Harmony by the Numbers – Principles of Thoroughbass Fluency

Thoroughbass was described by J. S. Bach as “the absolute foundation of music”, and the ability to play figured basses enhances sight-reading, transposing, and harmonization skills. Learn how the study of thoroughbass will enrich your understanding of harmony and develop your ability to perceive chord shapes and voice leading in your hands. We will survey teaching approaches and materials with the goal of developing this skill into a rich resource for creativity for the musician. And we will show how differences between historical practices and “modern” theory increase understanding of the connections among the mind, ear, and hand.

Dean Billmeyer

Dean Billmeyer is professor of organ, harpsichord, and music theory at the School of Music of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He has appeared more than two hundred times as organist, harpsichordist, and pianist with both the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and has more than thirty years of experience teaching figured bass. His numerous awards include prizes in the Dublin International Organ Festival Competitions in 1980 and 1988. As a collaborative performer, his recording credits include the only commercial recording of William Albright’s oratorio A Song to David, and three CDs with the Dale Warland Singers. In the past two seasons, he has given twelve organ concerts on four tours to Germany and Austria, and has lectured in Eisenach and Linz. In July 2014, he will lead masterclasses with Albrecht Koch in Saxony under the auspices of the German Silbermann Society.

Panel on the Young Organist

Richard Bunbury, moderator

This panel addresses issues pertaining to young organists in their formative years as middle, high school, undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, as well as emerging concert artists and touring performers. A variety of issues are discussed, both musical and non-musical. The panel comprises three outstanding and accomplished young organists at various stages in their education and career: Chelsea Chen, Monica Czausz, and Raymond Nagem. Artist manager Phillip Truckenbrod offers his guidance on the performance career aspect of being an organist. The session includes time for questions and a round-table discussion.

Richard Bunbury

  Richard Bunbury, Ph.D., retired from St. Theresa of Avila Church in West Roxbury in 2012, after thirty-two years, and now serves St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Dover, Massachusetts. He is active as an organist, harpsichordist, and choral clinician. His recordings include Unchanging Love: Brass and Organ Music of Larry Thomas Bell (Albany Records). In addition to his church music, he pursues an academic career, including ten years on the faculty of The Boston Conservatory. In 2007, he was appointed to the full-time faculty in the Music Education and Musicology departments at Boston University. He is on the board of several professional organizations, regularly presents at research conferences, and writes for journals and standard reference works. He recently received a book contract from Scarecrow Press for the Dictionary for the Modern Organist.

Chelsea Chen

Organist and composer Chelsea Chen is internationally renowned for her concerts of “rare musicality” and “lovely lyrical grandeur,” and a compositional style that is “charming” and “irresistible” (Los Angeles Times). She has performed in venues around the world including Singapore’s Esplanade, Moldova’s National Organ Hall, Los Angeles’s Disney Hall and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and her music has been aired on CNN.com, Pipedreams from American Public Media, Hawaii Public Radio, and Taiwan’s Good News Radio. Ms. Chen studied at Juilliard and Yale with Paul Jacobs, John Weaver, and Thomas Murray, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan. In 2013, she and German composer/violinist Viviane Waschbüsch formed their transatlantic VivaChe Duo to champion new chamber music for violin and organ. Ms. Chen is Artist-in-Residence/Organist at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida.

Monica Czausz

Monica Czausz is a rising junior at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where she studies with renowned professor Ken Cowan. She is organ scholar at Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal) in Houston, where she works with Robert Simpson and Bruce Power, and assists with the highly acclaimed Treble and Cathedral Choirs. She is the First Place winner of the 2013 William C. Hall Competition (San Antonio), the 2012 National L. Cameron Johnson Competition (Storrs, Conn.), and the 2011 National Oklahoma City University Competition. She has performed at notable venues in the United States, including Verizon Hall (Philadelphia), Cathedral of St. Joseph (Hartford), Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall (Houston), Christ Church Cathedral (Springfield, Mass.), and Macy’s Wanamaker Grant Court (Philadelphia). Before attending Rice University, she worked as organist and choir director at St. Paul’s Church (Episcopal) in Holyoke, Mass., where she led a small but enthusiastic music program.

Ray Nagem

Raymond Nagem is associate organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, and a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School, where he teaches the survey course in organ literature. He is a student of Paul Jacobs. A native of Medford, Massachusetts, he began organ lessons with John Dunn while attending the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School. As the recipient of the first American Friends of Eton College Scholarship, he spent a year in England, studying music at Eton College with Alastair Sampson. He earned his B.A. from Yale University, where he studied with Thomas Murray, and his M.M. from Juilliard. He has held positions at The Parish of All Saints, Ashmont in Boston; Trinity Church, Southport, Connecticut; and Christ Church, New Haven.

Phillip Truckenbrod

Phillip Truckenbrod has represented American and European concert organists since 1967, and his company has exhibited at least once annually at national and regional American Guild of Organists conventions since 1971. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and for a number of years worked as arts and music editor and critic at The Star-Ledger, Newark, then the seventh largest daily newspaper in the country.

