I delivered the following remarks at Doug’s memorial service in St. Stephen’s Church, Richmond, Va., on Saturday, October 7, 2023:
Introduction
Doug completed fifty years in St. Stephen’s Choir back in the spring . . . and he attended the first Thursday evening rehearsal of the next season, before falling ill the very next day. When I met him in 1985 he was just completing his 12th year.
His intense love of the church and its music was immediately obvious, and he came by it naturally—his maternal grandmother (Sara DeHart Dickinson) was for 50 years the organist of St. Andrew’s Church on Oregon Hill. This was the church his parents attended and where Doug was baptized.
His was a cultured and artistic family, if not overtly musical. His father was a local representative of the RCA corporation who often entertained various of their artists who came through town, including celebrities such as Arthur Fiedler—just this morning Mary Lane sent me a picture of Doug when he was about ten years old with Arthur Fiedler which I have on my phone, and will show it to you after the service!
At St. Christopher’s School Doug sang in the glee club under the direction of my predecessor, Granville Munson. They sang many of their services and concerts here in the church. So it was natural that Doug gravitated back to St. Stephen’s when he returned to Richmond after college and his early professional life in Atlanta.
My time with Doug at St. Stephen’s
It was immediately obvious to me as the new choirmaster that Doug was the sort of choirmember that I needed, and needed to cultivate. He was engaged, energetic, curious, and knowledgeable—an amateur in the truest and best sense of the word. He claimed not to read music, but I think he did instinctively. At any rate, he had a very good ear, and it didn’t take himlong to pick up the repertoire. From day one he was intensely loyal and very friendly, often initiating lunch visits as we got acquainted . . . and it was an added bonus that his daughter, Mary Lane, sang in my youth choir. We became good friends almost immediately and remained so until his death.
He went to the University of Virginia in its all-male era. He was proud of his Virginia heritage but was not obsessive or fussy about it . . . as evidenced by the first time I went to a UVA football game with him . . . and expressed absolute bewilderment that he had on a shirt and tie for the game! His rebuke and explanation of the tradition was gentle, but I knew that the next time that I needed to do likewise.
After St. Stephen’s
After I moved away from Richmond, we kept in touch regularly, and he even joined my choir in Connecticut on tour in England in 2010. But he remained totally committed and loyal to St. Stephen’s. This was particularly obvious as he described the various musician searches in which he participated. His ultimate loyalty was always to the church and the choir . . . not to me, not to Granville, and not to the past.
He was always positive, despite setbacks, and he was particularly glowing about St. Stephen’s present and future, and he reveled in what he described as “a new golden era” now unfolding. Even if intervals were long between our visits, when we did connect it was as if we picked up the conversation from the previous day. This continued for the entirety of the 17 years since I left Richmond.
Growing up he lived in The Fan and he liked to say that he played in the “concrete jungle” and he did love urban life and often talked about and enjoyed visiting various gritty city sites in Washington or Baltimore, in addition to Richmond. And occasionally we connected in New York where he was involved in some urban reconnaissance trip or an architectural exhibit.
Conclusion
In retrospect, it was a happy circumstance that this past summer I spent time in Richmond and in rural North Carolina on family matters and had the occasion to visit with Doug several times, including Sunday services, Brent’s trial run recital as he prepared for his performance at an AGO convention in Tulsa, and a memorable breakfast at a favorite place of his in Scott’s Addition—where everyone quite literally knew his name (though they were amazed that he was there at that early hour; he was a regular at lunch). I’ll treasure these visits.
In conversations recently I’ve been asked if I thought he had a favorite hymn or anthem, and I really can’t recall anything specific—he truly loved them all. And he certainly would have loved the offerings of organ and choral music at this service. But the hymn Come Labor On always held pride of place at St. Stephen’s and we did it often at services and funerals—the vivid text by Jane Borthwick and the stirring, soaring tune by T. Tertius Noble, one of Granville’s teachers—has sent many of the faithful on their way with the concluding stanza, and it is most appropriate for our friend and brother:
“Come labor on. No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
Till the long shadows o’er our pathway lie.
And a glad sound comes with the setting sun,
Servant (s), well done!”
With Arthur FiedlerWith his parents at their home, 1825 Grove Avenue in The FanWith his parents and maternal grandmother, Sara DeHart DickinsonCollege portraitSt. Stephen’s Choir 1985With Walt Amacker, Bob Hodder, and me on vacation, Summer 1986The same four on a more formal occasionSt. Stephen’s Choir 1993At Mary Lane’s graduation from the Univ of Georgia, 1996With me on vacation, 1998With fellow SSt choirmember Mollie Hyer, ca. 2004St. Stephen’s Choir, 2004On a choir tour in England in 2005 with the Ritchie sisters and their motherWith Diane Ritchie Howerton, 2005With my choir in Worcester Cathedral, before the tomb of King John, July 2010Canterbury Cathedral, 2010St. Alban’s, 2010St. Albans, Charlie Tyson to his right, Arthur Burrows over his right shoulder, and William Wilson over his leftWith SSt choir members at Bob Hodder’s memorial service, 2013Doug owned his own set of choir vestments which he took care of himself. He was cremated in them.Screen shots from his memorial service in St. Stephen’s Church on Saturday, October 7. 2023I was honored to have been asked to speak.Tanner Collins spoke of Doug’s work in the small business communityThe Rev. John Rohrs, RectorThe Rev. Will Stanley, VicarThe Commendation“Servant, well done!”
The afternoon session of the 2023 annual Presidents’ Day conference of the NYC Chapter of the American Guild of Organists was held at The Riverside Church, and was devoted to memorial tributes and remembrances of Frederick Swann, followed by a recital by Ken Cowan.
Asked to speak about Fred as a teacher, David Higgs solicited remarks from his fellow Swann students at Manhattan School of Music. I was flattered that David used several of my contributions. My complete response to his request follows:
Publicity photo 1966
One weekday morning before classes began, I had the occasion to check in with Fred in his office about some detail of scheduling or logistics. What I saw made an indelible impression on me: Fred was seated at his desk, staring motionless at nothing in particular, his overcoat still on, and his suitcase on the floor. He said he’d just gotten in from the airport.
Now this was about 8:30 a.m. and I quickly did the calculations and figured he must have been up long before dawn, after an evening recital, to have gotten from wherever in the country he was, in time to have arrived at his office in time for the days’ events at the school and church. No doubt it was a common occurrence in his world, but I’d not seen it before, nor did I ever see it again. But it stayed with me as snapshot in time of just how every hard Fred Swann worked to juggle the demanding attributes of a traveling concert organist, an artist teacher at a major conservatory, and the chief musician of one of the most highly visible religious institutions in the country. This he did seemingly with ease, but I never forgot the image of this great man working so very hard for his profession, and therefore for us.
Lessons with Fred were rigorous, and elicited the desire to do one’s best, but they were never terrifying or intimidating—or pedantic. “Why do you suppose such and such a composer did that,” I asked. “So we’d have something to do this morning,” he retorted! Rarely analytical or overtly technical in a theoretical sense, Fred would however go to great lengths to share his bag of tricks—how to take a brief double pedal passage in the Langlais La Nativité with the left thumb, on a different manual with the 16’ coupler drawn, to free up the right foot to close a swell box. Or discuss how to set up the Bach large tripartite O Lamm Gottes on the Nave organ in such a way that the repeats were on similar, but contrasting sounds taking advantage of chancel and gallery division, thus not only avoiding boredom, but clearly showing the inherent structure of the chorale which inspired the piece. When studying the works of Franck one could feel the gravitas of his life-long association with them, and his own study of them with Courboin. But he would still show tricks of how to play Cantabile in the “correct” versus “slushy” version, saying he did it both ways depending on the occasion and the organ at hand. He even showed where he sometimes used chimes in the slow movement of the Grand pièce symphonique, reminding us that more souls have no doubt been saved by a few notes on the chimes that all the mixtures ever made!
Fred was also a compelling and engaging classroom teacher, something not many in the organ world know. Classes in organ literature came alive from his life-long association with the canon of the repertoire, but also his quest for new and interesting lesser-known pieces. His masters’ thesis at Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music dealt with new repertoire for the organ recitalist. Classes in the history and design of the pipe (and digital!) organ were filtered through his own career as a consultant and recitalist. In organ class he admonished us to keep our heads low, eyes fixed on the ground, when taking a bow, so we didn’t look like newly-hatched chickens craning our necks! His suggestions in church music classes were backed up with his own experiences with the best of the best—Hugh Porter, Thomas Matthews, and the clergy he’d known, particularly William Sloane Coffin, who occasionally came to organ class.
At the time I think we knew we were participants in and beneficiaries of a golden era; that became clearer and clearer to me in my own career. We were lucky!
With David Higgs and Robert Gallagher, from a Manhattan School of Music catalog ca. 1980
Stuart Gardner died from natural causes on July 19, 2022 at Hospice By the Sea in Boca Raton, Florida. He was 96 years old.
A native of West Hartford, Conn., he graduated from Westminster Choir College in 1947, followed by a Master of Music degree from Yale University. While at Yale he was the organist and choirmaster of St. Paul’s-on-the-Green in Norwalk, Conn. In 1955 he was appointed to the Church of the Transfiguration, popularly known as the Little Church Around the Corner, in New York City, following a tenure at St. Paul’s in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He remained at Transfiguration for nearly a quarter of a century. He also taught at the McBurney School and Trinity School in New York.
At Transfiguration Stuart directed a choir of men and boys which had been established in the mid-19th century shortly after the church was founded, and he collaborated with the New York Pro Musica, founded in 1952 and directed by Noah Greenberg (1919-1966), which was in residence at the church. The New York Pro Musica was at that time in the forefront of the nascent early music movement in New York. Though not actually a part of the parish music program, several professional singers sang in the church choir and in the Pro Musica, and boys of the church choir often performed in the Pro Musica’s concerts, recordings, and tours, including their celebrated production of the mediaeval Play of Daniel which attracted national and international notice, including a European tour under the auspices of the United States State Department.
The Transfiguration choir frequently participated in extra-parish musical concerts and activities offered in New York City, including performances and recordings with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein in Mahler’s Second Symphony, which was nominated for a Grammy award. Following that, they also participated in New York Philharmonic concert performances of Mahler’s Third and Eighth symphonies with Pierre Boulez, the Berlioz Damnation of Faust, and other events including the world premiere of George Crumb’s Voices of Ancient Children.
In a 2019 visit with Stuart at his home in Florida, he told Claudia Dumschat (his successor at Transfiguration several times removed) and me that it was the policy of the better-known boy choirs in New York, like those at St. Thomas Church and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, not to allow their choirs to accept outside secular engagements. As a result of recommendations from them, his choir received and accepted many such invitations, and a generation of choirboys to this day recall these exciting appearances apart from their normal rota of singing liturgical church services.
In June 1981 Stuart married his wife Mary Lou, who he met in New York in 1973. Shortly before that he left New York to accept a position at Saint Luke’s Parish in Darien, Conn. His passion for sailing precipitated this move, which passion he pursued in a serious way. In an email to me recently, his step-son Tim Ferrell said “ . . . he was an avid sailor and would spend at least a month of each summer sailing. I sailed with him many times, anywhere from his homeport of Norwalk, Conn., to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. He liked to make distance and sailing was a vigorous activity. In later years we often spoke about the great times we had sailing up and down the coast of New England.”
In 1988 Stuart moved to Florida to accept a position at St. Paul’s Church in Delray Beach. In addition to the normal round of music at services, he founded the series “Music at St. Paul’s” to serve the community, as well as the parish. There he presented concerts featuring local parish musicians as well as community professionals featuring a wide variety and combinations of forces, with repertoire drawn from disparate eras and genres. The series continues to this day. Local newspaper accounts indicate that the St. Paul’s series took its place as a serious venue for classical music in the wider community in Southeast Florida.
In a 1998 article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Stuart said “Historically, churches were always centers of the arts . . . I view our concerts as part of the church’s outreach to the community. They are not just for the people of St. Paul’s.” And in the same article, a member of the contracted orchestra said “ . . . he does have a genius for programming. He has established a really interesting series in a warm, comfortable atmosphere for people to enjoy music in.”
Toward the end of his career, Stuart was featured in an interview-article, also in the Sun-Sentinel, which includes the following exchanges, giving insights into Stuart’s approach to music and life:
Q: [What is] a distinctive feature of your music program”
A: We consider the music program an outreach. We give monthly concerts including solo recitals all the way up to orchestra [programs] with 60 musicians. The other thing I do is train the two choirs and play at our two services.
Q: You allow young people to come to parish concerts at no charge. Why?
A: In the old days, music was as important as sciences, literature, drama, and so forth . . . enlightened headmasters and educators realize the arts are very important.
Q: If you couldn’t be a minister [of music] what would you be?
A: I would sail the seven seas. When I get an opportunity to, I still sail. Sailing is stimulating physically and mentally.
Stuart Gardner’s wife Mary Lou died in 2015. He leaves three step-children and many choristers, friends, and students on whom he left an indelible mark on their lives through his friendship and support, and his consummate musicianship freely shared with all.
This monograph was originally published as two separate articles in the March and April 2021 issues of the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians to observe the 100th anniversary of Dirksen’s birth. It also appeared in condensed form in the January 2022 issue of The American Organist, and was the basis for two separate webcasts sponsored by Washington National Cathedral and the American Guild of Organists to observe the centennial of Dirksen’s birth. Taking advantage of post-production interviews and feedback, what follows is an expanded and edited compilation from all available sources.
Part I—Biography
Introduction
When considering the attributes of Richard Dirksen’s career, “multi-talented” is the term most often used. That is accurate, but incomplete. He could easily have pursued a successful career as a concert organist, conductor, composer, producer, educator, impresario, administrator, organbuilder, church musician . . . or a clergyman. In truth, he was a 20th century Renaissance Man, though that too is a well-worn cliché. In the final analysis his career was a synthesis of each of these disciplines practiced at a high level of achievement at Washington National Cathedral, where he was to spend his entire career.
When Dirksen was appointed in 1942 the physical edifice of the cathedral was but a nascent vision of what it was to become, but it was still a highly visible presence in the city of Washington, throughout the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion—and Dirksen grew as the cathedral grew.
Known professionally as Richard Dirksen—that is how he was listed as composer, performer, or conductor—but to family, friends, and throughout the cathedral community, Dirksen was always known as Wayne. Even in his student recitals he was listed as Wayne Dirksen, or R. Wayne Dirksen.
The cathedral’s formal ecclesiastical name is the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington. At the time of Wayne’s appointment in 1942, and through most of the 20th Century, it was known as Washington Cathedral in all of its in-house publications, orders of service, and press articles. This followed typical English custom where the various cathedrals (excepting St. Paul’s) are identified by their location, though they each use their full ecclesiastical names on formal occasions. The “national” part of the appellation was usually given by others, suggested no doubt by the fact that George Washington and Pierre L’Enfant, in their plans for the new Federal city, called for the building of a great church for national purposes. Considering the era that the bulk of this article addresses, I’ve opted to use Washington Cathedral, or simply “the cathedral.”
The year before his death Wayne gave some remarks at a Regional AAM gathering which summarized his thoughts about the singular importance the cathedral had on him:
Now a comment on the strongest influence on my life and work: the vast dimension of the cathedral itself must be noted. Its magnitude and beauty offer endless inspiration to the artist and ennoble the richness of its worship and culture. An incomparable esthetic paragon, it is unlimited in challenge for special gifts and service, ever inviting discerning attention and attracting excellence. Its essence is that of the Eternal and Mysterious Holy One, accessible to human aspiration. Therein lies its greatest power.[1]
Wayne and Joan Dirksen, beneath a portrait of Senator Everett Dirksen, during a visit to the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, ca. 1980
Early Life
Richard Wayne Dirksen was born on February 8, 1921 in Freeport, Illinois, northwest of Chicago, into a Presbyterian family that organized its life around music, organs, and church. His father was an organbuilder and his mother an organist. The family was distantly related to the famous senator from Illinois, Everett Dirksen, though from a different branch of the family. Wayne’s visage evoked a resemblance that was striking enough that the question is often asked.
Wayne’s father, Richard Watson Dirksen, was the only child of Freeport’s major contractor who displayed facility in the manual arts at an early age and by adolescence was thoroughly familiar with the equipment of the building trades. A project at the local theatre included overseeing the installation of an organ and the elder Dirksen’s fascination with it sealed the path his life’s work. He founded the Freeport Organ Company and was later associated with Reuter.
Organ building requires a comprehensive knowledge of every building technique: electricity, metalwork, air conduiting, fine- and large-scale mechanics, cabinetry, acoustics, not to mention sales. As his son, Wayne was surrounded with these skills and that knowledge served him well. On his first morning in Baltimore to attend Peabody Conservatory . . . he heard a stuck note while passing a church, went in, introduced himself, fixed it, and made his first friend in town.[2]
As a boy, young Wayne was recruited to sing in the boychoir of Grace Episcopal Church in Freeport and, in a scenario to which many can relate, his family soon joined him as active members of the parish, although his mother continued as the organist of another church. He graduated from Freeport High School in 1938, where he was a member of the National Honor Society, a drum major, played the bassoon in the band, and won first place in the National Music School Competition. He studied piano and organ with his mother and others locally, but planned to pursue a career in the ministry and, with the help of his rector, was awarded a scholarship to Hobart College for that purpose.
However, he was drawn to music and, in what must have been a bold decision, declined the scholarship and spent the year following graduation seriously studying organ, piano, and theory with Hugh Price(one of Virgil Fox’s teachers) preparing for auditions to a conservatory. After a failed attempt to gain a spot at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he was awarded a scholarship at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 1940 where he was a student of Virgil Fox, who was twelve years older than Wayne and was already in demand as a concert organist.
