In Search of New Models, Part IX: New faculty searches

Just as the act of observing an event changes the event, so does a job ad restrict the job and its applicants. Academic job searches think they are designed to find the best person, but their side hustle is really the main event, which is to protect the search from litigation. The amounts of bureaucracy and bias control are staggering, and the things you can and cannot say or do with a candidate are a veritable catechism with dire consequences if something gets overlooked. I have no solution to this, but it may take a complete implosion to fix it. And of course I might stop there but am going to write hundreds more words about it, anyway:

As of this writing, I am into my 22^nd year at my teaching post. I am tenured, fully 'professored,' fully vested, 'teaching awarded,' and everything else. And I recognize that 22 years is the kind of longevity that is somewhat unheard of these days [which could be a broken model of its own – do people leave a job because they find a better offer, or are they being forced out by any number of influences? Either way, I have been fortunate.].

Let the record show that I am not seeking another teaching position. I like the one I have, current political and societal barriers in all directions notwithstanding. But even if I wanted to – and certainly far less so if my life depended on it – I could never get another teaching job at this point.

Not that an academic search committee is allowed to discuss it, but I’m too old. And the average job ad proves it: The application process involves submitting names and contact information of at least three references. In my case, that would be the most cursory definition of ‘reference’ ever. My list would contain zero actual mentors, because at my age, all my mentors are dead. Even one of my favorite collaborators at a previous position is dead. And so my lack of primary references anymore means I’m not young enough to have living mentors who can rave about my greatness. In other words, I’m too old.

Furthermore, one application process I once engaged in wanted videos of me playing for church and conducting choirs. But would I be playing for church and conducting choirs as part of the position? (Spoiler: No.) I'm not a member of the conducting faculty where I am now, so I have no choir to conduct. And I divide my time between two U.S. states, so I don't serve churches regularly and still have no choir to conduct nor an organ on which I serve weekly. [Although it doesn't apply to me, the tired cliché 'Those who can't do, teach' might actually come in handy here, just to get past the application!] And who sets up a camera when they play for church, anyway? The young do. The old are just well-known in the field, and believe me, I have put in my time. But the search committee doesn’t know that – after all, there are likely to be no organists or church musicians on the committee [which is already a fundamental flaw of most searches like mine].

There are many things one can’t do in an academic interview that if they could, they might alter the course of time. I have been changing students’ lives for years, but how do you prove that in a short-list visit? (Spoiler: You don’t.) Until such time as I could connect them with a real counselor, I have counseled innumerable students having mother problems or time management issues. To the extent that I could encourage them through it, I counseled one student whose ex freakishly died in their sleep. How do you demonstrate that in an interview visit? (Spoiler: You don’t.) The committee can’t watch me bring a sense of levity to the office staff every time I walk in the door. The committee has no idea that I am well liked by housekeeping staff, stage crew, building managers, colleagues, and students alike. The committee can watch me play from memory during the interview, but then they can’t go to the Waffle House with me afterwards and watch me let my disappeared hair down and just enjoy being with any people who showed up to eat, too. They can’t see how well I interact with a presenter and how refreshingly non-demanding I am on the road. They can’t see how stage crews breathe a sigh of relief when they discover that I’m low-maintenance and actually enjoy talking to them. In other words, the committee, in their search for the bright and shiny (the young), have no idea that the candidate in front of them would be the very best person for the position, and they have no way of finding that out.

There was recently an organ teacher position open. It was at a major private university, and it was one of those interesting ‘warmup’ teacher positions, where the underclassmen and secondary students would have lessons with this person before making their way up the ladder to the ‘real’ professor. I thought, Wow, that would be fun. For over two decades I have been preparing students for the next school or the next venture. But in this prospective position, I would be preparing them for the professor just next door. Very interesting! I began to assemble an application and then noticed that the position was non-tenure-track. I thought twice, and I wondered if this search committee might be delighted that a full-tenured professor out in the world would be perfectly willing to take this position. Would they be impressed enough to look at me? Would I be deemed over-qualified? Or perhaps 'extra-qualified?' But then I saw the ad in a slightly different light and noticed that it was describing the very person -- an alum of that institution -- who was already doing that job on a visiting basis. Ah, mystery solved – they’re going through the motions, but they already have their guy picked out. So never mind.

But move one track over with me for a moment, to a church search. I have never had any problem landing the church jobs I wanted. It might be because I was invited and able to do in the interview exactly what I do, without having to play a different game under the hood. There might be something to that. Poor academia is getting pressed on all sides, at about the pressure currently being exerted on Titanic. That’s an implosion in the making, and I am already sympathetic for when that time comes. Fortunately, I won't be among the candidates.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 19

This is the final installment of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods. See here for the entire series.

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About the author

Because my time in Houston was so formative, it was all too easy to pepper my own memoirs throughout the posts on Dick Woods at St. John the Divine, Houston. Had I published this as a bona fide biography of him, those personal memoirs and musings might have gotten in the way of his narrative and would have to be managed carefully in footnotes. But some of that personal material presented itself as a curious new creation here: a version of my own biographical sketch as told through the experience of working with Dick:

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As a fellow from the city of Statesville in the piedmont / foothills region of North Carolina [not to be confused, please, with Statesboro, Ga., nor with the Stateville Correctional Center in Ill.], I was raised on Hamburger Helper, livermush, hot dogs, Shoney’s, green beans, sweet tea, Dairy Queen, and no alcohol. It was the usual Southern childhood involving the usual Southern style of parenting and the usual profound loathing of junior high school. It also included the usual piano lessons, beginning at age 8.

