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Nunc Dimittis

January 2, 2015
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Harold Chaney, New York City organist, died on November 20, 2014. He was 84. The cause was complications related to Alzheimer’s disease. A native of California, he pursed dual careers as organist and harpsichordist. He earned a DMA from the University of Southern California, and was subsequently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for two years at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, where he studied under Heinz Wunderlich. After returning home, he was appointed to the University of Oregon music faculty, a position he held until moving to New York City, where he resided for over 50 years. 

In New York City he was organist-choirmaster at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church and also taught at Staten Island College, City University of New York. At St. Ignatius Church, he established a liturgical music tradition known internationally for its excellence. He performed numerous times with the New York Philharmonic under, among others, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph Eschenbach, and Mstislav Rostropovich. He appeared in recitals at both regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, and as recitalist in Europe, the Far East, and throughout the United States.

Chaney recorded for Koch International, New World Records, Music and Art, CRI, and Fleur de Lis. His most notable CDs are Choral Music of Morton Feldman and Stefan Wolpe, recorded with the St. Ignatius choir in 2000; and French Connection: Organ Music of Widor, Messiaen, Vierne, and Duruflé, recorded on the organ at Trinity Cathedral, Trenton, New Jersey, in 2002.

—Bynum Petty

 

Thomas P. Frost, organist and choirmaster in the Berkshires for over fifty years, died in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on April 5; he was 86. Born into a Congregational family in Brooklyn, New York, he joined one of New York City’s finest Episcopal boy choirs, St. Paul’s in-the-Village-of-Flatbush, and there learned to play the pipe organ. He continued his organ studies at Princeton University under Carl Weinrich, while earning a cum laude degree in electrical engineering. He worked as an engineer, project manager, and computer scientist with General Electric for forty-four years to support a career as organist and choirmaster. Frost served as organist at the First United Methodist Church in Pittsfield, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Stockbridge, First Congregational Church in North Adams, St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Pittsfield, the National Shrine of the Catholic Church in Stockbridge, and jointly at St. Theresa’s and St. Mary’s churches in Pittsfield.

A member of the AGO for nearly sixty years, he served as dean of the Berkshire chapter and chaired the AGO’s Region 1 (New England) convention in 1997. He founded and directed the Berkshire Organ Academy, the Berkshire Schola Cantorum, and the North County Christmas Festival of Lessons and Carols, and also composed and arranged music and published articles in the Organ Institute Quarterly.

Thomas P. Frost is survived by his wife, Eleanor; his brother, Richard H. Frost and his wife, Barbara; his sister Elizabeth F. Buck and her husband, Alfred S. Buck, M.D.; and five nieces and nephews and their children.

 

Harald E. Rohlig, 88, died October 25. Born in Aurich, Germany, Rohlig’s father was a Methodist clergyman whose opposition to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler resulted in him being incarcerated at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Rohlig was drafted into the German Air Force in 1943 at age 17; at 19, he was in the German army, and was captured by U.S. forces, who turned him over to the French. They placed him in a work camp as a prisoner of war. Those in the camp were also horribly malnourished, which made one of Rohlig’s tasks doubly rewarding. A local church needed someone to play its organ. Although a guard stood over him as he played and the priest was not allowed to speak with him, Rohlig has said that the priest, seeing how malnourished he was, would hide a sandwich under the organ bench—an indescribable delight for someone being starved in the camp.

When Rohlig was released from the camp in 1948, three years after the end of the war, he weighed only 98 pounds, and a bone in his right hand was shattered while clearing the German mines.

Rohlig completed a music degree at Osnabruck Conservatory and studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music in London. In 1953, he immigrated to Linden, Alabama, with his wife Inge (who died in 1999) to serve as a music minister for the First United Methodist Church. They moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and he joined the faculty at Huntingdon College, where he worked until retiring in 2006. Rohlig taught organ and other music at Huntingdon, winning numerous teaching awards; he also taught a class about how to live your life, where he often spoke about what he had gone through. He designed the Bellingrath Memorial Organ in Ligon Chapel, Flowers Hall, installed in 1965 and refurbished and expanded significantly in 2000.

Rohlig served as organist and choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church from 1962 to 2012. He also designed organs, including several neo-Baroque pipe organs in the Southeast, and composed more than 1,000 organ and choral works.

Harald E. Rohlig is survived by his wife of nine years, Jeanette Lynn, stepdaughter Betsy Cannon, sister-in-law Dina Rohlig, two nieces and his beloved feline companions, Bootsy and Paxy. 

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