Note by note: Vierne Carillon de Westminster

Just about any organist could say, “I have played this piece since high school.” That is not always good news. This carillon is often played too fast, surprise, surprise. Vierne says Andante con moto, not Allegro con fuoco. And when you recall that most metronome markings (here, dotted quarter 69) were often insisted on by the publishers against composers’ wishes and are often wayyyyyyy too fast, then there is no empirical support for playing this piece any faster than marked. Don’t forget that this is live music, not a computerized light show. Vierne asks for ‘motion’ in his Italian indication, but honestly, he writes so many notes in such vigorous rhythm that there is plenty of moto present without having to force things. The piece should soar rather than dive-bomb. Never stop listening.

Registration: French Récits will require everything on, except 16-foot stops. But in the U.S., I often leave off the mixture and the 2’ and even the 4’ reed and have a much better time. Those stops may make for a more imposing buildup later in, say, measure 66.

Measure 1: Repeat after me: “Those slurs over every measure do not indicate lifts at the end.” “Those slurs over every measure do not indicate lifts at the end.” “Those slurs over every measure do not indicate lifts at the end.” French Symphonic is always played legato unless otherwise indicated, and ‘otherwise indicated’ is going to be much more obvious than a phrase mark. Had Vierne intended lifts, he would have inserted breath marks or rests outright. The copious slurs here are not liftable phrase marks but rather moments of ‘pulses,’ where the first note of the slur is ever so slightly lengthened, and the remaining notes simply grow naturally from it and make their way without delay to the next slur. In other words, one may put the slightest tenuto on the first note of each slur and then proceed a tempo through the rest of the measure, with no breaking to prove a point. (Pedagogical descendants of Clyde Holloway will recognize this as ‘pulsing.’) Notice the actual rests Vierne inserts into the Pedal in measures 4, 9, 11, 12, 13, etc.

Measure 3: I like to play this melody on the manual adjacent to the Récit. It makes some of my own ‘thumbing’ easier in measure 33.

Measure 4 and following: observe exactly all printed rests for the Pedal. That goes for each hand, for that matter, for all 165 measures.

Measure 5: Compare the left-hand and pedal cutoff here with those in measures 9 and 14. They’re all different and are perfectly playable differently. I don’t think Vierne was being careless in his notation – he was too advanced in his style by then to miss errors like that. So go to the trouble to be rhythmically precise and listen to the results.

Measure 9: Notice that the left hand will need to insert an eighth rest in order to re-strike the A for measure 10. Same thing in measures 17 and 30. Same thing in measure 54 for the right hand. Plenty other places – just keep your eyes and ears alert for rhythmic precision at all times.

Measure 33: I ‘thumb’ a few sextuplets into the left hand, to keep things smooth and panic-free.

Measure 34: If you have been playing your left hand on the middle manual since the beginning and your Positif is on the bottom, you can ‘recover’ to the bottom manual at some point in this measure and prepare the Great stops for measure 35.

Measure 35 and following: Repeat after me: “Those slurs over every measure do not indicate lifts at the end.” This also applies to the Pedal slurring, which is aligned differently. Same thing as before – the beginning of a slur can mean a slight dwelling on the first note, but in French Symphonic style, such never indicates a break prior. Only rests and breath marks and staccato marks and the like indicate breaking. German and English? Yes, feel free to break at phrase marks. But not in French Symphonic.

Measure 51 is missing its slur in the left hand. Not that we were at a loss without it.

Measure 59: The final D in the left hand may need to be broken for the re-strike of that note for measure 60. But if the acoustic says otherwise, feel free to tie. In any event, no need to break the B – again, always legato in this style unless otherwise instructed.

Measure 62: The first eighth rest in the Pedal is unnecessary and should be crossed out. The Pedal holds its first note a full large-beat dotted quarter and then releases with the left hand.

Measures 66-69 and similar measures through 93: Repeat after me: “Those slurs over every beat do not indicate lifts at the end.” Use dwelling, not breaking, on the first note to make things clean. But don’t dwell too much, because the first note of each beat here is already the highest, and therefore the loudest.

Measures 70, 74, 78, 82, 86, 90: The left hand is told to lift its chord on the final eighth of each measure, while the Pedal is told to hold all the way to the downbeat. There is always the chance that one of those treatments was an afterthought that didn’t get changed in the other part. But there is plenty to be said for taking Vierne literally in those measures and allowing the Pedal to linger just a bit longer in the name of sustained reverberation. This makes even better sense in measures 114-118. Only in 119 does he change it, and for good reason of the registration change.

Measure 86: The final C in the right hand may need to be lifted for its re-striking in 87. See the discussion for measure 59 above.

Measures 96 and following: See those staccato marks? Now you can start breaking some things. The authority for that is granted by the staccatos, not by the slurs. Keep everything clean and consistent.

Measures 120-125, 130-140: Honestly, I don’t know what sort of claws Vierne is expecting an organist to have in these passages. There are a couple spots where the finger stretching is heroic [read: laughable] and downright dangerous if over-practiced. Be careful. Everyone’s hands are different, so I’ll just offer general comments: 1) When in doubt, strive for legato melody – we would notice a broken soprano note before we noticed a broken or missing inner voice; 2) The sextuplets add a very effective sense of churning but no melody; 3) The drone on A in the left hand adds more sound but no melody. I would say that that A could be the first note you sacrifice to save your wrists or to preserve other parts of the texture. Experiment as needed – no need for this to hurt.

