This article was inspired by Ralph Kneeream’s elegant and moving tribute to Searle Wright in the November 2004 issue of The Diapason. Dr. Kneeream strongly encouraged me to memorialize my thoughts and impressions of Searle as a teacher to provide an additional perspective on the talents and contributions of this remarkable man. It was my privilege to study organ, composition and improvisation with Searle from September 1964 through May 1966, and to be able to keep in contact with him after graduation from Union Theological Seminary’s then-existing School of Sacred Music until his death June 3, 2004. As a teacher of composition One of his aphorisms was specifically applicable to this area of music study: “Write quickly, but revise exceedingly slowly and carefully!” While he was referring to musical composition, his cautionary wisdom applies equally well to writing an article! I have endeavored to carefully follow this advice in compiling these thoughts and reflections. As a composer of numerous organ and choral works himself, he often joked about it being said of him that he was in this century (the 20th) but not of it! This self-deprecating humor was generally followed by this remark: “If one is going to write conventionally, one must have something to say and write exceedingly well.” He always advocated that a composition have a good “tune” or melody involved. He was not averse to 20th-century compositional devices (polytonality, 4th-built chords, etc.), but these were used as means to an end, not an end in themselves. He encouraged honest efforts at composition, but he could come down hard in his evaluations. I vividly recall his written comments on one of my own efforts, which I still have: “Good grief, the chords! The piece can’t move! It falls under its own weight!” This sent shock waves through my system at the time. But the encouraging part of his teaching style came to the fore in his comment on the last page: “Big talents carry big responsibilities!” I had been brought down, but also lifted up. He proceeded to outline in writing some of the options that could correct my many compositional errors. As a teacher of improvisation He worked with the Union students in a class setting. He would demonstrate how to build an improvisation with what seemed, and were, very basic and practical methods. It sounded easy when he would demonstrate, but I think there was a certain apprehension in all my classmates when we had to play, knowing his phenomenal reputation as an improviser and our natural desire to avoid making total fools of ourselves! Yet I always felt he was able to correct us without putting us down, and in such a way that we were willing to embrace and work on his corrections and suggestions. I will never forget one time when it was my turn to improvise in class. Somehow I got stuck on a theme from Grieg; no matter how hard I tried, I could not shake the theme or improvise my way out! While the theme was good, I soon ran out of material and ways to deal with the theme. Mercifully, I somehow brought the improvisation to an embarrassing conclusion. As I turned around on the organ bench, I could see the looks on the faces of some of my classmates; all of us awaited his comments. With a broad smile Searle said: “Well, it sounds like Bruce got stuck in a tune taught him by his Swedish grandmother!” He was aware that I am Swedish on my father’s side, and well aware that the composer of the theme was Norwegian. Much relieved, I joined my classmates in a good laugh, and he proceeded to show us all how to escape from such musical traps in the future! Part of our improvisation training was learning how to “decorate” hymns with passing tones and harmonic changes, as well as using hymn tunes as the basis for an improvised prelude to a service. While teaching this subject, he did not hesitate to express his opinion on free accompaniments: “Dr. Noble’s (T. Tertius Noble, Organist and Master of the Choristers at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City from 1913–1943) free accompaniments are fine, but he didn’t always put the melody in the top voice. If you’re going to do a free accompaniment, leave the melody intact in the top voice.” I never had the privilege of hearing Searle play a service, but Dr. Kneeream tells me that Searle was very careful to play the hymns as written for the services. When I heard this I was reminded of another of Searle’s sayings: “Just because one can do something does not mean one should!” Another valuable lesson he taught was how a chromatic sequence is constructed and functions. Using a variety of examples, he demonstrated how this knowledge can hasten learning the music of Vierne. He progressed from that lesson to show us how to improvise around a cipher, a skill I once heard him demonstrate “under the gun” when he was playing theatre organ for his 75th birthday party in Binghamton, New York. He worked around the persistent cipher for over two minutes, never losing a beat, until it suddenly ceased, allowing him to proceed! As an organ teacher As an undergraduate organ major at the University of Northern Iowa, my organ study was with Philip Hahn (later, Dr. Philip Hahn, AAGO, President of the American Guild of Organists), who was a student of Robert Noehren at the University of Michigan. The question of whom among the Union faculty I should study with arose when I was accepted at Union. Phil suggested I write to Dr. Noehren, since he had heard me play in my sophomore year at UNI when he was at the university to work on final plans for his new instrument slated for installation