After six years of piano study with the most esteemed teacher in my area, my fortune took a turn when I attended the North Carolina School of the Arts as a piano principal, in the big city of Winston-Salem, forty miles from home. I spent three glorious years there, tenth through twelfth grades. From there, it was on to Appalachian State University in the smallish but growing town of Boone, N.C., 68 miles from home, to double-major in piano and organ performance. From there, it was on to Rice University in the gargantuan city of Houston, 1098 miles from home, to continue the journey in organ.

All that to say that upon my arrival in Houston in 1990, ‘country had come to town.’ Not only had I had no more than medium-sized church experience, the majority of it Baptist and the entirety of it non-liturgical, I also had the country boy thing going. Dick amused himself by repeating some of my vowels back to me. I distinctly remember one day asking him to ‘puht sum fraawnk aawn’ (‘put some Franck on’), and he chortled for days after that, repeating ‘fraawnk aawn’ several times. Although I experienced shame at that, it did much to awaken the professional listener in me. I began to tune in to every nuance of language and dialect as carefully as my professor Clyde Holloway was training me to listen to every note I played. And yes, you’re damn right (‘daay-um raat’) I am now the best listener in the music and language business.

I began to notice my North Carolina twang morphing into a Texas drawl. Meanwhile, I was quick to inform his holiness that by the way, my alma mater is pronounced app-a-LATCH-un, thank you [thaah-eenk yew] very much. Not app-a-LAYTCH-un nor app-a-LAYSH-un, and it was time for all youse Pittsburghers to learn that. Dick just called it ASU thereafter. Safer that way, no doubt.

I met Dick in April 1990. While I was in town hunting for an apartment for graduate school, my professor Clyde Holloway sent me to interview with Dick for the open position of Assistant Organist/Choirmaster. I began work at the church on August 1 of that year, as Dick’s last assistant. Dick told me he had to push a bit to get me past the Music Committee, sight unseen to them. He trusted Dr. Holloway’s recommendation of me for the position, and therefore he trusted me. And my hiring must have meant that the Music Committee trusted Dick that time.

I was on high alert. Everything was new, and everything was high-powered. Not only had I embarked at Rice University on the highest-stakes training endeavors of my life so far, but I was also thrilled yet nearly terrified to be in such a large city and such a large church and beginning to hear Texas-sized tales of money, music, accomplishment, and politics. Being on such high alert, I quietly filed away in my brain just about every lesson that came my way: to whom to speak, from whom to run, what to do or not do in this or that liturgy, how to behave, how to stop behaving, how to refine my choral accompanying skills, how to eat chips and salsa and drink margaritas, where to get a haircut, and how to navigate the quickest yet least pothole-plagued routes between my apartment and the church and Rice. These lessons came at me constantly, and I wanted to learn as much as I could. That was a delicate tightrope act, because I didn’t want anyone to discover that I actually didn’t know very much about anything in life beyond music. At the risk of unnecessary presentism all these years later, I have realized many times over just how naïve yet arrogant I really was. Surely Dick must have shielded me from more woes and foes than I realized, and surely the rector tolerated me more with Dick there to run interference.

After resigning from St. John’s in 1994, I took an interim position waaaaay across town at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit. That was a disaster, honestly: I had left the place of Dick’s memory; I had left many friends in the choir; I was still quite young and inexperienced and yet placed in charge, and I was beginning to discover to my horror and annoyance how lax liturgy was becoming in all corners. Furthermore, Holy Spirit had just said goodbye to their own long-time music director [Brian Taylor, headed to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis] and were as emotionally spent as I was. None of us gee-hawed very well, to quote my maternal grandmother. [Aside: I was also battling some tendonitis, and neither the three-manual tracker at that church nor the ten-key data entry at a side job helped with that. But all glory be to technique study with Clyde Holloway – I have been pain-free ever since.]

During that period, I also signed on with a temp agency to make ends meet, eventually landing full-time in an apartment management firm’s national home office. Dick was always perched on my shoulder, reminding me to keep the redneck in check. Funny thing was that I was surrounded by many more rednecks in that office than anywhere else. Rather, what I realized for the first time was that I had learned to function quite competently among collars of all colors, and I could just relax. That remains the most cathartic moment of my entire side career as a frequent counseling client.

In 1995, I signed on as organist at St. Philip Presbyterian, Houston, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Smartest, most musico-liturgical-savvy congregation I ever worked for. Then in 1997, the allure of the magnificent Aeolian-Skinner instruments at First Presbyterian beckoned, and I began a tenure there, having the musical time of my life but being reminded at every turn of the game of church politics. Dick tried to set up shop on my shoulder again, but there wasn’t room for him there anymore. I finally laid him to rest in about 1999, six years after his death.

I didn’t pick up any Pennsylvania Dutch from Dick, and I certainly avoided saying ‘Yewston.’ I lived in Houston 1990-2004 and since 2004 have been teaching at my alma mater back in North Carolina, where my original twang has not returned in the full force I expected. The Texas swagger and drawl have remained. I hear some of Clyde Holloway [Texarkana] in my voice now.

Ever since ‘Yewston,’ I have spotted various mentors just under the surface in nearly everything I do. I teach my organ students much like Clyde Holloway taught us. I mentor them much like my undergraduate professor H. Max Smith mentored us. I teach my sacred music students everything I got from Dick and then some. Only my music theory pedagogy appears to be my own, and that garnered me a teaching award in 2025. Meanwhile, much of my humor still comes from Dick and from my maternal grandfather and from a friend whom Dick hated but who was essential to his AIDS care.