Measure 125: Tie the left hand A into measure 126. Ditto for measure 140 into 141. That is, if you’re actually playing it! (See the discussion just above.)

Measures 126-129, 141-144: The pesante chords are marked with sharp accents, which may be executed by shortening the quarter notes. Not too short – they still need a moment to speak with full voice.

Measure 144: Depending on the organ and the acoustics, I might tie the final F# in the Pedal into 145.

Measures 157-159: I have experimented with all sorts of rhythmic and acoustical manipulations here. Some folks add fermatas to the notes and/or to some of the eighth rests. But with Vierne suddenly coming to a rhythmic halt here for the first time in the piece and adding a ritard, I believe we might have plenty enough success just to keep counting while still slowing down.

Measures 160-163: If you can’t hear the Pedal notes, it’s too fast. That’s only four measures, so there’s no time for the Sowerby Pageant here – those notes are still quite melodic, and they deserve love.

Measure 163: I wouldn’t slow down too much. And I certainly wouldn’t add fermatas to the final sextuplets. Imagine a carillonneur playing a piece such as this – they wouldn’t slow down much. I might, however, release the penultimate chord just a bit early, to hear the Pedal cadenza better. And I might play the final two sextuplets in double octaves, especially if the organ doesn’t have enough lungs otherwise.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 13

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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A bit of fun

Any discussion of Dick’s influence naturally includes his command of his work and his welcoming others into it. But a discussion must also include his sense of humor. Although he felt increasingly slighted and irrelevant at St. John the Divine, Houston, he always maintained a wry sense of humor just under the surface, and he was always grateful when he found himself in company where he could unleash that humor freely (which he did). The apex I witnessed of his ability to shed work and enjoy life was a short trip he, Bruce Power, Richard Rhoads and I made to New Orleans beginning on Christmas Day 1991. Just four busy church musicians enjoying a few days off, with Dick leading the pack. We ate at the Camellia Grill one day and playfully concluded as a group that ‘Camellia’ was probably Dick’s drag name at Tulane. He went along with the gag.

Whenever he said something sarcastic or off-color, Dick would follow it with a smirk, a raised shoulder and raised eyebrows, or he would smile and tuck his chin in a demure pose of look-at-me-I-made-a-funny. He had a twinkle in his eye and a childlike smile. He never laughed out loud but rather grinned it out under a bulky caterpillar mustache I never saw shaved off.

He and I and several friendlies on the church support staff would giggle at the sincere but tragically all-too-frequent spelling ‘St. John the Devine.’ We snickered as we visualized champagne bottles and prows of ships when we heard of new parents asking to have their babies ‘christened.’ And we would snort at the strings of fashionable last names being given to babies for their full names; we imagined the future chaos when these children would be told to ‘print last name first’ and then an unsuspecting reader would have to recalculate which of all those last names was the real one.

Dick and I would always pass the Peace at the appropriate time and in quiet reverence, complete with handshake and the full exchange, “The Peace of the Lord be with you. / And also with you.” Then he would immediately exit that mood and make some characteristically Dick comment: “Where the hell is the choir today? This is going to be terrible.” … “Where would we like to go for lunch today?” … “Boy, that was some sermon. I should have gone to feed the doggies during it.” [‘Feed the doggies’ was code for ‘smoke a cigarette.’ Dick was a heavy smoker. When my non-smoking, teetotaling parents first visited me in Houston, we went to Dick’s one evening for dinner. Rather than smoke in front of them, Dick stepped outside several times, claiming he needed to check on or feed the doggies. That wasn’t entirely contrived: he had two small dogs that were quite the entertainment. ‘Ralph’ was an assertive, black, short-haired miniature Dachshund, and ‘Butch’ was an exceedingly lovable and gassy English pug.]

If Dick and I were planning a service and discovered we needed something from outside arm’s reach, I would ask, “Am I supposed to go get it?” And he would say, “No, I’ll get it. You just sit there, drawing salary.” I still use that line today in banter with colleagues.

As soon as dinner would be delivered at a restaurant, Dick would ask the table, “Well, you ready to go?” Or, “Well, I’ll see you in the car.”

Dick once accused a too-loud tenor of sounding like a braying donkey. He accused one person’s sudden vibrato of sounding like an English horn in a string ensemble. When a section of the choir would launch too loudly into a phrase or when a women’s section began to allow too much vibrato in, Dick would yell, “No, you can’t do it that way – you’ll scare the children!” He always said such things only to old friends and knew that they would take it in the banter from which it was intended, but I’m sure he would get quite the shock if he said any of that to anyone at all today. [By the way, ‘You’ll scare the children!’ was very briefly a contender for subtitle of this would-be published biography of Dick. I quickly decided against it, knowing that only insiders would get it, while other readers would think God-knows-what from it.]

Dick drove a white 1989 Chrysler le Baron with a black cloth convertible top. He looked quite the part in it, with a ball cap and sunglasses. He always wanted a fluorescent light frame around the rear license plate. Those things were still novelties back then, and whenever he’d see one on a souped-up car, he’d endearingly get so excited he couldn’t sit still. So I got him one for Christmas one year, but then one thing in life led to another, and it never got installed.

