ORGAN STUDIES. Proctor Hall

Transcription

1 ORGAN STUDIES I decided I wanted to play the organ when I was four years old. Our church had a rather nice M. P. Moller pipe organ, played by an old lady named Mrs. Nickels. I would stand at the choir loft gate after worship services and watch her play the postludes. I was fascinated by the huge gold leafed display pipes of the organ case and by the majestic sound of the instrument. I started piano lessons at the age of seven, but I was never really interested in the piano. The only thing that kept me going was the promise that if I continued piano lessons until I was tall enough to reach the pedals on the organ, then I could take organ lessons. Needless to say, as a child I didn t think I would ever be tall enough to play the organ. At long last, when I started high school at the age of thirteen, it happened. My first organ teacher was Louise Clary, who had a performance degree/certificate from the Peabody Conservatory where she studied with Virgil Fox. Louise was a fine organist and a gifted teacher. After a year or so, her family moved to Hopewell, New Jersey, near Princeton. She therefore had to drop many of her students in northern New Jersey, but she kept her best students and drove to Bergen County every Saturday to teach us. Eventually the commuting was too much for her, and she sought new teachers for us. Louise and her husband took me to many organ recitals. They invited me to stay with them in their Hopewell home one summer and took me to hear and play a number of pipe organs in Trenton and Princeton. One of my favorite instruments was the Aeolian pipe organ in Proctor Hall at the Princeton Graduate School. The sound was glorious, the acoustics perfect, and the organ case is one of the most beautiful in the country. Proctor Hall I next studied with Earl Goodwin, Director of Music and Organist of the Ridgewood United Methodist Church. Earl was a graduate of Oberlin College, and a gifted organist. He also studied with Virgil Fox. Earl immediately introduced me to major organ works and I worked very hard. Fortunately, our family church allowed me to have all the

2 practice time I wanted, and I routinely practiced every day after school. At the age of fourteen, I won second place in a student organist competition sponsored by the American Guild of Organists, playing works by Buxtehude, Bach and Mendelssohn. I was thrilled and so were my parents and my teachers. The same year, Mr. and Mrs. Burnett Andrews invited my family to dinner at their home in Morristown. My family vacationed every summer on Lake Dunmore in Vermont, and so did the Andrews family, so we had known them for many years. I was quite fond of their daughter, Marcia, who was my age. I knew that Mr. Andrews was an organist, and I was thrilled when he asked me to bring some music when we came to dinner. After dinner we went to the church. My eyes and my mouth must have been wide open as he opened the huge organ desk to reveal the four manual console of one of the most beautiful instruments I have ever played. The E. M. Skinner Organ of St. Peter s Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey, was built in 1930, and Burnett Andrews kept it in perfect order. I was thrilled. Throughout my college years, Burnett invited me every year to be his summer organist when he went on vacation. He had a very good adult summer choir of mixed voices, but when there was a funeral, I got to rehearse and direct his very fine traditional English choir of men and boys. (Please click on the other link listed with this chapter for a copy of the stop list.) St. Peter s Episcopal Church When I went to Westminster Choir College, Dr. Fox recommended Dr. Donald McDonald as a teacher, but I don t know why. After a year, McDonald and I parted our

3 ways when I was finally accepted as a student of George B. Markey. Dr. Markey was the finest teacher I ever had. He was very demanding, but he nevertheless let me experiment and find myself as a performer. I never thought that I played anything to his satisfaction, and he was greatly annoyed by the fact that memorization was so difficult for me, and yet, during my senior year at Westminster, he wrote to a church that was interviewing me, saying, His graduate recital, I think, was one of the highlights of our school year. Certainly, it was one of the most difficult programs planned and he played it exceedingly well. I continued to send reviews of my recitals to Dr. Markey until I was drafted, including my last recital in Wilmington, Delaware, just before I reported for active duty:

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5 While in Europe I played several recitals and sent Dr. Markey copies of the programs. He was thrilled that I was still trying to perform. After my four years in the Navy, when I applied to Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Markey wrote a very touching recommendation to the Dean and sent me a copy. In the body of the text were the words: While you are not primarily interested in his musical abilities, he is a fine musician and has served in the Ministry of Music with distinction for several years since his graduation from Westminster Choir College. During my first week at Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. James I. McCord, President, asked me to meet with him in his office. James Litton had been hired by the seminary as an interim director of music for one year while the seminary waited for the arrival of Eric Routley, but with his schedule at Trinity Episcopal Church and at the Choir College, Mr. Litton needed an assistant and asked if the seminary would provide me with a scholarship so that I could be his assistant. I was delighted. I never studied with James Litton but he was always kind to me. I played the organ at Trinity Church a number of times and Mr. Litton gave me all the practice time I wanted during my senior year in order to prepare for my senior recital. When Eric Routley arrived the following year, he too asked me to be his assistant. I played the organ for chapel services on Monday and Tuesday, Monday being Dr. McCord s service. I also played for a number of weddings, including, at Dr. McCord s request, the wedding of Henry Luce III who served on the seminary board of trustees. As a seminary student, I fully intended to become a minister of music in the United Methodist Church upon graduation, building on my accomplishments as a church musician before I entered military service. I had been the first Certified Director of Music in the Peninsula Conference of the United Methodist Church while I served as Director of Music and Organist of the historic Wesley United Methodist Church of Dover, Delaware. I assumed the Methodist Church would be interested in someone with my education and experience, but I was greatly mistaken. One member of the committee that supervised Methodist seminary students continually commented that my expectations of becoming an ordained Minister of Music in the United Methodist Church were not realistic. There were very few such positions. Furthermore, our group of eighteen seminarians was told that the Conference was only going to ordain six of us as deacons. I did not know what to do, but my musical hopes seemed to be dashed. The Congregational church I was serving as a student minister was very supportive and invited my to be in care of the Connecticut Fellowship of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches in which they had fellowship. The minister, the Rev. Richard Bower, had also been a disgruntled Methodist during his seminary years and had served this same nurturing church as a student minister. To make a long story short, I became a Congregationalist and served both NACCC and United Church of Christ churches for thirty years. Between pastorates I returned to the ministry of music several times, but the full-time ministry of music I sought never materialized.