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Remembering M. Searle Wright |
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an interview with |
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Ralph Kneeream and Bruce Bengtson |
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by Lorenz Maycher |
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in the choir room of |
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Christ Church, Reading PA |
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June 26, 2004 |
The great
American organist and composer Searle Wright made his last public appearance at
Marilyn Mason's April 4, 2004 performance of Dupre's "Stations of the
Cross" at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, PA. The date also
happened to be Mr. Wright's 86th birthday, and Professor Mason and a
small group of friends helped celebrate with Mr. Wright at a dinner party at
the Hotel Bethlehem. At the dinner, Marilyn Mason gave this birthday
toast: "Age is like art - it's open to interpretation."
Pictured
below are Searle Wright and Marilyn Mason seated at the 1955 Aeolian-Skinner
organ at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem following her recital:
There is
another photo taken that same evening of Mr. Wright trying out the organ, with
a delighted Marilyn Mason registering for him. After playing a few
chords, Mr. Wright turned to the church's rector and proclaimed the organ to be
"quite beautiful and very refined." Here is that photo:
Less than
three months later, Ralph Kneeream and Bruce Bengtson met with Vermont Organ Academy
director, Lorenz Maycher in the choir room of Christ Episcopal Church, Reading,
PA to reminisce about their associations with Searle Wright.
The Interview
BB:
Ralph, I don’t think you were able to come to Searle’s 75th
birthday up in Binghamton. I made the
trip, and he played two hours of theatre organ on the Link memorial organ,
playing for two silent movies. One of
them was a comedy, and the other was “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” It was unbelievable what he did in that two
hours. It was all improvised. He would take the tremulants off in the
church scenes in the “Hunchback”, and play it very spare, imitating a church
organ. Lo and behold, the organ
ciphered at one point. So, we all got a
live demonstration of what Searle had taught us in improvisation class back at
Union - how to improvise around a cipher.
And, he did it wonderfully.
Somehow the cipher disappeared, and he was able to go about his
business. But, it was just fascinating
to hear him do that.
RK: Bruce, I know exactly what you are talking
about, because I heard him do the same thing in Ann Arbor in 1997, when he was
79. He did this same thing for Marilyn at her conference. In those days the
conference lasted five days, and Wednesday was always the big night. We have wonderful pictures of Searle
standing in front of the marquee of the Michigan Theatre with “Teddy at the
Throttle” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
BB: In The Diapason
there were once two wonderful pictures of Searle: one taken at the console at Westminster Abbey, and the other
taken at a horseshoe console. The
article was entitled, “The Two Faces of Searle Wright”, the very serious face
at Westminster Abbey, and the big smile at the horseshoe, theatre console.
I did not hear this personally, but I was told when I got to Union that
at Columbia, when they had commencement services, they would have them as a
general rule out in the quadrangle, unless the weather was inclement, in which
case they would take the service to St. John the Divine. I had several people tell me that the
previous year they had taken it to St. John the Divine, and the academic
procession took something like 30 minutes.
RK: I was turning pages.
BB: Well, the improvisation that year, I
understand, was incredible, ending with him uncorking the state trumpet at the
end as the president or provost entered the procession..
RK: Oh, yes.
It was wonderful. They had the
main commencement in the cathedral, but the overflow crowd was so large that
they also took over the nave of the Riverside Church, as well as the Barnard
gymnasium, and it was broadcast to all these various places. But, he did everything at the organ. And, I remember he played “Orb and Scepter.” But, yes, he improvised, and it was a
wonderful occasion, with pouring rain outside.
Of course we were all upset, including Searle, that we had to lug all
our equipment, music and choir robes all the way from St. Paul’s Chapel, which
is at 117th and Amsterdam, to the cathedral, which is at 112th
and Amsterdam.
Another funny story is, one year we were doing the “Ceremony of Carols”
of Benjamin Britten in St. Paul’s Chapel at 12:00 noon. We did it once a year, usually at one of the
services or concerts before the Christmas holiday. And, for some reason or another, we were also doing it that year
at 1:00 p.m. at Barnard College. We had
a tremendous snowstorm, so we had to carry the harp underground through the
tunnel that goes under Broadway from the chapel and other buildings over to
Barnard.