The Professional Organist as Successful Communicator

In times of economic turmoil, in which churches are closing, positions “downsized,” and salaries and job descriptions often lacking, the organist of 2014 can be helped by tuning-up and improving communication and negotiation skills. This workshop focuses on communication skills useful in navigating organists’ professional relationships. Clergy, choirs, music committees, parishioners, volunteer boards, colleagues, and agents are among a long list of professional relationships that the organist faces. This workshop reviews practical skills and approaches for communicating, as well as internal skills, that help the organist remain calm, focused, and well-composed.

David Christopher Bellville

David Christopher Bellville, Ph.D., is a pastoral psychotherapist and consultant. A graduate of Boston University Graduate School, he also holds degrees from B.U. School of Theology and General Theological Seminary in New York City, and two degrees from Michigan State University. He has led workshops on reducing anxiety and stress (as at this convention), and other topics, for American Guild of Organists chapters and its 1990 national convention, and for churches, religious communities, and numerous professional groups in the United States and South America. He has an active practice in Brunswick, Maine. He is also married to an organist and is a clergy person himself.

Gregorian Chant Roots in the Music of J.S. Bach

Gregorian Chant was a well-known musical genre to J.S. Bach; he used at least thirty-one plainchant melodies in organ and choral compositions. Bach used chant motifs from two Missals with which he was familiar: Missale Hildensemense and Augustanum  Some stay close to modality, while others modify to tonality. Perhaps the most intriguing is the Gregorian Communio for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (in the “old missal”), Acceptabis sacrificium justitiae, which Bach uses in the Passacaglia in C minor. This presentation, with handouts, includes several pertinent examples, both visual and audio.

William Tortolano

William Tortolano, DSM, is a graduate of Boston University, New England Conservatory, and L’Université de Montréal. An authority on Gregorian chant, he is the author of two books: Beginning Studies in Gregorian Chant (translator) and A Gregorian Chant Handbook, published by G.I.A. He is professor emeritus at St. Michael’s College in Vermont; was a visiting fellow at Cambridge University (Trinity and King’s colleges); held a fellowship in medieval studies at Yale; and was a conducting fellow at Tanglewood.

Church Music As Somaesthetic Praxis

Handout

Singing, hearing, speaking, practicing, and performing are all bodily actions that shape the self. Church music perceived as a form of meliorative praxis that can contribute to a prosperity of life can be described as Somaesthetics. Carrying traces of specific meaning, this music unfolds and calls for an ethic that arises from the discourse of the embodied human soul and the revelation of the neighbor within his alterity?it obtains concrete meaning through the thematic thinking of the entirely Other. The transformative power of this thinking enables rich meaning of this music and relevantly articulates the church musician.

Christoph Schlütter

Christoph Schlütter received the Diploma A in Church Music from the Protestant School for Church Music in Halle/Saale, Germany. During his studies, he was an intern at Old South Church in Boston. Masterclasses with Quentin Faulkner, Ludger Lohmann, and Almut Rößler added to his education as an organist. Studies in art song and oratorio complemented his further formation. He performed numerous concerts in Germany as an organist, conductor, and singer, including the International Händel-Festspiele in Halle and the Bachfest Leipzig, amongst others. Concert tours brought him to France and the United States. Between 2007 and 2011, he was a research associate for the faculty of theology at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and, from 2005 through 2012, assistant organist at St. Nikolai in Leipzig. He currently lives in Brussels, working on his graduate thesis, entitled “Church Music Somaesthetics”.

Jean-Louis Florentz: Hommage à Messiaen

French composer Jean-Louis Florentz (1947–2004) was an unusually innovative successor to his teacher, Olivier Messiaen. Like Messiaen, Florentz developed a unique set of modes and a thorough grammar to govern movement through them. His approach to harmony is drawn from an unorthodox understanding of the implications of the overtone series, the series being impacted not only Florentz’s compositional techniques, but also by his ideas about organ construction. This paper examines the intersection of harmony, instrument, and philosophy in Debout sur le Soleil: Chant de résurrection pour orgue (1990).

Margaret Harper

Margaret Harper is a doctoral student at the Eastman School of Music, where she studies with David Higgs. She teaches secondary organ lessons at Eastman, and for three years was the teaching assistant of William Porter. She has also served as a teaching assistant for music history, music theory, organ literature, and sacred music courses. She received a Bachelor of Music from Wheaton College under Edward Zimmerman, and her Master of Music at Eastman under William Porter. Other teachers include Michel Bouvard and Edoardo Bellotti. She is organist at Penfield United Methodist Church. During summers, she also serves as organist at Lake Delaware Boys Camp. In 2012, she presented a paper on the intersection of theology and composition in the Clavierübung, Part III at the annual conference of the American Bach Society. She is on the board of the Rochester chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Recovering the Spirit of Adaptation: Lessons from the Iberian Renaissance

Recent recordings of sacred Renaissance vocal polyphony, especially projects that feature Iberian works, have tended to present an ever-expanding palette of supporting continuo forces: both organs and instruments have been used to double, gloss, or even substitute for voice parts. This paper surveys recent findings related to Iberian performance practices and proposes ways in which present-day conductors can, through the lens of the Renaissance, adapt otherwise improbable repertoire, in terms of performing forces and ability, for both liturgical and concert contexts.

