In honor of Marilyn Keiser’s 75th birthday (she was born on July 12, 1941), we offer this glimpse into her journey as a well-respected musician and person. One of our country’s foremost concert organists, Marilyn Keiser is a person of deep faith, humility, and tireless devotion to her family, students, and friends. In this interview, conducted on May 8, 2015, she talks at length about the importance of her family, her work ethic and practicing, and her love of and devotion to church music. She also discusses her longtime association with composer Dan Locklair and offers her pearls of wisdom to church musicians.
Marilyn Keiser is Chancellor’s Professor of Music Emerita at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, where she taught courses in sacred music and applied organ for 25 years. Prior to her appointment at Indiana University, Dr. Keiser was organist and director of music at All Souls Parish (now Cathedral) in Asheville, North Carolina, and music consultant for the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina, holding both positions from 1970–83. She is currently organist and choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church, Bloomington, a position she has held for over 30 years. She is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists.
Acknowledgements and sincere thanks are due to First Congregational Church, Saginaw, Michigan; for the interview recording and photo, Kenneth Wuepper, Saginaw, Michigan; and for final editing, Marilyn Keiser.
Steven Egler: What can you recall about your early formative years, before you started music lessons?
Marilyn Keiser: When I was born, my parents, Oliver and Eleanor Keiser, lived in Benld, Illinois, which was a river town. My father was the minister of the Methodist church, but it was during World War II, and the church was not always able to pay my father. They generally paid him with potatoes or chickens, but he was clearly not going to be able to raise a family that way.
So in 1943 or 1944, we moved to Springfield, where we lived with my grandparents for a while, and my dad went to work at Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. We rented a little house close to Allis-Chalmers, where he was on the night shift. During World War II, the company was making tanks, so since he was a foreman, he didn’t have to go to the war.
When I was four we moved to the house on South Douglas in Springfield, where my parents lived for 54-1/2 years. There were great schools—Butler Grade School and Springfield High School—that both my brother and I attended.
I was 3 or 4 when I started taking piano lessons. My brother was taking lessons, and I was trying to play what he played, so my parents let me start piano. I loved it. I practiced every day, usually before school so that I could play with my friends after school.
Your father was a Methodist minister. Did your family move frequently?
Dad was an ordained Methodist minister, but for the first 25 or 30 years of his ministry he was a supply minister and wasn’t moved around like the other clergy were. While other clergy stayed only three or four years, he was able to stay in one place for a longer period.
When I was about 7 or 8, my father started supplying in small churches around Springfield, and at one time he had three churches whose services were at 9, 10, and 11 a.m. respectively. He started the 9 o’clock service and delivered the sermon, drove to the next church where their lay leaders had started the service, preached the sermon, then drove to the third church, where they also would have started that service at 11, and he finished the service there.
A few years later he had two churches south of Springfield in the morning and one on Sunday night north of Springfield. I don’t know how he did all that because he had hospital visitations and other duties as well. In 1972, when he was 62, he retired from Allis-Chalmers and spent 15 years as a minister of pastoral visitation at Laurel Methodist Church, Springfield.
How did you become interested in playing the organ? As a young organist, what do you recall about playing for church services? What were the organs like that you played?
When I was eight, I recall telling my piano teacher that I wanted to be a church organist because I heard the organ at Laurel Church where my family attended when my dad wasn’t preaching somewhere else. Laurel had a two-manual Möller organ, which I thought was magnificent. When I was in seventh grade, my family visited my Uncle Dave in Miami, Florida, and I played my Chopin piano pieces on his little Hammond organ.
I wanted to start organ, but my parents couldn’t afford to pay the three-dollar organ lessons fee that was charged by one of the local church organists, so I took lessons at Bruce’s Music Store for 50 cents a lesson. I did that for four years from the age of 12 to the week before I turned 16. I pedaled with only my left foot, and the week before I turned 16, I had my first pipe organ lesson with Frank Perkins who was organist at First Methodist Church. He was a Union Theological Seminary graduate and a wonderful human being.
