Music: Organists

If you are a Charles Michael Schwab or a Pierre Samuel du Pont, you may have an organ of your own and a private organist all to yourself. If you are rich but less exacting, you still may have an organ but only a part-time organist to play on it. If you are of a whimsical turn and have ever pumped an oldtime church organ, you probably belong to The Guild of Former Pipe Organ Pumpers (TIME, May 25). If you go to church you may know your parish organist. Many a person goes to cinemas partly to hear the tremolos and chime-effects of the neighborhood Wurlitzer. But most people belong to none of these classes, are vague about the position of organists in the musical world, unaware of their interests, their problems.

One problem, decided the National Association of Organists when 200 delegates met in Manhattan last week for its 24th annual convention, is the increasing tendency of churches to employ “choral specialists” in place of organists. Said Rowland W. Dunham, director of the College of Music at the University of Colorado (Boulder, Col.): “We are all agreed that good, unaccompanied choral singing is beautiful, appropriate and desirable, but is that all that should be heard in church? Shall the organ be silent except for its necessary help on the hymns, a very short prelude and a totally useless postlude? I think not. Of course the organist is still a necessary evil in most churches where this new type of choirmaster is in control. … At best the position of the organist in these churches is a most menial one. He is suffered to use the instrument only as indicated. What can be said of the shortcomings of the new disciples of choral perfection? My many informants in the profession reveal that a general lack of musicianship prevails in nearly every case. Technical details that any trained organist understands are conspicuously absent.”

The organists discussed technical, mechanical organ-problems, heard Pianist-Author John Erskine tell them that “the best music of the future” would be composed by them. They elected him an honorary member of the Association. They listened to the Schola Cantorum sing old motets under Conductor Hugh Ross, made a tour of Manhattan’s finest church-organs: at St. Patrick’s, St. Bartholomew’s, Riverside Church, Temple Emanuel, Trinity Church and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Inventor-Pianist Hans Barth played for them on his quarter-tone piano.

President of the Association, re-elected last week for a third term, is Harold Vin cent Milligan, organist of the (Rocke feller) Riverside Church and of its predecessor, the Park Avenue Baptist Church. Born 42 years ago in Astoria, Ore., he is blond, bespectacled, looks less esthetic than businesslike. He has studied early U. S. music, written the sole biography of Composer Stephen Collins Foster, com posed songs, organ pieces and operettas. Lately he has devoted all his time to organ-playing and managing the N. A. O. and the National Music League which, with Mrs. Otto Hermann Kahn as its president, helps young U. S. musicians get ahead. Last month he represented U. S. organists at the Anglo-American Music Conference at Lausanne, Switzerland.