Peabody and the Appointment to Washington Cathedral
Wayne’s student notebook from Peabody is a fascinating snapshot into Virgil Fox’s teaching methods, and is worthy of serious study at another time. Fox went into extreme detail about matters of technique, including fingering and pedaling indications which he insisted his students use. Fox was not the sort to encourage a lot of individuality. He insisted on doing it his way.
Fox’s syllabi and class handouts indicate that he had given much thought and preparation, and was very methodical. Everything was worked out in advance and little was left to chance. Assignments in technique, repertoire, registration, and style were specific, and lessons were arranged to accommodate Fox’s increasingly demanding concert schedule. Wayne regularly played at conservatory exhibitions, concerts, convocations, and accompanied choral ensembles. His growing repertoire was eclectic, with a heavy concentration of the works of Bach . . . and his recitals were played from memory.
During the first two years at Peabody, Wayne was the organist of the First Methodist Church at St. Paul and 22nd Streets, the “Mother Church of American Methodism” as the church was known then and now. The church traces its history to 1774 as Lovely Lane Meeting House, and it was at a conference there in 1784 that the denomination known as the Methodist Episcopal Church was formed. In 1884 the church (by then known as the First Methodist Episcopal Church) moved into an impressive new church designed by Stanford White in the Romanesque Revival which was built as the “Centennial Monument of American Methodism.” An active congregation still occupies the landmark building, though the congregation reverted to its original name and it is now known as the Lovely Lane United Methodist Church. At Sunday morning and evening services the organ and choir, under the direction of Edward H. Stewart, offered a comprehensive repertoire typical of the era.
First Methodist Church, Baltimore, now known as Lovely Lane United Methodist Church
In January 1942 Paul Callaway (1909-1995), the organist and choirmaster of Washington Cathedral, came to Peabody to audition students to be his assistant. Callaway had been at the cathedral since 1939 and was just getting started on ambitious plans which necessitated acquiring an assistant. At this time Callaway would have been in his early 30s, slightly more than a decade older than Wayne.
Also interviewed for the position were Milton Hodgson and William Watkins, who were also students of Fox at Peabody. Hodgson remained in Baltimore for the remainder of his life and was the music director of WMAR Radio-TV for 30 years. He died in 1981. After graduating from Peabody, Watkins had a very successful early career as a concert organist which was curtailed by a serious automobile accident that left him impaired. He was a much-beloved teacher and church musician in Washington until his death in 2004.
Wayne began his duties at the cathedral in the early spring of 1943, just in time for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter preparations. His basic duties were to train the Junior Choir, a rather large training choir from which were selected boys for the main cathedral choir. This choir sang under Wayne’s direction weekly at early Sunday services in Bethlehem Chapel. Although he shared some of the playing of voluntaries with Callaway, the now-familiar custom of the assistant organist doing the bulk of the accompanying while the boss directed the choir was not in vogue. Callaway did almost all of the choral direction while accompanying from the console, and the assistant’s typical task was to turn pages.
Wayne commuted from Baltimore the rest of the semester until he graduated in May. Most of the graduating class received certificates or diplomas indicating successful completion of a three-year prescribed course of study; only three actual degrees were conferred—one M.Mus, and two B.Mus. Most students graduated with a Teacher’s Certificate. Wayne received the Church Organist’s Certificate, the only one that year.
Early indications show that Wayne’s relationship with his new boss was complementary and harmonious. Writing to his family back home in Illinois he says, speaking of Callaway:
He is very energetic and a titan of a musician, handling his choir with an iron hand. He is not the organist Virgil is, but that is not to be expected . . . there is much I am learning from him, especially about service playing. He is unmarried, smokes a lot, drinks a little (better delete the latter for dear Grandmother), drives carefully, is a swell fellow, and has been grand to me.[3]
Wayne’s opinion of Callaway’s playing must have strengthened in the ensuing weeks as he wrote to his family about a month later, describing a recital Callaway had played the previous week:
He is every bit the organist that Virgil is, with as much technique, the only difference being that he doesn’t play from memory.[4]
And Wayne’s description of his first Easter Day is memorable:
Then came the 11:00 service, and about that I can hardly say a thing, for it was something I shall never forget. The processional—with flags, banners, nine clergymen, the Dean—all of it like I have always dreamed Easter Sunday would be—was, in fact, somewhere. I had nothing to do but sit back in the alcove behind the organ console and enjoy it, and the emotions with which I was filled that morning were of every description—dominated by pure joy. The music was perfection itself, and the brass and tympani augmenting the organ raised the vaulted arches right off the pillars.[5]
Since he had a low draft number Wayne decided to enlist, rather than wait to be drafted. In fact, he enlisted the very day after his graduation recital at Peabody. Paul Callaway also left the cathedral for army duty as a warrant officer and bandmaster in the Pacific.
Filling in for them at the cathedral for the duration of the war was Ellis C. Varley, a name largely forgotten now. Varley went on to a distinguished career at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit. He previously held positions in Ohio at St. Paul’s in Akron and Grace Church in Sandusky. He was also the personal organist to the Firestone family and his performances were regularly broadcast over the Cleveland radio stations. At the time of his death in 1954 at age 63, he had been organist of St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida, for less than a year.
Army Life During World War II
After enlisting in the Army, Wayne was assigned to be a chaplain’s assistant at Walter Reed Army General Hospital where he was the organist and sexton for the hospital chapel. The chapel on the campus is an attractive edifice in the English Gothic style which contained a nice three-manual Skinner organ. It was a popular site for weddings, sometimes as many as eight per week, for which Wayne received fees over and above his military pay, most of which he was able to save according to letters home to his family. He also had a few pupils and played for a Jewish synagogue—all of which was a prelude to the pattern of work he was to maintain for the rest of his life. He always had several jobs.
The chapel of Walter Reed Army General Hospital Washington, D. C.
Of particular interest, one of his duties at Walter Reed was program director and announcer for the hospital radio station WRGH. The original station consisted of individual headphone jacks by each bed. It had been the gift of New York theatrical producer Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and was inoperative by the time Wayne arrived, though most of the hardware was still in place. Wayne and his team gained permission and a modest budget to rebuild the system and they began to gather replacements parts from any source they could find, such as a pinball repair shop in downtown Washington. In short order they rebuilt the campus radio station complete with a soundproof studio, master control board, a library of LP recordings, and two outside channels from which to choose. In this capacity he introduced several innovative features and programs. The station’s work was even featured in an article in the New York Times Magazine written by well-known columnist Meyer Berger.[6]
A lively family recollection gives an interesting snapshot into the politics and logistics on the hospital campus:
1944 was an election year, Roosevelt running for his fourth term against Thomas Dewey. Then, as now, candidates were to receive equal amounts of media time, but Roosevelt refused to campaign as the war was in full cry. Speeches by either candidate were therefore hard to come by, but on Monday, October 5, at 10 p.m. Dewey was scheduled to give one on CBS. Unfortunately there was to be a prize fight at the same time on NBC. The majority of the officers, being Republicans, wanted to hear Dewey’s speech; the enlisted men, being soldiers, wanted to hear the fight.
Now bearing in mind that WRGH had only two channels available, and that after 5 p.m. the master control switch in the studio determined what single channel was heard throughout the hospital, the station operatives had a decision to make. They opted (privately) for the fight. So at 10 p.m. that night it was necessary that the person on duty (Cpl. Bradley) turn the switch from CBS to the fight on NBC. For whatever reason, he missed it. Now that would have been fine: the officers would happily have listened to Dewey, and the enlisted men, grumbling, would have gone to sleep. But upon discovering the mistake, some five minutes into the speech, he did switch to the fight, thus cutting off a presidential candidate’s rhetoric in mid-flight.
The repercussions were swift. Dad was enjoying a quiet evening at home when the call came at 10:15 to report to the base IMMEDIATELY, and we can surmise that the next few hours were singularly unpleasant. It was also no surprise that his orders to report to infantry basic training at Fort Barkley, Texas, came three days later. Wayne says now that the war was escalating so fast that he would have been called up sooner or later anyway, but this incident, which had received media attention by this time, was doubtless no hinderance to that.[7]
Wayne spent the remainder of World War II serving in the infantry until he mustered out in November 1945 with a rank of sergeant. The war in Europe ended as he was en route to Germany, so he spent his remaining months in uniform with a traveling six-man show he created for troop entertainment traveling throughout northern Europe.
On January 9, 1943 in Freeport, Illinois, Wayne married his high school sweetheart, Joan Shaw, the daughter of Elwyn Riley Shaw, a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, and later a federal judge on the U. S. District Court for Northern Illinois, appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Roosevelt also appointed Judge Shaw to the National Railway Labor Panel in 1943, and in that capacity the Shaws were frequent visitors to Washington during the Dirksens’ early married years. There is every indication that the two families were closely linked.
Wayne and Joan with their first-born son, Richard Shaw Dirksen, 1943
Second Call to Washington Cathedral
At this point Wayne had in mind moving to New York to pursue a career as a musician and composer in the theatrical milieu of Broadway. His assistantship at Washington Cathedral was basically a convenient part-time job while he finished at Peabody and the thought of a career there was not on his radar screen at all.
Ellis Varley received the call to Detroit, and all persons who left their jobs to serve in the war were entitled to return to their old positions when the war was over. So it was that Wayne was invited back to the cathedral and when Callaway returned in March 1946 they were reunited at the cathedral for a second time. Thus began a working relationship that lasted until Callaway retired in 1977.
Much could be written about the association of these two musical titans. As if to exemplify their obvious difference in size and height, they were just as different in temperament, personality, and in their approach to music. Yet, they were also entirely complementary and compatible. Callaway, who never married, was a frequent guest in the Dirksen home and he was the godfather to the Dirksen’s second child, Geoffrey Paul Dirksen.
Wayne Dirksen and Paul Callaway in the early 1950s
It was about this time that Dirksen’s career as a composer began to evolve with ever more seriousness and his compositions began to appear regularly on cathedral music lists. One of the hallmarks of Callaway’s lengthy tenure was his eagerness to infuse a distinct American component into the historically Anglican cathedral style.
It’s a curious attribute given that T. Tertius Noble, the quintessential Englishman, was Callaway’s great mentor—an “articled pupil” was the term Callaway used, to denote the master-apprentice relationship they shared. I believe that it was the strong influence of David McK. Williams and his very eclectic musical program at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York that set that pattern in motion. Callaway was careful to say that he was not technically a student of David McK. Williams, but he admitted to me that he learned a lot from him and had turned pages for him weekly at Sunday Evensong, and observed at close range a lot of his unique style and repertoire.
So it is not a surprise that Callaway would have taken increasing notice of his young assistant’s growing oeuvre and basically performed whatever Dirksen wrote. In return, the cathedral obtained in Wayne the services of a de facto composer-in-residence for the rest of his life.
For the 150th anniversary of the District of Columbia Paul Green produced an outdoor drama titled “Faith of Our Fathers” which inaugurated the new Carter Baron Amphitheater in Rock Creek Park and attracted wide attention. Green had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for his drama “In Abraham’s Bosom” and had written several large-scale outdoor productions, the best-known of which was “The Lost Colony” about the disappearance of the Indian colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, which is still produced in the summer. For “Faith of Our Fathers” Dirksen was commissioned to write the music and conduct performances by musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra. The production ran for two years in the summer. This highly visible format gives an idea of Dirksen’s growing renown apart from the cathedral.
Wayne was but 29 years old at this time and it is remarkable that he would have been tasked with so highly visible a commission—not just the composition of the music, but he was charged with auditioning and assembling the musicians (mainly from the National Symphony Orchestra), rehearsing them, and conducting the production over the show’s two-year run.
It has been suggested that this meteoric rise came about through a thin line of association involving Paul Hume. Remembered by the general public primarily as the music critic of The Washington Post from 1946-1982 who wrote a critical review of a solo recital by Margaret Truman, daughter of the president, in December 1950 in which he said:
Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality—(she) cannot sing very well—is flat a good deal of the time—more last night than at any time we have heard her in past years—has not improved in the years we have heard her—(and) still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish.
President Truman penned a famous rebuttal to Hume saying, among other things, that:
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beef steak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below![8]
But few people remember that Paul Hume was also a professional singer who sang in such things as early performances of Menotti operas . . . and he was the baritone soloist in the choir of Washington Cathedral at just about the time Wayne came on the scene. One theory is that Hume heard some of Wayne’s youthful compositions, including his epic 1948 Easter Anthem Christ Our Passover, and recommended him to Paul Green.[9]
Assistant-itis
By 1950, Dirksen admitted to getting “assistant-itis.” Working for Callaway “involved a lot of page-turning,” he said; and he felt that he was just “hanging around” too much. He asked Bishop Angus Dun if he could start a mixed-voice glee club from students at the National Cathedral School [for Girls] and St. Albans [School for Boys].[10] Dirksen commented, “In those days the kids never even dated one another. Certainly to this point, the two schools never shared classes.”[11]
This began a pattern of creative collaboration between clergy, musicians, and the two schools that would continue and strengthen throughout Wayne’s career at the cathedral. This was facilitated by a turnover in the leadership at the two schools on the close, and a new cathedral dean. Even though the cathedral was (is) the bishop’s church, Bishop Dun, and his successor Bishop William Creighton, delegated total control of the cathedral’s worship life and operation to the new dean, the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, who charted a path that ultimately led to the completion of the building of the cathedral. At the same time, his vision also demanded that the cathedral assume an ever-expanding, ever-visible role in the religious, artistic, and civic life of cathedral community, the city, and nation. All of the musical forces of the cathedral community were included in this mandate, including the inception of the College of Church Musicians.
By combining the upper school glee clubs of the two school on the cathedral close, it was possible for the first time have a full SATB chorus in the curriculum. St. Albans and NCS were each 4th-12th grade, which guaranteed a full complement of tenors and basses, and the girls provided a high level of vocal maturity. Wayne immediately challenged the group to the point where they attained semi-professional status. The repertoire was comparable to that of a fully developed community chorus and concerts were presented to professional standards which often received favorable reviews in the press. In Wayne’s own words:
Whatever the Glee Clubs sing is apt to be hard and fiercely dealt with because we have little time to rehearse. So, a 13-year-old boy comes to his first rehearsal and you shove in his hands the Haydn Seasons, 212 pages thick, eight-part chorus, and maybe he has never seen a bar of music before. And you say to him, “Oh, by the way, we’re singing in German. OK? Here we go!
Of course the first two or three weeks some of them are pretty well snowed. So I say “be very quiet and listen. Before music can come out of the mouth it has to go in the ear and be in the brain,” and soon they can sing.[12]
The combined glee clubs also began to participate in cathedral liturgies, school chapel services in the cathedral, even substituting for the cathedral choir on occasion. Especially appealing to Wayne’s interest in musical theater, was the opportunity to compose operettas—usually with his wife, Joan, as librettist—which were regularly produced as part of the school’s program.
In addition to these new duties at the schools, Wayne continued his duties assisting Callaway, though by now he was given the title of Associate Organist and Choirmaster. This he did in addition to an increasing presence on the Washington musical scene. He taught organ at American University, directed the Department of Agriculture Chorus and the Doctor’s Symphony, an affiliate organization of the National Institute of Health, and was the director of the B & O Chorus in Baltimore. He made frequent appearances as a collaborative keyboard artist throughout the region, and he was especially known as an extraordinary continuo player improvising from figured bass notation. He also made occasional appearances playing organ in large-scale works for chorus and organ. He played the organ in the pit orchestra for the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass which had been commissioned for the inaugural of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971.
RWD and Leonard Bernstein during preparations for the premiere of Mass
Beginning in the early 1950s services and events at the cathedral began to be televised. By the 1960s it was standard programming for the Christmas Day services from the cathedral to be broadcast nationally on network television. Wayne increasingly found himself directing the technical and logistical details of these, including notated scripts timed to the minute which the participants and choir followed. In addition to all of this, he continued to compose for these and many other diocesan events inherent in the life of the cathedral church of the diocese.
Tower Dedication in 1964 and New Duties
A significant building decision with lasting implications faced the cathedral as the new decade appeared on the horizon: build the tower, or complete the nave interior? There were persuasive arguments on each side, but it was decided to build the tower. Included in the tower plan was the installation of a ring of ten bells for change ringing, and a 54-bell carillon—the only such tower in the world to contain each.
The tower was dedicated on Ascension Day 1964 in a marathon day of services, concerts, and dramatic presentations; documentary videos on bells and change ringing played on a loop during open houses at the schools. The services and closing concert, accompanied by various instrumental ensembles featuring the carillon were held outdoors, and an altar was set up at the top of the Pilgrim Steps leading downward from the south transept. All of the musical organizations on the close were involved. The day began at 7:00 a.m. with fully choral services of Holy Communion, Morning Prayer at 10:15, various dedications and playing of the new carillon and changes on the ten-bell ring, Evensong at 4:00, and concluded with an evening concert with full orchestra, cathedral choral society, and glee clubs of the two schools, all gathered at the base of the dramatically lit new south transept and tower, now the highest point in the city.
The cathedral had recently celebrated the completion of the south transept in an impressive way, but nothing on the scope of the tower dedication had been attempted prior. New works were commissioned from Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem, Lee Hoiby, Stanley Hollingsworth, Roy Hamlin Johnson, John LaMontaine, Milford Myhre, and Leo Sowerby. A two-LP album of the music, dramatic narrations by Basil Rathbone, and a book containing the scores of the commissioned music commemorated the event, all produced under Wayne’s careful direction.