I rode my bike to practice for two to three hours every day, and I learned how to pedal with both feet in one week. That was in mid-July, and at the end of the summer, I supplied for him on the big four-manual Möller at First Methodist when he went to New York City for some lessons with Alec Wyton. During my junior and senior years of high school, I played for First Congregational Church. This was my first church job, and I was paid $7.50 a week! They were meeting in the Jewish synagogue because their church had burned down in November 1956. My senior year in high school, First Congregational built a new church and I got to play and help dedicate a brand-new two-manual Casavant organ.
Another important teacher in my life was Paul Koch, the successor to Frank Perkins at First Methodist Church in Springfield and another graduate of Union Theological Seminary. I studied with Paul during the summers between my college studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Tell us more about your family.
My parents both loved music and they both sang. My mom played piano, and my dad always wanted to play trombone: he could even make his mouth sound like a trombone! My brother played clarinet. I could not have had a more wonderful family. I had loving, nurturing, and supportive parents, who traveled to many places over the years to hear me play concerts and services. My mother was a fabulous cook and a bookkeeper for Sears; she managed the accounts for the large Sears store in Springfield along with six other regional stores. My dad worked two jobs most of the years I was growing up. He was a great communicator, and, having grown up on a farm, he could fix or build anything. He was a wonderful athlete and had a great sense of humor (as did all of his siblings.)
They are both deceased now: my dad died in 2003 at the age of 92, and my mother died in 2012 at the age of 98-1/2. They both had a wonderful sense of rhythm, and while they listened to music, my dad often tapped his hand or foot. Mom would also tap her heel on the floor. I have a wonderful video of her doing that a month before she died.
Please speak about the rest of your family. Were they musical as well?
I had an older brother Ralph (deceased September 2015), and we grew up in Springfield where we lived close to our maternal grandparents but were only an hour away from my dad’s father and his siblings. My dad’s mother died in 1938 so neither my brother nor I knew her, but all four of my grandparents were from musical families.
My mom’s mother played the piano for silent movies when she was 16, and it was there that she met my grandfather who was a violinist and had a band. His family had lots of musicians: my dad’s mother’s family, the Schellers, also had tons of musicians. One of her brothers was an organist and a piano tuner, and my father’s father had a beautiful bass voice. The Keisers and the Schellers had a double male quartet that sang at the Methodist Church in Mount Olive. In addition, my dad’s sisters all played piano and organ, and my mother’s first cousin played organ, so there was lots of music all around me.
Did you study any other instruments besides the organ and piano?
I did study the violin, but I didn’t really play after eighth grade. My maternal grandfather was a great violinist and had a beautiful German violin that I gave to a 14-year-old, a fabulous violinist, who studied at Indiana University. He had it restored to its original, beautiful sound. I actually got a recording of it for my mom, and she was thrilled to hear Grandpa’s violin played by such a talented young man.
Did you ever feel any “competition” between organ and violin?
Not violin, but I did study piano all through high school. I did a lot of accompanying in college and played for two honor recitals my senior year. I also studied harpsichord with Bedford Watkins at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Do you recall any of the repertoire that you learned when you first studied with Frank Perkins?
I learned the Krebs/Bach Eight Little Preludes and Fugues and the Boëllmann Suite Gothique. I just loved that first movement! I learned the “Dorian” Toccata of Bach and played it for the dedication of the Casavant organ at First Congregational. Another piece I learned was the Carillon in the 24 Pièces of Vierne, the one with the big pedal part. I played it so many times that the sexton at Laurel Methodist Church called me the “boom boom girl!”
What I remember about practicing is that my dad would go with me after supper a couple of nights a week to sit with me while I practiced on the pipe organ at church. I also practiced at a music store close to my school.
After graduation from high school, you decided to major in music at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington where you studied organ with Lillian McCord.
I loved chemistry, math, and history in school, but yes I decided to go into music. I auditioned at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and Illinois Wesleyan University, but Wesleyan gave me a full tuition scholarship, so I went there.
