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E. Bronson Ragan Memorial Tribute

April 1, 2003
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Kevin Walters is Director of Music at The Presbyterian Church in Rye, NY and Organist of Congregation Emanu-el, also in Rye. Prior to his present appointment he was Director of Music at Marble Collegiate Church, New York City, for twelve years, and has served on the faculties of the Guilmant School and the Manhattan School of Music. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music with degrees in piano, theory and composition; his major teachers have included Robert Crandell, Herbert Howells and Searle Wright (composition); Jack H. Ossewaarde and Bronson Ragan (organ). He is a consultant to the AGO examination committee, having previously served as a member of the committee for ten years; he is a frequent contributor to The American Organist and currently writes reviews of new choral music.

On Tuesday night, March 5, 1996, the Church of the Holy Trinity, on Manhattan's Upper East side in New York City, paid tribute to E. Bronson Ragan, who was Organist and Choirmaster of the historic Rhinelander Church from 1946-1971. The tribute was organized by Dr. Stephen Hamilton, the current Minister of Music, and presented three of Ragan's former students--David Hurd, Walter Hilse and Kevin Walters --as well as Mollie Nichols and Stephen Hamilton. The organ concert featured music by Bach, Sowerby, DuMage, Franck, Hurd, and Liszt on the 60-stop Rieger pipe organ installed in the church in 1987.

It has been almost exactly twenty-five years since Bronson
Ragan died suddenly on March 29, 1971, at the age of 56. At the time of his
death, he was within a few months of completing twenty-five years as Organist
and Choirmaster of the Church of the Holy Trinity (Episcopal) in New York City.
A native of Rome, New York, E. Bronson Ragan graduated from the Institute of
Musical Art (predecessor of The Juilliard School) with the artists' diploma in
piano and organ. His principal teachers were Gaston Dethier and David McK.
Williams. In 1938, he was appointed to the theory faculties of both the
Institute and Juilliard Graduate School, as it was then known. After serving in
the U.S. Army during World War II, he returned to New York and to the
reorganized Juilliard School where he joined his longtime friend and colleague
Vernon deTar on the organ faculty. He remained until 1969 when he left
Juilliard to become Chairman of the new organ department of the Manhattan
School of Music where he was already a member of the theory faculty. He also
taught at Pius X School of Liturgical Music and The Guilmant Organ School from
the early 1950s.

Of all his many professional activities apart from The
Church of the Holy Trinity, Bronson Ragan would surely have said that the most
important was his involvement in the examination program of the American Guild
of Organists to which he was passionately committed. He served several terms as
a member of the examination committee and the national board of examiners,
working to encourage thorough preparation on the part of candidates and to
uphold uncompromisingly high standards on the part of examiners. All his
students were expected to attend to the applied disciplines of transposition,
harmonization and score-reading as diligently as to the learning of the organ
repertoire. Where the latter was concerned, Bronson Ragan had a very definite
preference: the music of J.S. Bach reigned supreme. Any organ music preceding
Bach was derisively referred to as "pre-music" and, with the exception
of César Franck, he was largely unsympathetic towards much 19th and 20th
century French music; Reubke's Sonata
was regarded with scant courtesy--he not only refused to teach it, but would
have fits even if he heard it being practiced! Through his love of sixteenth-century counterpoint and vast knowledge of its diverse stylistic applications, he was able to communicate a considerable appreciation and understanding of this
subject. He had a very linear approach to most music-making and continually
stressed this in his organ lessons. He adamantly refused to indulge a student's
eagerness to learn the bravura "show-pieces", preferring instead a
methodical approach which placed technique ahead of flamboyance. Any trace of
rhythmically careless playing from his students elicited an immediate and
thundering denunciation. (The venerable old E. M. Skinner organ at Holy Trinity
Church would unfailing terrorize any student who could not compensate for its
sluggish action, and not a few of us came to grief when our inadequate passage-work was exposed by this unforgiving instrument.) His own playing was a model of
rhythmic and technical precision and his improvisation abilities were
phenomenal--he could extemporize a four-voice fugue on a given subject in
virtually any style but adamantly maintained that improvisation skills were
largely "unteachable."

In his last few years at Holy Trinity, the Skinner organ was
finally diagnosed as "terminal and inoperable." The church did not
have adequate funds to repair or replace it was another pipe organ, so Bronson
Ragan reluctantly agreed to the purchase of a large Rodgers electronic
instrument. At about the same time, Holy Trinity found itself unable to
maintain a fully professional choir. Rather than establishing a volunteer
choir, Bronson Ragan proposed the rather startling idea (for that time) of
calling upon his many colleagues and students to introduce instrumental music
of all types into regular church services--everything from wind ensembles to a
solo violoncello with all the repertory possibilities they brought with them.
The result was more successful that Bronson Ragan had imagined it would be, and
first-class instrumentalists were eager to play in the church with its
excellent acoustics. His enthusiasm for this different approach to church music
made many of us aware of new possibilities for repertoire and instrumental
combinations with the organ.

Creating new levels of awareness in all of his students (he
was a teacher, in the best sense, to everyone who knew him) is truly the
enduring legacy of this uniquely gifted man and his faithful, purposeful life.
We remember him with gratitude and much affection.