Wayne was asked to chair the committee planning these festivities. In order to do that he relinquished his position as Associate Organist and Choirmaster in 1963. Those duties were assumed jointly by Norman Scribner, who would go on to become a renowned choral director in Washington, and David Koehring, a Fellow of the new College of Church Musicians.
Following the widely-reported success of the tower dedication festival, Dean Sayre pondered the whole concept of the cathedral’s “program.” Up to this point the actual building of the cathedral, together with ordering of regular and special services consumed the cathedral’s efforts—that was its program. The three concerts offered by the Cathedral Choral Society during the season were the only non-liturgical events offered at the cathedral, and it was decided to invest some discretionary budget into planning a series of offerings on a three-year trial basis which would include all the arts.
For this the cathedral turned to Wayne Dirksen, giving him a new title: Director of Advance Program, a position he held from 1964-1977, though the title was later shortened to Director of Program. The fruits of this new initiative were many and long lasting, including an annual summer festival featuring events of all kinds attracting many celebrities such as Ravi Shankar and Dave Brubeck (The Light in the Wilderness, The Gates of Justice), as well as performances by visiting choirs and ensembles—such as the Renaissance dramas “The Play of Daniel” and “The Play of Herod” performed by the New York Pro Musica under Noah Greenberg, and Menotti’s opera The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore. An annual boy choir festival featuring the new Berkshire Boy Choir and later diocesan RSCM festivals sprang from the initial summer festival. Other community events, such as the Open House in the fall were also begun.
Dave Brubeck and RWD
During all of this Wayne continued to compose regularly. He also attracted the attention of search committees at some very interesting and highly visible institutions: he turned down an offer to become the Dean of Oberlin Conservatory, and Grace Church at Broadway and 10th Street in New York approached him about the position of Organist and Master of the Choristers when their renowned organist, Ernest Mitchell, retired. The correspondence between Dean Sayre and the newly-appointed rector of Grace Church, the Rev. Benjamin Minifie, is endearing.
The Dean implores Minifie to look elsewhere, saying that the combination of Dirksen and Callaway is “heaven on earth,” continuing:
I am quite sincere in saying that if either he [Wayne] or Callaway left, the greater part of the joy of being Dean here would leave with them . . . I thank you for telling me of your interest, and naturally I would not stand in the way of anyone so fine as Wayne if he really wanted to go.[13]
Yet he freely admits that the music of Grace Church would flourish should Wayne decide to accept. To those who know these two institutions, it is interesting to contemplate what their programs might have looked like under the leadership of Wayne Dirksen during the 1960s to 1980s.
Precentor and Organist and Choirmaster of the Cathedral Church
In 1969 Wayne Dirksen was appointed Precentor of the cathedral church, though not yet Canon Precentor. It was reported that this was the first time that a lay person had been appointed precentor of a cathedral in the entire Anglican Communion and it was big news! In this position he was in charge of the entire worship life of the cathedral and oversaw several related departments, including music, vergers and sextons, sound technicians, ushers, altar and flower guilds, and visitor services, especially as it related to visiting choirs, and other dignitaries and personalities. In his annual reports to the Dean and Chapter and in his correspondence it is dizzying to review the sheer number of services and persons involved in the various tasks necessary to implement the cathedral’s mission and ministry. In all ways except sacerdotal, Wayne was a member of the senior clergy of the cathedral and was likely the most highly visible layman in the Episcopal Church. Throughout all of this, he continued to compose regularly, and his correspondence shows that more and more he struggled to find the uninterrupted time necessary for that, though in 1969 he relinquished his duties at the two cathedral schools.
With the nation’s Bicentennial in sight, it was decided to stretch the building program to the limit and complete the nave in 1976. Wayne relinquished the duties of Precentor in 1973 and led the committee to plan for the cathedral’s elaborate observances of these two singularly important events. Known collectively as Festival ’76, it included several services and events over an 18-month period on a scale far surpassing the dedication of the tower in 1964. Included were services dedicating the new west rose window, the Sowerby Swell division of the renovated organ, andon the exact 200th anniversary, July 4, 1976, the Dedication of the Nave in the Service of the United States of America. On the following Thursday, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, and President and Mrs. Gerald Ford there was a festival prayer service. Throughout the remainder of 1976 there were other dedicatory services acknowledging the cathedral’s place in the world-wide Anglican Communion, as well as interdenominational ecumenical services. The planning, implementation, and documentation of all of these services and events were accomplished under Wayne’s supervision.
View from the North Transept gallery, July 8, 1976. The our-of-focus man in the foreground is Paul Traver, the director of the University of Maryland Chorus which participated in the service. I was singing in the chorus near the photographer who took this picture.
Coinciding with the opening of the complete nave, was the completed renovation of the cathedral organ, an intense three-year process. For this project, planning for which began in 1957, Wayne was the coordinator for the cathedral. Wayne had also directed the installation of the Aeolian-Skinner Organ in Bethlehem Chapel in 1952, and even devised a mechanical device to adjust the pedalboard height, a prelude to the more sophisticated hydraulic lift for the pedalboard on the main organ when the new console was built in 1958.
Wayne had also been responsible for the procurement of two other organs the cathedral used: a completely movable organ with attributes and uses similar to the famous “Willis on Wheels” in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. This organ was built by Reuter, but the casework was built by Wayne’s father, Richard Watson Dirksen, known to the family as “Dugan.” The other organ was a small portative fabricated by the elder Dirksen’s Freeport Organ Company with pipes made by Aeolian-Skinner, which saw use as a continuo instrument in concerts.
A 1971 clipping showing Wayne playing the portative and John Fenstermaker at the Reuter movable organ.
When Paul Callaway retired as Organist and Choirmaster in 1977, Wayne was appointed the fourth Organist and Choirmaster of the cathedral. The position of Precentor had recently fallen vacant and Wayne was again appointed to that position as well. Throughout all the varied activities and events he oversaw, Wayne continued to compose, including works for the new Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and Hymnal 1982, including six hymn tunes, two Anglican Chants, and challenging anthem settings the Three Songs of Isaiah, which canticles were new to the BCP. These were given their first performance in Washington Cathedral, during the national convention of the American Guild of Organists by the Choir of St. Thomas Church in New York, directed by Gerre Hancock.
Canon Dirksen, Completion of the Cathedral, and Retirement
In recognition of his 40th year of service to Washington Cathedral, the chapter named him Canon Precentor, and he was installed as a canon of the cathedral in 1983. At the service, during which other ordained clergy were seated as canons, there were only two lay canons installed, and Wayne shared the honor with Richard Feller, the cathedral Clerk of the Works.
Even though he retired from the cathedral in 1977, Paul Callaway continued to direct the Cathedral Choral Society until he retired from that position in 1984. Wayne was appointed interim director of the CCS while a search for a permanent director was undertaken. Over the years Wayne had been closely related to the CCS and served it in a variety of capacities, including accompanist, assistant director, and business manager. J. Reilly Lewis, a graduate of Oberlin and Juilliard, who had begun his career as a member of the cathedral’s Junior Choir under Wayne, was appointed and he served until his death in 2016.
Other honors accrued to Wayne in his final years at the cathedral. He received honorary doctorates from George Washington University and Mount Union College and honors from Peabody and Shenandoah Conservatory. He served a residency at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in 1987, and commissions continued to be offered.
Wayne resigned as Organist and Choirmaster in 1988 to lead the cathedral in its plans to consecrate the completed cathedral. He was succeeded by his associate, Douglas Major. The festivities observing the completion of the cathedral culminated in a marathon series of services and concerts over the 48-hour period of September 28-30, 1990, and included appearances by President and Mrs. George H. W. Bush.
Wayne Dirksen retired from the cathedral the following spring; the official service marking this was held on April 1, although there were many events on the cathedral close honoring him. In retirement, Wayne was active and in demand. He was a guest at the Evergreen Music Conference in 1993 and continued to compose. He began setting much of his music in computer notation and published an annotated catalog of his music. Dirksen’s hymns tunes were the subject of an article by Clark Kimberling in the October 2002 issue of Journal of the Hymn Society
Wayne’s beloved wife Joan Shaw died on January 27, 1995. Richard Wayne Dirksen died July 26, 2003 and his memorial service was held in the cathedral on August 28. They are each interred in the columbarium of the cathedral crypt adjacent to the Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea.
In 2006 the Cathedral Choral Society established the Dirksen Endowment Fund which sponsors its Third Millennium Christmas Carol Commissions.
Conclusion
Within the space limitations of this article, it’s been a challenge to chronicle the activity of Wayne Dirksen’s life. As a result, nothing has been offered pertaining to the mental acuity or personality manifest in his extraordinary creative life. Fortunately, Wayne’s concluding remarks at the aforementioned AAM gathering gives us an important clue:
I conclude these remarks with a quotation that has been of greatest theological influence in my creativity. Louis Pasteur wrote: “The Greeks understood hidden power of things infinite. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language—the word ‘enthusiasm’—en Theos—a God within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a God within and who obeys it. The ideals of art, of science, are lighted by reflections from the infinite.”
My succinct perspective is this: when people perform music together, that enthusiasm within each engenders a community-wide awareness of those reflections of the infinite. The sharing of “a God within” through making music puts us in unison touch with the infinite God, and intensifies our knowledge of and enthusiasm for Him. Collectively, therefore do we embody and live our theology.[14]
Part II—Compositions
Introduction
It’s not known exactly when Wayne began to seriously compose. Following high school we know by his own account that he studied theory with Hugh Price, in addition to piano and organ. Biographical references also state that he did not study composition (or conducting) at Peabody.
We also know that, in addition to his keyboard study, he played the bassoon in his high school band and won a statewide solo competition playing that difficult instrument. Looking back at his body of compositions, it’s clear that he was very effective in writing for wind instruments, significantly more so than is typical of keyboard-centric composers.
Dirksen may have had the occasion to show some of his compositions to well-known composers passing through Washington. We know that he played his organ sonata for Leo Sowerby and Sowerby’s reply was that he could correct or suggest this or that, but that Wayne was advanced to the point that he could fix it for himself. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he was self-taught as a composer—and as a conductor, for that matter.
His earliest surviving manuscript is an ink copy dated June 1941 which is included in the notebook he used for his studies at Peabody. It is a solo setting of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier titled “Benedicite.” Not to be confused with the Prayer Book canticle of the same name (a setting of which he later did compose), it reads:
God’s love and peace be with thee, where
So e’er this soft autumnal air
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair.
The poem continues for twelve more stanzas of three lines each, concluding:
With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
As thou mayst hear and I may say,
I greet thee, dearest, far away!
Wayne sets the complete poem and dedicates it “To Joan,” his high school sweetheart from Freeport, Illinois, who became his wife.
Links to scores and recordings of most of the works mentioned in this article are located on the timeline on the Dirksen Centennial website, together with an interactive account of Dirksen’s many other activities: Timeline | Richard Wayne Dirksen Centenary (rwdirksen.com)
Of particular interest are 1) Wayne’s own annotated catalog of his compositions composed during his tenure at the cathedral, which he compiled in his retirement;[15] 2) Two academic works by Fr. James Moore;[16] and 3) Clark Kimberling’s article in The Hymn.[17]
Characteristics of Dirksen’s Compositions
Dirksen composed some 300 works of great variety of style, for varying forces and occasions, almost evenly divided between sacred and secular. Wayne said in jest that he was an “occasional composer,” meaning that he wrote for a specific event: a commission, a family wedding or funeral, or a cathedral observance or dedication. In fact, Dirksen states that of the many first performances of new compositions that Paul Callaway undertook in his long tenure at the cathedral, half of them were composed by Wayne himself.[18]
It is true that Wayne composed as the result of a need or request, as opposed to some inner muse to compose for the sake of composing. When considering his other performing, teaching, and administrative duties, it is remarkable that he found the time to compose as much as he did. When reviewing the dates of his compositions alongside his biographical timeline, it is easy to recognize those years when he composed less than previous ones, but he did compose regularly throughout his tenure at the cathedral.
In Part I we learn, in Wayne’s own words, the significant impact that the cathedral space itself provided in terms of his own compositional inspiration. The primary impetus for his compositions was indeed the need/ask, and the ever-expanding space of the cathedral as it was being constructed. In fact, in his annotated catalog he began with an aerial picture of the cathedral as it appeared in the 1940s and concluded with a similar aerial shot of the completed cathedral. He literally grew professionally as the cathedral grew physically—a unique position in the history of each.
Speaking in 1998, as he reflected on his life of music at the cathedral, Wayne said:
It has two great powers, music in the Cathedral: the power to instill a mystical quietude with searching intimacy, or the power to overwhelm and shape with emotion – the gamut between the Incarnation and the Resurrection. What a space to occupy with music![19]
In reading others’ essays on Dirksen’s music, or when discussing it in person, inevitably there emerges a list of composers whose works may have inspired Wayne’s compositions, names such as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bartok, Walton, Kurt Weill, or William Mathias. One could argue the relative merits of each of these and add or subtract to the list ad infinitum.
One of Wayne’s “other duties as assigned” was to be the rehearsal accompanist for the Cathedral Choral Society. As such he had a performer’s knowledge of an eclectic cross section of choral repertoire, including a lot of contemporary music by these very composers, plus Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, andBernstein’s Chichester Psalms shortly after each were written. Also included in CCS concerts in the 1950s and early 1960s were significant works of Frederick Delius and Leo Sowerby, and it is interesting to note that Dirksen’s music bears little overt homage to that lineage of musical composition.
On February 26, 2021 the cathedral sponsored an online festival observing the 100th anniversary of Dirksen’s birth. Included was a discussion at which several people spoke, including George Steel, a former Dirksen choirboy who is now the Abrams Curator of Music at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. George later expanded on his thoughts:
One of the lessons I learned early on in my musical training under Wayne Dirksen was that liturgy is theater, and that liturgical music, therefore, is site-specific theater music. (Theologians might quibble, I suppose, that traditional theater is a kind of representation, whereas the liturgy is “the thing itself.” I might argue otherwise.) To my young self, Wayne underscored this idea of liturgy-as-theater, and of the Cathedral as a stage-set in which to enact music dramas of every scale.
The scholarship current in the 1950s posited that Drama in the West was reborn following the Dark Ages out of a simple three-line Easter responsory (the “Quem quaeritis”), which subsequently moved out of churches as it was elaborated into full-fledged theater. Under Wayne’s Precentorship, that evolutionary connection from versicle and response to full operatic exchange was on regular display. Participating in Wayne’s carefully made liturgies, whether simple memorial services or his fully composed liturgical dramas, made clear how thoughtfully he was structuring a series of dramatic events, ever conscious of the emotional and spiritual impact of each gesture: the tolling of the bourdon bell, the sounding of the Trompette-en-Chamade, the juxtaposition of chant (or chant-like music) and through-composed music, a procession, a station, a meditation, a congregational hymn. In liturgy, music is always an action.
Dirksen’s work bore the clear imprint of his fascination with works like Play of Daniel and the York and Chester mystery plays, which were revived mid-century. And he was part of that wave of musicians who responded in kind: Stravinsky, with The Flood and other works; Britten with Noye’s Fludde and his chancel operas, and Menotti’s neo-medieval The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore.
Dirksen went further, writing and staging actual theater works and operas in the Cathedral. In fact, the first opera I ever saw in person, Menotti’s Martin’s Lie, was staged in the Nave under Wayne’s tenure. That production taught me three wonderful things I took (erroneously) to be givens about operas: that they should be new works, they should star choirboys, and they should be staged in Cathedrals. In 1981, when I worked on the revival of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at the Kennedy Center—a work that is literally liturgy-as-theater—I saw further proof of ideas that I had absorbed already from Wayne. Of course, Wayne had played the world premiere of Mass, which had had a seismic effect on him. And, I see now, that through Wayne, I learned some of what he had learned from Mass, before I ever saw it.[20]
There’s a dissertation topic for the taking in a complete theoretical analysis of Dirksen’s works. What follows are but introductory observations:
Wayne’s early song referenced above is simple by comparison with many of his later compositions, even those for solo or unison voices. Still, there are clear early indications of characteristics that would later define his compositional style, such as 1) wanderings into key centers other than so-called closely related keys—and a return to the original key in a comparatively short period of time, 2) predominantly linear writing with memorable melodic content, and 3) an independent keyboard part, or instrumental accompaniment of comparable linear interest.
These three traits are present in most of Dirksen’s works in gradually advancing ways, but the linear unfolding is a dominant compositional trait throughout. Strictly speaking, there’s relatively little formal contrapuntal or fugal writing in most of his works. The vocal canons, by definition, are obvious exceptions. But there is nothing in his music reminiscent of the static, homophonic texture of Lauridson or Pärt that luxuriate in the sound of a prolonged homogenous choral sound, even in his hymns, the best-known of which are in fact unison tunes with accompaniment.
In general Dirksen’s music is characterized by mixed meters, which bring about lively or “sprung” jaunty melodies, such as the Benedicite omnia opera from The Fiery Furnace or Hilariter, or to notate a flowing chant-like tune such as Innisfree Farm.
Regarding harmony, key centers tend to be audacious in the juxtaposition of distantly related material which reverts back to the original point of origin very quickly. This is particularly obvious in most of his hymn tunes. Modal influences and other non-diatonic pitch sets, such as the octatonic scale, are also common.
Dynamics tend to be wide ranging with sharp contrasts, especially so when accompanied by instruments and percussion, and climaxes are punctuated and released effectively, and often several times in sequence before the obvious main climax. In terms of form, common elements are strophic chorus/verse, classic ternary and rondo, and dance forms such as the Sarabande and Galliard.
In terms of instrumentation it is clear that Dirksen is skilled at writing for wind instruments, particularly woodwinds, which is not surprising given his early mastery of the bassoon. Individual independent linear lines dominate the texture. Even in his choral works with organ accompaniment, the organ part often bears more resemblance to instrumental writing, as opposed to a keyboard-centric texture. As a result they are often quite difficult and performances assume the services of a skilled organist.