Another story I remember is, Searle would have a choir party once a
year at his apartment, which was at 111th and Broadway on the
northeast corner. It wasn’t a large
apartment, and you know we had forty or forty-five people in the choir. So, we would pack in there, and other friends
would join us, such as John Huston, and above all, Robert Crandell, who had
succeeded Robert Baker as organist-choirmaster at First Presbyterian Church in
Brooklyn Heights. I’ll never forget one
year at about one o’clock in the morning Searle was playing some obscure work
of Gustav Holst, or William Walton, or Herbert Howells on the record player – a
record he had brought back from England that summer. All of a sudden, someone said, “I wonder where is Bob. What happened to Bob Crandell?” We looked all over the apartment, but there
was no Bob. Somebody said, “Well, try
his apartment. I hope he’s all
right.” Sure enough, he had left the
party, gone to the subway at 110th and Broadway, had taken the
subway home to Brooklyn Heights and had crawled into bed before he was ever
missed at the choir party at Searle’s!
Every year Searle would sail either on the Queen Elizabeth, or the
Queen Mary, for England. In those days,
he would spend a good three months in England.
Whoever was his assistant at the time would be in charge of the summer
program at Columbia. Usually in those
days it was a six-week program. We used
to tease, saying, “In New York there are only two places open on July 4th
– the city jail and Columbia University.”
And, we had classes on July 4th.
Searle would always sail for England, and those send-off parties down
on the Hudson were MEMORABLE. We all
went, Louise and Catherine Meyer, Donna Brunzma and I, to say bye-bye to
Searle, “see you the end of August.”
This was usually sometime in June.
During the year, there would be three choir rehearsals a week at
Columbia – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from 5:00 to 6:15. All the students were there, and had to
attend two of the three rehearsals, as did the professional quartet. They had the choice of either Monday or
Wednesday, but they all had to be there on Friday. And then usually after that Friday rehearsal we would repair to
Mother Schraft’s on Times Square for a Friday evening dinner. And, Bob would usually come up from Brooklyn
Heights, and sometimes John Huston from the Village if he was available. We’d usually have wonderful Friday evenings
together.
BB: You talk about Fridays, Ralph – the first year
I was there, for some scheduling reason, Searle had to give me my lessons in
James Chapel. Of course, Searle had
some wonderful things to say about the instrument, as you can imagine, because
the room was dry, and the organ was rather thinly voiced, and it was not his
favorite instrument in the city, shall we say.
But, the second year, fortunately, I had my lessons at St. Paul’s
Chapel. And, they were on Friday afternoon, scheduled for 2:00. But, Searle was not a morning person. He was definitely a night person. So, Searle would come in very seldom at
2:00. It was generally closer to 2:30,
and he would come in half awake, like a person just waking up in the morning. He would apologize, “Bruce, I’m so sorry I’m
late, but I had to stop on Broadway and get a fresh orange juice.” That was always the line. But, he was always so generous with his
time. If I had things prepared, and I
knew what to expect, we would start at 2:20 or 2:30 and we would go up to that
choir rehearsal time. I would stagger
out of that chapel not having had an hour lesson, but two-and-a-half hours or
more.
In my lessons, the more I would play, the more excited and animated
Searle would get. He would come up and
say, “I like the sounds you’re using.”
(You know this was on that wonderful Aeolian-Skinner at St. Paul’s
Chapel.) “Have you ever tried it this
way?” And, he would immediately change
all the stops. I would then go for my
pencil to write it down, and he’d say, “No, no, don’t write it down. You could also do it this way,” and would
change it again! The point that he was
making was, use your ears, your good musical judgment – use what will sound
best on this instrument – there are other things that will work besides the way
you’re doing it. He was so generous with
his time and encouraging, always finding something positive to say before he
made his “suggestions,” as he put it.
He never said, “You must do it this way.” But there would be suggestions.
Very seldom was there anything about fingering or pedaling. He just assumed you were mature enough to
take care of these things, although he would sometimes say, “I noticed you were
playing it this way. Have you tried it
like this?”
Searle was able to sit extremely still at the console so that there was
an economy of motion when he played.
RK: A wonderful hand position.