The voice of this Southeastern-country-boy-turned-Texas-cowboy-turned-professor enjoys a bit of local celebrity now. In 2023 I was invited to serve as the Voice of the Appalachian State University Marching Mountaineers. It thrills me to no end to participate in that capacity, which I will do and keep teaching until I retire from Appalachian [again, that’s app-a-LATCH-un] in 2029. As it turns out, Dick would be 100. 

And with that, our lengthy series is ended. Nunc dimittis Richard Forrest Woods.

Note by note: Jongen Sonata Eroïca

You’ll need John Scott Whiteley’s book on Jongen’s organ music. There are many instances of pitches and other issues he corrects, and I feel he’s right.

Note that Jongen’s instrument in Brussels didn’t have a mixture on the Récit. The organ had plenty of mutations, so his music can authentically have a bit of a ‘snarl’ to it, if you care to experiment with registration.

I love this piece. But it’s hard on the first-time listener. The form is not at all a Sonata. It’s more like a litany, in the formless form of a fantasy, couched in a loosely-organized theme and variations, with a sprawling introduction and some profound interludes inserted, plus a fugue, plus dynamics that shift up and down more often than a loaded truck climbing a mountain. All that to say that one must be careful not to overblow any part of this piece, whether with sentimentality, excessive speed, or technical brandishing. The good news to all this is that the piece is essentially monothematic, and any perceived form is secondary.

Note: Measure numbers are vague during the introduction. For the present discussion, I just go with the barlines. In that case, the first ‘measure’ lasts for nearly two systems, and the final measure on page 1 is measure 4, and the final measure on page 3 is measure 17. Beginning on page 4, the barlines are much more regular; the final measure on page 4 is measure 25.

Measure 1: Modéré is not French for ‘as fast as possible.’ And pressez un peu is not French for ‘speed up as much as possible.’

Measure 2: Maestoso grandioso is not Italian for ‘as fast as possible.’ I bring on the 32’ reed for that measure, just to ‘cue the tympanist’ for the long Pedal note.

Measure 9 is often played detached but need not be. The notes under the slurs proper can be fingered perfectly legato, with some clever finger crossing technique. Jongen doesn’t ask for articulation, although hand jumps between slurs will be necessary. Also at the end of this measure, where the right hand is given an 8va, the publisher has missed sharping the B at that point. The sharp is present in the left hand, because there was no change of octave from its previous B#.

Measure 10 is a good place for the Tuba in the Pedal.

Measure 17: Jongen calls for the tirasse Grand-Orgue to be removed. I don’t think that’s enough – the Pedal also needs to be reduced. The left hand may need to be reduced, as well. I bring it all back on in the middle of measure 18.

Measure 30: This is the main theme of the piece, and it’s about as quiet as the piece gets. So don’t plow through it too quickly. Find a way for this quiet moment to be listened to as intensely as all the preceding flourishing commanded.

Measures 36-37: I employ the Pedal to help with wide reaches, beginning with the low D#. I’ll hit a piston to silence the Pedal and couple the speaking manuals to it. Then a new piston to restore the Pedal for measure 40.

Measure 41: No manual 16? Play an octave lower through measure 51. I play this variation on two manuals on similar registrations. The reason I split them is because I don’t like to break the whole-note C# in 49 on behalf of the left-hand eighths. That’s the only reason.

Measure 49: There are Pedal sixteenths there! Oh, that must mean to play as fast as possible, right? [Sarcasm.] Let the left hand chromatic (and melodic) descent be your guide for smoothness and clarity.

Measures 52-62: Those are a lot of sixteenths. That must mean play as fast as possible, right? [Sarcasm.] There is a melody there (left hand) and it deserves clarity and love. Throughout this variation, don’t lengthen the eighth notes in the right hand – they are marked staccato. Pass the sixteenths cleanly among right hand and Pedal.

Measures 63-67: Here is one of many crescendos in the piece. Charles-Marie Widor said that when building the organ up, add stops on strong beats, and when bringing the organ down, remove stops on weak beats. Therefore, here in measures 63-67 I hit a new general piston on each downbeat. That brings me to the fact that my own performance of this piece is rather ‘orchestrated’ and is what I call a ‘piston hog.’ If the pistons exist, I’m going to use them!

Measures 67-94: This passage is based on only a small motive within the primary theme. It is not ‘the Allegro’ section of a Sonata-Allegro movement (see Reubke) and need not take off so fast. Remember that these composers were gentlemen, not wild stallions.

Measures 71-72: I believe the right-hand dotted quarters need to tie to missing half notes, same pitches.

Measure 95: I move Jongen’s reduction directive into the middle of 94, to achieve more decrescendo. Remember Widor saying that reduction can occur on weak beats.

Measures 95 and following: This section is based on another small motive in the primary theme. Same discussion as for measures 67-94.

Measures 112-115: I do entertain some amount of accelerando, ‘arriving’ on measure 116.

Measures 116-117: I add the lower octave in the right hand for the Eb-D-C motives. Those moments seem to lack body otherwise.

Measures 116-119: Those are a lot of sixteenths in the Pedal. That must mean play as fast as possible, right? Sarcasm again.

Measure 120: This is a good place to build up the organ for the fanfare coming up in 121. I do so on the second eighth of beat 1.

Measures 122-125: I don’t believe the Pedal should drift into an unmeasured trill. I believe the sixteenth-note rhythm is sufficient. See measures 245-246 as well.

Measures 130-150: Loooooooong decrescendo. I burn through pistons like there’s no tomorrow, about every two measures or so. I have not played this piece with human registrants, but my apologies to them if I ever do.

Measures 150-172: Although Jongen was Belgian, his music is very much French Symphonic in style, which means ‘legato unless otherwise indicated by a breath mark, staccato, or a rest.’ Therefore, the left hand needs to be legatothroughout this entire section, and that means dust off your thumb glissando technique and put it to work. It may be prudent to register these two manuals adjacent to each other, so that the right hand can ‘thumb’ a few notes to help the left hand out.