Brass fanfares, both as stand-alone pieces and as introductory passages to other works, are almost ubiquitous and are clearly a response to the cathedral space itself.
A unique and fairly consistent characteristic of Dirksen’s instrumentation is the use of bells. In Part I Wayne’s involvement in the procurement of the cathedral’s bells—the ten-bell ring and the carillon—is described. The cathedral also had a set of Whitechapel handbells duplicating the pitches of the ten-bell ring in the tower, diatonic D major, D-F#. These were ostensibly for the purpose of practicing change ringing, but they were kept in the choir room and often saw use in Wayne’s compositions, and in the changes that accompanied the singing of plainsong psalms in procession.
In addition to calling for actual bells in his instrumentation, he also used change patterns melodically in some of his pieces, such as the conclusion of Sing Ye Faithful, which quotes the Queen’s Change as a prominent backdrop to the concluding main theme. His 1950 organ sonata includes bell-like gestures, long before the cathedral bells arrived.
The Great Choir before the installation of the choir stalls
An Overview of Dirksen’s Compositions
What follows are logical “chapters” in Dirksen’s compositional life, which are marked by actual events in the construction of the cathedral.
1942 Beginnings
When Wayne arrived the main worship space of the cathedral was the Great Choir, Sanctuary, and High Altar. Initially a temporary chancel had been set up in the sanctuary and individual chairs were arranged in the Choir facing the altar. By 1942 the choir stalls had been built, but the marble floor was yet to arrive. The North Transept was complete and there was enough of a Crossing to connect it to the choir, but its roof had not yet risen to the level of the vaults.
Robert Quade, who studied with Paul Callaway from 1947-1952, remembers the edifice:
Several hours alone in the mysterious beauty of stone and carved wood would bring supreme thrills. Metal ceiling to the Crossing, no bays to a Nave, and the South Transept was under construction! The plastic coverings of the South Transept windows would often allow sweet doves to enter and fly about the Great Choir. Only once, as I was leaving, did a feathered fowl alight on my shoulder—I remember wondering about the symbolism![21]
One of Dirksen’s most enduring anthems was written during this time frame, his well-known setting of the Easter Canticle Christ Our Passover. In Wayne’s annotated catalog he lists this anthem as coming from the 1960s, and that is indeed when it was published. It was actually sung for the first time as the Gradual at the 11:00 service on Easter Day 1948.
It is interesting to contrast this epic anthem with Dirksen’s 1950 compositions for “Faith of Our Fathers,” the outdoor drama produced by Paul Green for the opening of the Carter Baron Amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park. They are each vivid and dramatic, but one was obviously intended for sacred use, and the other, secular. Chanticleer was composed for the Christmas Day broadcast in 1950.
Dirksen’s first commission was in 1954 resulting in the anthem For this Cause; the Canons on Psalm 101 followed. One of his most popular works, the Christmas Carol A Child My Choice, followed in 1955.
1957 50th Anniversary of the Laying of the Foundation Stone
Welcome All Wonders and Yet even now saith the Lord was written for the occasion. In 1958 Wayne wrote his oratorio, Jonah, for the schools’ glee clubs and orchestra, combining elements of the Biblical story and Melville’s Moby Dick in a libretto by Day Thorpe, who was the music critic of the Evening Star newspaper, and who (along with Paul Callaway) was a founder of the Opera Society of Washington (now the Washington National Opera). Jonah was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Hilariter followed in 1960.
1962 Dedication of the South Transept and 1964 Dedication of the Tower
It’s hard to imagine the visual and sonic impact that the opening of the South Transept had on theinterior space of the cathedral. For the first time one could stand in the crossing and the vistas to the North, South, and East would look as they do today.
For this occasion Wayne composed his cantata The Fiery Furnace with the intent that the full interior space of the cathedral be used. In his annotated catalog he devotes almost two full pages to describing the work, the forces required to perform it, and the dedicatory service itself. During the prelude the full 200 voices of the Cathedral Choral Society processed to the eastward bays of the Great Choir, and the 100 voices of the combined glee clubs of St. Albans School and National Cathedral School for Girls processed to the North Transept Gallery. During the opening hymn the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys and clergy officiants processed to their normal place in the Great Choir for the office of Evensong.
Following Evensong and the sermon by the Dean of Coventry Cathedral, the cathedral choir and clergy formed a procession and made their way to three stations for prayers and responses, following which the cathedral choir, directed by Paul Callaway, made its way to the new South Transept gallery. Wayne picks up the account in his annotated catalog:
Three powerful unison trumpet calls sounded in the North balcony and were immediately echoed by an orchestral statement in the South. The reverberation was gathered up in a powerful organ chord that fired off the two hundred voices of the Cathedral Choral Society singing “Nebuchadnezzar the King made an image of gold!” It was instantly heard that the opening of the South Transept space had made a dramatic and beautiful increase in the acoustical dimension of the cathedral.[22]
This work uniquely displays Dirksen’s compositional raison d’etre—occasion and the cathedral edifice. Probably more than any of his compositions, The Fiery Furnace is in fact building specific, although Ronald Arnatt did mount a performance of it in the Art Museum of St. Louis for the triennial convention of the Episcopal Church in 1964. To mark the 50th anniversary of the South Transept in 2012 Jeremy Filsell directed a complete performance with Cathedral Voices, a volunteer group that included some members of the cathedral choir, with the accompaniment provided by organist Scott Dettra. The Benedicite omnia opera Domine from it has been excerpted a few times, including for the 1964 dedication of the central tower, and later on the occasion of the dedication of the Pilgrim Observation Gallery.
I have a personal reminiscence of this work. My parents moved to Washington in 1959 when I was six years old. In the ensuing years they took me regularly to the usual sightseeing venues and I vividly recall one Saturday afternoon we went to the cathedral. There was lots of music going on. Security and crowd control wasn’t what it is today, and we wandered up into the South Transept gallery where a group of singers and some instrumentalists were rehearsing, led by this small but imposing man who kept going over and over a spot featuring just the tambourine.
Many years later I realized we had stumbled on the dress rehearsal of The Fiery Furnace at the very spot where the Benedicite omnia opera begins, and the small man conducting was none other than Paul Callaway. For the performance Wayne Dirksen directed the schools’ glee clubs in the North Transept, and Norman Scribner directed the Cathedral Choral Society in the Great Choir, and Ronald Rice played the organ for the service . . . and for The Fiery Furnace . . . and the solo organ recital that followed!
To observe the nation’s 200th birthday and the completion of the Nave, the cathedral mounted twenty-eight special events over an 18-month period, all under the imprimatur Festival ’76. These included separate large-scale services observing the cathedral’s local, diocesan, national, and international roles, including a service on July 8 in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, and President and Mrs. Ford.
Wayne had administrative and programmatic oversight over the entire Festival ’76. In addition to that, for the Summer Festival that year he composed music for The Ballad of Dr. Faustus, an original production of Christopher Marlowe’s “The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus.” The work was produced by Ted Walsh and his Shakespeare & Co. in the Crossing of the Cathedral for five performances, August 4-8, 1976.
The years following the Bicentennial until the completion of the cathedral were some of Wayne’s least productive in terms of composition—there simply was no time. Following the retirement of Paul Callaway in 1977, Wayne assumed the position of Organist and Choirmaster, and Precentor. Directing the daily choir rehearsals, playing the organ, and administering the entire worship department of the cathedral was a herculean task in itself.
Also, following the construction expense to complete the Nave and the costs associated with Festival ’76, the cathedral was broke. Staff was cut, and those remaining did double, and triple duty as needed. There weren’t many festival services, and even the Consecration in 1990, though entirely appropriate to the occasion, was scaled down by comparison with Festival ’76.
Notable among Wayne’s compositions during this time are those occasioned by the new prayer book and new hymnal of the Episcopal Church. For the Hymnal 1982 Wayne is represented with six hymn tunes, including Innisfree Farm and Vineyard Haven, the latter usually being included in a list of the most important hymn tunes of the 20th Century. Fr. Moore’s article[23] on Dirksen’s hymn tunes provides in-depth commentary on each of his 30 tunes, including accounts of what did and what did not make it into the hymnal and, most interestingly, what almost didn’t make it! There’s also a humorous account of the family cat figuring into the tune name of one of them.
David Schaap and Selah Publishing are preparing a Dirksen Hymnary containing his unpublished hymn tunes to texts old and new for release later this year.
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer provided for three additional canticles appointed for Morning or Evening Prayer, collectively known as the “Three Songs of Isaiah.” Wayne composed anthem settings for each of them which are of particular effectiveness. They were composed for the choir of St. Thomas Church, New York, to sing at a service in the cathedral for the 1982 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists. It is unfortunate that these settings are not more widely known, probably owing to the fact that Morning Prayer is seldom sung, and the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis seem to be the preferred canticles at Evensong—plus the fact that they are very challenging. Apart from their liturgical use in the daily office, they are outstanding stand-alone anthems which are especially appropriate for the Epiphany season.
Other Works
Sacred Liturgical Dramas: These include several works on Biblical themes intended for use with the two schools in seasonal services and other events at the cathedral. The earliest is “A Christmas Service” from 1951, and the last, The Raising of Lazarus, is dated 1976. They are all on a par with the similar church dramas by Menotti or Britten.
Instrumental and Organ: Dirksen wrote relatively little for his chosen instrument. The “Chorale Prelude on Urbs beata” dates from 1948 and was published by Novello in 1965, Cantilena, the middle movement of his Sonata for Organ, was published by H. W. Gray, and The King of Love hymn prelude was published by E. C. Schirmer in 1995.
Tom Sheehan, the present cathedral organist, has performed and recorded from manuscript the final movement of the 1951 Sonata, and “Much Ado About Nothing—An Overture for Organ” on the cathedral’s YouTube channel. The latter is based on a recorded improvisation based on themes Wayne composed in 1973 for a production of the Shakespeare play in the new theater at St. Albans. Wayne says “Two songs and some incidental music had been written, and upon those sketches I based the overture, improvising with the tape recorder on. It was ‘composed’ in 1992 when putting the songs into computer-engraving.”[24]
Other instrumental works include the Sonata for Clarinet, Strings and Piano; works for various combinations of brass instruments with and without timpani; a suite for organ, trumpet, and handbells; various combinations of works involving harpsichord, guitar, handbells, and various percussion instruments.
Dirksen’s two most significant orchestral works are the symphonic suite created for “Faith of Our Fathers” and a work titled “The American Adventure,” a 38-minute orchestral score composed for a new theatrical production occasioned by the Bicentennial in 1976, which was recorded by professional musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra and replayed at two new, small theaters outfitted with quadraphonic sound and wide screens upon which were projected slides and some motion picture film. “By means of this communications system the history of America was vividly unfolded.”[25]
Works for the Theater: It’s a shame to leave this category to last. It fully deserves a detailed chapter of its own. In studying and playing them we get a glimpse of what Dirksen might have produced in large quantities had he gone to Broadway after the war, instead of returning to the cathedral.
I assume that Wayne played lots of secular music in his high school band, and we know he was a DJ on the campus radio station at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was stationed during the war, where he must have known the popular tunes of the day. He and his team’s offerings were of sufficient interest to have been the subject of the aforementioned story by Meyer Berger published in the New York Times Magazine on December 5, 1943.
Wayne’s most significant works in this genre are in the form of operettas performed each spring at the schools. They are each stylish, full of attractive, memorable melodies, and sophisticated dialog. They were accompanied by Wayne’s brilliant, largely improvised, piano accompaniments. For those directing high school glee clubs, they are well worth considering instead of taking the path of least resistance with yet another Gilbert & Sullivan offering.
Last Works: Wayne was known to have said of his 1995 anthem Sing Ye Faithful, that it was the best he’d ever written. His final work was a setting of the Te Deum, commissioned by Bruce Neswick for the 200th anniversary of Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky in 1996. Each of these works were written shortly after the death of his beloved wife, Joan, and are memorials to her. The conclusion of the Te Deum even includes a quote from a previous anthem, Father In Thy Gracious Keeping, a memorial anthem written for a cathedral colleague, which was also sung at Joan’s memorial service.
It’s difficult to summarize or draw to a close these thoughts on the extraordinarily creative life and works of Richard Wayne Dirksen. The Very Rev’d Frances Bowes Sayre, Jr, Dean of the
Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington from 1951-1978, with whom Wayne worked so closely, provides two fitting benedictions. The first is from a profile in 1967, when Wayne says:
The Dean phrased it beautifully when I was going through my adjustment period after I stopped working regularly in the music department. (It’s hard when you’ve played the organ for services every Sunday since you were 13 and then you wake up one Sunday and no one needs you!) But the Dean said, “Don’t worry, Wayne, I’m going to give you an organ to play on bigger than any choir or choral society or orchestra you’ve ever had. It’s going to be yours to use, to play on. I trust you.” And he has kept his word.[26]
And, finally, following the success of the tower dedication as Wayne set aside his duties as associate organist and choirmaster, Dean Sayre offered what may well be the most fitting summary of all:
“No man ever wore Joseph’s coat with more imagination than this man of creative devotion.”[27]
Additional Photographs
From a cathedral guide book showing Wayne at the console of the 1938 Ernest M. Skinner & Son organ.
Richard Watson Dirksen, Wayne’s father, in 1956
Wallace Mann was the principal flutist of the National Symphony Orchestra, with whom RWD collaborated in concerts at the Phillips Collection.
L-R Paul Callaway, Richard Dirksen, the Very Rev’d Francis B. Sayre, Jr., and another cathedral canon with likenesses of bosses carved in the central tower.
RWD at a rehearsal of the glee club of the National Cathedral School for Girls
Receiving an Emmy in 1975 for a televised service of Lessons and Carols sung by the combined Glee Clubs of the National Cathedral School and St. Albans School
Wayne’s father fabricated the cabinetry and designed the cathedral’s movable organ, which was built by Reuter.
Paul Callaway in 1975, at the portative organ built by Wayne’s father. (Photo by Morton Broffman)
RWD with Leo Sowerby and Gerald Knight, Ascension Day 1964
With Paul Callaway and Dean Sayre, 1977
Neal Campbell is the organist of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach, Florida, following full-time positions in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia, where he was for ten years on the adjunct faculty of the University of Richmond.
He grew up in Washington and studied organ with William Watkins and Paul Callaway. He attended the University of Maryland where he studied piano with Roy Hamlin Johnson, sang in the University Chorus, and studied choral conducting with Paul Traver.
He earned graduate and undergraduate degrees from Manhattan School of Music studying with several leading organists in New York, including Frederick Swann, John Walker, James Litton, McNeil Robinson, Eugenia Earle, Arthur Lawrence, and Alec Wyton. He earned the D.M.A. degree in 1996 and wrote his dissertation on the life and works of New York composer-organist Harold Friedell, and he recorded an album of Friedell’s music which appeared on the Pro Organo label.
He was for six years the editor of the Newsletter of the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and he has written articles published in The Diapason, the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, The American Organist, and the Musical Heritage Review. His research interests include New York City musical history, Aeolian-Skinner organs, and other historical topics relating to church music and organs of the recent past. He is currently working on a project about church music in Harlem in the first half of the 20th Century.
[9] Richard Shaw (Rick) Dirksen, telephone conversation with Neal Campbell, March 15, 2021.
[10] By long-standing tradition the school does not use an apostrophe in its name.
[11] Steven E. Hendricks. “The Washington Cathedral Boy Choir: Musical, Spiritual, and Academic Training of Choristers Through the 20th Century.” DMA diss., Ball State University, 2003. Based on an interview with RWD, 18 May 1999.
[12] RWD profile in The Cathedral Age, Fall, 1967.
[13] The Very Rev’d Francis B. Sayre, Jr. to the Rev’d Benjamin Minifie, Feb. 8, 1960, in the Dirksen Archive of Washington National Cathedral.
[14] Richard Dirksen, Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, September 2003, 12.
[15] “The Music of Richard Wayne Dirksen Composed at the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Washington in the District of Columbia, Annotated Catalog 1948-1993.” Archived at RWD-Catalog-Complete.pdf (rwdirksen.com) accessed April 22, 2021.
[16] Fr. James Junípero Moore, O. P., “An American Tradition: The Sacred and Secular Music of Richard Wayne Dirksen.” Draft manuscript, unpublished, 2015. Archived at Moore-An-American-Tradition-Music-of-RWD.pdf (rwdirksen.com) accessed April 22, 2021. “Rejoice Give Thanks and Sing! The Complete Hymns of Richard Wayne Dirksen (1921-2003)—Scores and Commentary.” Catholic University of America, 2021. Archived at Moore-2012-Hymn-dissertation.pdf (rwdirksen.com) accessed April 22, 2021.
Stuart Grizzard was the sort minister that has almost disappeared from the religious landscape of the early 21st century, and really has entirely disappeared from the Southern Baptist Convention. The blurb, written by his daughter, on the dust jacket of his memoirs published privately in about 1991 describes him as
“active in the Southern Baptist Convention and in the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. He was an evangelical, with a world view and an ecumenical perspective. The social dimensions of faith were deeply significant to him, and he took a stand for racial justice at a time when many pastors were silent. Years ago he became a champion of the right of women to be in ministry.”
Since I was a teenager when I served as the organist of his church, the subtleties of that description weren’t obvious to me at the time, but this describes him well as I remember him 50-plus years later. On a personal level I remember his friendship and his love of music and dignity in worship.