in the newly completed music building. I well remember Dr. Noehren’s reply: “You have had enough discipline in your training. Now the time has come for you to have some freedom. Therefore, I recommend you study with Searle Wright.” I told this story to Dr. Baker (Dr. Robert S. Baker, Dean of the School of Sacred Music) during my entrance interview with him at UTS and recall his reaction: “Very interesting that Bob (Dr. Noehren) would recommend you study with Searle. They are of very different persuasions, you know!” Thus it came to pass that I studied with Searle. During my first year at Union, I had my lessons on the organ in James Chapel at Union, not at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, where Searle was the Organist and Director of Chapel Music, because of scheduling problems. Searle was not, to put it mildly, enamored of the sound of the organ in James Chapel! And it was no wonder. The room was dreadfully dry acoustically, which would put any organ at a disadvantage from the outset. Rebuilt and updated in 1960, at a time in American organ building when pipe scales were getting thinner and thinner, making mixtures work properly with the thinly scaled foundational underpinning was a real problem. Dr. Baker had the Swell mixture replaced at least three times after he became Director of the School upon the death of Dr. Hugh Porter. Searle was accustomed to the magnificent G. Donald Harrison American classic Aeolian-Skinner and the reverberant acoustics of St. Paul’s Chapel. I vividly recall Searle’s frustration during one of my lessons while helping me with a registration. Exasperated, he muttered: “This organ is as subtle as a train wreck!” However, that did not stop him from finding combinations that not only worked well for the literature being played, but were beautiful! He had a wonderful ear for sounds and total mastery of the art of registration. One of my many lasting memories is how excited he would become when I came to my lesson prepared with a significant amount of literature to play. He loved it when I was willing to take his ideas on the pieces and at least try them. During my second year at Union, my lessons were in St. Paul’s Chapel. Scheduled to begin at 2 pm on Fridays, they seldom got underway until 2:30. Searle was not a morning person! He often stayed up as late as 4 am practicing or composing, followed by sleeping until noon. Therefore, 2 pm was very early in his day. He would come in late, half-awake, apologizing for being late and saying he had to stop along Broadway to get an orange juice. Upon ascertaining I had prepared a number of pieces for him to hear, he quickly awakened as his enthusiasm bubbled to the surface. Having taken advantage of the 20–30 minutes he was late to work out registrations on the magnificent chapel organ, I would begin to play. His keen ear for color would take over as he would rapidly approach the console from his “listening post” in the nave of the chapel to compliment me on my registration, quickly followed by: “Have you thought of doing it this way?” as he changed all the stops I had selected! In amazement I marveled that I had not thought of it in the new way and would reach for my pencil to jot down the idea. But he would protest, “No, don’t bother to write it down; you could also think about doing it this way,” and quick as a flash, he would again change all the registration. The moral of the story soon became readily apparent: he felt it limiting to be doctrinaire; rather, he encouraged me to use my ear, take into account the resources at my disposal, the acoustics of the room, the structure of the music, etc., to achieve a series of musical sounds that emphasized the music and what it was trying to convey. He was exceedingly generous with his time. If I had a significant amount of repertoire prepared, my “hour lesson” might well run until nearly 5 pm when he had his Friday evening choir rehearsal! I well recall stumbling out of the chapel physically exhausted, but mentally and emotionally on an unbelievable “high” after those lessons. They were so stimulating! His knowledge of the repertoire was comprehensive. Often during lessons he would ask if I knew or played such-and-such work. Often, I not only did not play it, I had never heard of it! He would allow me the time to write down the names of these suggestions. My organ scores are rife with names of works to learn, written in pencil scrawls that fade more and more as the years go by. I am still, after all these years, exploring some of the suggestions he made in those lessons. Though the pencil scrawls are faded or nearly invisible after 40 years, my memory of the man, his teaching and his ideas are as fresh in my mind as if I had just heard them yesterday. As in his teaching of composition and improvisation, he could be a very encouraging organ teacher. After playing a noonday recital at St. Paul’s Chapel, I expressed my disappointment in missing too many notes in the G-Major Voluntary, op. 1, no. 5, by William Walond. Searle pointed out that errors in this type of music can be minimized by first taking care to cover the notes one is about to play, then keeping your hand and wrist as quiet as possible while playing. While he did not often talk about technique or fingering, when he did, it was right on target and to the point. Note that this was brought home to me by the one who was to give me “freedom” and not impose more discipline on me! “Most players have more technique than they need,” he would say. “Technique must be the servant of the music.” He had such a wonderfully fluid technique