Lillian McCord was amazing. She had parties for all of her students after their recitals. She drove us around to hear André Marchal, Marilyn Mason, Virgil Fox, and Alec Wyton. Wyton came to Peoria my senior year, but I was not able to go due to a conflict. She took to him my copy of his Fanfare that I was learning for my senior recital, and he autographed it for me.
Lillian was so musical and so nurturing and encouraging. She also attended a lot of conferences and was always learning new things and new repertoire. She never hesitated to suggest pieces for me to study, even though she had never played them herself.
IWU gave me a great education in music history and theory, choral literature, and contemporary music.
Tell us about your time after you graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University.
After IWU, I went to Union Theological Seminary in New York (1963–65). Lillian McCord had gone to Union, and Paul Koch, Frank Perkins, and Lewis Whikehart, my choral director at Wesleyan, had all gone to Union.
Although I had been to New York City on a choir tour in my senior year of college, I hadn’t seen Union at that time; however, Robert Baker came to IWU my senior year, and I auditioned for him there. He also suggested, as did Lillian, that I study with Alec. I wrote a letter to Alec to ask if I could study with him, and he replied saying he would be happy to accept me as a student.
There were always 35 to 40 students in each of the two graduate classes at Union: two years of master’s students. You said it right: it really was a mecca for future church musicians. Daniel Day Williams taught systematic theology. Cyril Richardson taught liturgics, and Samuel Terrien, a great Biblical scholar, was also on the faculty.
After my parents drove me to New York City to begin my master’s degree and before they left the city, we went over to the cathedral so they could see where I would be taking organ lessons. Just as we were leaving, Alec Wyton was walking down the driveway. We waited for him inside the choir room, and he took us up to the organ. I’ll always remember this because when we were walking up the winding staircase to the organ loft, Alec said, “Isn’t music fun?” After that, my dad quoted him all of the time.
What was Alec Wyton like as a teacher?
He was a great teacher. I became his assistant later, but as a student I was impressed by his tremendous repertoire and how incredibly musical he was. I heard him improvise many times at daily services and on Sundays, and I never heard a trite improvisation. He had an incredible creative gift.
What I remember specifically about his teaching was his concentration on musical line. Sometimes in a Bach trio sonata he’d say, “Let your right hand be an oboe.” He talked a lot about hand position and about preparing your hand position. This was especially helpful since I learned a lot of Messiaen during my doctoral studies. I did the whole Pentecost Mass along with many other Messiaen compositions. In regard to preparing hand and feet positions, he often quoted his teacher George Cunningham who would say, “Have your foot right over the note you need to play before you play it.”
Alec also was very drawn to new music and very supportive of it, and he commissioned a lot of new works. There were many concerts during the years I was in New York including Sunday afternoon concerts, and many included new music of various sorts. He commissioned Richard Felciano to write a piece, God of the Expanding Universe, for tape, organ, choir, and strobe lights.
After receiving the Master of Sacred Music degree in 1965, you were assistant organist at the Riverside Church where you worked with Fred Swann for one year. How did this come about?
After my master’s I applied for a German government grant to study in Cologne, but during that spring I encountered Fred Swann. Evidently, Robert Baker had mentioned my name to him and that I might be interested in applying for the job as assistant organist at Riverside Church. Virgil Fox was leaving and Fred was going to become the organist, and so I was one of three candidates who applied for the job. Subsequently, I was offered the job the day my boat ticket arrived for Germany, and that was really a difficult decision. I remember lying face down on the floor trying to decide what to do, and I finally decided that the thing to do was to stay in New York: I would have opportunities to go to Germany again, but I wouldn’t have another opportunity to be Fred Swann’s assistant at Riverside.
The first Sunday I played was in mid-August 1965, and the preacher was Martin Luther King, Jr.! That year was wonderful. Fred was so funny and such a master. I learned so much by watching him play that big five-manual organ. Fred had such incredible control of the organ, and his accompanying of oratorios was spectacular. The choir sang an oratorio every Sunday afternoon.
He was gone quite a bit, and the first Sunday he was gone I was just starting the improvisation after the offertory anthem leading into the Doxology, and Richard Weagly, who was the choir director, leaned over and said that a man was having a heart attack and just to keep playing.