Dr. Grizzard was well-educated, even learnèd, but not scholarly or overtly erudite. He was from Orange, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Richmond and Crozer Seminary in Pennsylvania. Prior to National Baptist, from which he retired in 1978, he held pastorates in Orange, Norfolk and Richmond. He was friendly and easily approachable, but never glad handing or cheesy. He was a truly gifted orator, but had no idea of what it might mean to be media savvy. He spoke with the conviction and authority inherent in the subject of his discourse, not because of his own self-importance. He was a part of an era of free-thinking Baptists that also produced more famous southern preachers such as Carlyle Marney, Edward Hughes Pruden, Clarence Cranford, and Vernon Richardson, each of whom Stuart knew and counted as friends and colleagues. And, like them, his leading of public worship was of a style that evoked classical dignity in its ordering. There were no gimmicks; it was church. It was to be approached with awe—with “fear and trembling.”
My most vivid memory of Dr. Grizzard is of him in the pulpit. During services when it was time for the sermon, the house lights were dimmed slightly and he read the appointed scripture from a large Bible on the pulpit, which was front and center on the rostrum—central, but not overwhelming or imposing. When he finished the reading, he closed the large volume with an audible thump, turned off the reading light, and preached without notes for fifteen or twenty riveting minutes—not especially long by Baptist standards.
Many years later I found out from reading his memoirs that in fact he prepared his sermons carefully with painstaking study and thought. He wrote them out either in longhand or, when he had the services of a secretary, they were typed. He then memorized them and delivered them without manuscript in such a way that if you didn’t know it (as indeed I did not at the time) you might think he was speaking extemporaneously.
Stuart Grizzard was the pastor of Washington’s National Baptist Memorial Church from 1964-1978, of which church I was the organist for slightly over a year from 1969-1970 when I was in high school. I didn’t exactly report to him in my work; my boss was the choir director, John Bigbee, who was also the baritone soloist of the church. John had a pleasant voice in a slightly over-the-hill sort of way. I’ve never known if he was trained to be a professional singer. But he did sing for various organizations around town and was entirely suited to his position at the church. Some years previous he had been the bass-baritone soloist among the quartet at the church, and somewhere along the way became choir director as well. I still remember when the choir sang the trio and chorus The Heavens Are Telling from Haydn’s Creation, John would direct the choir, then when it came time for the trio to sing “the day that is coming” he would simply turn around, face the congregation to sing the trio, then turn back to the choir and more or less cue them when it was time for their entrance, which overlapped with the conclusion of the trio.
That episode epitomizes the casual, amateur approach to music making at the time, which was a slight contrast to the otherwise formal and dignified conduct of worship, which was typical of the prosperous era to which this congregation now found themselves in the twilight . . . which probably also explains why they were willing to entrust the position of church organist to a 16-year-old high school student. There were regular services on Wednesday evening, Sunday morning, and Sunday afternoon or evening. During my first weeks there was a 5:00 Sunday afternoon service. It consisted of some hymns, a solo, and a brief, less weighty form of sermon titled simply “Message.” At some point in the service—probably after the pastoral prayer—I was required to play one stanza of “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind,” (the Maker tune) on the chimes, which for some electro-technical reason would only play if the cross over the choir loft was turned on, and the only way to turn it on was from a switch in the stairwell I took to get to the organ console. It was therefore solely by my action that this important task could be accomplished.
The afternoon services weren’t well attended and at some point soon into my tenure the church experimented with other sorts of early afternoon happenings following lunch in the church hall, including a series of “Focus Groups.” I even led one of them on “Contemporary Trends in Church Music,” about which I knew absolutely nothing. What I did know was that Washington Cathedral had recently completed the building of the central Gloria in Excelsis tower, which event was covered widely in the local press, and there was much music commissioned expressly for the dedicatory celebrations by living composers such as Leo Sowerby, Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem, John LaMontaine, Stanley Hollingsworth, and Roy Hamlin Johnson —contemporary music in its definitive textbook definition by my reckoning. An impressive album of LP recordings and an authoritative book containing the orders of service and copies of all the music commissioned for the occasion was available from the local Takoma Park library, which I seem to have checked out in perpetuity.
So this “focus group” gathered around some sort of record player in the choir room and I took them through some of the newly commissioned compositions such as Lift up your heads great gates and sing by Ned Rorem, and a setting of the Prayer Book canticle Benedicite omnia opera by Richard Dirksen. Each of these new compositions was written with the intent of being performed outdoors along the area of the south transept of the cathedral with the new tower illuminated behind and above the “stage” set up at the top of those steps leading down to the statue of George Washington. In particular, I remember the class was impressed with Dirksen’s Benedicite omnia opera, as it employed lots of woodwinds instead of the usual brass for outdoor accompaniment. That, plus the concept of every living thing, and even inanimate objects such as hail and snow, praising the Lord, as enumerated in the text of the prayer book canticle . . . all this made a favorable impression on my appreciative audience as they were being presented with my version of new trends in church music.
Dr. Grizzard attended my class, as he did everything offered in the name of the church. I’m totally unaware of what he might have been like around the office on a daily basis as a manager or “head of staff” as some places now style their spiritual leaders. I suspect he was of the same type as Marney and his other colleagues I previously mentioned, who were known to let others on their staff do their respective administrative and secretarial ministries. His concentrations, from all I could gather, were on study, sermon preparation, writing, and visiting. I know that while I was there the church hired a third full-time clergyman whose title was Minister of Administration; John Bigbee selected the hymns and seemed to have total control of the music of the church. But, Dr. Grizzard was as big presence, though I doubt anyone would call him a micro-manager. For the few social things I attended, like church luncheons or suppers, he was always there. His was not a secluded ivory tower existence.
John Bigbee had a secular job as manager, maybe even owner, of a printing company in Washington. The only reason I know this was that his outfit printed the weekly church bulletins and orders of service. So, I saw John only on Sundays, because he was there only on Sundays! I was in high school, and had a fair amount of control over my schedule by that point, and had already established myself as a young church musician with a clear and advancing path ahead of me, and I actually spent quite a bit of time around the church practicing after school hours on weekdays, and almost all afternoon each Saturday preparing for the service on Sunday. At my request, I even had an office at the church which had recently been vacated by the director of some ancillary counseling service that had vacated the premises. It was on the second floor, Columbia Road side of the church near the entrance to the gallery. It had a couple of nice slender windows, one of which looked down Columbia Road toward Sixteenth Street with a view of the impressive Mormon chapel across the street. Dr. Grizzard’s office was directly next to mine and in the typical goings and comings, we actually saw a lot of each other—usually just brief hallway chats about things, my studies and musical activity.
I do remember once being in his office, which was spacious and comfortable. On his desk was a large cigar still unopened in its wrapper. It may have been the first time it occurred to me that a man of the cloth might indulge in such worldly pleasures. Stuart confesses in his memoirs, which he wrote as he approached retirement, that he did indeed enjoy an occasional cigar or cigarette, but said he was thankful not to be a slave to tobacco. I don’t think it was uncommon in that era, especially among clergy from the south. A friend who went to Baylor University remembers that when Carlyle Marney came for a campus series of lectures he always smoked a cigar openly. An unusually devout and precocious young man came up to him and questioned its appropriateness and Marney retorted contemptuously “grow up kid! Haven’t you got anything else to worry about.”
National Baptist is located at a prominent site on Sixteenth Street, just north of Meridian Hill Park at the confluence of the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights, Adams-Morgan, and Mount Pleasant. Its architect, Edgerton Swartwout, formerly of the McKim, Mead & White atelier, designed an imposing tower taking advantage of the triangular site at the top of Meridian Hill created by the gradual incline of Sixteenth Street as it works its way north. As a result of this site location and the architecture of the surrounding area, it is every bit the equal of the more prosperous neighborhoods of Embassy Row or Dupont Circle. At one time I believe it was even planned for Sixteenth Street to be named something more descriptive than its generic numeric appellation. It is a long wide avenue stretching directly north of the White House all the way to the Maryland state line in Silver Spring, and there are many churches of varying denominations, and one or two synagogues along the complete length of the thoroughfare. At Columbia Road, the center of Columbia Heights, there are three churches of significant, prominent architectural interest with spires or towers to match: All Souls Unitarian Church, the former Washington Mormon Chapel (now the Unification Church), and National Baptist. At Meridian Hill Park, just south of Columbia Road, Sixteenth Street takes a dramatic downward incline all the way to the White House. In fact, Meridian Hill Park itself it characterized by an upper park at level grade, and a lower park featuring a fountain feeding into a series of pools descending down the hillside.
Sixteenth Street stretching north from Lafayette Square in front of the White House. National Baptist Memorial Church is visible on the right after 16th Street passes Meridian Hill Park.
Likewise, the drive from the Maryland state line to Columbia Road is also slightlydownhill. Driving south from our home in Takoma Park, as I did regularly, one can see the three towers at Columbia Road rather prominently on the horizon. In the neighborhood of National Baptist there are apartment houses of significant architectural proportions and several embassies, including those of Spain, Mexico, Italy, and some of the smaller African nations.
National Baptist was founded in 1906 as Immanuel Baptist Church and assumed the present name when it was decided to build a new national church in Washington sponsored by both American and Southern Baptists as a memorial to Roger Williams and religious liberty. President Warren G. Harding broke ground in 1921, and the cornerstone was laid by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes the following year.
Swartwout’s design placed seating for the main portion of the congregation under a large circular rotunda. When combined with additional space from the original church, it provided a combined seating for some 1,100 persons. There was a large partition which could be drawn to separate the seating under the dome from that of the original church, which created a smaller seating area when desired. This was the standard configuration for services by the time I arrived, but on the few occasions when the entire area was open it was an impressive space.
The organ was Austin’s Opus 1403 containing 42 ranks spread over three manual and pedal divisions, and was built in 1923 for the new church. It was installed in the lower portion of the tower directly above the choir loft. There was nothing especially distinguishing about the sound, but it provided a good variety of stops and was fairly complete. It was my main practice instrument and I learned lots of repertoire on it as I continued my studies with William Watkins and prepared for various student recitals and competitions. Also, preparing the accompaniments for the various anthems, oratorios, and solos required lots of practice time. In a holdover from the past tradition the church employed a quartet of soloists, some of whom were quite good and were generally on the choral scene in Washington. The typical drill on Sunday morning was for there to be a solo and a choral anthem at each service, in addition to hymns and some choral responses. The choir also presented an oratorio once or twice a year and it was here that I first learned Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, and portions of Elijah by Mendelssohn. The organ suited these accompaniments well. Once or twice I had my lessons at the church if I were preparing something special, but by this time figuring out the layout and use of a moderately large organ was not a foreign task for me, and I played as much repertoire as I could for services.
National Baptist Memorial Church on the left at 16th Street and Columbia Road, N.W., All Souls Unitarian Church on the same side of 16th Street at Harvard Street, and the Washington Mormon Chapel, the white marble structure in the foreground.
At 18th Street and Columbia Road, two longish blocks from the church was a bustling neighborhood center that later became known as Adams-Morgan. I would occasionally walk down there from the church to get coffee or lunch, or go to the People’s Drug Store. In the same neighborhood was Gartenhaus Firs, Avignone Frères Catering and Dining establishment, a local branch of Riggs National Bank, and the rather imposing First Church of Christ, Scientist. To a high schooler such as myself, it really did feel big time. I’d just gotten my driver’s license and drove to the church on Sundays, but during the week when traffic was heavier and parking space rare, I would frequently take the bus from Takoma, transferring somewhere around Petworth to get over to the church and would explore the neighborhood during practice breaks.
The reasons for these neighborhoods’ slow decline are many, and are far beyond this the scope of this remembrance, but a cursory understanding of the scene helps describe something of the remarkable ministry of Dr. Grizzard at that critical juncture in the history the church and the city. For a 16-year-old it was all quite heady and was my first serious foray into church life, and I felt that I was a central participant in it all. The congregation may have already seen its glory days, but there is no doubt that the riots of 1968 following the death of Martin Luther King cemented its fate for many years to come. On Good Friday 1969 when I played for the three-hour service many people recalled the vivid memory of the previous year when the service was cut short as the riots were fully underway a block away on 14th Street.
Fourteenth Street and Park Road, N.W., one of the centers of the 1968 riots. The spires of the three churches at 16th Street and Columbia Road are on the upper right.
One Sunday morning in October 1969 National Baptist was visited by representatives of the Black United Front of Washington demanding reparations from the church. I was generally unaware of the political ramifications of race relations at the time, although I vividly remember the rioting following the assassination of Dr. King and the resulting general unrest throughout the nation. National Baptist was well represented by both Afro-Americans and Africans and other foreign nationals attached to the nearby embassies and everyone seemed to get along just fine. Of course the memory of the previous years’ riots and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 were still very fresh, as were the physical manifestations of the riots in our immediate neighborhood.
Quoted in John Wann’s history of the church Dr. Grizzard said “One of our most growing experiences was the confrontation with the Black United Front and their demand for $250,000 in reparations in October of 1969.” The previous May an incident at The Riverside Church in New York made the news. James Foreman invaded the morning service making demands which not only interrupted the service, but actually ended it in chaos immediately after the opening hymn. I’ve never known if the incident in New York inspired the local representatives of the Black United Front, but it was very much on Dr. Grizzard’s mind.
Before the service he came up to the organ loft and told me that he was not going to let the service end in chaos as it had at Riverside. He instructed me to, if things got out of hand, play a hymn as loudly as I could until either he gained control of the service or everyone left while I played. He specified which hymn I was to play, and I wish I could recall what it was—something familiar and strong like “The church’s one foundation” I suspect. In the end it was not necessary, and I remember being both disappointed and relieved! The representatives of the BUF said they came in peace, and their actions bore that out. They had their say, remained for the rest of the service, and visited at lunch afterward. But I’ve never forgotten the tension the incident induced in me. That it mirrored a prominent recent incident at the famous New York church made me feel like a very central participant in weighty matters, which in a way I was, and so was the church.
In closing, it’s worth recounting in full Dr. Grizzard’s reply to the representatives of the Black United Front. The full text appears in John Wann’s history of National Baptist Memorial Church, and was also entered into the Congressional Record of the House of Representatives by the Hon. Joel T. Broyhill on Thursday, October 30, 1969. Dr. Grizzard resided in Broyhill’s congressional district.
Reparations, Restitution and Repentance—October 19, 1969(read by Dr. R. Stuart Grizzard)
II Corinthians 5:17—If any man be in Christ he is a new creature . . . all things are become new. Revelation 21:5—Behold, I make all things new.
Introduction
Since the Black United Front has come to us and presented these demands for what they call reparations, it seems fitting that I, as Pastor, should make some reply to them.
We do appreciate the fact that they told us they were coming and that last Sunday, when they wanted to come, they were considerate enough to postpone their coming because we had a service of ordination for Mark Tracy, which involved six ministers, and it would have lengthened that already long service unnecessarily.
In time of revolutions, as in war, the first casualty is truth. Revolution has a logic of its own but common sense, objectivity, reasonableness, is turned aside for passionate emotion, confrontation and chance, whether it is purposeful or not. The voice of moderate progressiveness, which tries to keep the fabric of life from being torn apart during change is not heard. Yet, I will be heard on this for I know that ultimately it is the voice of reason that will prevail.
I quite understand the emergency of black nationalism. It is a needed corrective for the intransigence of a stubborn racism that is inflexible in granting simple human rights to people. But that kind of separation will only result in a polarization of society, which will continue animosity that will perpetuate hostility forever. We are going to have to learn to accept one another and live with one another with mutual respect.
Evidently we have been selected because we are designated as the National Baptist Church and, therefore, representative of all Baptists. Perhaps through us you hope to reach other Baptists. We are not the oldest, richest, largest or most Caucasian of all Baptist churches as I shall show in the course of these remarks.
A Baptist church, in structure, is a democracy. I cannot speak for the church. I can only speak to it. This obtains not only for this occasion but for all. What I am to say does not officially represent a reply by this church or by Baptists. It does represent the deep feeling of my own heart, given after prayer and study. The demands, as presented, will be received and acted upon by the church itself at a later meeting.
Evidently, those who composed these demands know little of this particular church. I would not, for anything, defend the past history of prejudice or inequities on the part of the white majority in this country in its relationship with ethnic minorities. It is writ in a record of shame that brings blushes to the cheek, and in this record the Church of Christ has not acquitted itself too well in trying to right these wrongs. Let it be said, however, that always there were those, laymen and ministers, who did speak out against the evils of racism and slavery. But these voices and examples were not heeded.
The indictments brought here today are not always correct as far as this church is concerned. A candor and sense of fairness makes it necessary to set the record straight.
I do not want to be misunderstood in this. Our church is by no means perfect in its adjustments to these revolutionary days. We have done a great deal but what we have done and are endeavoring to do should be set forth.
I fully realize that we are just beginning to get ready, to commence, to start. Most respectfully, I ask that you know of what we have done and are doing.
1. We are an open, inner city church.
We have, for more than 7 years, gladly received all who will come into our fellowship and qualify for membership in our church, without concern for racial, cultural or national background. Our only concern is that they accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and pledge to serve Him as Lord of Life. Not only are there scores of black children in our Sunday School, there are about 100 people who are internationals from all over the world who have affiliated with our church. At least half of the people who now join our church are black. Many of thee are now assuming places of leadership and responsibility. If you look around you today you will see that approximately one-third of this congregation is black. Here are some of the community involvements of our church.
a. The Columbia Heights Church Community Project.
This is a structure of community churches to do community work in which we have put about $15,000 in the past four years. For three years the director of it was a black woman of great charm, accomplishment, education and compassion. This project has concerned itself with clothing distribution, push-cart Bible program, teenage clubs, tiny tot clubs, and a day care center which meets in our church. During the riots in 1968, along with other churches of this area in the project, we attempted to alleviate suffering through the providing of food, clothing and housing.
