ registration. Here a
brief digression is necessary to survey the changes which had taken place in
organ construction between the writing of these two volumes. Although Americans
had begun building their own instruments instead of importing them from England
in the first half of the 19th century, the English influence remained very
strong.  By 1850, although loud
organs (by early standards) were increasing in popularity, the basic sound was
light and bright, emphasizing the diapasons and flutes, with some reeds and
strings included.  The manuals and
pedalboards were not standardized--both the Pedal and Swell divisions tended to
have incomplete ranges.76 The first large American organ was the Hook and
Hastings instrument installed in the Tremont Temple, Boston in 1853, with four
manuals and 70 stops.77 Thus, from about 1860 on, the enthusiasm for
increasingly louder organs continued, with a bolder, brighter sound appearing.
Console controls and nuances of the expression pedals became more important.
Organs now tended to be placed in the front of the church rather than hidden in
the balconies, and cases were often eliminated.78

These changes say a lot about the change in the role of the
organ in the church service. Around 1841, one writer complained that the organs
were sometimes unsuited for leading congregational singing, one of the possible
problems being that they were too small to really lead the singers and keep
them on pitch.79 However, by about 1850, Gould writes that performances were
gradually getting louder, complaining that in some churches the choir and
congregation combined could not sing above the organ, satisfying only those
"who are more pleased with noise than with sense."80 Johnson and
Cutler warn the organist about playing too loudly while accompanying in their
opening remarks, explaining that the organ should be subordinate to the
singers.81 However, it is interesting that in The Organist
style='font-style:normal'>, although the organs by this time must certainly
have been louder, this warning is never mentioned.

To return now to the topic of registration, both volumes
include information on registration in their introductions, as well as sample
specifications. (See Example 5 for the basic specification list from the Cutler
& Johnson collection.) As might be expected from the changes in organ
building, a much wider variety of stops is mentioned in the later volume. Both
collections describe stops, but Johnson and Cutler add information on the
purpose of some of these stops in worship.  For example, they recommend the diapason as "well
suited to church purposes in general," but guard against using the flute,
which "is a fancy stop, and generally much abused . . . when used as a
solo stop . . . the effect is suggestive of the theatre, or ball-room, rather
than the church."82 Within the pieces themselves, Johnson and Cutler
suggest only one specific stop in the entire volume, sometimes designating
where a solo stop should be used but not suggesting a particular stop. Southard
and Whiting, on the other hand, provide detailed registration suggestions at
the beginning and throughout every piece, as well as directions to use the
couplers, expression pedals, and tremulant. They also suggest in the
introduction that one of the responsibilities of the organist is to create
"striking and delicious effects of the organ," which they advise
requires the use of varied registrations and separate manuals.83

This emphasis on registration, coupled with the changes in
organs observed above, suggest that the role of the organist was changing by
about 1870. Although Johnson and Cutler provide basic material on registration
for the stops generally appearing on a "modern" organ, they are not
as concerned with how the organist applies or combines these stops as they are
with the spiritual effects that various stops induce.  Southard and Whiting, however, comment from the start that
"the chaotic droning and ridiculous combinations of stops which were
satisfying until within a few years, will no longer be endured by Congregations
of average musical culture."84 This implies a concern that the organist
have a greater technical knowledge of registration than was previously
considered satisfactory. But this comment also suggests that the organist is
now expected to start with the registration concepts of "musical
culture" of the society at large and apply them to the service of the
church, reflecting the increasing importance of musical culture in society in
general. This differs from the earlier outlook on registration which assumes
that the organist chooses stops based on their contribution to solemn worship
without regard for (or deliberately in contrast to) the types of sounds
associated with secular culture.

A final point of contention regarding registration is
illustrated in the closing comment of the introduction to The Organ
style='font-style:normal'>ist,
where the editors comment that they hope that their collection will "tend
to improve the taste and ability of players, and thereby create a general
demand for more complete and effective organs than are often found outside of
two or three of our largest cities."85 This is in marked contrast to
Cutler and Johnson, who, although they would agree with the goal of improving
the taste and ability of players, are trying to "improve" it in the
opposite direction from the goals of Southard and Whiting. It is noteworthy
that Gould writes in 1853 that organists should be careful that their playing
serves no other purpose than to recommend the organ and organ-builder86--what
Southard and Whiting seem to be suggesting as a positive goal.