I had started to build the organ up really loud and kept playing, but it was starting to get really loud, and I thought, “Oh, my gosh! What if this man is really dying?” So I pulled the organ way back and just kept playing: it seemed like an eternity. Eventually, they were able to get him out on a stretcher, and he did not die. That was a memorable moment!
Did you have any other church positions while you were in New York City?
During the two years I was working on my master’s degree, I did have a church job at a Methodist church in Bergenfield, New Jersey. That was my first experience working with a children’s choir. I also played the organ and directed the adult choir.
After one year at Riverside Church, you were appointed associate organist and choirmaster of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine where you served for four years. You were now a colleague of your teacher, Alec Wyton.
Eugene Hancock was leaving St. John the Divine, so Alec asked me to become his associate at the end of that summer.He thought that they would not acknowledge that I was a woman and, instead, put M. J. Keiser on the masthead of the cathedral bulletin, but they did in fact print my name as Marilyn Keiser. When I first went there, I even had to wear a black beanie on my head during the service.
Times have changed, haven’t they?
Yes. I did that for four years (1966–70), eleven rehearsals a week with the choir boys—twice a day—and Thursday night with the men. My first week there Alec had just been elected president of the AGO. He was there one day and gone four. We sang two psalms to Anglican chant Monday through Thursday and plainsong on Fridays. Alec transposed every chant up a third, so not only did I have to learn how to do Anglican chant—which I’d never done—but also I had to learn how to do it and then transpose it up a third! I worked very hard that first week along with all of the choir rehearsals. It was a big learning curve for me.
You might as well have been called co-organist and choirmaster.
Yes. He was gone a lot during his time as president but particularly that first year.
In 1970, you moved to Asheville, North Carolina. Tell us about the responsibilities there in those positions.
In my fourth year at St. John the Divine, I met the Reverend Alex Viola—at Alec Wyton’s recommendation—in New York. He had just moved to Asheville as the associate rector at All Souls Episcopal Church and said they were looking for a new musician. I had also looked at a couple of other options, but he persuaded me to go to Asheville to audition. I was really interested in this, because in addition, Alex had gone to the diocesan foundation to ask for a three-year grant for someone to travel around the diocese (Diocese of Western North Carolina) to work with small churches.
That summer, I was the first person hired by an Episcopal diocese to serve as a music consultant and work with small churches throughout the diocese. So I had a joint appointment: I worked three-quarter time at the church and one-quarter time for the Diocese of Western North Carolina, and I traveled to the small churches at their invitation.
When I went to All Souls, the choir was pretty small. I recall there were maybe twelve people, whose average age was about 68. They did, however, have a few paid soloists—one student and some adults— and over the course of the years, we established a music committee that was instrumental in establishing a choral scholar program similar to what a colleague of mine had instituted in Milwaukee. We then brought in two students from Mars Hill College—now University—who received a $50 stipend each semester. After that, we soon had four and then eight by the time I left in 1983. The choral scholars with their young voices transformed the choir.
My diocesan work turned out to be the topic of my doctoral dissertation at Union, which was called Singing the Liturgy in Small Communities: Pilot Project in the Diocese of Western North Carolina.
Describe your work as consultant to the Diocese of Western North Carolina.
I worked with choirs and organists as well as with clergy groups. I also worked with children’s choirs and had a children’s choir festival and acolyte festival, but most of what I did was leading congregational hymn sings. Of course, these were the years prior to The Hymnal 1982, and I led many hymn sings.
All Souls Parish—now Cathedral of the Diocese of Western North Carolina as of 1995—was the church built by George Vanderbilt and had a fine music tradition. F. Flaxington Harker was one of my predecessors there. Clem Sandresky, who later became the head of the School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was also a predecessor of mine, and in the early years he was also the organist at the Grove Park Inn, which had a big organ no longer in existence.
What sorts of music did you perform while at All Souls?