BB: Wonderful hand position always. He had very facile fingers and hands. I talked to Bob Baker, and got him to
reminiscing about the contests they used to have in T2 of Union as to who could
play the “Roulade” of Seth Bingham the longest before they made an error in
it. And, Bob Baker said, “Searle always
won that contest. He always could play
more cleanly than I could.” I told
Searle about this and he said, “I don’t know about that. Bob is pretty good.” Of course they were good friends through all
the years.
RK: Yes, and they appreciated each other’s art
immensely. And, I need to say, Bruce,
that Searle always spoke about you as one of his very finest students because you
were always prepared. He wasn’t always
patient with people who were not prepared, whether they were members of the
choir, whether they were an assistant, a student, or an administrator at
Columbia or Union. He certainly was the
most consummate, well-rounded musician I’ve ever encountered in my life, and
I’ve known a good deal of very fine organists and choirmasters, as I know you
have. Here we have a man who could
improvise as long as anyone wanted him to improvise.
One thing interesting about his service playing, though, however, he
could do a free accompaniment to all five verses of a hymn. But, he very rarely did. He believed that the hymn was for the
congregation, and his hymn playing was very “Catholic,” if I may put it that
way. He followed the score. Occasionally there would be a nuance, or a
difference. Or, if he took a quiet hymn
to play during communion, he would improvise on the tune. He would often, however, ridicule organists
that were showing off with their free accompaniments while the congregation
struggled to find the tune. He was very
strict about this, and did not appreciate service playing that was too liberal.
BB: He always told me, “Now, Dr. Noble’s
accompaniments are fine, but he didn’t always put the melody in the top. If you’re going to do it, try to leave the
melody intact, on the top.” That was
his philosophy.
RK: So people know what to sing. He was a very quiet service player. We did a lot of early music – the Byrd three
part, four part, five part masses. He
loved the Tudor period, the Elizabethan period, and we did them in Latin and in
English. One of the nice things about
working at Columbia University was that the university was paying the bill, and
not the congregants. Therefore, he did
not have to worry if a certain piece was going to go over well with the
congregation or not. It was a rich
feast every Sunday morning. We would
have some of the finest theologians in the country preaching, Rheinhold Nieber
from Union Seminary would preach sometimes, and other of the Union professors,
as well as the Columbia professors. The
homilies were terrific, and, of course, so was the service music. The congregation was not always large. Sometimes there were 35 people in the
congregation and 45 people in the choir.
But, we did sing the full service.
In those days it was mostly morning prayer. When we did Eucharist, of course, we did a full sung
Eucharist. And, people would visit
because they knew they would have a rich offering at St. Paul’s Chapel that was
well done.
People often say to me how did you meet this person, or that person, or
this one? Well, I met them at St.
Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University.
Because, in the late 1950s and 1960s, and early 70s, before Union closed
and before the chapel music program at Columbia was curtailed by the
university, Morningside Heights had an extremely rich offering. All sorts of people the world over would
come there. I met Maurice and Madeleine
Durufle at St. Paul’s Chapel in 1964.
Searle happened to be in England, and as his assistant, I had the job of
hosting them about for several days.
They knew very little English, and I knew next to nothing in
French. But, we managed. We went to meals at the faculty club, and
struck up a friendship which lasted for 35 years. Many of the New York organists, and foreign organists I met were
because of and thanks to my association with Searle Wright.
LM: How did you come to be Searle Wright’s
assistant at Columbia?
RK: Well, that’s an interesting story. I moved to New York City in 1956, after my
military service. A few years earlier
the Reading chapter of the American Guild of Organists brought Claire Coci here
for their annual recital. It was 1953,
to be exact, and she had just lost her husband, Bernard LaBerge in 1952 – the
great impresario. But, she continued to
tour. And, since Reading was a one-day
trip from New York City she drove over with a friend early on a Saturday morning. We had a luncheon for her at the Abraham
Lincoln Hotel, just up the street from where we’re sitting. Then we went back to the church and she
practiced all afternoon, and the recital was that evening. At one point that afternoon she said, “Play
something for me.” I had had one year
of training with Richard Ross at the Peabody Conservatory, so I played a piece
I had learned there. Afterwards she
said, “Well, I hope some day you’ll come to New York and study with me.”
Well, I had two years of military service to do first. But, in 1956, I did move to New York, and
did ring her up and started to study with her.
Of course, she was a good friend of Searle Wright’s. I’m not sure of the exact time I met Searle,
but I remember one occasion, when Claire was married for the second time, she
had a reception in her eighth floor apartment at 72nd and Broadway,
where she had a two-manual pipe organ.
