Robert Sutherland Lord died July 24, at the age of 84. A recognized authority on the music of Franck, Tournemire, and Langlais, he also maintained a close friendship with Mme. Alice Tournemire, the composer’s widow. Mme. Tournemire’s assistance eventually made possible the publication of Lord’s essay in 1984: “Liturgy and Gregorian Chant in L’Orgue Mystique of Charles Tournemire.” One month before Lord’s death, this essay was reprinted in a volume dedicated to Tournemire studies.
During the last year of his life, Dr. Lord returned to a project that he had left behind two decades earlier—the analysis (begun in 1989 and worked on for three years) of a musical manuscript of Tournemire (spanning nearly 1,300 pages) that had been donated to Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Lord resumed work on preparing the text for publication, and it appeared in print exactly one month before his death: “Catalogue of Charles Tournemire’s ‘Brouillon’ [Rough Sketches] for L’Orgue Mystique, BNF., Mus., Ms. 19929.”
Robert Lord was Professor Emeritus of Music and University Organist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Heinz Chapel. Upon his retirement in 1999, Lord’s students honored him as an outstanding teacher. Over 45 years, he performed more than 160 organ concerts and played for more than 4,000 weddings at the chapel. He was also organist and choirmaster at Christ Episcopal Church in the North Hills for 22 years and served as the first chairman of the board of the Northland Public Library. During the 1970s, he annotated a weekly program of organ music for WQED-FM called “Lord on Bach,” rebroadcast over other PBS stations. He played a recital at the Cathedral of Blackburn in Lancashire, England, where his great-grandfather Daniel W. Lord, who emigrated to the United States in 1864, had been a church organist. Lord played recitals at the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris and at the cathedrals of Notre-Dame in Paris and in Chartres, as well as at King’s College, Cambridge University.
Robert Lord received a BA degree in music from Dartmouth College; later, Dartmouth honored him with a Reynolds Fellowship for International Study. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in music history at Yale University. Other organ teachers included Maurice F. Longhurst (Dartmouth College), Clarence Watters (Trinity College), Heinz Wunderlich, and André Marchal.
Robert Sutherland Lord is survived by his wife Martha W. Lord; four children, seven grandchildren, and one great granddaughter.