I had great support from the clergy, and in fact, I have had that in every position I’ve ever held. Neil Zabriskie was a fantastic rector and very supportive during my years there. We did Noye’s Fludde by Benjamin Britten twice: the first time was for the 75th anniversary celebration of the church. We involved 200 people in it one way or another and had kids from all over the city. We also had a team of about 20 women who made the most fabulous costumes.
We also presented Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors twice. When we did Amahl, I actually played the organ and had a small orchestra around me: I played and conducted from the organ. When we performed Noye’s Fludde, we had a full orchestra, so I stood in the pulpit in order to conduct the congregation.
We commissioned and premiered the children’s opera Genesis (1971) from Malcolm Williamson and gave the first performance of his opera The Red Sea (1972). We did the first performance of Alec’s opera Journey with Jonah. In 1980 we did a performance with full orchestra of Mendelsohn’s Elijah and had a “Mostly Mozart” concert one year, and a Haydn concert another year. Then for six or seven years we presented a procession of Advent Lessons and Carols, an idea that I had gotten from Jim Litton at Princeton. I always had wonderful support from the parish and the community.
You also taught at the University of North Carolina at Asheville during this time.
I taught at Brevard College my first three years in Asheville, and then during the last two years of my tenure in Asheville I taught at UNC Asheville. During those two years, I conducted the community chorus of about 75 people and performed the Fauré Requiem the first year and the Honegger King David the second year.
I recall starting to conduct the Fauré, and my baton hit the music rack and flipped over into the French horn section. I just kept conducting and the horn player handed the baton back to me!
How do you balance being a performer, a church musician, and an educator?
I have had the best of all worlds. I used to think when I was driving to IU that so many people work in factories or clean houses and shovel coal, and I go to work and make music all day long. What a gift to be able to spend your life making music: I cannot imagine a more fulfilling and wonderful way to spend your life.
I first joined Phyllis Stringham’s management and was with her for just a couple of years. Then Karen McFarlane and Ralph McFarlane began their own management. I had met Karen when I was in St. Louis during the summer of 1963. Karen was also a student of Frank Perkins during her undergraduate studies at Lindenwood College.
So this was before the Murtagh years?
Yes. Karen and Ralph had a management which, I believe, was called McFarlane Artists. The summer before I moved to New York I stayed in Frank Perkins’s house with another Lindenwood graduate, Linda Street, who was also going to attend Union Seminary that fall. She and Karen were good friends, so this is how I got to know Karen.
Karen then moved to New York at the end of my year with Fred Swann at Riverside, and she became Fred’s secretary. We stayed in contact for a long time and became good friends, so I was with her management for a number of years. When Lilian Murtagh became ill, Karen of course, being at Riverside with Fred and Fred being in the Murtaugh “stable” as they called it, got to know Lilian and eventually took over the management in 1976.
Your performing career has taken you across the U. S. and abroad.
I’ve performed a lot in this country, but I haven’t traveled abroad too much. I’ve played a couple of times in England and once in Paris and Brazil and Singapore. Three years ago, I went to China with the Indianapolis Symphonic Chorus where I played the Brahms Requiem for them on the organ at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center on two hours’ practice. It was the most nerve-racking thing I’ve ever done!
There were 1,100 people, even sitting behind the choir. It was jam-packed! Since the Brahms ends so quietly, I offered to play the Widor Toccata as an encore. It was well received.
What do you like about being a concert organist?
I love playing beautiful organs, and I love finding beautiful sounds on those organs. I also love learning the geography of every organ, which is so unique and very challenging. Some people love crossword puzzles: I love getting to know new instruments. I also enjoy seeing former students and classmates and friends from over the years.
What’s the schedule like in a day of Marilyn Keiser’s life?
When I was teaching I got up at 5 o’clock every morning and walked, had breakfast, dressed, said my prayers, and I always tried to get to school by at least 7:30 a.m. so I could get a parking place. I’d teach sometimes five or six hours with maybe a 15 to 20-minute break before my classes began in the afternoon.