Most of the New York organists were at that reception - Dr. Bingham and
his wife, Searle Wright, and many others.
At one point several of us were asked to play a piece, and I hesitated
as I was over 21 and had just had a gin and tonic. Searle always swore that that was the best playing he ever heard
me do. So, I said “Maybe I should sit
down and have a gin and tonic every time I play a church service”, and we
laughed about that for years.
The summer of 1958 – well, two things, in addition to meeting Searle –
I had served for two years at Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village at 2nd
Ave. and 7th St. where I had a professional choir of 12 voices – nice
way to start a career, with a professional choir of 12 voices. In those days, one of the New York
newspapers would publish on a Saturday the music programs for the following
day.
BB: The Herald-Tribune. I still have the clippings in my office.
RK: And, Searle saw my name, and saw that this
person in the Village was doing some interesting organ and choral music (he
told me this later).
That was one thing. Another
was, I met Searle in Houston, TX in the summer of 1958 when I was one of the
finalists in the national organ playing competition. Searle heard me. The
following September, when Dale Peters decided to return to Texas after
finishing his master’s degree at Columbia, Searle needed an assistant, and I
was given the position. It was basically
a two-year position, and I ended up staying eight years, and would’ve stayed
even longer, but it was time to move on.
LM: What were your duties as his assistant?
RK: It was my job to be in charge of the music
library, to make sure the 40-45 choir folders were ready, with the new music in
place and old music removed, for the Monday, Wednesday and Friday
rehearsals. Searle’s assistants usually
always had to play the Monday and Wednesday noonday service. In those days there was a noonday service in
the chapel on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the story being (how accurate it
is, I don’t know) that Columbia University was first chartered by one of the
King Georges, and there was something in the deed that said something had to be
held in the chapel every day that the college was in session. Searle loved to tease Alec Wyton about this,
saying, “You realize we’re the only royal chapel in New York City. We’re the only ones that have the right to
wear maroon, royal red robes.” And,
this would make Alec Wyton chuckle, because they also had red robes at the
cathedral.
On a Monday noon, there was a Lutheran matins, which I usually played
(or whoever the assistant was). It was
a sung service, and the students had to sing two of the three weekly services
as part of their scholarship, which gave us a certain leverage. Then, there was a general Presbyterian
service on Wednesday noon for about 35 or 40 minutes. And, then on Friday, we had an Anglican-Episcopalian
Eucharist. Sometimes Searle would play
on a Friday, especially if Chaplain Crumb was doing the service. Chaplain Crumb, then – John Crumb - later
became Bishop of Southern Ohio. First
of all he went to the Church of the Ascension at 10th St. and Fifth
Ave. Then he was elected Bishop of Southern
Ohio, and subsequently Bishop of Western Europe before he retired. Searle and John worked together at Columbia
from about 1952 to 1964.
BB: Was that how Searle went to Christ Church
Cathedral in Cincinnati?
RK: No.
There’s another story with Southern Ohio.
BB: Because he made his decision to go to
Cincinnati when he was out in Lincoln.
We had him out there to do an improvisation workshop. And, I would take him places, and it was
like a tennis match.
RK: He wasn’t sure.
BB: Today he wasn’t going to do it, tomorrow he
was, and this would vary several times during the day. Finally before one of the sessions, he said,
“I’m going to do it. I’m going to make
the call. Thank you for listening to
me.” That’s how he decided to go to
Christ Church, Cincinnati.
LM: Was the music program at Columbia already
threatened at that point?
BB: Severely curtailed.
RK: Well, to finish about the duties of
assistant organist, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, there were organ recitals. Searle and I played one a month, and it was
my job to be on hand to turn pages for the others. The most rewarding part of the job came in the summer time. Searle was gone and it was the assistant’s
job to run the six-week summer program from the first of July to the middle of
August. We had to organize a summer
choir, and sometimes there were people from the winter choir that also stayed
for the summer session. But, they were
two distinct groups every year. And, we
had four soloists, sometimes from the winter choir.