It is interesting to note that in looking at the two
above-mentioned church music anthologies, there is scarcely any mention of
accompanying hymns and psalms. This may reflect the new rise of the use of
voluntaries and corresponding lack of suitable literature (thus the focus on
this aspect), or it may be considered a commentary on the relative lack of
importance of hymn-playing to these editors.  Southard and Whiting, for example, ignore the subject
altogether.

In studying the voluntaries in The Organ
style='font-style:normal'>ist, it
becomes apparent that some of the registration changes must have required
pistons, which as stated were becoming more popular. This makes the fact that
this volume excludes a discussion of registering hymns even more interesting,
since changes between verses of hymns to illustrate the meaning of the text
would now have been much easier and smoother. Perhaps due to the emphasis in
earlier years on accompanying, the editors were interested in looking ahead to new directions in church music.

On the occasion of her 80th birthday

Sarah Mahler Highes is Associate Professor of Music and College Organist at Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin, where she has taught since 1989. She holds degrees in music education (B.A., Olivet College, 1976), music history and literature (M.M., University of Colorado, 1979), and organ performance (D.M.A., University of Kansas, 1985). Dr. Hughes teaches piano, organ, harpsichord, and music history courses at Ripon as well as directing the Collegium Musicum. She is also Minister of Music at First Congregational Church in Ripon, where she directs children's and adult choirs and plays for services. Dr. Hughes has published articles on and edited music by women composers and is a regular contributor to THE DIAPASON. She recently studied in Vienna with Michael Radulescu of the Hochschule fuer Musik und darstellende Kunst.

Miriam Clapp Duncan, Emerita Professor of Music at Lawrence
University, Appleton, Wisconsin, celebrates 50 years of teaching and her 80th
birthday on October 26 (the same date as Scarlatti) this year. In honor of her
achievements, the Northeastern Wisconsin Chapter of the AGO has commissioned
from David A. Heller an organ
partita based on "Down Ampney," to be performed by chapter members at
their worship services during the succeeding year. Professor Duncan reflects
upon a long and satisfying career in an interview with Sarah Mahler Hughes.

Q: What was the first musical experience you can remember?

A: It was coming home from my father's funeral--I was five
years old--and playing the songs I'd heard on the piano. My family decided I
had to have lessons.

Q: How did you come to choose the organ as your principal
instrument?

A: I grew up in Anderson, Indiana. As a child, I listened to
radio station WLW from Cincinnati, which wasn't far away. They broadcast a
daily organ program from their studios which I listened to faithfully. I also
had an English aunt, a real character, who lived with us and who wanted me to
learn to play the organ. I started taking lessons at the age of 13 from a nun
who had gone to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. That's what
influenced me to go there.

Q: Describe your education at the American Conservatory. Who
were your teachers?

A: As a music school, it wasn't the worst place, but it
wasn't the best place, either. I had excellent theory instruction, which really
helped later when I went to Vienna to study with Anton Heiller. I discovered
then that be and I spoke the same language as far as theory went.

Leo Sowerby taught theory, music history, and composition at
the Conservatory, and I'd like to talk a little about his classroom teaching
because as I get older I realize what an influence he had on me. He paid
enormous attention to detail. We had to analyze quantitities of works,
including a dozen string quartets by Beethoven. Sowerby believed in studying
the scores of whatever pieces you were playing. When he was young, he never
went to a concert without going to the library first to get scores of the
things he was going to hear. Who has that kind of self-discipline these days?
He believed you could teach yourself because he had taught himself very much in
that way. He made us write our counterpoint exercises in the old clefs so we'd
know how to read them. He'd sit at the piano and improvise chord progressions,
and suddenly he'd stop cold, point a finger at you, and ask, "What chord
is that?"

Q: Did you also study organ with Sowerby?

A: Yes, but not at the Conservatory. He wasn't allowed to
teach there because he didn't have a degree in organ. He hadn't studied with
anyone famous--in fact, he hadn't even studied! He taught himself to play the
pedals by drawing a pedalboard on a piece of brown butcherpaper which he put
under the piano. I took lessons from him privately, at St. James' Episcopal
Church, where I played the big 1925 Austin organ. It was mostly his own works
we studied, and some English works that he liked to play for church. I learned
a lot about service-playing in the English tradition from him.

Q: Your first teaching job was at Wheaton College, was it
not? How did that come about?

A: One of my organ teachers at the Conservatory was Frank
van Duesen, who had been a student of Guilmant. Mr. van Duesen had surgery for
glaucoma in 1945, and I ended up teaching for him at Wheaton for two years.

Q: After teaching at Wheaton, you finished your M.M. degree
in 1947, and you and your husband moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where be began
teaching piano and theory at Lawrence University.