I always try to practice every day. One of the gifts I got from my parents—not just the gift of interest in and ear for music—was discipline. In my parents, I saw great discipline and the ability to keep working at something. My mother was a fantastic seamstress and quilter. She also crocheted, and with a project almost complete, she’d see where she dropped a stitch, take it up and go back and repair that spot. Her stitches and quilts are absolutely exquisite.
I think both Ralph and I inherited the energy and the will to work hard at things. I admit that for me practicing has never been a burden: it is something that I just love to do. I have always loved learning new music and still do.
In 1983 you were appointed to the faculty at Indiana University where you served until 2008, and in addition to applied organ, you taught classes as well.
I was brought to Indiana University to develop the church music curriculum. I added to the choral literature courses that Oswald Ragatz had created. He taught two choral literature courses: one in anthems and motets and the other one in large forms.
I didn’t have any of his notes, so I just developed those courses on my own. I added courses in hymnody and organ improvisation, and I developed a church music practicum where we talked about hymn playing, conducting from the console, anthem repertoire, wedding music, handbells, working relationships with clergy, and other issues facing church musicians. I would also bring in a psychiatrist to talk about conflict and communication. In addition, I usually had 10–14 private organ students and a lot of doctoral dissertation and research director responsibilities.
Please tell us about your teaching. How is it rewarding for you?
I love teaching—I really, truly did and do love teaching. You’re a teacher: I know you love it since I can see it in your face. I loved seeing students grow. Their interest and eagerness to learn was always so inspiring to me. I learned so much from my students—I think that we all do—just in learning how to articulate something that might come naturally to you but that might involve a more careful explanation to a young student.
I tried to help students bring the music to life, to help them with interpretation, articulation, and timing, and to help them learn to listen to melodic lines and harmonic development. I found it a challenge to help students find their balance and learn to relax at the organ.
Robert Baker used to say, “Find your nest and make a nest at the organ.” He also said, “If you don’t sit on the organ, the organ will sit on you!” I recall working with an older student who was playing the Mendelssohn Prelude and Fugue in G Major, and I noticed that his legs were very tight and stiff. I suggested that he imagine sitting on a soft brown pillow. All of a sudden, the pedal part just floated. I then realized that the sound that had been coming out of him was due to the tension in his legs and in his body.
That’s not easy when you’re working with young students. I think it’s hard to help them to get to that point.
I think that we, myself included, forget that images can really help a student. One image I use is sitting at the edge of a pond or on a dock and dangling your feet into the water.
The image that Marie-Claire Alain used for neutral touch was to imagine a string of pearls: neither do the pearls overlap nor is there space between the pearls. I think that is a fantastic image.
Are you still teaching?
I do teach privately and have a few students. I did retire from IU in 2008, but I did go back this past semester (spring of 2015), and I am supervising the Sacred Music Practicum course this school year (2015–16).
You have recorded several CDs that include a wide variety of repertoire. What is the recording process like for you?
It is very easy to record in a quiet church, such as St. Paul’s Episcopal, Indianapolis. It’s only frustrating when there is a lot of noise outside and you have to keep repeating passages over and over. Additionally, the recording engineer is very important. Some of them are so encouraging.
Please tell us about your longtime collaboration with composer Dan Locklair.
Dan was a senior at Mars Hill College when I went to Asheville as music consultant for the Diocese of Western North Carolina in 1970. Dan called to ask me to come out to his church in Flat Rock, North Carolina, so that’s how I first met him.
I didn’t realize then that he was a composer. He went on to Union Theological Seminary for his master’s and then to the Eastman School of Music for his doctorate. It was after that that I learned about his compositions, after which he sent me a few things.
The first piece that I really became deeply acquainted with was Rubrics (1988). He gave me a copy of it when he was at the Brevard Music Festival. I listened to a recording of it [Mary Preston’s premiere performance in 1989 in Pittsburgh] and was just blown away. I just loved it and wanted to learn it. The first time that I performed it was for the 1994 AGO national convention in Dallas. Before that I had gone to Winston-Salem to play it for him. Dan danced, sang, and carried on with such energy while I played it for him.
What is it about his music that attracts you?