For those six weeks we had three recitals a week, a Tuesday and
Thursday, plus the regular noonday services on Monday, Wednesday and
Friday. Then, on Wednesday evening, for
those six Wednesdays, we would have a very special recital. Marilyn Mason would play, or John Weaver,
Leonard Raver and Daniel Pinkham. I’ll
never forget the evening Richard Westenberg played. He played the Messiaen “La Nativite,” one of the early New York
performances of the entire work. And,
the New Yorker came out and said Olivier Messiaen was going to play the work
himself, so the chapel was packed to the hilt!
We laughed about that for years.
Marilyn played several times.
In 1961, in my youthful exuberance and stupidity, we gave what was
probably the second performance of the Durufle “Requiem” in New York. (Jack Ossewaarde had performed it at the
1956 convention at St. Bartholomew’s.)
I decided to do it for the summer session in 1961 and played and
conducted from the console. And, who
was sitting on the front row but Robert Fountain, who was teaching choral
conducting that summer at Union Seminary.
He was, at that time, one of the nation’s outstanding choral
conductors. I saw him come in and sit
down and said to myself, “This was a mistake.”
But, we did it and got through it.
When I met the Durufles three years later and told them about it, it got
me some points with them, I’ll tell you!
That was pretty much it for the assistant’s job. Oh, and Sundays the job was to turn pages
for Searle. He did all the
playing. Occasionally he was away and
the assistant played then. Searle would
improvise a prelude, and always play a major work for the postlude – a movement
of a Vierne symphony (he was especially fond of the last movement of the Fifth
Symphony, which this gentleman here plays), a Bach prelude and fugue, or a
Buxtehude prelude and fugue – always a major work.
There were three concerts a year, one just before Thanksgiving holiday,
one in Lent, and one in May with full orchestra. The one in May was known as the Spring Festival. We would have the orchestra from Juilliard,
which was in those days on Morningside Heights. And we would do major works – not just choral and orchestra – but
things like the “Egdon Heath Overture”, the “Spitfire”, the whole “Choral
Symphony” of Holst, which I don’t think had ever been performed in this
country.
Also, the assistant’s job was to play an organ concerto at the Fall
concert. And, I had the great privilege
of doing the Bingham Concerto, which I had to learn in about four or five weeks
because the concerts never started to take shape until the last couple of
weeks. We did the Normand Lockwood
Concerto, and we did this with minimal rehearsal time and minimal preparation
time. But, you did it because you were
expected to.
And then, for the Spring Festival, if there was an organ part in the
score, the assistant would play it.
And, I just have to tell you this funny story: One year for the Spring Festival, Searle decided to turn the
whole chapel sideways, with the choir in the south balcony, the orchestra under
the balcony, and me up in the choir loft about five miles away trying to
watch. We opened the concert with, I
want to say, the big Stanford Te Deum, with full chorus, full orchestra, and
bombastic organ. The chapel was just
overwhelmed with sound. The next piece
on the program was the Suite from Henry V by William Walton. Herb Burtis had brought his harpsichord in
from New Jersey, which he played. The
second movement starts with this little chord on the harpsichord. Herb hit the chord, and a tile fell out of
the dome. And the chapel was shut down
for months while they redid the dome, or checked it. We all laughed about this, because with all the sound going on in
the Stanford everything was fine, but this little chord from the harpsichord
made a tile fall out of the ceiling. It
didn’t hit anyone. Searle loved to
remember that, and we joked about it until recent months, “Remember the time
the tile fell out of the dome when Herb hit the chord on the harpsichord?”
BB: The old console had extra tabs on top of the
stop jambs to operate the new stops in the dome. These weren’t operated by the combination system. I was playing one of the noonday recitals
once. Ruth Ann and I were engaged and
she was turning pages for me. Searle
and I had worked it out in the “Piece Heroique” of Franck, in the echo section
in the middle, that we’d do each one on a different manual, with the last one
being up on the Brustwerk. Well, you
had to prepare the dome reeds. And, I
had forgotten to disable them, so that when I got to the echoes, the last one
had the reeds on by mistake. Everybody
jumped, including me, but I didn’t skip a beat. That’s what makes organ playing interesting. It is one of the most exciting organs in New
York City, and there’s nothing like that room and its acoustics.
RK: One of the performances I remember was of
the, talking about the sound of that chapel, “In Ecclesias” of Giovanni
Gabrieli.
BB: With the brass in the various balconies of
the chapel.