and sat very quietly on the bench, always playing with an economy of motion; but could he move when the music called for it! I vividly recall his working with me before my master’s recital at St. Thomas, helping me to set registrations, tempi, etc. He would walk around the nave, listening intently. Interestingly enough, he did not radically alter the sounds I had chosen; rather, he adjusted them for balance in the room in a way I could not possibly do from the console. As we worked, he would frequently tell me how the organ was when it was all E. M. Skinner during the time he was working with Dr. Noble. I recall his mild grumbling about Harrison putting the Great manual on the bottom and questioning the wisdom of a French-style organ in an Anglican church. But he loved “his” Harrison Aeolian-Skinner in St. Paul’s Chapel, built almost 20 years before the St. Thomas instrument. On my master’s degree recital, I played Searle’s Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue. As we were planning the repertoire for my recital, he asked me if I would be interested (note: asked me!) in learning the work. He described it as a big virtuoso piece not many people play. He had written it for Marilyn Mason in 1960, and she gave its first performance at the AGO national convention in Detroit that year. Searle felt it to be a good piece and worthy of the time I would need to spend on it. I readily agreed to tackle it! Since one of the requirements for the Master of Sacred Music degree at UTS in those days was to write both abbreviated and extended program notes on each work in our master’s recital, I arranged to interview Searle and get the background of the piece “straight from the horse’s mouth,” as he said. As we sat in “The Pit” (the “break room” at Union) over coffee, he told me about his life and the piece. He was especially proud of the work; it had come out in print only three years earlier. I shall always treasure the note he wrote in my score after the recital, “Thanks for a great performance!—Searle.” He championed Vierne and Karg-Elert when they were out of vogue in the 1960s. I studied the Vierne Triptyque with him. It ends with the “Stèle pour un enfant defunt,” the last piece Vierne played on his recital at Notre Dame in June, 1937, when he collapsed and died at the console just prior to the customary improvisation. Searle took such pains in teaching these little miniatures, talking about ways to pace and phrase them. I have all his markings in my score, and I treasure them. What he accomplished with me in those lessons was not only to give me a thorough understanding of those specific pieces but also to develop my understanding and feeling for the use of phrasing and rubato, not only in the music of Vierne, but other composers as well. His teaching philosophy • Use your ear, decide on and practice your pacing, don’t forget the big line, and play musically. • There are no difficult pieces, only unfamiliar ones. Your job as a musician is to make familiar that which is unfamiliar and to communicate. • A teacher is constantly in danger of falling into the trap of trying to be all things to all people, of trying to do too much, and of being a jack-of-all-trades. It is good to know something about a lot of things musical, but it is necessary to remember that it is “a little” that one knows. The teacher must take a point of view in order to give the subject studied a personality and a point of departure. The teacher’s viewpoint should be only a point of departure, not the gospel for the student. Epilogue I took my last lesson from him in April, 1993, at the First Congregational Church in Binghamton, New York, his last church position. The entire lesson was devoted to the Final from Vierne’s Fifth Symphony, which Searle had played impromptu for me one time during a lesson at St. Paul’s Chapel to illustrate a point he had been making about “the big line” versus detail treatment. I was so overwhelmed hearing him play the piece at the time that I promised myself I would learn it some day. Before the Binghamton lesson, he had relearned the piece himself so he could teach me. This was so typical of Searle: he believed in preparing and expected the same of his students. I still have all his markings and suggestions in my score. This lesson took place before the articles were published showing that the metronome markings in the Vierne symphonies are wrong. He said that the tempo markings in the score of the Final were “ridiculous!” “Slow it down! Just let the piece happen.” He also talked about the construction of the piece, how to handle the three episodes before the theme recurs in minor, then again in major against the triplet figuration. As always, he talked about the big line and the shape of the piece. “The details are fine, but if you lose the shape of the piece while getting the details, what have you gained?” After the lesson (21⁄2 hours, just like in the “old days!”), I took him out for dinner. He would accept no pay for the lesson! We had a wonderful conversation on a variety of topics. After dinner I bade him goodnight as he headed back to the church—he wanted to practice! He was working on the Roger-Ducasse Pastorale. Even Searle admitted it was a hard piece! It was the last time I saw him alive, but I kept in contact with him by phone the rest of his life. He seldom wrote letters and was generally good for an hour on the phone, joking that he was vaccinated with a phonograph needle! What a legacy he left! May the soul of the faithful departed rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon him. Amen.