Measures 167-186: I make a looooooong accelerando and an equally looooooooong crescendo. More general pistons.

Measures 173-182: Those are a lot of off-beat sixteenth notes. That must mean play as fast as possible, right? Sensing a sarcasm pattern here?

Measure 182: non legato! Well, finally, permission to peck at notes. Be sure the hands pass the descent cleanly to the Pedal in 184: don’t hold the manual F# past its welcome.

Measures 186-208: If only Jongen had written this section one note value level faster, then we could play those Pedal notes as fast as possible, right? By now, the Dear Reader might have figured out that I am no fan of unmusically fast tempos. I have heard this section, if not the entire piece, go by in such a blur that I have to wonder if the organist just hates music or has to go to the bathroom. Truly our ears are often not put to work enough when we’re on the bench. We can do better, and we can insist our students do, too. To misquote paraphrase the Dos Equis most interesting man in the world, “Slow down, my friends.”

Beginning at 186, we may assume legato once again, although Jongen doesn’t say so. On the other hand, he indicates some manual staccatos, which assumes legato everywhere else. Also in this section, the manuals are given lots of full chords in octaves, suggesting detachment. This is fine and quite heroic, in line with the piece’s title.

Measure 209: It’s only Moderato assai. And in the absence of articulation markings, it’s also legato.

Measure 235: I cut the Pedal half note off early in order to build the manuals yet prevent that buildup to be reflected too loudly in the Pedal.

Measures 238-249: The thickness of the chords does not lend itself well to legato. This is fine.

Measure 252: That is only Un poco. Not ‘all the tempo you’ve got.’

Measures 256-263: The Pedal has a nice melody. It’s not a toccata.

Measure 265: The left hand needs middle C# on the third beat.

Measures 273-277: If only those Pedal notes were sixteenths, eh? Sarcasm. Same tempo as before.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 18

This is one of many installments of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods. See here for the entire series.

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Some final observations

One might think that ‘getting out’ when he did was a blessing for Dick and saved him some trouble. But he didn’t ‘get out.’ He was ‘gotten out’ by AIDS and local society’s intolerance of it. Had he lived and stayed on at St. John the Divine, he probably would have died anyway from exhaustion, hypertension, or stress. And he would have had to witness along the way the further erosion of many elements of worship that his training and heritage, indeed his very self, tried to preserve. Either way, he was doomed.

Perhaps Dick no longer belonged at St. John the Divine after his hiring rector Tom Roberts died in 1973, and perhaps he should have sought other employment once again. Perhaps he was too tired to do so, or perhaps he thought he’d give the next rector(s) a chance, or perhaps by the time he realized that mistake, he felt he was too old to move on. Or perhaps he was resigned to the fact that with ‘renewal music’ and willful liturgical and musical ignorance on the rise everywhere, he’d probably never find the sort of parish he trained for and taught in the Seminary. [He would have found such a place, by the way. But with so much Church-wide change emerging at that time, it was probably difficult to determine where one might find a parish reliably friendly to whom and what Dick represented. Don’t forget that Internet searches didn’t exist in those days.] Then there was the money and the St. John’s choir, both of which fed Dick’s soul to a great degree. If I were granted a sit-down with him once again, it would be my first order of business to find out why he stayed on and didn’t use his stature to go to another position.

And perhaps I myself did or didn’t belong at St. John’s, but I didn’t have the foresight to know one way or the other, at least during my time working with Dick. Frankly, the more critically and honestly I look back at my time with Dick’s successor John Gearhart, I keep concluding that I might have stayed longer. I had more to learn. I needed to develop better skills in work / life balance. I needed to learn ways to continue after a major upheaval such as Dick’s death. I had plenty left to learn in matters of worship trends, liturgy, acoustical renovation, making my expertise known with compassion, and recognizing where my expertise was lacking or didn’t exist at all. John Gearhart was becoming for me what Dick Woods was for the generation before me – he was a new voice for new ears like mine. I had been willing to learn from Dick, and I was now willing to learn from John. But I had arrived at the parish during an era of unrest rather than stability, and I think I never got my legs solidly under me. I untidily tilted at every windmill and allowed myself to be distracted by the commonplace occurrence of a conservative parish behaving conservatively. But had I stayed, I would have witnessed multiple, refreshing turnarounds that occurred in the parish. While I am pleased with where I eventually ended up three years after resigning, I probably needed those three years to be less chaotic than I made them!

Richard Forrest Woods, Diplôme Schola Cantorum, was born about twenty years too late. He lived long enough to witness constant, measurable erosion of the dignity of Episcopal liturgy and music. He lived long enough to see his counterparts around the nation begin to be replaced by amateur guitarists with corporate day jobs. Dick’s training was in maintaining high standards, not in rescuing them from whom he considered marauders. The celebrated, deliberate wearing away of high musical standards pushed him far out of his comfort zone.

Conversely, Dick died about twenty years too soon, in that he did not live long enough to see churches begin to take better care of their marginalized. Perhaps he would be pleased today, not to mention have been better cared for.

For the musico-liturgical tradition he championed, Dick Woods appears to have died in vain. But for those readers whose loving tributes to him inspired the writing of this would-be-published-document-turned-marathon-blog-series, he certainly did not live in vain, for he brought life and a love of music to many people fortunate enough to work with him. Dick’s choirs adored him partly because of his own self but also because he gathered them around a more profound Alleluia of human fellowship that only the best music coupled with our best efforts can bring.