We had some fun with a little fiefdom cropping up in the receptionist’s office. The receptionist began to require staff members to mark themselves present or absent on a magnetic board in her office. For us, that meant a trip to another building and upstairs, just to slide a little magnet left or right. She insisted everyone play along, but she was endearingly quite appreciative of anyone who did. So we would just call her with our status, which was fine with her. A few times, Dick called to tell her that he was heading to the restroom and that he would let her know when he was finished. Not only was the overkill of that lost on her, but also a tiny, private restroom was located right next to Dick’s office, not eight feet from his desk. He could have carried the hard-wired landline phone in there with him, if it meant that much to him. (And it didn’t, of course.)

Dick hated having to answer to more and more people in his work, a growing percentage of whom had no idea how to do that work. So he understandably resisted being required to sign in and out of campus, as if his hours were being tallied. But the bit of fun he had with the receptionist was surely an entertaining (if admittedly passive-aggressive yet equally futile) protest of increasing encroachment on our professional privacy.

Dick didn’t like the tidal wave of paperwork beginning to invade. Purchase orders, work orders, pre-purchase approvals and all other manner of paperwork made their appearance in churches everywhere during this time. Dick nominally worked at the pleasure of the rector, but now we all – including the rector at times – were beginning to work at the pleasure of the church administrator. When Dick suddenly had to justify every expense as if it were a first-time expenditure, he tried very hard to stay cool on the outside even as he railed in private against this new management style. I, too, hated it and felt that artists were going to have to begin operating like oil companies just to get pianos tuned and music ordered. [That’s life in the modern world, of course. The paperwork I am now responsible for in my university teaching is staggering, and it makes a few handwritten triplicate purchase orders at St. John the Divine look like a dream job – or dream vacation.] We found the whole thing silly and trendy, IRS bullying aside. We were annoyed all over again when we learned that church administrators’ salaries everywhere were beginning to eclipse those of the clergy for whom they worked.

The Rt. Rev. William E. Sterling (1927-2005) served as Bishop Suffragan of Texas 1989-1999. He previously served as rector in several churches in the Houston area. And he was a good friend of Dick’s. When he would visit St. John the Divine on official duty, he didn’t hang out with the clergy between services. Rather, he and Dick hung out in Dick’s office, smoking. Bishop Sterling confirmed me at St. John the Divine in the fall of 1990. Dick told him to give me “an extra-special blessing,” which the bishop dispensed by doing a near-complete handstand of his entire 200+-pound weight on my bowed head. The short prayer uttered over each confirmand was never so long than when he uttered it over my head that day. But my neck and I survived, and Dick and Bishop Sterling had a little fun.

To my ears, Dick’s favorite story to tell was of a service of healing and Eucharist one of us would play every Friday in the chapel. Dick loved telling this story, and he would chortle at the punchline every time, as if he were telling it for the first time:

One Friday, I was playing … just … the dreariest, most depressing music for communion for that service. And one of those old ladies passed by and patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “Your music really makes this place come alive!” I could hardly keep playing for laughing!

Bruce Power, one of Dick’s true friends, still giggles at that story today. One day, when Bruce learned I was going to play a special concert with the choir at First Methodist in Houston, he instructed a buddy of his in that choir to come up to me during rehearsal break and say, “Your music really makes this place come alive.” That was the kind of thing Dick would have done. 

Next time: The tragic surprise

In the Red

Several years ago, my wife was hired to play for a wedding to be held at the Marriott in downtown Des Moines. One of the grooms was her colleague in the Des Moines Choral Society and had asked her to play. As her significant other, I was also invited.

So we were ascending the escalator on wedding day. My wife was heading into Salon A to prepare for the wedding. At the top of the escalator, I noticed outside Salon B the seal for the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa. As any other curious and self-respecting Episcopalian who didn’t live there would have done, of course I had to poke my head in and ask, “Hey, what’s going on in here?” to which a very nice lady replied, “Oh, we’re electing a bishop! Would you like to see the ballot?”

Well, that ballot had three candidates on it, all women –– a deliberate effort on the part of the delegates. This election was going to seat Iowa’s first female bishop. Now, all this is significant and rates a blog post because of the inclusion and tolerance represented by the gay wedding in Salon A and the all-female bishop ballot next door in Salon B, all in a state not generally recognized for its tolerance. For one brief moment, all was well in the world. I thought, “I’ll take it.” But it got even better:

At the same moment that the two grooms started down the aisle to get married, the Episcopalians next door had completed their balloting and now had a bishop-elect (the soon-to-be Right Reverend Betsey Monnot). Therefore, there was much cheering and rejoicing from Salon B, which we could hear from the wedding in Salon A. I had no problem appropriating in my own mind the neighbors’ applause for the wedding’s purposes, and I am confident they wouldn’t have minded. Matter of fact, they would have come next door themselves and continued the celebration.

Perhaps you needed to be there. But for me, it was a moment worth preserving and sharing, and I have delighted in sharing this story with all who will listen, including the two grooms, the bishop, the bishop’s priestly husband, and the dean of the cathedral. And now you. Who’s next?