His music has integrity and energy and freshness, and it’s so appealing to ordinary people. There’s joy and, at the same time, deep serenity. You’ll hear this serenity in his new composition, In Memory—HHL, originally composed for orchestra in 2005 after his mother’s death and revised for solo organ in 2014.
I certainly don’t play all of his music, but I’ve learned a lot of it. Spiritual Pair (1994) was composed for and dedicated to me. It was a nice surprise. Tom Wood and I had been talking about my doing a recording on the new Goulding & Wood organ at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans, and because of the strong history and tradition of jazz in that city, I decided that the CD should include that music and be titled Spiritual Pairs.
Retirement: this word means many things to many people. What does it mean to you?
Well, I haven’t really retired (hearty laughter)!
I assume that you are continuing in your post at Trinity Episcopal Church, Bloomington.
I’m considered half-time at Trinity Church, but since I retired from IU, I’ve spent much more time there and have had much more time to plan. I have 11 paid choral scholars in my choir. We began the choral scholar program when I became the organist in 1985. I took over from Tom Wood when Goulding & Wood came into being. He had been co-organist with Robert Rayfield who was on the faculty at IU, so Bob Rayfield continued as the 9 a.m. organist and I was the 11:15 a.m. organist. Tom was around occasionally to substitute.
That arrangement continued until Bob died very suddenly in 1999 of an aortic aneurysm. There was nobody to take over his service that next Sunday, so I agreed to take over both services until Christmas. In the end, however, I continued to play for both services on a regular basis.
Bob had a wonderful and very close-knit choir, and so for the remainder of that school year, I rehearsed his choir separately (as we had done previously). I kept Bob’s 9 o’clock choir separate from the 11:15 choir until the end of that school year, at which time I combined the choirs. We still have the 9 o’clock choir and the 11:15 choir.
When I went there in 1985, I spoke to the rector and expressed my concern that the 11:15 choir was down to about seven people, so I told him about the choral scholar program that I had started in Asheville. He then approached Genevieve Daniel, widow of former School of Music Dean Ralph Daniel, who gave $5,000 a year for 20 years. So, we were able to get choral scholars, starting with four, then eight. Now I have 11 choral scholars, but there are also seven or eight IU students who sing at either one or the other services. The choral scholars sing at both.
Then there is a fabulous group of volunteers, many of whom are retired professors—Latin, French, and Greek, physics, speech/theater lighting. It is a great group of people.
Do you plan the same music for both services?
Yes. We all rehearse together and sing the same anthem at both services. With the choral scholars present at both, the continuity is there, even though the 9 o’clock choir is considerably bigger than the 11:15 choir. There are also several fine instrumentalists and singers in the parish, many who are music professors.
One other thing that I wanted to say about my choir is that I often say to them, “If the whole world could hear you sing, wars would cease.” Of all the things that I do in my life, standing in the middle of that choir and hearing them sing on Thursday night rehearsals is very moving. I am so lucky—and so grateful!
We have a fantastic clergy presence at the church. Our rector, Charlie Dupree, studied organ with Janette Fishell when he was an undergraduate student in graphic arts at East Carolina University. He is a magnificent preacher, administrator, leader, and amazing colleague. He’s a composer and writes a lot of the Psalm refrains we sing. They are all beautiful, very singable, and very creative.
Why is it important for you to still have a church job?
Well, I grew up in the church. My father was a Methodist minister, and I went to church with my parents every Sunday. I began piano when I was four and often played at my father’s churches. When I was eight I told my piano teacher that I wanted to be a church organist. I began organ at the age of twelve and had my first real church organist position when I was sixteen. I have been at Trinity Church now for over thirty years, and I feel so blessed. It is my calling. It feeds me. Also, I keep learning new organ music, new service music, and new choral music.
What books do you like to read?
I love history—American history and world history—and biographies and the works of Barbara Brown Taylor. I really enjoy the writings of Tom Brokaw and Charles Kuralt. Right now I am reading his book entitled Charles Kuralt’s America. I also read The Smithsonian and National Geographic, which my dad would read from cover to cover.