During the Poor People’s Campaign we made available a part of our property as a registration center and groups within the church ministered to the needs of the poor people.
b. The five houses in the next block were purchased for the purpose of doing community work and the hope that we could upgrade the community.
c. Recently, part of our reserve money was placed in the Change Credit Union, a black-owned and operated institution to provide blacks with business opportunities and capital.
d. The church will consider soon our participation with responsible groups in the rebuilding of our burned out area.
e. Last summer, two members of the staff of this church, one part-time and one full-time, were black ministerial students.
Of course we have not done enough to minister in these difficult days. But we are open and we are earnestly trying to be relevant to our situation in the name and spirit of Christ.
2. Reparations is not a Christian concept.
It is a legalism which is antithetical to the teaching of Christ. It seems to say that the payment of money can make right the past. I must repudiate this concept because it becomes ridiculous in application.
If all the injustices of past centuries are to be dealt with in this way, we will never settle the score. Should the descendants of the Indians, who reputedly sold the island of Manhattan to the Dutch for a measly $24.00, be properly compensated now? Shall the descendants of all the Union soldiers who were killed in the Civil War, fighting to free the slaves, be remunerated now? Shall women, white and black, until recently the most discriminated against group in society, be paid for their generations of servitude as the minions of man? I do not think this can be done.
If you are going to play this game, I have what seems to me to be a just complaint. My saintly father, the latches of whose shoes I am not worthy to unlace, preached for 40 years for Baptists in Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana. Early in his sixties he had a stroke and was never able to function very well after that. There was no provision for his retirement, disability or support. I was forced to leave this city, interrupt my education, go home, work in the cotton mills in Danville, Virginia, and on an ice truck to support the family. This I was glad to do, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. Baptists should have provided for that contingency. They could have and should have.
Reparations never catch up with injury. It cannot by its nature do so, and it heals nothing.
3. Restitution is a Christion concept.
In this, by requesting and granting of forgiveness, relationships are healed and one tries to make up to the injured for wrongs done him. This is accomplished by love, sympathy, and perhaps by material things, too. It is done to the person wronged and not to his descendants.
4. Repentance is a Christian concept.
In fact, this is the beginning of forgiveness. One is genuinely sorry for his sins, for his acts that were wrong, for his hateful attitudes. In genuine contrition he turns from them, asks forgiveness of God and the people he has wronged. It is God’s grace that makes it possible for there to be healing and a new beginning. His grace makes it possible to forgive each other.
5. Renewal
Renewal comes from repentance and forgiveness. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, all things are become new” (II Corinthians 5:17). Then we are told in Revelation 21:5 as God speaks, “Behold I make all things new.”
The greatest injustice of all time, the cruelest also, was the rejection of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who, as a result of rejection by those he came to save, was crucified. In this foul act, God, through Christ, became completely identified with sinful man and, through the suffering of Christ on the cross, made possible man’s redemption from his sinful nature. God vindicated Christ by raising him from the dead. Each of us by an act of faith may appropriate the salvation of our souls and lives through trust and acceptance of Christ.
There is a positive lesson that we in this church must not miss. Demands like these should forever disabuse this and every church of the illusion that we can shut ourselves up behind our cloistered walls and lose ourselves in obscurantism while social change whirls around us. We are going to have to become more and more supportive of these forces that are trying to bring meaningful chance into our world.
Racism is a rejection of persons as persons and is a grave sin against people of God. I am resolved, so help me God, to continue to stand out against racism of any kind, as I have endeavored to do for 30 years.
Here in this church we are dedicated to what is regarded by many militants as passé, but we believe in it. We are committed to a belief that in the local, parish church people of differing ethnic, social and national backgrounds can come together under the Lordship of Christ, accepting Him and each other on the basis of our hopes, to serve Christ and our day as the community of the concerned. In this fellowship we will, ever, strive to change as led by the Holy Spirit of God to be God’s instrument in this place for the betterment of all His people.
(Signed) R. Stuart Grizzard
John Wann’s history of the church indicates that the members of the Black United Front remained after the service for “Christian fellowship” and then left peacefully, and that the church accepted Dr. Grizzard’s reply as “fitting and proper.”
As of this writing it has been 51 years since Dr. Grizzard wrote these words, and the topic of reparations has been renewed in several progressive places. Many institutions have taken definite steps to make restitution. For example, the Virginia Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, has taken a very public stand in admitting its racist past and has established an endowment fund, the proceeds of which benefit descendants of the slaves who built the seminary.
In his written remarks Dr. Grizzard admits that his approach may appear passé to the militant progressives, and I imagine it might seem so today. I’m not enough of a theologian or anthropologist to effectively argue the point one way or the other, and I certainly wasn’t in 1969. But my remembrance of this great man was that he was acting on his convictions, and he was eloquent in his presentation, which was based on scripture and his understanding of Christian principles.
In the fall of 1970 I accepted another job of increased responsibility, professional standing and scope . . . and salary. In reflecting on my relatively short tenure at National Baptist, I’m put in mind of some of those contemporary pieces of art consisting of several overlapping geometric designs, where each resultant space is filled in with a different color. Usually it is in these smallest spaces that the colors stand out most brilliantly. At any rate, it is with that brilliance and vividness that I recall my brief tenure at National Baptist Memorial Church and my friendship with Dr. R. Stuart Grizzard.
Bibliography and Sources
Bigbee, John Chapman. Obituary in The Washington Post, January 17, 1991.
Carey, John J. Carlyle Marney: A Pilgrim’s Progress. Mercer University Press, Press, 1980.
DeFerrrari, John and Douglas Peter Sefton. Sixteenth Street: Washington, DC’s Avenue of Ambitions. Georgetown University Press, 2022.
Grizzard, R. Stuart. Obituary in The Washington Post, February 23, 1989.
Grizzard, R. Stuart. Sweeter As The Years Go By. Private Memoir, publ. 1991.
Walker, J. Samuel. Most of 14th Street Is Gone: The Washington, D. C. Riots of 1968. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Wann, John L. A History of the National Baptist Memorial Church, Washington, D. C. Private Publication, 1976.
Additional Photographs
Map of the principal sites of the riots of 1968. National Baptist Memorial Church at 16th Street and Columbia Road is marked with a circled cross.
The lower section of Meridian Hill Park which follows the downward slope of 16th Street to Florida Avenue.
Dr. R. Stuart Grizzard, Pastor, 1964-1978
Church Christmas card 1969
Panoramic photo of 16th Street showing NBMC’s tower and circular auditorium, and the triangular site at Columbia Road. All Soul’s Unitarian Church is to the right at Harvard Street.
Columbia Road looking east toward 16th Street
Sixteenth Street looking north, with some of the embassies in the neighborhood.
The church from the Columbia Road side looking toward 16th Street. Dr. Grizzard’s office was on the second floor directly above the entrance, featuring the large circular window. The slender window to its left was my office.
The Lutheran Church of the Holy Comforter at Alabama and Branch Avenues in Southeast Washington, D. C. was an unusually devout and unusually modest community. The congregation met in a fairly dreary adapted space that was built in the 1950s to be the parish hall once the church was built, which it never was. It was typical sturdy-but-cheap cinder block construction with institutional tile floors. As you entered the front hall it had the smell of a well-used, but well-maintained multipurpose building redolent of daily cleaning and a slight tinge of candle wax and incense.
The worship space itself was outfitted modestly but traditionally with as many beautiful things as the congregation could manage. I don’t recall any stained glass windows. In fact, the most beautiful effect in that regard was that through the frosted glass of the (liturgically) west facing window where one saw a handsome row of slender evergreen trees outside which occasionally swayed gently in the wind. The chancel was arranged in a traditional divided manner with the altar against the wall facing eastward. The organ was a Möller Artiste of four ranks.
But this is where any acquiescence to modesty ended. The services were conducted with great solemnity and color, with all the resources the small parish could muster, but were entirely devoid of pomposity. A significant portion of the service was sung which caused more than one congregant to quip that the pastor’s name was apt, as he did indeed sing as much of the service as possible.
A recent picture of the altar in its reconfigured location, with shades installed over the window so you can’t see the row of evergreens outside.
I had substituted at the church around Thanksgiving and Advent of 1968 so I was known around the place when the permanent job became vacant the first of the next year and I was appointed. I was a high school student and had yet to obtain my drivers’ license. I was nothing approaching a prodigy in the textbook sense, but the fact that I was good, competent, and reliable at that age was cause for comment and a certain amount of adulation. The all-volunteer choir was small and of moderate ability, but I recall we sang anthems of enough gravitas that I still know and use some of them—things of the caliber that are in the Oxford Easy Anthem Book, which more than one wag has dubbed the Oxford Not Quite Easy Enough Anthem Book!
The choir from a church directory. I remember each of these singers and what their voices sounded like, but recall only the name of Jeanne Shuey, an alto, second from the right on the front row.
I only served the church for about four or five months, but this was my first regular position—the first instance where I was the organist (and in this case, also choirmaster) of the church. The services were elaborate by any measure, especially so in my experience, even though I had been to a few services at Washington Cathedral by this time. They consisted of various combinations of what we would now call Morning Prayer and/or Eucharist. They may even have used the terms MATINS and MASS. The full complement of Holy Week services beginning on Palm Sunday, the Maundatum ceremonies on Maundy Thursday, the Good Friday liturgy, and the Easter Vigil were all done in their entirety. So, before I was old enough to drive a car, and continuing throughout my career, the intricacies of any service I’ve been presented with has not been an impediment, and I always felt at home in the services of varying denominations, and in varying forms and styles.
Pastor Senger was thorough and precise, but in no way was he what we would today call a Type A personality. He was genuinely devout and conducted the services in a way that left no doubt that it was the most important thing in the world for him to be doing at that moment. Typically, we had a few moments of socializing between the two morning services each Sunday and that pretty much is the sum of my recollection of our interaction. He would inquire about my school and organ studies; by this time I was studying regularly with William Watkins and playing in competitions and student recitals around town.
The job required me to be present for choir rehearsals on Thursday evenings and two services on Sunday morning at 8:00 and 11:00. Since I did not drive, the arrangements were somewhat intricate, but it worked and the side benefit was that I got used to relying on the D. C. Transit bus system—this being in the years just prior to the Metro. On Thursdays after school, I would take the bus from the Takoma terminus down to Federal Triangle, and then change to a bus that went down the length of Pennsylvania Avenue SE, across the Anacostia River, get off at Branch Avenue and walk several blocks to Alabama Avenue where the church was located. Then, after choir rehearsals on Thursday nights, my father would meet me in the car from his second job which was somewhere on East Capitol Street. Then, on Sunday mornings, we would reverse the plan: he would drop me off at about 7:30 a.m. and then continue on to his job.
The real fun came when I would take the bus home after Sunday services around noon. I would explore the city sometimes not arriving back home in Takoma Park until dark. I would have lunch at any number of places I discovered on Pennsylvania Avenue in the neighborhood of the church or in downtown Washington, such as Reeves or the Hot Shoppes on 14th Street not too far from where Metro Center is today. I would check out any church along the way that looked interesting. Sunday afternoons usually included taking the bus from downtown, through Georgetown and up Wisconsin Avenue to the Cathedral for Evensong, and from thence up to Friendship Heights and change to a bus that went along Western Avenue to Silver Spring and ultimately Takoma. It boggles my mind to think of doing this as a young teenager today—no cell phones or text messaging to check in. I do remember always planning to have enough change for the bus and a pay phone, which were then plentiful.
The only conversation I actually recall with Pastor Senger had to do with the parish finances in general. One Sunday there had been a typical stewardship address which included plans for the eventual building of a proper church. At our visit over coffee between services I recall him saying he wasn’t worried in the least about the outcome. He said if it was God’s will it would happen and it was out of his hands. There was nothing about him that indicated he had the sort of ambition to be anything other than the shepherd of this congregation, or that he had any sort of planned career path in mind. In fact, he never left Holy Comforter, finally retiring from there in 2009. I remember on my last day as their regular organist after Easter when he saw me he just said “it’s a sad day.” In retrospect, I’m sorry I didn’t experience a couple of complete liturgical seasons with him. I learned a lot.
In 1987 this church did a modest renovation of their worship space which included reorienting the layout. The altar was now under the frosted windows at the opposite end of the church with the evergreens, now larger, still gently waving in the breeze behind the altar. The choir and a new Karl Wilhelm organ was at the opposite end of the room where the altar had been previous. I was highly honored to be asked to come back and play one of the dedicatory recitals. It was in October 1987 that I went up on a Sunday after church in Richmond to practice and play a late afternoon recital following Evening Prayer. Upon walking into the front hall, that familiar distinct aroma greeted me, as did a few familiar faces from some twenty years previous, including Jeanne Shuey from the choir. Pastor Senger was still there presiding, greeting, infusing the place with warmth, dignity, and lots of pride in the new organ.
In the cursory research for this remembrance I found out that Pastor Senger died on July 20, 2018 at a facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and his funeral was from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church also in Gaithersburg. He was 90 years old, and retired from Holy Comforter in 2009 after serving as its pastor for 50 years. Apparently, he attended Good Shepherd regularly, and I found a YouTube clip of the celebratory observance of his 65th anniversary of ordination held there in 2016.
The bishop presiding over the extended presentation, which took place before the Prayers of the People at the regular morning service, and he related some of Pastor Senger’s accomplishments which were many. He had been a leader in both the religious and the political community in Southeast Washington. He also was commended for his leadership in growing liturgical awareness within the Lutheran Church in America. Apparently, the observance of the Easter Vigil at Holy Comforter was among the first to take place in that denomination in the country. Perhaps it was even the one for which I played my one Easter with them!
In this YouTube footage Pastor Senger was in a wheelchair and spoke only a very brief word of thanks toward the end, but his voice was unmistakably resonant and clear, though considerably weaker than what I remember from the vigorous 40-year-old from whom I learned so much during the first few months of 1969.
From the website of Holy Comforter Lutheran Church in 2020 which I found as I was preparing this article:
The Lutheran Church of the Holy Comforter was founded in 1945, and for most, if not all of its existence, we have been strongly committed to worship in the liturgical tradition. During the fifty year pastorate of The Reverend Franklin Gwynn Senger III, who retired in 2009, Holy Comforter was active in the Society of the Augsburg Confession, which worked to promote a greater appreciation of the western liturgical tradition, and it was one of the first Lutheran congregations in the Washington area, to offer the Eucharist every Sunday.
Holy Comforter has always had a strong involvement in the community, and, in the early 1960’s, was active in the successful movement to integrate the Hillcrest area and eliminate the system of real estate covenants that excluded persons of color. Holy Comforter helped in the formation of the Hillcrest Civic Association, and has been and still is the meeting place for several community organizations.
Holy Comforter was never a large congregation. Although attendance averages twenty to forty people a Sunday, we have a core of active and committed members. The congregation was integrated by the 1960’s and roughly half the membership are white and half are people of color. Our members are scattered all over the area. Some live in the neighborhood, but others come from as far away as Columbia, Maryland and Reston, Virginia.
These sketches were published in the February 2016 issue of The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians.
For almost three years prior to June 2016 my local colleagues and I worked regularly as we prepared to host the 50th anniversary conference of the AAM held in Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. For this reason the conference became known as the Fair-Chester Conference.
One of my tasks was to prepare brief sketches on the conference venues and organs for the Journal, a very enjoyable job as there are many significant examples of each in the area, and part of the conference intent was to showcase the differing styles of architecture in which we worship and make music. Terry Byrd Eason was a featured conference personality as he took us through significant details at each venue.
As preparations and schedules emerged it was with regret that the committee had to cancel plans to visit the churches in New Canaan and Mt. Kisco but I’ve included details here of these architecturally significant churches.
Established in the early 1950s St. Barnabas was admitted to the Diocese of Connecticut as a parish church in 1967, and was designed by Greenwich architect Philip Ives. Richards, Fowkes & Co. installed its Opus 1, there in 1991.
Richards, Fowkes & Co., Opus 1
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stamford, CT
The original St. John’s Lutheran Church was formed in the mid-19th century by Swedish immigrants who moved into the area from Bridgeport. The present building, inspired by the New England meeting house style, was built in 1954.
The organ was built by Richards, Fowkes & Co. in 1995
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stamford. Richards, Fowkes & Co. organ
First Presbyterian Church, Stamford, CT
Known colloquially as the “Fish Church” because of its appearance in profile and floor plan, the First Presbyterian Church is generally considered to be one of the most significant ecclesiastical structures of the 20th Century. Designed by Wallace K. Harrison it was dedicated in 1958 and is unique in its combined use of precast concrete slabs together with thick faceted glass designed by Gabriel Loire of Chartres, France.
The organ is Visser-Rowland’s Opus 87. The carillon in the tower was built by Gillett & Johnston in 1947 and amended by Paccard in 1968.
The “Fish” Church, Stamford
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Stamford, CT
The parish traces its history to the pre-Revolutionary War era and originally included what is now Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, and New Canaan, and is the mother church of Anglicans in Fairfield County.
The present building, the third for the parish, was designed by noted Victorian Gothic architect William Potter who designed many churches in New York and academic buildings on the campus of Princeton University in the latter half of the 19th century.
The new church was opened for worship in 1891 and originally contained a Roosevelt organ. In 1917 Skinner installed its Opus 277 and it served the church until the 1960s when a new McManus organ was installed in the gallery. In 1990 the church installed the present organ, essentially a new instrument incorporating selected pipework from the previous organs. In an unusual arrangement, the church functioned as general contractor for the new organ and farmed out work according to its specifications, all under the direction of Craig Ferguson, chairman of the organ committee and vestryman of the parish. Tonal work was facilitated by Bruce Schultz and mechanical, engineering, and structural design was completed by the Foley-Baker.