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Next time, a curious final post in this series: “About the author”

Note by note: Guilmant Sonata No. 1, Mvt. II: Pastorale

This is one of my favorite movements from the French Symphonic style. I excerpt it all the time, more so than the third movement.

As usual, the published metronome marking is too fast. There is plenty of room to slow this down somewhere into the 70s and still remain in a large meter of 4, which is important. One needs time to smell all these pretty roses along the way!

Compound meter can be a beast to keep under control. With this movement’s lilting rhythm of quarter-eighth, it is too easy to throw it out of flow. If the eighth note occurs too strongly, too late, or too early, it could sound like labored duplets or a dotted rhythm or just drunken sludge. Listen mercilessly but lovingly to every note, and keep the gentle flow alive, all the way to the end.

Obey Guilmant’s rests exactly, even when they are only a single eighth long. It’s all perfect the way he wrote it.

Measure 11: If you configure Swell and Positif adjacent to each other, you’ll be able to ‘thumb’ a couple alto notes in measures 13 and 14, to preserve legato (see next paragraph below). A good way to configure this in English/American manual layout is to couple the Swell to the dead Great and play there, then play the Positif normally from measure 11. You can undo the Swell/Great setup later, by moving the hands to the ‘real’ Swell during measure 18, removing the Swell-Great coupler, and adding the ‘real’ stops on the Great in preparation for measure 21. A general piston is probably the way to go there. If this sounds like a lot of trouble, I assert my gospel lesson once again that preserving as much legato as possible is always worth a piston.

Measure 13: The alto A on the ninth eighth note could be taken by the left hand (probably the second finger). Ditto the alto B in the following measure.

Measure 24: I add the Great to Pedal during the rests in this measure, to give the Pedal more presence in the brief contrapuntal section through measure 29. Guilmant’s directive to remove the Positif Clarinette in this measure can wait until measure 30, when you can hit a general piston just after the downbeat and take care of everything at once.

Measure 38: No need to try to time a general piston just right for the left-hand chord. That piston may be hit any time between 34 and 37, because it won’t affect the Great, where you are playing at that point 

Measure 41: Positif divisions rarely have the Harmonic Flute that Guilmant calls for. I just use whatever manual has a big flute on it. And don’t forget that a four-foot flute (or two of them!) played down an octave might be just as good on some organs. In any event, you can get the Clarinette back later, in time for measure 53. Throughout this passage, obey Guilmant’s rests exactly, and watch for those spots where your wrist may be raising into the air for a release, but your fingers still have notes down!

The rest of this lovely piece plays itself, so long as you observe Guilmant’s rests and registrations. As pieces go, this one is not hard to play, but it becomes harder if you are as much a slave to legato as I am. If you are, then some of this will require sophisticated fingering and quick manual changes that should not be allowed to sound panicked. Enjoy.

The third movement of the Sonata is not under discussion here, but if you have read others of my Note-By-Note posts, you’ll probably be able to write a post about that one on my behalf! Be sure to include phrases such as “usually too fast,” “don’t rush,” and “usually too loud.” *Grin*

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 17

This is one of many installments of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods, organist/choirmaster at the Church of St. John the Divine, Houston. See here for the entire series.

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After the Woods era

Dick was of the ‘Organist-Choirmaster’ vintage. The next generation was ‘Director of Music.’ Dick’s calling card actually displayed both titles, each on a separate line: Organist-Choirmaster / (Director of Music) [parentheses included]. About five months after Dick’s death, his successor John Gearhart arrived from St. Paul’s Church in Mobile, Ala. In John and his wife Laurie, I found easy confidantes and a whole new set of lessons to learn. John is a good man and a conscientious and creative director of music. He was necessarily a bit of a shock to the choir – a man of wider smiles, more relaxed wardrobe, and louder living than Dick. He was as organized as Dick but also rather more passionately impulsive. It took me only a short while to learn how fast I would have to move to make things happen when John had an idea. Dick had his ideas months ahead; John seemed to have his just before bulletin printing deadlines! [Kidding.] But one is a fool who thinks John didn’t fit in. Rather, it was Dick who had over time become the outlier in that parish. John Gearhart quite satisfactorily and appropriately completed the public gleam of the parish that the rector and the congregation had in mind.

As the final word on matters of worship staff, rector Larry Hall hired and presented John to the choir, sight unseen. There was plenty of grumbling that the choir never had much of a say in the matter and therefore felt unappreciated. Some fallout and exodus were predictable and indeed occurred. Not everyone was willing to accept the new way, appropriate though the new way admittedly was for that parish. A sense of making a statement gnawed at me. The Woods era was over, and I felt like I was supposed to make some dramatic statement to that effect. I self-misguidedly chose resigning to make that statement, effective May 15, 1994. It wasn’t until much later as that date approached that I realized that it was one year to the day after Dick’s death.

For a number of years following, several choir members organized an annual choir reunion on the Saturday closest to Dick’s birthday, July 26. The group would gather at a gourmet Mexican restaurant in the Houston area, in homage to Dick’s preference for the original Ninfa’s Mexican restaurant on Navigation Boulevard. [It was at Ninfa’s with Dick where I learned everything there is to know about Tex-Mex. I also learned that Dick proudly knew how to ask for an ashtray in Spanish and that he drank his margaritas in the uncommon fashion of straight up with no salt. I think of Dick and the choir and of Ninfa’s and of life in Houston every time I go out for Mexican.] At these post-Woods-era gatherings, the choir would update their contact info with each other, tell stories, eat lunch, and sing one or two pieces together, usually the Doxology and the Mozart Ave verum, which is fitting, since we didn’t get to that one during Communion at the funeral. Previous assistant organists able to attend always added a level of remembrance from their perspectives that enriched the choir members’ recollections from theirs. This annual gathering was about the man as much as the experiences and training he provided.