Is there any aspect of your career you’d like to do another way?
No! I feel that I have been enormously blessed. The only thing that I would like to do someday before I die is to go to Leipzig.
What are your favorite organs?
I absolutely love the new Fisk organ in Auer Hall at IU. It is just a magnificent instrument—never overpowering, just a fabulous organ. St. John the Divine is another instrument I love. The sound of that instrument in that room is quite remarkable and thrilling!
Please comment about your service to the American Guild of Organists and other organizations.
I served as registrar on the AGO’s National Council, Dean of the Western North Carolina Chapter, and I’m currently serving on the National Nominating Committee.
I’m also on a Task Force on Denominational Music Organizations that we started this past year. One of the important things about this Task Force is that we are trying to make connections between the various denominations, both in the sharing of information and in finding ways to work with each other. Those things are good for everyone.
You were also a consultant to the Hymnal Music Committee of the 1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church.
That was a phenomenal experience. I was on the Committee during my first year at IU (1983–84). It was so important to me because it kept me in touch with the church music scene; I did not play for a church during those first two years that I was at IU. It was a fabulous group of people: Jim Litton, Ray Glover, Richard Proulx, and David Hurd.
Early on, I served on the Standing Commission in the 1970s and then again during the actual Hymnal 1982 process. I was on the commission again in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was asked to develop a program for musicians in small churches, so I got together Ray Glover, who was then at Virginia Seminary, and Carol Doran, who was at Colgate–Rochester Divinity School. The three of us met in Indianapolis and put together a curriculum for what became the Leadership Program for Musicians Serving in Small Churches, which was eventually called LPM.
We then added people from the Standing Commission and brought on two more people from the Washington, D. C., area: Martin Rideout, who was in Burke, Virginia, and Ed Kryder who taught liturgics at Virginia Seminary. They ultimately became the advisory board for the Leadership Program for Musicians Serving Small Churches, for which I served as chair for the first five years of its life.
I also worked for 3–4 years with the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) to try to develop a mentoring program for young musicians just coming out of school. Our hope was to pair them with seasoned professionals. AAM continues its work to find internships for young church musicians.
What advice do you have for the younger generation of musicians entering the organ and church music profession today?
I think that it’s really important to learn a lot of repertoire while you’re in school. When I began working full time, it was much more difficult to learn new repertoire. During my years in New York, we had recitals at the cathedral every Sunday before Evensong, and I usually played at least one—sometimes two—a month. So, I had many opportunities to learn new repertoire. Never stop learning new music: new organ music, new service music, and new choral music.
Also, it’s really important to keep being flexible. That’s one of the things that I find in working with Charlie Dupree. Both of us feel that way. Sometimes, I see colleagues who feel that it has to be just one way.
Developing a spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and flexibility is so important, especially when you’re working in the church. As I have mentioned before, I’ve taught church music practicum courses, and at the end of every semester, I left them with this quote that I found on the choir room wall in a church in Pittsburgh, “May you always be young and glad, and even if it is Sunday, may you be wrong, because when men and women are always right, they are no longer young.” Isn’t that great?
Can you comment about what your legacy might be to our profession?
At the end of each semester, I would always talk to my students about the importance of reaching out to area musicians who work in small churches or in small communities. So many of them had not had the opportunities that our college and university students have had, and they are so eager to learn. I love my life in music, my life as a church musician and teacher, and I love my church. And I’ve tried to pass this love on to my students. And—embrace your gifts and share them freely and with joy.
Another quote that I always end my workshops with comes from George Cunningham, organist for the BBC and Birmingham Town Hall, a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music and President of the Royal College of Organists. He was Alec Wyton’s teacher. The old American Organist published four speeches of his, one of which ended with the following [I always get choked up when I read this]:
“Our work as musicians must be for us a call and a challenge: a call to more eager study and a search for the beauty and truth of music, and a challenge to carry everywhere its message of joy, of order, and of peace. That is our reasonable service.”
Thank you, Marilyn. You are a heroine for all of us. Godspeed to you!