In the late 1980s the church began plans to develop its property into an innovative design which came to be known as Canterbury Green, a mixed use complex consisting of apartments, retail stores, parking, pedestrian arcades, and a park-like garth surrounding the church, all of which was given the New York State Association of Architects Award in 1995.
Canterbury Green rising around St. John’s Church.
Chancel of St. John’s Church, Stamford
Christ Church, Greenwich, CT
Established as a parish in 1749, the present church building was built in 1910 to a design by local architect William F. Dominick. The noted parish Choir of Men and Boys was established in 1934 and has since been joined by the Choir of Girls, a mixed adult choir, a training choir, and a Compline Choir.
The church has recently undergone an extensive restoration. The large Austin organ was installed in 1976.
Christ Church, Greenwich
Christ Church, New Haven, CT
From 1895-98 Henry Vaughan directed the work of building the present Christ Church specifically for the purposes and needs of Anglo-Catholic worship, and it is considered to be a masterpiece of his style of parish church architecture.
With close ties to Yale University and the Institute of Sacred Music, the music of Christ Church attracted considerable attention under the leadership of our colleague Rob Lehman, and was among the first churches on college campuses to introduce Compline into its rota as an offering targeted to the student population. In addition to his position as Professor of Organ at Yale, Thomas Murray is the organist of the church.
Lively-Fulcher installed a new organ in 2005.
Antique print of Christ Church, New Haven
Console of the new Lively-Fulcher organ, Christ Church, New Haven
Trinity Church-on-the-Green, New Haven, CT
Trinity Church, one of three churches on the largest town green in New England, was designed in 1813 by Ithiel Town, who developed his version of “Gothick Style” some twenty or thirty years before what has come to be the accepted beginning of the Gothic Revival in America.
Trinity maintains one of the oldest choirs of men and boys in America, having begun in 1885. The church has since established a parallel program for men and girls, and adults. Walden Moore recently observed his 30th anniversary as Organist and Choirmaster of the church, following in the lineage of Stephen Loher and G. Huntington Byles.
The organ was built by Aeolian-Skinner in 1935 and is maintained by Joseph Dzeda of the Thompson-Allen Co., also curators of the organs at Yale University.
Aeolian-Skinner Opus 927, Trinity on the Green, New Haven
Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Woolsey Hall is the principal auditorium on the campus of Yale University and is used for a variety of academic and community performances and events. It is part of the Bicentennial Building Complex built in 1901 which also includes the Memorial Rotunda and the University Commons. It was designed in the Beaux Arts style by the noted New York firm Carrière & Hastings and seats some 2,600 persons. In it is contained what is generally considered to be one of the great organs of America, if not the world: the Newberry Memorial Organ, the work of the Skinner Organ Company in 1928, incorporating pipework from two previous organs. Unique as the organ is, even more rare is the fact that so large an organ, now almost 90 years old, is maintained in perfect working condition under the care of the Thompson-Allen firm.
Console of the Newberry Organ, Woolsey Hall, Yale University
Christ Church, Bronxville, NY
Christ Church Bronxville is a parish in the Diocese of New York which has long expressed its worship life through music and liturgy in a “high church” tradition. Known for its local adaptation of Sarum traditions, the parish was the host for the first AAM American Sarum regional conference in 2010.
Christ Church is the last parish church with which Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was associated. It was Goodhue, together with his partner Ralph Adams Cram, who revolutionized the Gothic landscape of America in the first quarter of the 20th century. Goodhue supervised the siting and general plans but died before the church was completed.
The organs in Christ Church have been represented by some significant American builders. During the extraordinary 45-year tenue of Robert Owen the Aeolian-Skinner and Gress-Miles organs became well known through his concerts and recordings. As the vicissitudes of wear and tear took its toll, the organ was ultimately replaced after a long series of modifications and repairs by a new organ built by Casavant in 2010.
A service in the mid-1950s . . .
. . . and a recent celebration, Christ Church, Bronxville.
Glen Island Harbour Club, New Rochelle, NY
One of Westchester’s unique jewels, Glen Island was originally created in 1879 as a summer resort for a business representative named John H. Starin. In 1923, Glen Island Park and Casino was acquired by Westchester County.
The Glen Island Casino was a springboard to success for several noted bands during the 1930’s Big Band Era, including those of Ozzie Nelson, Charlie Barnet, Claude Thornhill, Les Brown and the Dorsey Brothers.
In March of 1939, Glenn Miller and his orchestra got their big break when they were chosen to play a summer season at the prestigious Glen Island Casino.
The casino was closed in 1978, but reopened in December 1983. The original shell of the building and the dance floor in the second-floor ballroom, where the bands played, were retained.
The club is now a premier event facility with stunning water views and award-winning cuisine and hospitality.
Glen Island Harbour Club, New Rochelle, New York
St. Mark’s Church, New Canaan, CT
Anglicans have worshiped in New Canaan since pre-Revolutionary War times; the original St. Mark’s is now St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in the center of town on God’s Acre, the original portion of the village set apart for its houses of worship. The present church, opened for worship in 1961, was designed by Stamford architect Willis N. Mills and draws its inspiration from Medieval principles applied to mid-twentieth century styles and techniques. The rood screen iconography is the work of Clark B. Fitz-Gerald and features sculptures of wood and metal.
St Mark’s takes its place among the other ecclesiastical and domestic designs in New Canaan that make the town a showplace for the American modern architectural movement of the 1950s, inspired by the European Bauhaus developed by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer and their students, among whom Philip Johnson was the best known.
Austin installed a new organ when the present church was built and has recently made some additions and modifications. The carillon in the tower is by Paccard.
Altar Screen designed by Clark B. Fitz-Gerald, organ and choir behind. St. Mark’s Church, New Canaan
St. Mark’s Church, Mt. Kisco, NY
Dating from 1909 St. Mark’s was one of the earliest churches designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Goodhue was proud of this church, writing about it in 1910 to Montgomery Schuyler
At Mount Kisco, we have almost completed the best . . . church I have so far done; and though the tower isn’t on, the various details have been so carefully carried out and the atmosphere is so much that of an English church of the “right” period, that it would give you a better idea of my dreams and my gods (architecturally speaking) than anything else.
Among the details Goodhue oversaw was commissioning Hildreth Meiere to paint the altar triptych, her first professional work.
The present organ was built by Aeolian-Skinner as its Opus 1201 in 1951, and was designed by G. Donald Harrison, who placed his signature plate on the console. The organ became widely known via a recording by long-time organist Edgar Hilliar on the Aeolian-Skinner “King of Instruments” series of recordings.
St. Mark’s Church, Mt. Kisco, New York
St. Mark’s, Mt. Kisco. The Positiv organ is suspended from the ceiling at the entrance to the chapel across the chancel from the main organ.
On Friday following the conference proper an optional tour visited these four outstanding venues in New York City.
The Church of the Intercession, at Broadway and 155th Street, once a chapel of the Parish of Trinity Church, is located in the midst of Trinity Cemetery where several notable New Yorker’s are buried, including Clement Clarke Moore, long-assumed to be the author of A Visit from St. Nicholas (’Twas the night before Christmas). Each year in December there is a procession to his grave and a candlelight reading of the famous story. Former New York mayor Edward I. Koch, himself Jewish, requested to be buried there, and he is.
From an architectural standpoint the church and parish buildings are the most complete ecclesiastical work of architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. It was Goodhue’s favorite of his church buildings and he is buried near the font in the north transept in a tomb given by his architectural colleagues, containing reliefs of some of his famous buildings as rendered by sculptor Lee Lawrie.
Pictures of the organ case designed by Goodhue found their way into several books in the 20th century. Its use of en chamade pipework is probably the first instance of that in America, although the pipes themselves are non-speaking. Goodhue traveled to Mexico and it is thought that he was inspired by organ cases there containing reed pipes en chamade. The first organ in the church was built by Austin. The present organ is comprised of the Aeolian-Skinner organ formerly in St Paul’s Chapel of Trinity Parish, installed by Schlicker with additional new pipework and console.
Church of the Intercession, Broadway and 155th Street, NYC
Case of the original organ designed by Goodhue.
The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine is the largest Gothic church in the world and is the seat of the Bishop of the Diocese of New York. Following a competition which saw submissions from several architects in a wide variety of styles, construction began in 1892 to a design by Heins & LaFarge, who submitted the winning entry in the Byzantine-Romanesque style. When Heins died in 1907 the first phase of construction ended with the apse and choir complete. A “temporary” dome, still in place, was built by the Guastavino firm and Ralph Adams Cram was called to complete the cathedral in the Gothic style. Although Cram’s entire design has never been completed, the length of the nave was opened in 1941, a length of 601 feet.
The original organ was built by a young Ernest Skinner in 1906 as his Opus 150. It was extensively renovated with much new pipework by Aeolian-Skinner in 1951 to a design of G. Donald Harrison, including the famous State Trumpet at the west end. The organ was restored by Quimby and Douglass Hunt in 2008 following heavy smoke damage from a fire in the gift shop in the unfinished north transept.
A recent diocesan event.
St. James Church at Madison Avenue and 71st street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is an unusual amalgamation of styles. Began in 1884 to a Romanesque design by R. H. Robertson, it placed the altar at the west end of the church, at the Madison Avenue side so that no new construction would block the sunlight on the apse windows surrounding the altar. The main entrance to the church was mid-block on Madison Avenue.
In the 1920s as the high Gothic style of ecclesiastical architecture was gaining favor throughout the country, and in New York in particular, the vestry of St. James engaged Ralph Adams Cram who essentially designed a new church using the existing structure as the footprint of the design to save money. A new chancel and elaborate altar reredos was created at the east end of the church, and a new entrance and tower was created opening on to Madison Avenue. This work was completed in time for services on Christmas Eve 1924.
There have been previous organs by Austin and Möller, and the present organ by Schoenstein contains complete chancel and gallery divisions.
St. James Church, 1884
The chancel of St. James Church, showing the organ facade and the reredos designed by Ralph Adams Cram.
Grace Church at Broadway and 10th Street was founded in 1805 in lower Manhattan just a few blocks from where several Episcopal churches were located, near where Trinity Church stands today. The present church was completed in 1846 and is the work of James Renwick, Jr., who was 24 years old at the time. Although his later design for St. Patrick’s Cathedral is better known, Grace Church is considered his masterpiece. The site on which the church stands was originally the farm of Henry Brevoort and legend has it that as the town fathers were extending Broadway north onto his farm, he stood guard with an ax threatening anyone attempting to build a road through his property. It is for this reason that Broadway takes an abrupt turn westward at this very point in its progress uptown. And as a result, Grace Church is the focal point of a commanding view appearing at the head of Broadway from over a mile downtown.
Grace Church has had a succession of fine organs and organists. The church for many years maintained a choir school, the first in the city (now a parish day school from which choristers are drawn), founded by James Morris Helfenstein. The choir and school flourished under the direction of Ernest Mitchell who was an “organist’s organist” in the early-mid 20th century. Both Tournemire and Vierne dedicated compositions to him, and many organists “of a certain age” will remember the picture of Mitchell at the imposing console of the 1928 Skinner organ which appeared in the World Book Encyclopedia in the 1950s and 60s. The console is now on display in the music office of the church.
The present organ by Taylor & Boody dates from 2013 and has been lauded as a tonal and engineering masterpiece.
An antique card picturing Grace Church in the 1920s.
Ernest Mitchell at the console of Skinner Opus 707, a photo which appeared in several editions of the World Book Encyclopedia in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Taylor & Boody organ.
Much of the information contained in these paragraphs is based on material found on the website of the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in the pages developed by Steve Lawson on the individual organs of the city: http://nycago.org/Organs/NYC/index.html
Several pictures from the conference:
Nick Thompson-Allen, John Boody, and Joe Dzeda
Jim Litton and Patrick Fennig
Philip Moore at the garden party at Christ Church Greenwich.
Conference committe chairman Geoff Smith, John Boody, Suzanne MacDonald, and Judith Hancock at the garden party on the grounds of Christ Church Greenwich.
Gregory Eaton and David Hurd at the Glen Island Harbour Club
Philip Stopford, Christopher Wells, Anne Timpane, and Geoff Smith, present and past organists of Christ Church, Bronxville.
Fr. Carl Turner in the pulpit at St. John’s in Stamford.
Bp. Keith Whitmore, with Rob Lehman and Sonya Sutton at the Glen Island Harbour Club.
Nick Andrews, Terry Eason, and Doug Hunt on the steps of St. John the Divine.
Barry Rose and Murray Sommerville at Grace Church, NYC.
John Boody at the tomb of Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Church of the Intercession, NYC.
Thomas Richner was not part of the “organ scene” of Boston musical life in the way that—say—George Faxon or Francis Snow were. Indeed, he never maintained a permanent residence in Boston, but rather commuted from his home on Long Island or his apartment in New Brunswick for his duties in Boston, where he had an apartment in the Prudential Center.
But from 1971-1993 he was the organist of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, The Mother Church, in Boston and in that capacity he was one of the most visible and best-known of Boston organists, and—indeed—of American organists in general.
Contributing to this was the fact that
a) he was already a well-known concert pianist and professor at Rutgers University,
b) The Mother Church, as the headquarters church of the denomination, was well-known, services were broadcast internationally, and it provided instant name recognition, and
c) the organ was already famous as the largest Aeolian-Skinner ever built.
2. Biographical Information
Born November 4, 1911 in Point Marion, PA, “where the Cheat River and the Monongahila River come together—that’s the point!” as Uncle T would say.
And, lest you think I’m being overly familiar in referring to Dr. Richner as Uncle T—believe me—to anyone who was in his presence for more than ten or fifteen minutes, Thomas Benjamin Richner was Uncle T at his own insistence.
There was not a lot of musical incentive growing up, but he did develop an early interest from local musicians and he eventually earned the B.Mus. degree from West Virginia University.
He found his way to New York to study with Dora Zaslavsky who, together with her husband—the famous painter John Koch, quickly became family to him. Later, he even lived across the street from them in Setauket, a lovely village on the north shore of Long Island, when they told him of a bungalow that was for sale. Uncle T was even represented in one of Koch’s paintings. It was Koch’s custom to use friends and colleagues as subjects in the paintings of his and Dora’s life together in New York.
“Summer Party” by John Koch. Tom Richner is depicted looking out the window next to the woman gesturing outside.
Tom won the Naumburg Award in 1940, sharing the prize with pianist Abbey Simon, and violinist Harry Cykman—and his significant performing career was launched, including a debut recital in New York at Town Hall for which the reviewer in the New York Times declared that he was a “born Mozart player,” an appellation that stuck for life.
He earned masters and doctors degrees from Columbia University, where his dissertation titled Orientation for Interpreting Mozart’s Piano Sonatas was turned into a standard reference book of the era. He taught at Teachers College from 1946-68, and at Rutgers University from 1959-86.
During his early years in New York he converted to Christian Science, and for the rest of his life he remained a devoted follower, but he was never ridged, doctrinaire, or proselytizing about it. It was just a natural part of his life.
In the 1950s Tom became the organist of the Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist, in New York, an influential branch church which inhabits the lower floors of a mid-town office building near Grand Central Terminal which had an old Skinner organ. It was rebuilt by Aeolian-Skinner in 1955 when he and G. Donald Harrison set about turning it into a deluxe instrument for playing services, as well as for repertoire, including double antiphonal expressive divisions which T used to great effect in the “tapers” at the conclusion of the hymns and other passive portions of the service. While retaining all of the solo and color stops of the old organ, it exhibits all of the classic hallmarks of Harrison’s post WW II organs—cohesive independent choruses on all manuals, and fully developed Positiv and Pedal divisions. It is truly a great organ desperately in need of restoration or relocation.
Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City
All of which brings up T’s organ playing and study. He was essentially self-taught. But he regularly went to the Sunday afternoon services at St. Bartholomew’s Church played by the legendary David McK. Williams, and T emulated much of Williams’ style in accompanying and service playing. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that DMcKW’s playing had the single most influential effect on T’s own organ playing. T talked about David and his playing until the end of his life—almost with tears in his eyes. He said it was that beautiful and he was that moved.
Tom later received the honorary D.Mus. from Colby College, where he directed the Richner-Strong Institute in the summers, and the honorary D.H.L. from Greenwood College in South Carolina. After his retirement from The Mother Church and Colby, he was Artist-in-Residence at Rollins College.
He died at his home in Worcester on July 11, 2008—at age 96.
At his house organ in Setauket, Long Island, with Charles Callahan and me, Summer 1992
3. “Organist, Pianist, Teacher, Composer”
Since this is a gathering of organists, I titled this talk with T’s role as organist first. I really think that he could have had a significant career in any of these categories, but the realities of life are such that one aspect of one’s abilities usually eclipses others, even if the gifts are distributed evenly.
With that in mind, I’d say that in Tom’s career, in terms of capacity and influence, the correct order might be:
1. Pianist and Teacher—this was the centerpiece of his career, and that for which he was best-known, was most seriously trained, and started earliest, followed closely by
2. Organist, both at the two cardinal Christian Science churches mentioned, and as a touring concert organist. And only as a distant third . . .
3. . . . is he remembered as a Composer.
But I do feel that in his small body of work he found a unique compositional voice that—had he devoted more time to it—would have yielded a style that was both approachable and lyrical, but also a challenging synthesis of expression within the mid-century school of American composition. 7:00 minutes
With Charles Callahan at The Mother Church in Boston, 1990
4. Two Recordings of Solos for use in the Christian Science service.
Each were recorded, as was T’s custom, at regular Saturday rehearsals prior to Sunday services. The soloist is Esperanza Isman, who had a significant singing career. She later converted to Christian Science, eventually becoming a practicioner.