One friend in the choir has stressed what it was about Dick to be able to create what he did, against so much headwind. When it came to music and its community-building component, Dick was genuine. He focused on tone, and the rest followed, including goodwill. [Paraphrased.] These annual re-gatherings were not hero worship; rather, we were still honoring the community Dick fostered within us all. As of this writing in 2025, we’re all getting older (and worse), and those gatherings are no longer annual, but they still occur here and there.

About six years after Dick died, the church campus was finally showing enough wear and tear that it had to be dealt with. And deal with it the parish did. They realized that the buildings had lasted fifty years and needed some help to continue into the future. The perfect committee was formed, coordinated by the perfect chair Mrs. Sally McCollum. They openly and honestly discussed and dealt with every inch of the physical plant. They retained leading professionals in liturgical design, infrastructure, roofing, fire suppression, landscaping, and a host of other fields. And yes, they dealt smartly and successfully (and finally) with matters of acoustics, chancel layout, seating, and floor covering in the main church. The entire room now has slate flooring and completely modular liturgical furniture and platforming for infinite versatility for services and concerts. What had previously been one of Houston’s more visually disagreeable rooms is now rather luminous, and what had previously been one of Houston’s driest acoustical spaces is now one of the warmest and most commanding. The architecture now serves the function of the space better, rather than being merely a perpetuation of the original architect’s adherence to his idol’s designs. All this, plus a five-manual pipe organ with two consoles, built by Orgues Létourneau, St. Hyacinthe, Quebec [their largest, at 144 ranks] to replace the 1954 Wicks rebuilt in 1970. The room, previously and deservedly shunned by all competent musicians, is now in constant use as a popular concert venue. The parish has enjoyed hosting such events and takes an active role in hospitality.

That renovation is a visible representation of the parish’s revolution toward smarter decisions on many matters. Dick’s successor John Gearhart reports that the conservatism toward the marginalized turned around, too, for which I offer congratulations to the parish and many thanks to God. John reports that all things were made new during the time following Dick’s death. Certainly overdue, but revolution toward a better church for God’s people made its way organically and peacefully into many lives there. John’s own successor Steve Newberry reports that things continue on that good track. The liturgy in the nave has remained faithful, even adding vergers, Anglican-chanted Psalms, and monthly Evensong. ‘Renewal music,’ now perhaps better known as ‘praise and worship,’ is still plentiful in its own services in another space on campus.

Next time: Some final observations

Note by note: Vierne Symphony No. 1: Final

Vierne was later apologetic for this movement. He felt it was too youthful, too swaggering, and too shallow to be good music. If my memory serves, he also felt it was unnecessarily hard compared with the musical return on it. I agree with all this, but if we play the piece with dignity rather than pageantry, it will say what it needs to say, without offending. It is exciting enough on its own without me getting in its way. And guess what – we can hit more of the right notes when we slow down. Just imagine.

For this entire movement, the eighth-note pairs of the main theme will give you no end of grief for evenness. Those two notes often come out as lopsided triplets or as subsets of sixteenth quintuplets. Keep them even and perfectly aligned with the accompanimental figures against them.

Repeat after me: “Slurs in French Symphonic music do not break at the end.” The only authority to break a note in this style is a rest, a breath mark, or some sort of articulation such as a staccato mark. All those little paired slurs at the beginning are nothing more than strong-weak indications. Now, for the right hand, the first notes of these pairs are automatically louder, anyway, because they are higher. So don’t work too hard with those. But the left-hand pairs are the reverse, and you and your ears are going to have to show up for work to keep those sounding correct.

Measures 1 and 2: In many performances, these two measures tend to come off as regal, with poise and grandeur. And then the Pedal enters, and the discussion above regarding uneven eighth-note pairs comes into play. Listen mercilessly to the main theme throughout the movement – the recurrences of that rhythm are relentless, and the siren’s song toward rhythmic sloppiness is nearly overwhelming. Your ears need to be as tired as your fingers and feet when you play this piece.

Measures 4, 8, 13, 17, etc.: Everyone shortens the first note in the Pedal, but Vierne doesn’t ask for that. Nevertheless, I think that approach is here to stay. The accents he places on the half-notes are compelling for some detached prep just before, but he would have placed a staccato on the preceding note each time if he wanted the break.

Measure 5 is usually where people realize they started a little slower than they intended, and so they catch up in this measure. Don’t.

Measures 6, 10, and 11 tend to rush. Don’t let them.

Measures 13, 14, 17, 18, etc.: Again, the eighth notes in the melody tend to rush. Keep hands and feet rigorously aligned in solid rhythm.

Measures 23-27: I tend to start this section on the Récit and then move to the Positif in the middle of 25 and to the Great in the middle of 27. Harmless. I do the same in the recap, measures 190-194.

Measures 31-37: Again, make sure the left hand and Pedal remain rock-solid in their rhythms and tempo. The Pedal often tends to rush the eighth notes. Dust off your Gleason technique and clean those up.

Measure 40: The manual change there is terribly awkward. It can be easily fixed by making the manual change on the second eighth of that measure. Although slightly different, Vierne does this in measure 44.

Measure 49: Vierne doesn’t ask for a slower tempo, but many people play this slower. After all, it’s hard to play, plus it’s marked cantabile. But if you do choose to do that, then you’ll need a place to recover tempo in time for 85. Many people speed up in 67, 77, or 81. Just do so gradually and with intention, rather than jarringly. Another option is to play the entire movement more grandly, if I haven't said that already, hint, hint.

Measure 65: The left hand should move to the Positif on beat 2. Consult Olivier Latry’s corrections for this and other spots.