A: Yes, and I didn't teach at first because Lawrence, like
most liberal arts colleges in those days, bad a rule that wives couldn't teach
in the same department as their husbands. However, the GIs had arrived after
the war, and by 1949 they were desperate for another organ teacher. LaVahn
Maesch, the Dean of the Conservatory and the principal organ instructor, came
to my house one Sunday afternoon and said, "I need you at the
Conservatory, because I know you taught at Wheaton, and we really do need
somebody with experience to teach." So I was in business. I had 26
students that first year, and for the whole year of teaching I was paid $600. I
never dreamed then that I would end up being chair of the organdepartment and a
full professor.

Q: Seemingly your course was set. Yet something happened in
the 1950s--a sort of musical awakening?

A: Yes, and not just for me. It began, I think with the
Haarlem Academy, which the Dutch government sponsored in order to show off the
great organ at Haarlem. College teachers from this country, dozens of them,
went there to study and bring back the gospel of performance practice to their
students. The faculty was the best: Anton Heiller, who did all the Bach
teaching, Marie-Claire Alain, Luigi Tagliavini, and Gustav Leonhardt for
harpsichord. I never attended the Academy workshops, but I heard the Haarlem
organ and learned about what went on there. What the Academy did was bring
people up to date on performance practice, and its influence on organ teachers
has changed organ playing in this country--I don't think that's an
exaggeration. We know things now, and people play very much more intelligently than
they did 35 or 40 years ago.

Q: Were there other significant musical experiences for you
during these years?

A: Yes, two in particular. I spent two summers--1950 and
1951--as a student at the Organ Institute of America in Methuen, Massachusetts,
where the old Boston Music Hall organ had been moved thanks to the efforts of
E. Power Biggs, Arthur Poister, and Carl Weinrich. The organ--a Walcker, I
believe--was a beautiful instrument with a very handsome case. The faculty at
the Institute were all the major organists in the United States. We practiced
in the mornings, had lectures in the afternoons, and heard recitals at night on
that gigantic, four-manual-plus organ. For the first time, we learned what
organo pleno meant, because every division had a plenum. I date my interest in
the organ music of Bach from these sessions.

Sowerby once told me he'd like to go to the Organ Institute
for a summer. Imagine the challenge of trying to explain organum plenum or
tierce en taille to America's first Prix de Rome winner and Pulitzer Prize
winner two times over. Sowerby's Toccata for Organ was the first piece he wrote
after this long conversation with me (accompanied by martinis, of course) about
Baroque organ music.

Q: How did you make the connection between the Organ
Institute and study in Europe?

A: One of my fellow students at the Institute one summer was
Rudy Kraemer, who now teaches at the University of North Carolina. He told me
about his study with Anton Heiller in Vienna. Rudy had gone there on a
Fulbright, but he didn't know about Heiller at first. One day Rudy had walked
into a cafe on the Schwartzenbergplatz and discovered Gustav Leonhardt having
coffee with H. Robbins Landon. Rudy got to talking with them both, and they
told him to go to Heiller, that be was the only organist in Vienna who knew
anything about Bach and early music. Heiller at that time was less than 30
years old, but he'd already established himself as a player and scholar. I
decided that I wanted to study with Heiller, too, and in 1954-55, my husband
and I went to Vienna, thanks to a Ford Foundation grant. I worked with Heiller,
and also with Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Q: What were your impressions of Heiller?

A: He had a very good voice--his first job, in fact, was as
a baritone in the chorus at the Volksoper. He sang a lot at my lessons, and I
never would have learned to play appoggiaturas expressively if be hadn't sung
them first. He also had a fantastic ear. He could pick out a 4' flute in a
plenum and say, "Get that flute out of there!"

Heiller, of course, and Marie Claire Alain, and Tagliavini,
were pioneers in the historical performance practice movement that began in the
'50s and changed the organ world forever. All of these people believed
thoroughly in getting your hands on a photocopy of the original music--the Orgelbüchlein
style='font-style:normal'>, for example. They didn't even trust what somebody
else had written because they didn't know what his scholarship was like. And
they didn't trust trying to play as you heard someone else play. Although
Heiller used to say, "I'm no scholar, but I have friends who are." He
was so modest; however, he had plenty of imitators.