Chad Fothergill

Chad Fothergill, a native of southwest Wisconsin, holds a Master of Arts in organ performance from the University of Iowa, where he has also completed residency requirements toward a Ph.D. in musicology. Principal teachers and mentors for his studies in organ, choral conducting, liturgy, and improvisation have included Gregory Aune, William Beckstrand, Delbert Disselhorst, David Fienen, Christine Getz, and Patricia Kazarow. He has previously served as dean of the University of Iowa chapter of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) and Education chair of the Sioux Trails AGO chapter AGO, and has taught on the staffs of both the Iowa Summer Music Camps and the Lutheran Summer Music Academy and Festival. From 2010 to 2012, he was vice president for Region III of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM). He now serves as cantor at University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, Philadelphia.

Bach’s Leipzig Chorales: New Thoughts on Their Development and Function

The Leipzig Chorales are an anomaly among Bach’s keyboard works, because a clear and exact purpose for this collection is unknown. This paper contextualizes the possible function of the chorales in the service at St. Thomas Church in order to find their liturgical use. It looks at their most plausible function, as chorale settings played in alternation with congregational singing of chorales during communion, specifically on feast days. It also explores their compositional development in light of other musical publications at the time, namely Georg Friedrich Kauffmann’s Harmonische Seelenlust, and pietistic theological writings appearing in Leipzig.

Daniel Aune

Daniel Aune is director of music and organist at Christ Lutheran Church, Baltimore. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in organ performance from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with David
Higgs. Other degrees from Eastman include a Master of Music in organ with David Higgs, a Master of Music in harpsichord with William Porter, and the Sacred Music Diploma. Additional studies included improvisation with William Porter and a doctoral minor in composition. He has been published in the Eastman Organbook, and has also composed choral anthems and hymn arrangements for organ, brass, and choir. His competition
credits include first prize in both the Rodland Memorial Scholarship Competition and the San Marino Competition, second place in the Arthur Poister Competition, and semi-finalist in the National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance. He also was the recipient of Eastman’s first-ever Lecture-Recital Prize.

Extemporaneous Sublime: Indeterminacy and Transience of the Improvised Moment

The qualities of spontaneity, irrationality, and indeterminacy have been hallmarks of musical improvisation, while often largely neglected as attributes of the musical sublime. The connection between musical improvisation and the experience of the musical sublime represents an oft-concealed thread between the very acts of music production and listening. This paper explores analogies between the sense of indeterminacy and transiency in improvised music, concepts of the aesthetics of the musical sublime, and the extemporaneous act of music performance. It examines the notion of the sublime as an attribute of musical experience that can be evoked through the performative act of organ improvisation.

Zvonimir Nagy

Zvonimir Nagy, a native of Croatia, holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in music from the Academy of Music-University of Zagreb, Texas Christian University, and Northwestern University, respectively. He is the recent recipient of the Swan Music Prize in Choral Composition and the Seattle Symphony Composition Prize. His compositions and scholarship are inspired by the intersection of aesthetics and spirituality on one end, and music perception and philosophy on the other. Paraclete Press and World Library Publications publish his music. He has taught on the faculties of Northwestern and St. Xavier University, and currently serves as assistant professor of music studies at the Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is also the cathedral and diocesan organist at St. Joseph Cathedral in Wheeling, West Virginia. He continues to perform as a solo and collaborative organist and pianist.

Ancient Materials, Modern Techniques: New Compositional Trends in Interwar France

During the compositionally fertile interwar period, the reclothing of ancient source material with contemporary compositional techniques emerged as a defining characteristic of modern French organ music. The new treatment of modes, rhythms, and forms derived from ancient sources such as plainchant, early modal compositions, and non-Western musics enabled a modern style that both renewed tradition and broke with Romanticism. The characteristics and complexities of this new synthesis of ancient and modern are illustrated with examples from the works and writings of Tournemire, Messiaen, and Alain.

Ruth Draper

Ruth Draper’s scholarly focus is exoticism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music, with a focus on the cultural ideologies and compositional mechanisms surrounding the shift away from the representational. Currently a DMA student at the University of Washington, she is writing her dissertation on the music of Jehan Alain. She holds master’s degrees in organ and music theory pedagogy from the Eastman School of Music, and completed her bachelor’s work at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. Also successful as a performer, she is an international competition laureate and regular recitalist. She is currently organist at Seattle First Baptist Church and accompanist and theory teacher for the Seattle Girls’ Choir touring ensemble.