O Gentle presence well-known hymn by Mary Baker Eddy (6:15 minutes)
The Raising of Lazarus Biblical dramatic account from John 11 (6:19 minutes)
TOTAL 20 minutes
With me and Charlie Callahan’s dog Baron, Orwell, Vermont, ca. 1993
Though open for instruction for slightly less than a decade beginning in 1962, the College of Church Musicians on the close of Washington National Cathedral exerted an influence of national proportions that belied both the small size of its student body and the short span of its existence. The former is entirely in keeping with the original vision of the college which began shortly after the Very Rev. Francis Bowes Sayre, Jr., dean from 1951 to 1978, assumed leadership of the cathedral. The latter, sadly, was the result of the confluence of several vicissitudes that afflicted the Cathedral throughout the 1960s.
From the outset of his leadership, Dean Sayre pursued a vision that the Cathedral should play a significant, vital role at the intersection of the nation’s political and spiritual life. He also came to the Cathedral at a critical juncture in its architectural design and construction, and he was the de facto iconographer as decisions unfolded regarding the artistic fabric of the cathedral. His towering infectious spirit imbued itself in all of his undertakings as he sought to make the fledgling cathedral a temple landmarked for the interdependent disciplines of Christian worship, and the performance and study of sacred music in the context of the liturgy.
At the time Dean Sayre arrived in Washington, Paul Callaway had already been the cathedral organist and choirmaster for slightly more than a decade. Returning from significant time away for service in World War II, his vigor was just beginning to be renewed and he found a steady ally in the new dean. Together they, with a consortium of consultants and fellow staff, worked toward a vision that culminated in a new college, the fifth institution of learning on the cathedral close, devoted to the formation of church musicians. The new college’s brochure for its first academic year clearly indicates the ecumenical and national scope of the intended enterprise. It states that
” . . . the College is charged with developing excellence in the composition, performance and appreciation of church music in the United States; to this end, the college will:
Offer specialized advanced training to unusually qualified fellows in the special field of music which is associated with the worship of God;
Establish a national center where organists, choirmasters, and clergy may attend seminars in the use of church music and obtain advice on specific problems;
Provide a center in the United States to stimulate, guide, and encourage creative and experimental work in church music.
With facilities including the organs on the cathedral grounds and in surrounding churches, a house which serves as headquarters for the school, [Rosedale, an 18th century farmhouse later associated with the National Cathedral School for Girls, is no longer part of the cathedral’s or the school’s buildings] in which there are pianos and numerous work rooms, and by using the fellows ‘under fire’ in the music program of the cathedral, the college feels it can . . . offer leadership in the field of church music to all Christian denominations.”
In fact, by the time the College closed, it also offered studies in Jewish music and established an endowed chair for that purpose, held by Herman Berlinski and funded from a grant in memory of Rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld, the Senior Rabbi of nearby Washington Hebrew Congregation, the largest Reform Congregation in Washington where Berlinski was organist. Rabbi Gerstenfeld died in 1968 and his son had attended St. Alban’s School.
The first class of fellows consisted of Charles Bradley, New York; John Cooper, California; David Koehring, Indiana; Roger Petrich, North Dakota; William (Pat) Partridge, Virginia; Ronald Rice, Ohio; and Beverly Ward, South Carolina.
Leo Sowerby with the first class of fellows. L-R Ward (standing), Bradley, Cooper, Rice, Partridge, and Petrich. David Koehring is missing from the photo.
These seven fellows represented Episcopal, Baptist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian denominations. In the ensuing years several students matriculated following the graduation of this founding class. Some of their names are very familiar to 21st century AAM members, and others less so; sadly, several are now deceased.
The college may have been ecumenical in its philosophy and student body representation, but there is no doubt that the prevailing ethos leaned heavily toward the Episcopal way of doing things, and following graduation most of the fellows pursued careers at what were once known as cardinal parish and cathedral churches throughout the United States. Shortly after the school’s opening Sowerby and Callaway were the “kingmakers” of choice as they fielded calls from rectors and deans throughout the country seeking church musicians to fill their vacancies. After graduation and positions in South Carolina and Baltimore, Pat Partridge is still the canon musician, organist and choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis, a position he has held since 1981.
Leo Sowerby was the founding director of the college, having been persuaded to leave his positions in Chicago where he retired as the organist and choirmaster of St. James Cathedral and the head of the composition department at the American Conservatory of Music. Other founding faculty included
Paul Callaway, cathedral organist and choirmaster, organ teacher at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, founder and conductor of the Cathedral Choral Society, and musical director of the Washington Opera Society, now the Washington National Opera;
Richard Wayne Dirksen, associate organist and choirmaster of the cathedral, accompanist and assistant conductor of the Cathedral Choral Society, organ instructor at American University, and director of the glee clubs of the National Cathedral School for Girls and St. Alban’s School for Boys;
The Rev. Leonard Ellinwood, a noted musicologist who held a position as Senior Specialist in the Humanities at the Library of Congress. He was also an ordained deacon who held the title of assistant minister of the cathedral; and
The Rev. William G. Workman, canon precentor of the cathedral.
Richard Dirksen, Paul Callaway, and Dean Francis B. Sayre
As the decade progressed other noted Washington musicians were added to the faculty, including John Fenstermaker and Ronald Stalford (themselves graduates of the CCM), Richard Roeckelein, Albert Russell and a young John Corigliano who taught composition after Sowerby died.
Students for the college were recruited largely through what could, at that time, rightfully be called the old boy network—recommendations and word-of-mouth endorsements easily found willing applicants. From the aspiring students’ standpoint enrollment was a slightly tricky proposition. So specialized was its mission and so small the student body that typical administrative details expected of a college pertaining to finances and accreditation were never finalized in the normal, legal sort of way, although from the outset it was determined that students would pay no tuition. And the cathedral foundation’s charter did give it the right to confer degrees. It is a tribute to the reputations of the founding faculty, especially Sowerby, that so rich a field of applicants was gathered. Some students already had graduate degrees, or transferred from (or later to) nearby degree granting institutions, such as American University and the Catholic University of America, each of whom allowed fellows to take courses and to use their libraries. And in a rare case or two a fellow was admitted without an undergraduate degree. It was a very customized approach to higher education befitting the specialized nature and purpose of the college.
Dr. Sowerby with John Fenstermaker, 1965.
There were other prominent institutions of higher learning in this country which very effectively trained aspiring students at the graduate level for careers in sacred music. Notable among them was the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Its director, Robert Baker, was on the governing board of the CCM and he played an important advisory role in its life, particularly so as the college faced closure.
Students at the College of Church Musicians were expected to have their own church jobs on Sunday mornings and their field work was supervised, as was also the case with those at Union Seminary. In the case of CCM, Dr. Sowerby would pay a scheduled visit to hear a student play and conduct a service on their home turf, and would offer written and verbal comments at a subsequent lesson.
The main difference, practically speaking, between the CCM and these other schools was the master-apprentice system which, because of the small student body, was easily facilitated, and was an objective at the outset. Most of the student’s work was undertaken on a one-to-one basis. That, plus the fellows’ direct participation in the musical life of the Cathedral and its related schools, marked a definite distinction from what was offered elsewhere in sacred music studies.
Richard Dirksen, Leo Sowerby, and Gerald Knight at the dedication of the Gloria in Excelsis Tower, Ascension Day 1964.
Writing in the Spring 1963 issue of The Cathedral Age Rear Admiral Neill Phillips, U.S.N., Retired, chairman of the board wrote:
“We shall never be able to go in for mass production of graduates and still maintain the high quality that we feel is a basic requirement. On the other hand we feel that the graduation yearly of even a relatively few fellows who will go out to churches over the country richly equipped for their profession will (together with the CCM symposiums and workshops, which reach many other organists) exercise a profound influence on church music and therefore on Christian worship.”
And it did.
In the fall of 1962, Leo Sowerby told T. Scott Buhrman, who was preparing an article which appeared in the January 1963 issue of The American Organist, about the new college, saying that “we have classes now only to find out what the fellows don’t know and work from there. By February they should be completely on their own, not unlike the students at the Academy in Rome,” referring to his own time as a fellow of the American Academy of Rome.
Sowerby guided the entire focus of the college and taught theoretical courses in analysis, counterpoint, orchestration, and composition, filtered through the lens of the requirements of the church musician. Students who were particularly gifted in composition occasionally found their works on the music list at cathedral services, and several found publication, particularly music for the new rites of the Episcopal Church which began to emerge in the era prior to the revision of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the various trial use liturgies which the cathedral undertook. Roger Petrich’s Variations on “Herzliebster Jesu” was written while he was a student of Sowerby prior to his admission to the CCM, but it was sung by the cathedral choir on a Good Friday service, recorded, later published by Oxford University Press, and is still in print, some fifty years later.
All students were expected to have a mastery of compositional techniques such as to be able to write a descant, or an effective reharmonization, or to orchestrate hymns and anthem accompaniments for other instruments as needed. And students were encouraged to study for and to take the examinations of the American Guild of Organists. All students studied organ at an advanced level and played regular recitals on the cathedral’s Sunday afternoon series. Most students studied organ with Callaway, who also taught the choral conducting component of the curriculum, the repertoire for which usually consisted of whatever the Cathedral Choral Society was rehearsing at the time. The typical operating procedure for the study of this topic consisted of the student’s conducting a portion of a work with Callaway at the piano, playing precisely what the student conducted, exaggerating the mistakes! Music history courses were taught by Leonard Ellinwood, and liturgical topics by Canon Workman.
Dr. Callaway and Ronald Rice at the cathedral organ.
There were more than 20 services per week in the cathedral which to one degree or another required music, and the college fellows, in this regard, became adjunct assisting musicians fulfilling ancillary roles in the cathedral music program. The cathedral’s Sunday rota included, in addition to the 11:00 service (which in those days consisted of Holy Communion on the first Sunday of the month, and Morning Prayer and Sermon on the remaining weeks) an early service in the Bethlehem Chapel for which the junior choir sang, a 10:00 folk mass in an undercroft chapel, and Evensong at 4:00, followed by an organ recital. In addition to guest recitalists from around the country and around the world, the cathedral organists and the fellows took their turn in playing these recitals at which the entire gamut of the organ repertoire was offered, including hefty doses of contemporary music, such as then avant-garde works of Ligeti, the latest works of Messiaen, and occasionally a new work of Sowerby, who was almost always on hand, along with organ enthusiasts from all over the city. Growing up in Washington there were two places where you could always count on seeing someone you knew to visit and trade stories—Dale Music Company in Silver Spring on any given work day, and the chancel of Washington Cathedral after Sunday post-Evensong recitals.
On weekdays the boys of the choir sang Evensong on Mondays through Wednesdays, either the treble line alone or with combinations of ATB parts sung by the fellows. The men of the cathedral choir did not sing weekday Evensong in those days. On a weekly rotation each fellow also had an opportunity to direct the choir during the weekday Evensongs.
On Friday morning there was a service in the Great Choir which the fellows designed and implemented, each fellow taking a turn at leading at approximate six-week intervals, all under the supervision of the college chaplains. St. Alban’s School for Boys (from which student body cathedral choirboys were selected), and the National Cathedral School for Girls held daily chapel services in the cathedral, and the Beauvoir elementary school held a weekly chapel. As needed, fellows were found playing for these services.
Fellows were also expected to attend rehearsals of the Cathedral Choral Society on Monday evenings, and they often assisted in performing roles in the varied repertoire which took full advantage of the cathedral’s spatial possibilities. This was especially evident in works commissioned for celebratory events in the cathedral’s ongoing building program. In the aforementioned article in The American Organist T. Scott Buhrman tells of a rehearsal for the first performance of Richard Dirksen’s The Fiery Furnace which was composed for the dedication of the newly completed south transept:
“Here we saw and heard the fellows in the “under fire” part of the school’s program. One man acted as organist, another was page-turner and a third was stationed in the lectern as coordinating conductor between the three choirs and a like number of instrumental ensembles which were positioned in the north and south transept galleries, the Great Choir and in the musicians gallery above the Great Choir stalls.”
Dr. Callaway at a rehearsal of the Cathedral Choral Society.
Fellows were also expected to attend the full practice of the cathedral choir on Friday evenings, which was thorough and long. The evening began in the choir room with the full choir of men and boys rehearsing the hymns and psalms for the for the coming Sunday morning and afternoon services, followed by rehearsals of the communion service settings, canticles, and anthems for the coming Sunday morning and afternoon services in the Great Choir with organ. Following a break, it was back down to the choir room to rehearse the settings and anthems for the following week. After this was a second break at which the boys were dismissed, following which the men read through the settings and anthems for the third week out. From beginning to end, the men were lucky if it was a three-hour evening.
Dr. Callaway at a rehearsal in the cathedral choir room.
The College of Preachers on the cathedral close followed a somewhat similar track as the College of Church Musicians, but it tended to sponsor short term courses for clergy akin to retreats or conferences, instead of a dedicated course of study leading to a diploma. But music played a role in its offerings as well, and on several occasions the College of Preachers offered courses in tandem with the CCM on topics such as psalmody or various liturgical trends that were beginning to emerge as part of the fledgling liturgical movement. And, most conferences under the auspices of the College of Preachers contained a worship component with music, just as the day schools did, and the fellows stood at the ready to perform these ancillary tasks as assigned.
In all of these endeavors the fellows of the College of Church Musicians were more than mere auditors and scholars. They did more than just study the ideas of sacred music, they were directly involved in the actual music making and its preparations at all levels and learned by doing. They were in fact adjunct musicians of the cathedral and its attendant educational institutions, and this was taken into account in the original decision not to charge tuition.
Leo Sowerby had progressively more serious health problems throughout the 1960s and he died from symptoms of a stroke he suffered while in residence at Camp WA-LI-RO in Put-In-Bay, Ohio, on July 7, 1968 where he had been composer-in-residence for many years. The college continued operations for a while following Sowerby’s death, but the absence of his guiding presence, together with its unstable finances, which were inextricably linked with those of the cathedral in a difficult era, each contributed to its closing in 1969. There were some heroic efforts to keep things afloat and, in fact, for quite a few years following there was a program which called for one or two fellows to be in residence at the cathedral for short periods of time doing the things fellows had always done, but without a prescribed course of study or the granting of diplomas or degrees. Some students transferred to American University or Peabody Conservatory which had close associations with CCM. Robert Baker, Dean of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York, offered admission without audition to any students who wanted to transfer.
In the all-too-short period of its existence, though, the College of Church Musicians was a powerhouse of serious study, preparation, and performance of sacred music which very nearly transformed the musical life of the entire church, and its influence continues to this day through the legacies of its approximately thirty graduates and the positions they held and continue to hold.
Dr. Callaway with fellows Mark McNulty and Raymond Chenault, 1975.
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Neal Campbell is the Director of Music and Organist of Trinity Church in Vero Beach, Florida, a positon he has held since November 2015 when he came from a similar position at Saint Luke’s Parish in Darien, Connecticut. He is on the committee planning the 2016 conference in Fairfield and Westchester counties. He previously held church, synagogue, and college positions in Washington, Philadelphia, Richmond, and the New York tri-state area. Growing up in Washington he studied organ with William Watkins and Paul Callaway, piano with Roy Hamlin Johnson, and choral conducting with Paul Traver. He attended the University of Maryland and holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from Manhattan School of Music in New York.
National Baptist is located at a prominent site on Sixteenth Street, just north of Meridian Hill Park at the confluence of the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights, Adams-Morgan, and Mount Pleasant. Its architect, Edgerton Swartwout, formerly of the McKim, Mead & White atelier, designed an imposing tower taking advantage of the triangular site at the top of Meridian Hill created by the gradual incline of Sixteenth Street as it works its way north. As a result of this site location and the architecture of the surrounding area, it is every bit the equal of the more prosperous neighborhoods of Embassy Row or Dupont Circle. At one time I believe it was even planned for Sixteenth Street to be named something more descriptive than its generic numeric appellation. It is a long wide avenue stretching directly north of the White House all the way to the Maryland state line in Silver Spring, and there are many churches of varying denominations, and one or two synagogues along the complete length of the thoroughfare. At Columbia Road, the center of Columbia Heights, there are three churches of significant, prominent architectural interest with spires or towers to match: All Souls Unitarian Church, the former Washington Mormon Chapel (now the Unification Church), and National Baptist. At Meridian Hill Park, just south of Columbia Road, Sixteenth Street takes a dramatic downward incline all the way to the White House. In fact, Meridian Hill Park itself it characterized by an upper park at level grade, and a lower park featuring a fountain feeding into a series of pools descending down the hillside.
The organ was Austin’s Opus 1403 containing 42 ranks spread over three manual and pedal divisions, and was built in 1923 for the new church. It was installed in the lower portion of the tower directly above the choir loft. There was nothing especially distinguishing about the sound, but it provided a good variety of stops and was fairly complete. It was my main practice instrument and I learned lots of repertoire on it as I continued my studies with William Watkins and prepared for various student recitals and competitions. Also, preparing the accompaniments for the various anthems, oratorios, and solos required lots of practice time. In a holdover from the past tradition the church employed a quartet of soloists, some of whom were quite good and were generally on the choral scene in Washington. The typical drill on Sunday morning was for there to be a solo and a choral anthem at each service, in addition to hymns and some choral responses. The choir also presented an oratorio once or twice a year and it was here that I first learned Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, and portions of Elijah by Mendelssohn. The organ suited these accompaniments well. Once or twice I had my lessons at the church if I were preparing something special, but by this time figuring out the layout and use of a moderately large organ was not a foreign task for me, and I played as much repertoire as I could for services.
Neal Campbell--Words and Pictures. 