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 12

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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Dick’s complaints

One of the clergy at St. John the Divine, Houston, was always driving the congregation’s spoken texts by staying ahead of the assembly – loudly and at high speed – under the guise of ‘leading’ them. He was always out ahead of the congregation in everything: the Gloria, the Creed, the Confession, the Lord’s Prayer, every Amen. Yelling one’s way through the liturgy to ‘lead’ the congregation is the spoken equivalent of blasting full organ at them during every stanza of every hymn. The yelling (Dick’s word) drove Dick crazy, week after week. He once addressed it during a weekly Tuesday staff devotional, warning that dragging the congregation that way through their parts of the liturgy turns too much attention to the ‘yeller’ and away from the congregation’s leitourgia. In that same staff session, Dick also tried to correct a sexton, whose style of increasingly heated-up extemporaneous praying the previous week Dick labeled ‘conjuring up God.’ Dick did not share with me what he was going to say that day, and I was alarmed at the risk he took in saying those things to the entire staff, with both offending people present. But I was riveted by his knowledge and authority in addressing those matters, even as I knew he might not have felt so authoritative by then in his life. He was well trained in congregational worship matters, but his expertise was on the way out from the mainstream, and I had to discern his expertise more often in his practice than in his instruction.

Dick hated to see liturgy repurposed on a whim; he always wanted liturgy to speak for itself. He would even raise an eyebrow if Holy Eucharist began with a direction to the page number in the Prayer Book rather than directly with the opening acclamation. After all, the page number was in the bulletin, and to verbally call attention to it was the equivalent of reading the bulletin aloud to the congregation, something else Dick hated. Nowadays at St. John’s, depending on the celebrant, a quick ‘good morning’ and welcome may follow the opening acclamation, during which the congregation is sometimes promised a ‘powerful worship experience.’ Dick insisted that liturgy is inherently powerful but that to literally interrupt it to label it in such obvious, pedestrian language immediately lessens the very power it could wield on its own. But so it goes. Fortunately, the celebrants at St. John’s these days don’t wait for a response to ‘Good morning;’ rather, they move straight through it: “Good morning, and welcome to the Church of St. John the Divine …” Gotta give them that.

Anyway, Dick despised how liturgy was being increasingly customized for the contemporary service, and he trusted no one who embraced it. As a proponent of the latest edition of the Prayer Book, he had invested some of himself in it and didn’t appreciate its erosion so soon after its publication. He suffered a double loss of liturgical conservatism and of self that came with so much modern liturgical overhaul without his input or blessing as the ‘chief liturgist.’ [Aside: Dick was never titled ‘chief liturgist’ and was never acknowledged as such, from my observations. But he was definitely most knowledgeable about liturgy, as parish musicians usually are, often far more so than the clergy. Although an Episcopal rector is the final word on liturgical matters, the parish musician is most often the more knowledgeable. (We need not venerate our musicians for that so much as we should impugn our seminaries for not training our clergy better in such matters.) As the scope of his influence allowed, Dick planned liturgy, conducted the choir, and cued the crucifer with great authority. My first time to witness it, I saw Dick truly in his element. Not only did I see a true ‘boss’ in him in that moment, but I also realized that for those of us paying attention, we were all part of something far bigger than any one or two of us. But the title of ‘liturgist’ was not bestowed on a musician in this parish until ten years into the tenure of Dick’s successor John Gearhart.]

A ‘Music Committee’ was formed in the mid- to late 1980s or so. I never went to those meetings, but according to Dick and his circle, it was merely another antagonistic tool to use against him, and since then, no one I have talked to can recall what its charge was or what it accomplished for the greater good. Its formation was probably a placating gesture toward the pushier renewal music contingent of the parish. Dick would go to meetings and listen and understand, but he had no intention of increasing the renewal music component of the services under his direct management. He already included at least one such song each Sunday during communion, sometimes even dipping into the more casual hymnal supplement Songs for Celebration. He tended to fill communion with congregational singing anyway, rather than choral motets, which was probably as much compromise as he was willing to allow. A friend of mine from the Cathedral, who would visit occasionally would complain to me that St. John’s sang far too many hymns and that the choir didn’t have enough to do. At any rate, Dick’s quiet, unadvertised refusal to increase the ‘renewal music’ component to Sunday mornings didn’t relieve the inner stress he felt from the redundant Music Committee and the tenuous reasons for its formation. That committee lasted only a handful of years after Dick’s retirement, confirming its dual callousness to him and pointlessness to the parish.

Dick’s mistrust of most of the parish and its managers was deep-seated by the time I arrived on staff. I didn’t mind being some sort of bridge between him and them, but he wouldn’t have it. When I offered to play the piano for a certain Sunday School class, he said, “No! You can’t do that! Once you start that, you’ll be playing that stuff for the rest of your LIFE!” I might have tried harder to bridge gaps, but I didn’t create them, and I didn’t know what I was doing, and I always had him in one ear, warning me that I’d never be let out of the fluff-piano-playing box once I stepped into it. Perhaps Dick should never have hired an assistant so young and inexperienced. Perhaps he really needed an assistant more like himself at that point. All this sailed right over my head in those days. I would like to have been able to visit with him over that and a host of other matters, lo these many years later. The learning experience I was in was rich, but other learning experiences I let slip by were surely abundant.

Dick enjoyed the respect of his counterparts all over the country. He was well-liked in the American Guild of Organists, Association of Anglican Musicians, and the Association of Diocesan Liturgical and Music Commissions [now the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions], and he played, conducted, and lectured magnificently for their various programs. But he and I would also garner unsolicited sympathy from counterparts. We would introduce ourselves to fellow musicians, but when they learned where we worked, they would usually say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” rather than, “Hey, that’s a great church.”