I can't overemphasize Heiller's influence on organ-playing
in this country. Let me give two examples. In 1962, be appeared at the AGO
National Convention in Los Angeles. It was the first time be came over to the
U.S., and he lectured on the Orgelbüchlein normal'>. People were transfixed--they didn't know there was so much to be
known about this collection. They became interested in it again--most of them
had been bored out of their skulls when they'd had to study it, and they
acknowledged that. Heiller toured the country after that, stopping in Appleton,
among other places. He played the entire Orgelbüchlein
style='font-style:normal'> on a little eight-stop Schlicker practice organ at
Lawrence, and he wowed 'em--even the band students, who like all the others,
had been required to go. That's an artist, who can make people interested in
difficult music!

The second monumental event was Heiller's dedication of the
Fisk organ at Harvard in 1967. That's a magnificent organ, and his playing
matched it--I'll never forget his performance of the Reger Wachet auf
style='font-style:normal'>. Every great organ teacher in the United States was
there--Gleason, Craighead, and others. I think some of us realized for the
first time what organ recitals could be. That organ sent ripples across the
entire country and influenced a whole generation of builders and students.

Q: What did you learn from Gustav Leonhardt?

A: Leonhardt was a great teacher--extremely knowledgeable,
and fluent in several languages. The first thing he did was explain to me his
idea that there was no such thing as a German Baroque style because it was all
borrowed from the French and Italian practices. The only German contribution to
a Baroque musical tradition was the chorale. That was a pretty strong
statement, but it illustrates an important fact--the existence and appreciation
of various national styles in this period. For example, once you know the
unique characteristics of these national styles, you can pick out passages in
Buxtehude that sound like Frescobaldi.

Q: What happened when you returned from Europe in 1955?

A: Well, first I had to cope with an old Kimball organ,
which actually seemed like a pretty good instrument because it had replaced one
that was even worse. But the main thing was that when I came back to Lawrence,
I started teaching repertoire outside the French Romantic school, which
dominated the American organ world at that time. I taught Buxtehude, Bach, and
Hindemith and music that I liked and thought was important. And by golly, the
students liked those things, too. I think I began to have a following because I
was not teaching Robert Elmore's "Donkey Dance." People didn't know
what I was up to--they thought I was either mad or trying to undermine Mr.
Maesch.

It's hard to believe, but at that time only a handful of
Bach works were played on recitals, mostly the big preludes and fugues. Nobody
taught and played the Clavierübung or the chorale preludes--the music was
considered too serious. Of course, part of the problem was that there weren't
many organs that could "play" the music well. The French organ
symphonies were known, but only
the "Toccata" from Widor's Fifth was played a lot. I think many
organists were afraid to play something they thought people wouldn't like.

Anyway, I ran afoul of Mr. Maesch, who had studied with
Dupré in Paris, not only because of the repertoire I was teaching but
because I was playing faster and with more articulation. He--and lots of other
people, too--believed that everything should be played legato. Organ music was
like spaghetti--long lines of legato notes--with swell shades used for contrast
and expression. I told him, "It may surprise you to know that Austrian
organists do play at a good clip." He said, "How can they do that in
those acoustics?" I replied, "They play cleanly and they
articulate." This was a new concept!

Q: Obviously, you have been committed to historical
performance practices in your teaching and playing. How did you continue your
studies in the following years?

A: Well, in 1966 I spent a sabbatical in France, Germany,
Italy, and Vienna, listening to and playing old organs, and taking lessons. I
took lessons from Marie Claire Alain at her house, because I wanted to get the
goods on the French Classical school, and I worked with Tagliavini on
Frescobaldi.

Q: You also spent some time at the Newberry Library, didn't
you?

A: Yes, on another sabbatical in 1973, I researched Baroque
treatises in the Newberry Library in Chicago. The Newberry is one of the great
music libraries in this country, which many musicians don't seem to realize.
They have very interesting seminars as well as more early music scores than any
library in the United States. Why bother digging through treatises? Well, many
treatises were written in the Baroque era, not instructing you how to play, but
describing how the playing was done. So it's possible to learn a very great
deal about performance practice by reading, and I don't think anyone is ever
going to be a knowledgeable organist playing Baroque music unless they read
about it.

Q: Your study in Vienna really convinced you of the merits
of mechanical-action organs, did it not?

A: Absolutely. I had to bide my time, but by the mid-60s
tracker organs were becoming popular. I managed to convince my organ majors at
Lawrence that tracker organs were superior even though they'd never heard one
(there weren't any in northeastern Wisconsin). I took a group of students to
Boston in 1967 to bear the Fisk, and we wore our "Tracker Backer"
[modeled on the NFL "Packer Backers"] buttons. E. Power Biggs came
onstage for a recital, and he said, "Welcome, all you Tracker Backers and
all you non-Tracker Backers." I'm still amazed at how many people have
beard of us. People hear 'Lawrence' and they say, "That's where the
Tracker Backers are from." But behind it all was a very serious
appreciation for tracker organs and a longing for one at Lawrence.