Measures 65-76: Those double thirds are going to require your best finger crossing technique. There is precious little time for substitution. Those third are often played with some sort of articulation, although Vierne doesn’t ask for that. But that might be another one of those global habits that’s here to stay.

Measure 66: I move the right hand to the Great for the final three eighths of 66, and then move the left hand on the second beat of 67. Smoother and easier.

Measures 127-130, 135-139, 143-145: Consider using two feet for each pair of Pedal eighth notes. This will keep the tempo under control, but that idea goes out the window beginning in 147.

Measures 215-218: Detail alert: Notice that Vierne doesn’t ask the melodic half notes to break along with the staccato quarters under them. And notice the absence of staccatos on the downbeats of all these measures.

Measures 218-220: There are staccatos on some right-hand notes that are not present in the left. I believe they should be added. But not in the Pedal.

Measures 243-244: As I have said many times before for many other pieces, those Pedal notes are melodic, and this is neither a race nor a parade of technique. Those notes deserve to be heard as the music they are, not as a Pedal exercise. Play music there, and let the notes be exciting on their own terms (which they are). Matter of fact, notice that Vierne does not even ask for a final ritard. If you obey that non-directive, then the final four measures are quite thrilling without help.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 16

This is one of many installments of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods, organist/choirmaster at the Church of St. John the Divine, Houston. See here for the entire series.

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The funeral

Mr. Bob Jones, then president of Geo. H. Lewis & Sons Funeral Directors, was a dear friend of Dick’s, and he stood ready to assist when the inevitable occurred. I thank him, God rest his soul, for that service in friendship. Aside: Over the years, Bob also spearheaded a most welcome practice that nearly all other funeral homes in Houston still follow today – bringing a check to each funeral for the organist.

Dick’s funeral was May 22, 1993, at 1:00 pm at St. John’s. Bishop Sterling celebrated. Rector Larry Hall preached. My teacher Clyde Holloway played the Franck B-Minor Choral for the prelude, after which I added the Bach E-Flat Prelude and Fugue. The hymns were Engelberg, St. Columba, Melita, Down Ampney, and Land of Rest. And the choir completely filled the stalls with current and former members. (How I wished I had been around during the heyday of this choir with Dick.) There were surprisingly few other people in attendance – maybe fifty or so – a final insult, I felt, from a parish of some 4000 members, for a fellow who had served among them for two decades.

The choir sang three anthems at the Offertory: Duruflé Ubi caritas, Mendelssohn ‘He that shall endure,’ and Vaughan Williams ‘O how amiable.’ Even today, I still weep openly upon hearing the Vaughan Williams. For whatever reason, my myriad emotions converged around this piece during this time, and I remember Dick and everything he stood for, every time I hear it. Communion motets were Tallis ‘If ye love me’ and Mozart Ave verum. I recall running out of communicants before we ran out of music, and just as Dick would have done, we ended the music and did not get to the Mozart.

Bishop Benitez (previously the rector) could not attend the funeral and wrote an address of sorts to be read aloud. I was keen to hear what final words he might offer for this fellow he openly admired. To my disappointment, the letter was full of platitudes and clichés. It was all smiles and read like a merry biographical sketch intended for a retirement party. I was deeply disappointed that the bishop didn’t make better use of the opportunity for a Christian teaching moment. There was no mention of the tragedy of this death, no mention of the unnecessary stigma that came with AIDS in those days, no reprimand of this parish or the Church at large – an institution that should have been there for sick people who often unnecessarily lost their dignity and friends and family as well as their lives with this disease, no mention of the HIV learning curve the whole thing put some of us on and should have put everyone on, no call for better education and better treatment of each other. I seem to be the only person who remembers the address at all, and although I can’t recall if it was read aloud or if the bishop had pre-recorded it himself it to be played back at the service, I know I’m not making it up. I have tried to get a copy of it from the archivist at the diocese, but the backlog on the digitization of previous bishops' documents is understandably formidable.

Credit is due Bishop Benitez, however, for his unwavering and demonstrated admiration of Dick from the day they met to the day Dick died. He always called Dick ‘maestro.’ I remember his graciously attending a birthday party for Dick in 1991 and uttering a most sincere prayer to God, some of the words I remember as, “… for your servant Dick … that as his days increase …” The bishop even visited Dick on his death bed at home. Dick’s inner circle has never forgotten that gesture from the bishop nor the absence of the same gesture from the rector and others.

Dick’s ashes were interred in the columbarium at the church. As one enters the gate, his niche is on the left-hand side, in the first bend of the columbarium’s cruciform layout. Dick is interred directly next to Mr. Collis Woods, Sr., a Black gentleman who served St. John’s for decades as sexton. The two of them had arranged to be interred next to each other so that visitors might assume they were brothers. Dick always chuckled like a sly villain whenever he told anyone of those plans. The whole thing is a perfect representation of his wry, sneaky humor, and it is quietly hiding in plain, perpetual sight right there in the church columbarium.

Next time: After the Woods era

A few more little-known facts

I tend to accept the things I can’t change, keeping quiet about some things and otherwise choosing my battles carefully. But I can tell I’m turning into my grandfather. Witness:

Other than in movie theatres, it is foreign to me to require food and drink just to sit through a performance in a theatre. In my youth and college days it was unheard of to allow food and drink into, say, an opera or even a musical. And certainly not during church. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to all the coffee thermoses now in church, candy bars at orchestra concerts, and wine glasses at virtually everything. And when one considers the price markup of concessions at all theatres, then the ‘need’ for a plastic cup of wine appears to be more an addiction or nervous habit than anything else. I feel sorry-not-sorry for people when they learn they are not allowed to bring their salads and pinot grigio picnics into our student concerts at the university.