A fighter Dick was not. Fully peaceful on the outside, he deferred to authority 100% of the times I witnessed. He would then internalize any pain, betrayal, annoyance, or injustice. He would complain bitterly in private about it, but only if asked, and always without raising that swallowed, medium-high-pitched Pennsylvania-Dutch voice of his. Perhaps a drink or some dinner would boost his spirits, and the next day he’d be fine. He once told me that I could say absolutely anything to him, that he was the most resilient person I would ever meet. He was right about that, at least from day to day, but I’ll bet the cumulative effect of it all just made him tired and immunocompromised.

Next time: A bit of fun

Three church positions in a year?

It’s not that I can’t keep a job. Rather, for several years I have been dividing my time between my home in Boone, N.C., and that of my wife in Des Moines, Iowa. Conclusion: I can’t serve any one church regularly. So I have fun running around and helping this or that church from the organ bench week to week. I learn a lot about how folks are doing things – even if that research is sometimes horrifying. I’m glad for the education.

For much of this past spring semester 2025, I helped out as supply organist at First Baptist Church, Boone, N.C. Their organist retired, and I have enjoyed playing there and also spending some extra time with one of their problem choir members, otherwise known as my sister. The organ is a two-manual Reuter, Op. 2180, and the chapel houses the church’s former organ, a Möller double Artiste, Op. 10052. In the main church, there are no acoustics to speak of, and the padded pews do little more than foster a good nap, judging from the number of nappers I observe during sermons. But what a wonderful flock of music lovers and society servers. And if the Dear Reader has already been wondering how the words ‘Baptist’ and ‘organ’ can end up in the same sentence these days, wonder no more. This church has no screens and therefore no band and no intention of getting them (for now, that is. At present, the church is between pastors.). The choir loves to sing and learning how to sing better, and it keeps a stable of Appalachian State University students. The congregation is full of musical talent, and the handbell choir is healthy. And the church is the last one standing on the edge of the Appalachian State Univ. campus, and its student ministry is strong. Go check them out.

As of this writing, summer 2025, I am embarking on my first position in a cathedral. Through August 10, I’ll serve as interim organist for the Cathedral Church (Episcopal) of St. Paul in downtown Des Moines. Two Eucharists each Sunday and the privilege of working with a semi-professional choir. I am even official, having been assigned an email address on the Cathedral’s server! The organ is a sizeable Casavant, Op. 3719, and there is a 25-bell manual carillon. The Cathedral is searching for a director of music, so check them out, too. Dean, Bishop, and all clergy are welcoming and affirming, and there is a kind and music-loving congregation. There is also an attentive interim organist, who is seeing to some lingering maintenance issues with the organ and is composing a how-to manual for the next organist. St. Paul’s also has seasonal monthly Evensongs, society outreach, local beautification projects, Ascension service and soup dinner, etc. Downtown churches tend not to fare very well these days, so go and support them, if you’re around.

And then when I get back to western N.C. this fall, I’ll assume my annual seasonal duties as organist for All Saints Episcopal Mission in Linville, N.C., through their season that ends on the final Sunday of September. I just show up with a second musician of any flavor, play lots and lots of hymns and service music for Eucharist, and go to lunch. Another music- and organ-loving congregation, and I play on a sizeable Allen that has been expertly tended to and voiced by Jim Ingram. I have enjoyed visiting with guest clergy and celebrating far fewer than six degrees of separation most times. I even met Tom Roberts, son of the Rev. Thomas Roberts, who hired my mentor Richard Forrest Woods in Houston way back in 1972.

Now after all that, I wonder what will be next. Anyone need any help from the organ bench?

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 11

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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Life with Dick

During my tenure at St. John the Divine in Houston, we did the Fauré Requiem one Good Friday. Dick had studied the work during his time in Paris with Fauré’s pupil Nadia Boulanger, and he told me that ever since then, he had had a perfect performance of it in his head. But he knew that a perfect performance was not to be had. He knew that he and the choir could only strive for perfection yet never achieve it, but I don’t think he ever gave himself permission to be human. Nowadays, accepting our limitations and simply doing our very best in the presence of God are standard fare in books on church music, but Dick never quite got there on the acceptance-of-our-limitations part.

Dick also had a ‘perfect’ Holy Eucharist in his imagination, from prelude all the way through the liturgy and the postlude, but he was always disappointed week after week when it never was achieved. He was always a little peeved after church. I once asked him how he felt each Sunday after having led hundreds of people in traditional Episcopal liturgy. He thought that was a ridiculous question and sarcastically answered that it made him “feel on top of the world.” Although I still sympathize with him on the elements he accused of marring a perfect Eucharist [and there were always plenty, a few of which included the celebrant using the wrong words or otherwise stumbling over the liturgy, the choir missing a cue, the organ having a cipher, one of us playing a wrong note, the sermon being useless, a microphone not being turned up in time, a small child screaming, an old lady coughing for fifteen minutes before finally leaving the room, the crucifer not holding the cross straight, a candle burning out, etc.], today I would disagree with Dick over this hypothetically perfect – and fully unattainable – Eucharist. I think he was howling at the moon and that it just made him unnecessarily tired.

