Alan Dann, president of the Estey Organ Museum of Brattleboro, Vermont, died September 7 at the age of 80. Born March 29, 1934, he was educated at Harvard University; Teachers College, Columbia University; and the University of Connecticut. He moved to southern Vermont in 1998. As a church organist, he served at various times the West Dover Congregational Church, St. Mary’s in the Mountains, the Halifax Union Society, and the Marlboro Meeting House.
Glendon Frank:
Remembering Hilda Jonas
Harpsichordist, pianist, teacher, and, most importantly, beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Hilda Jonas passed away peacefully at age 101 in her San Francisco home on September 12, 2014, after a long and productive life devoted to music, family, and community. Her husband Gerald preceded her in death in 2007.
Victor Gonzalez/Robert Martin,
Paris, France
Mercer University,
Macon, Georgia
Mercer University has acquired and has dedicated a new organ for the organ teaching studio in McCorkle Hall, Townsend School of Music. The instrument, the Giuseppe Englert Memorial Organ, was originally built by Victor Gonzalez in 1953 in Paris. Its home for 59 years was the salon in the apartment on the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg (in full view of the impressive gold-leaf dome of Les Invalides, where one finds the tomb of Napoléon) of Giuseppe Englert and his wife, Jacqueline Englert-Marchal, the daughter of celebrated blind French organist André Marchal.
Kegg Pipe Organ Builders,
Hartville, Ohio
Bryn Athyn Cathedral
Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania
From the organbuilder
The Diapason is pleased to partner with the Chicago and Fox Valley Chapters of the American Guild of Organists and the Chicago-Midwest Chapter of the Organ Historical Society in presenting a Midwinter Pipe Organ Conclave, Sunday and Monday, January 18–19, 2015. The event will be held in La Grange, Illinois, a near suburb of Chicago. La Grange is conveniently located to Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway International Airports, usually a twenty- to thirty-minute drive.
Two leaders in the organ world served as faculty for the 64th Sewanee Church Music Conference: Todd Wilson and Peter Conte. Wilson is director of music and worship at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio, as well as head of the organ department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In addition to his position as organist-choirmaster at St. Clement’s in Philadelphia, Conte is marking his 25th year as Wanamaker Grand Court Organist.
An overview of 15th–18th century repertoire, sources, and modern editions
Despite the combination of carelessness and wars over the past 400 years, an exceptionally large corpus of keyboard music compiled during the 16th and 17th centuries has survived in manuscript form in Poland. It is extremely rich in liturgical organ music, but secular forms are also prominent. To the best of my knowledge, it is a great lacuna that no treatises on performance practice (such as registration, ornamentation, fingering) with or without examples have survived, if indeed any were produced.
On March 2, 2014, the Feast of the Transfiguration, Raymond H. Herbek began his own transfiguration from an earthly body to an immortal one. I had known Ray, as he was called, for 40 years and always found him to be amiable, interested in what others were doing, and eager to share many wonderful stories about his life and career in music.