Q: And finally that dream did come true.

A: It took 30 years, but in 1995 the Brombaugh Opus 33 was
dedicated in the Memorial Chapel at Lawrence. I truly feel that this is the
culmination of my whole teaching career. I feel like everything has finally all
come together. It's been an inspiration to see it come to fruition because I
know it's the right thing to do, musically and in every way.

Q: You've had a strong committment to teaching, not only
college students, but other people in the community. You were heavily involved
in the OROCO program in the Fox Valley of Wisconsin, for example.

A: That was my idea, and I helped to organize it. The
Outreach Opportunity for Church Organists program started about 1970 to give
people lessons who wouldn't otherwise have had access to training. Many people
were (and maybe still are) playing the organ in church and had never had a
lesson in their lives. We--Mr. Maesch, Clinton DeWitt, an organist from Oconto,
and I--traveled around to churches in northeastern Wisconsin recruiting
students. Originally, we sent teachers, including Lawrence students, out to
these communities to teach group lessons. But then, thanks to a $10,000 gift,
we were able to award scholarships to individuals, and they made arrangements
to study with designated teachers in Appleton, Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Ripon. I
think the program was very successful--many of the OROCO graduates are still
active in church music. I think we turned out at least 45 new organists, and
the program continues to this day.

Q: Officially, you retired in 1985, yet you're still active
and visible in the organ world.

A: I don't think musicians ever really retire--I know I
haven't. Lawrence wouldn't let me retire--I've taught both organ and
harpsichord for sabbatical replacements, and I still have 15 community
students. There seems to be a steady stream of people over the age of 35 who
want to learn to play the organ. In fact, I have a waiting list! But that's
good news for church music. I resist the recent trend of "canned"
music to accompany singing in church, and I hope most other organists do, too.
I think we have to have live music if we're going to have viable church music.
We need to all hang in there and produce more and better organists.

Q: What advice do you have for organ teachers today?

A: Develop patience--it's a slow process to develop organ
technique. Be interested in your students not only as musicians but as people.
And don't expect your students to play the way you do. Many of my teachers just
did what their teachers had done. I think that's a curse. Students who just
play the way they're taught will never make it as performers.

I still think mechanical-action organs are the best for
training organists, but teachers should never allow themselves or their
students to play mechanically. Teach musicianship! It's hard work, but it can
be done. But don't neglect a reliable technique in favor of sleazy
"expression." Don't kid yourself! The most beautiful music is made
more beautiful by impeccable technique.

Teaching organ must be the most wonderful vocation for a
woman organist. I have had great success as a teacher but it's hard work. I've
had some failures. I could never get my students to believe that their senior
recital pieces were not necessarily the most godly music to play for church,
though a case could be made for the godliness of all organ music. Too many
organists, I fear, seek supreme godliness in their own playing rather than in
the purpose of the Supreme Being.

I'm very proud of my students--all of them. Hardly a day
passes that I don't get a phone call from one of them. They call me
"Mother Duncan," and they're all over the country and even overseas.

Q: What would you advise organ students to do?

A: Practice. And learn to listen to your own playing. Don't
rely on CDs and how other people "do it." And, of course, study your
scores and learn as much as you can about music theory and history.

Q: Do you have any thoughts about the future?

A: I'm glad I'm 80 years old this October. At least I can
look forward to hearing some fine organ playing in heaven, and maybe I'll be
able to give J.S. Bach the chance to explain some performance practice to me.
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Chronology

Born October 26, 1919, in Anderson, Indiana

1942, BMus, American Conservatory of Music, Chicago

1945-47, Instructor of Music, Wheaton College

1947, MMus, American Conservatory

1949, Part-time Intructor, Lawrence University

1950-51, Summer Organ Institute, Methuen, MA

1954-55, Sabbatical in Vienna, study with Anton Heiller

1962, Chair, Organ Dept., Lawrence

1963, First woman organist to perform at St. Norbert's
Abbey, DePere, WI

1964, Full-time Instructor, Lawrence

1965, Assistant Professor

1966, Sabbatical in Germany, Italy, Vienna; study with
Marie-Claire Alain in Paris

1967, Began lobbying for mechanical-action organ at Lawrence

1971, Received tenure

1972, Associate Professor

1973, Sabbatical, Newberry Library, Chicago

1979, Full Professor

1985, Retirement