While composing this biography, as I reflected on Dick’s stated desire for that elusive, perfect Eucharist, I realized that St. John the Divine was actually quite liturgically conservative in those days, just like Dick – perhaps more than he admitted. The clergy and servers took liturgy seriously; their movements and actions were well planned and smoothly executed. With very few exceptions, they were always vested and fully clothed underneath; long-sleeved shirts, ties, dresses, no jeans, no sandals. Celebrants celebrated with all the right words for the most part, usually missing only a word or two when they tried to recite liturgy from memory without having practiced first. Celebrants began Eucharist with the opening acclamation rather than with that most maddeningly human-centered and garden-party-oriented ‘Good morning.’ Even at the announcements following the Peace, rector Larry Hall never said, ‘Good morning.’ Rather, he always welcomed the assembly in the name of Jesus Christ. Neither did he use announcement time following the Peace to read out announcements that were already in print. He underscored the important ones, encouraged everyone to digest the others on their own time, and got back to the liturgy (exceptions noted at the end of this post). Upon reflection on those days, I truly appreciate that rector’s approach to liturgy. Everything was quite proper. Even the contemporary service, then just in its infancy, was faithful to every word of Rite II, with only the music, dress code, and sense of complete propriety relaxed.

Dick and I agreed that ‘Good morning’ betrays an unsettling willingness to interrupt timeless liturgy with temporal tripe. The first words out of the celebrant’s mouth, whether ‘Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit,’ or, ‘Good morning!’ will set the tone for the rest of the hour, like it or not. Even the congregation of liturgically rock-solid Rite I Christ Church Cathedral in Houston in those days proved that just about any congregation may eventually go where it is consistently steered. During the 1990s, the Cathedral had gotten a new dean, who was into the ‘good morning’ nonsense. It wasn’t long before he began waiting for a response in kind – and got it. Before you know it, the Cathedral congregation was responding enthusiastically, “Good morning!” to begin Rite I each week, and never batting an eye. They also absorbed without a whimper that dean’s affinity for Rite II, which he not-so-subtly sneaked in the back door by celebrating Holy Baptism as often as possible, thereby forcing Holy Communion into Rite II on those Sundays. Dick would have blown a gasket to see liturgy turned into such a personal playground. Clyde Holloway and Bruce Power at the Cathedral fixed it for themselves by retiring/resigning, and one of them even returned after that dean was gone.

But I digress.

Another example of congregations being willingly misled is in the printing of hymn texts in service leaflets or projected onto screens, diabolical practices that started in the late 1990s in churches everywhere. Hymn texts alone were now printed or projected as some sort of perceived convenience. But musical notation and a multitude of additional information for each hymn were now absent, and congregations everywhere who followed this practice began to regress into the most musically ignorant in modern Christianity.

Dick would have lost his mind at all this, and I nearly have. I have maintained all along that musical ignorance aside, there is little that looks more ridiculous than a white-collar congregation singing sturdy hymns of the faith not from the sturdy repository of music called the hymnal but rather from a flimsy service pamphlet they are going to throw away upon exiting the building.

But I digress again.

Despite the propriety of the liturgy on a general level at St. John’s, the time of announcements following the Peace was often a cringeworthy wild card. We never knew what was coming, whether a small troupe doing a silly Rally Day skit or the Senior Warden singing a stylized rendition of Happy Birthday to the rector. [True story. In 1992, the Senior Warden sang ‘He’s turning 50 in the morning’ to the tune ‘Get me to the church on time.’] Apparently, we musicians were the only ones bothered by that shift in tone during otherwise fairly respectable liturgy. Since the liturgy was so dignified and the shenanigans so base, the contrast was that much more cringeworthy. I often wanted to slip out of the room or crawl under something. And both Dick and I felt extra-conspicuous to be observing all that silliness while vested. We felt like we had shown up at a crawfish boil in tuxedos.

Next time: Dick’s complaints

I work among freaks, apparently

I once heard from a prospective student from Virginia. He had been looking for a college in Virginia where he could double major in statistics and organ. He found more than one, but they never returned his messages of inquiry. So he started looking across the state line and found me. The rest is history – he came to Appalachian and double majored as planned.

What I didn’t know at the time is that all other things being equal, what tipped his scales toward Appalachian was that not only did I respond to his inquiry, but I also responded the same day. Well, imagine that. E-mail – what a concept. I told this story to my colleagues in a full faculty meeting one day, to illustrate our ongoing commitment to students and to encourage everyone that just answering a freaking email could get some fine students coming our way. What a surprise.

In this age of enhanced, instant and constant communication, how is it that messages still go unanswered? How can a college expect to survive if it doesn’t respond to tuition-paying business knocking on the door? How can a college hate teaching so much that it ignores prospective students coming in?

All my colleagues and I love hearing from students new and former. We are committed to them and to their success. We say so in our vision/mission statements, and we practice what we preach. And when any of us travel and visit with counterparts at other institutions, we are always alarmed by their situation and simultaneously amazed at our own. How did we all land in a place where upper administration listens to its faculty and where our dean supports us with every fiber, every word, and every dollar available? That’s probably not answerable, so we just enjoy it and exercise it and keep paying it forward.

I have lost track of the number of times someone has expressed pleasantly-surprised thanks that I returned their email or phone call so promptly. Honestly, I just don’t know any other way to do business. Communication is king, and I insist on it from all students. I have blogged before about not receiving return messages in the other direction – that’s not so pleasant.

My school of music just had its ten-year review for reaccreditation. I told the reviewers, “The most truthful thing we should (but can’t) put into our recruiting materials is, ‘Come major in music here, because we’re nowhere NEAR as dysfunctional as everybody else.’”