I shake my head over our addiction to noise: omnipresent earbuds, days-long playlists, resonant clubby restaurants, screaming children, Broadway live sound, souped-up motorcycle and car stereos, fireworks, dance clubs, and souped-up cars missing their mufflers. Seriously, are we really that afraid of our own thoughts anymore? Of course, I myself don’t seem to mind dozens of ranks of organ pipes sounding within striking distance; so there’s that.

I miss church weddings, even if I don’t miss playing for them. I have reached my limit for remote, expensive wedding venues that used to be hay barns.

I miss tuxedos on performers.

I miss white tie.

I miss matching socks.

I miss dress socks.

I miss any socks with suits.

I miss suit coats that cover the butt and actually button around the belly.

I miss dress shoes.

I still don’t like blond shoes with dark suits.

I don’t like that an untucked button-down with no blazer is now called ‘business casual,’ and a standard suit with tie is now called ‘formal.’ I suppose that means I’ll be considered a freak or an extra-terrestrial if I ever wear white tie or even black tie again, or if I tuck in my button-down and wear a belt with it.

I don’t miss men’s pants pulled up to the chest, nor neckties that barely make it past the sternum.

Speaking of ties, I miss symmetrical knots.

And I am completely at a loss to explain the proliferation of pajamas for public attire. Seriously, people, what happened?

In other news, I still believe in using hard-copy scores whenever possible. I suppose I would read from the original manuscript, if I could.

And I still believe in showing up early and in eating afterward with whoever wants to go and in talking about music and men’s ‘fashion’ and the grandfather I have apparently become.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 15

This is one of many installments of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods, organist/choirmaster at the Church of St. John the Divine, Houston. See here for the entire series.

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The inevitable

After he got out of the hospital, Dick said strange things and had trouble following conversations. That was to be expected for what his brain had just endured and was now up against, but he needed to save as much face as possible. He wisely stayed off the organ bench during church now. I started taking up more bureaucratic slack, most of which involved finding ways to keep him off the phone. He couldn’t carry on much of a conversation, and most of the folks he was talking to were uninformed about what was going on. Furthermore, there was no voicemail in those days; phone messages existed only on pink slips from the receptionist’s office. Dick would return a call from a pink-slip message, get no answer, and then just throw the slip away and declare the matter ended. He wouldn’t [couldn’t] even leave messages on answering machines. Complaints began to mount. I began to go in after he left each day, retrieve messages from the trash can, and return calls. Of course, e-mail didn’t exist yet.

And so it went for a few months. That Christmas 1992 was touch-and-go. Dick’s brain couldn’t keep up with appropriate tempos in rehearsals. I took it upon myself to practice playing and conducting just in case I needed to, and I had to practice those during times Dick was not going to be within earshot. I had to work out in my mind where the orchestra might re-set to see me, should Dick not be able to conduct. And I worked out any spots where I might gently drive tempos ahead at the organ without losing the orchestra, whether Dick was conducting or not. He was determined to remain in charge, and his inner circle was determined to help him. Even though it was my job to be prepared, ironically I had to think through all these things and be ready without anyone knowing. Fortunately, those secret plans weren’t necessary, and I have never shared them with anyone until now. We made it through that night. Dick even managed to rally for the evening with higher energy and better tempos. But he was exhausted afterward, of course, and he never rallied back to that level again.

We all knew there would certainly be no post-Christmas-Eve party at Dick’s that year. Those were always epic in previous years. Church would be over around midnight on Christmas morning, and many choir members and other friends would gather at Dick’s and party well into the night. Dick always invited the Diocesan Music Commission and his good friend Bruce Power. The party would last until at least 4:00 am. I would go and stay for only a short while, because I had Christmas morning duties. It was one of the most joyous times of year for me. Since I couldn’t get home to North Carolina for Christmas, I could enjoy my dear friends in the choir, celebrate a [big] job well done at church, and get in the habit of being in church on high holy days, a foreign concept in my childhood but a necessity for me now.

Soon after that Christmas 1992, we moved out of the church into the gym for services during nave renovation. Then Dick announced his retirement, to take effect after a couple months’ vacation he had accrued. I officially took over as Interim. I didn’t see him for a while, during which time he lost half his weight and began wasting away. He arrived in a wheelchair for his farewell Sunday, during which he received a lengthy standing ovation. Dick managed to stand his poor, emaciated self up and accept it.

Once Dick’s retirement was effective, no one in the music department knew what was next, and a sense of threat loomed. We were all waiting for some sort of bomb to be dropped – choir disbandment in favor of the contemporary service, choir scattering out of frustration, choir scattering because they realized that Dick was the only glue holding them all together. I just wanted to hand them off intact to Dick’s successor, whoever that was going to be. And Holy Week was now around the corner.

Meanwhile, the search for Dick’s successor was now on. A search committee was formed, but when Episcopal policy gives the rector the final say over matters of worship and therefore worship staff, this was going to be under the hood a quiet, intensive, one-man search. This was rector Larry Hall’s chance.

Saturday, May 15, 1993: Dick was on his deathbed at home, under Hospice care. Here I should thank a gracious and dear lady, ‘Pearl,’ assigned to his care. I had stopped by to speak what few words I had in my feeble, uninformed vocabulary for such a time as that. Not having experienced this before, I was horrified at how emaciated Dick had become, and I was unfamiliar with the short gasps of breath that are the typical death rattle. I wanted to stay but had to head to church for a wedding. A few minutes before I began the prelude, rector Larry handed me the note that Dick had died; he was two months and eleven days shy of age 64.

Next time: The funeral