That is what keeps me showing up for work. Truly I work among freaks. And my colleagues work with one, too.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 10

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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The Choir of St. John the Divine, Houston

My first experience with the choir was at my first regular Thursday evening rehearsal in 1990. From day one, I saw how dedicated they were to Dick. I saw how dedicated they were to great music. I saw how dedicated they were to fine liturgy. And I saw how dedicated they remained, even as ‘renewal music’ gained ground all around them. This choir was a collective workhorse, and their love for each other and for all that Dick taught them never flagged:

"[It was quite the] … impact that Richard Woods’s friendship, example, musicianship, and professionalism made on a 23-year-old fresh out of LSU grad school. It seems like yesterday. I’m always happy to share interactions about Dick Woods. He was a force!”

“What a talented, dedicated, humorous combination of a man he was. I miss him … and all of the individual choir members we were blessed to spend time with praising God, sharing beautiful music, and nurturing souls. … I am always saddened when I remember how sick and how heartbroken Dick was at the end. He gave so much and loved so much. … No one that was fortunate enough to know him can ever forget him. He shaped all of our lives, for the better, and made us all better musicians along the way. What beautiful music we made. I always felt like he deserved so much more than we were able to give him in return. I truly loved that man.”

“Dick was able to get more out of a choir, perhaps even beyond his own technical abilities. It was just the way he brought everyone together around the music.” 

The sextons always had coffee prepared for Thursday evening choir rehearsal. The choir would arrive early to chat and visit, and then Dick would call out, “Let’s go, please!” to begin rehearsal. [“Let’s go, please!” was going to be the subtitle of this biography, if published.] There was a break about midway through for more coffee and conversation, and then the second half. Dick was all business during rehearsal but was all in for the visiting before, in between, and following. Dinner with the inner circle often followed rehearsal. I was honored to have been invited.

Dick insisted on a clear, vibrato-free sound from his sopranos and altos. He also required a certain dress code when the choir processed in the aisle: black flat shoes for the women, no dangly earrings, and modest hairstyles. He put in writing these and other policies prescribing how to process, how to hold one’s folder, how much space to leave between pairs in procession, how to acknowledge the altar and turn into the stalls somewhat sharply, etc. I have followed suit with similar rules for my own choirs.

Dick and the choir stayed busy. They went on tours to England in 1982 and to Eastern Europe in 1990, the repertoire for each of which they recorded stateside. They also presented occasional Evensong at sister parishes in Houston and sang a major work every Good Friday. This choir embodied the fact that a church choir is probably going to be their director’s Sunday School – and this choir was that perfect Sunday School class. They embodied the importance of gathering in church with other human beings and to having fellowship one with another. Worshipping God was one thing, but doing so among kindred spirits was indispensable, and they knew that.

The choir was populated by many strong personalities who wasted no time making their approvals and disapprovals known to the rector. They didn’t care so much how the choir was treated, but they were quite the watchdogs for Dick’s treatment. They stood up for him, and I know he appreciated that. Thanks to Dick, they were also respectably well-versed in liturgical matters, and they deserved – as the tithing parishioners most of them were – to be heard as lay experts in such matters.

Dick and others of us would go out for dinner and drinks after Thursday rehearsals and for lunch after church on Sundays. I developed a ravenous craving not only for the food but also for that fellowship, and I have never stopped organizing similar small groups in my succeeding positions. Every time I go out with folks following a rehearsal or performance or service, I think of the St. John’s choir. Every time I go to a British pub or to get Mexican, I think of those days. That is no exaggeration.

Next time: Life with Dick

Under the ‘P’

The Appalachian State University Marching Mountaineers are dubbed “North Carolina’s Band of Distinction.” They are 300 strong, and they preside at Mountaineer football games with enthusiasm, focus, determination, precision, and musical integrity.

One day in 2023, director Jason Gardner stopped me in the hallway and asked if I’d like to serve as “The Voice,” following the retirement of Jay Jackson. Once I actually found my voice in that moment and picked my jaw up off the floor, I managed to say something like, “Yes, yes! When do we start?” The second thing I said was, “But I’m not saying Roll 'neers.” [He and I are of one mind on that silly little phrase that won’t go away.]

My job is to announce for the Band when they are on the field. Show tunes, context, generate excitement, etc. [I do NOT announce the games, heaven forbid.] So on home game days I arrive at 7:00 am to get good parking. I’m in my khakis and black Band polo and my black Band ballcap. I join the Band in Kidd Brewer stadium on the ASU campus around 8:30, and we rehearse. I get to hang out in the uppermost areas of the home side press boxes, where I enjoy the grandest view in town. I sit directly under the ‘P’ in ‘Complex’ in this photo:

 

Then we walk downtown for some lunch. I hit a few tailgate parties and enjoy the gathering crowds. Then I go change into the official black suit, white shirt, gold tie, Appalachian cufflinks, black ballcap, flashy oversized gold pocket handkerchief, and stadium credentials. We do a lawn concert for any fans who wish to gather, while I roam among the people and make announcements in a wireless mic. Following the lawn concert, we line up and commence our grand Episcopal procession into the stadium to the cadences of the percussion battery, and we are greeted by the roar of gathered students and fans trickling in. I start roaming the stadium and greeting folks in the name of the Band. I announce the pre-game show and then roam the stadium during the first half of the game, then announce the halftime show, and I am done for the day. I usually hang around, though, and roam some more and make sure the Band sees my face and the enthusiasm on it for them!

I love game day for the crowds and for the Band. I love working behind the scenes and making things happen, much like doing so at the organ for church. I love being involved in a marching band once again. I had not been involved in one since the football season of 1982, when I was the best last-chair third trumpet player the Statesville (N.C.) Greyhound Grenadier Marching Band ever had [by golly].

My favorite parts of game day:

- walking into the stadium for rehearsal and listening to the Band crank up for the day;
- hearing that first cheer from the audience at the lawn concert;
- stepping off for the parade into the stadium;
- the diabolical sense of enjoyment I derive from the drunken fools who don’t get out of the band’s way during the parade. They are about to get, shall we say, 'maced' by up to four drum majors wielding maces;
- the percussion battery taking the field for pre-game, announcing to the world that it’s on, and the Band holding their position in the end zones and then taking the field and daring anyone not to listen;
- the first four chords of Simple Gifts after some fanfares;
- poking my head into the Band stands during the first half and getting a blast of second-down fanfaring;
- walking around during the first half of the game and visiting with friends. Walking through Miller Hill in the south end zone, which I call Hops and Pot Field, and hearing people say, “Hey, nice suit!” I always say, "Thank you – please watch the band at halftime;”
- seeing the entire production team up in the booth linger to watch the Band on the field. They could be taking a break during that time, but they are staying up there to watch and to comment on their favorite moments, just like I’m doing now. It’s a great day.

The Marching Mountaineers are collectively our teams’ biggest fan. And I am glad to have been given a place among them, considering my otherwise unrelated ‘field’ of expertise.

on Richard Forrest Woods – Part 9

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 writing on the wall

Dick succeeded Mr. G. Alex Kevan as Organist/Choirmaster for the parish. During my tenure, I discovered many photos of Mr. Kevan and many anthems and service pieces he had written. His music program for the parish appeared to be squarely grounded in the great American musico-liturgical heyday of the 1950s-1970s. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the Rev. Thomas A. Roberts, who hired Dick in 1972, was equally grounded in that liturgical heyday. But Father Roberts died suddenly and unexpectedly the following year and was succeeded by The Rev. Maurice “Ben” Benitez.

Fast-forward to 1993: rector Benitez was now Bishop Benitez. He was unable to attend Dick’s funeral. He prepared a letter to be read aloud during the funeral. In it, the bishop related the story of his and Dick’s first sit-down at St. John the Divine in 1974, during which he insisted Dick include ‘renewal music’ in services. He then reported that Dick sighed deeply and asked resignedly, “Well, do I have to do that every week?” That short anecdote reveals that when Dick took the post under Fr. Roberts, perhaps it was in the sort of environment that would feed his musical and liturgical soul. Perhaps based on the legacy of Alex Kevan and Fr. Roberts’s direct recruitment, Dick saw at St. John’s an opportunity to ply his trade unimpeded. But this story also bears out how easy it was – even in the 1970s – for St. John’s to drift into musical licentiousness, notwithstanding its ultra-conservatism otherwise. But Dick’s response in that story also suggests that he was accepting of where things were heading. As a former lecturer on church music at the Seminary and having served as the head musician at several parishes around the country, he knew very well the ‘renewal movement’ was on the rise, and perhaps he was increasingly resigned to the fact that the movement would probably catch up with him, no matter where. Although Benitez was demonstrably one of Dick’s biggest fans all the way to the end, that meeting was a turning point, a sort of writing on the wall, by my calculations. Dick soldiered on, and when rector Benitez became Bishop Benitez in 1980, the next rector, the Rev. Laurens A. “Larry” Hall embraced the same trend in music, yet to a much greater degree. Dick soldiered on.

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The annual parish hymn-sing each Thanksgiving Wednesday was a highlight. It was an evening of Thanksgiving dinner in the parish hall, followed by about an hour of hymn singing with piano and small orchestra. We did nothing else like it all year. It was always a full house, and I loved seeing everyone enjoying themselves outside of liturgy. In 1991, Dick was particularly inspired to compose arrangements for the orchestra for many of the hymns for the event. He had learned that rector Larry Hall could not attend that year, and so Dick felt freer to do his own thing and had a surge of creativity. The two of us stayed at the church one Friday evening until 4:00 am the next day, composing arrangements and making copies. We were nearly derailed by the rector, though, who had been insisting there be an element for children during the event. But Dick felt it wasn’t a children’s kind of event, and I felt the children would be just fine singing hymns along with everyone else, just like on Sundays. Larry announced in full staff meeting one week that since he was going to be away for it that year, he wouldn’t push the children thing; otherwise, he would have pulled rank. He seemed truly irritated.

Larry and Dick had worked together long before I arrived, but the meeting just described was the first time I sensed Larry losing patience with Dick, and I became uncomfortable with the realization that Dick and I might have been on thinner ice than I first thought. Things didn’t feel transparent. I began to wonder if Larry merely tolerated Dick since he ‘inherited’ Dick from one of Larry’s best friends and one of Dick’s biggest fans, former-rector-now-bishop Benitez. I woke up to the sense that Dick was somehow in the rector’s way and that I was likely guilty by association. I became manifestly ill at ease for the duration of my tenure there.

Next time: The Choir of St. John the Divine, Houston