RK: And another time we did the Vaughan Williams
Mass in G Minor, with those acoustics, and a choir on either side. It was a glorious sound.
But, talking about the organ – a few years prior to that, Searle was
invited to play at the Guild’s mid-winter conclave in St. Louis. He decided he was going to present a work by
Marcel Dupre, the “Vision,” which very few people played. He worked very hard on it and played it at
the conclave. That was the year I was
playing at the Chapel of the Incarnation, which was his old job. They were without an organist, and Searle
excused me on Sundays. He had a place
in his heart for that church, and it was Louise’s parish for many years. In fact, that’s where they met, Louise,
Catherine, Viola and the whole family.
BB: The Meyer sisters.
RK: Right.
Christmas Eve I had a midnight mass there, and got home late and to bed
at probably two o’clock in the morning.
And, I had a recital to play that following day at St. Thomas Church
after evensong. Christmas happened to
be a Sunday that year, and William Self had invited me to play the recital that
day at 4, or 5 o’clock.
BB: 5:15
RK: At 8:00 a.m. on Christmas Day, the guard’s office,
which was just opposite the entrance to St. Paul’s Chapel, called and woke me
saying there was three feet of water in the north chamber of the organ. There was a trap door over the north
chamber, and that night we had had a storm, which blew the trap door open and
drenched the Great, Brustwerk, and part of the pedal. The guard said, “We’ve got men over there now.” And I said, “Stop, stop, stop! Don’t touch anything!” Searle always remembered that the last piece
played on the organ had been “God Among Us”, played by one of the Union
students in a noonday recital just before Christmas break. Well, we sure had something among us that
morning. I went up there, and that is,
of course, when we had to shut down the organ.
And, that’s when the rebuild took place, and is when Searle decided to
add the vox in the box, because he wanted that theatrical sound, the electronic
32’ stops, and the big reed we were just talking about. So, that part of the organ was out of
commission for a year, although we were able to use the south chamber. So, that flood let to the additions. He had always missed having a big reed, a
vox humana, and 32’s. Of course, people
said, “You don’t put electronic 32’ stops in St. Paul’s Chapel. How dare you?” But, he knew it would work– his ear told him.
BB: And it worked because of the room. You couldn’t have gotten away with that in a
dry room.
RK: No question. Searle had a superb ear, whether it was in running a rehearsal,
composing music, improvising, playing organ recitals, playing services,
teaching. I don’t care what it was,
I’ve never seen a more complete musician.
BB: You talked about the Final from the Fifth
Symphony of Vierne. That’s the last
thing I ever studied with him. Long
after I left Union I stopped up to Binghamton while he was at the
Congregational church. He had played it
at one of my Friday lessons one time, and I was flabbergasted. It is a fantastic piece. It is a difficult piece in every way,
musically and technically.
I had worked on it very hard, and called him to arrange a lesson since
I had a business meeting to attend in nearby Hamilton, NY. So, I stopped by on the way back and met him
at the Congregational church. He had
gotten out his score and had done some work on it, too. That was another two-and-a-half hour lesson,
on that piece alone. I still have all
his markings and suggestions. It was
fabulous, and the time went so fast. He
was, again, very complimentary, and he would not take any money for the
lesson. I said, “At least let me take
you out for dinner.” He said, “All
right, I do have to eat. I’m on this
diet.” So we went to a restaurant he
frequented a lot. This is the kind of
generous man he was.
LM: What sort of things did he have to say to
you about the piece?
BB: Well, I was playing it too fast, trying to
observe Vierne’s metronome markings. He
said, “That metronome marking is ridiculous.
Slow it down. Just let the piece
happen.” (Of course, since then the
expose has come out in the magazines that the metronome markings were wrong in
those pieces, and that they read the wrong side of the weight in the click
metronome.)
He also talked about the construction of the piece, and how you should
handle the three episodes before the theme comes back in the minor key, then
again in the major with the triplets.
He always talked about the pacing and the big line. He said it’s wonderful to get all the
details, but if you don’t also have the big line then you lose the shape of the
piece. He ALWAYS talked about the shape
of the piece. I remember so well
studying the Vierne “Triptyque” which includes the last piece that Vierne
played before he died at Notre Dame, the “Stele pour un enfant defunt” I studied all three with Searle, and he
would take great pains with those three little miniatures, talking about ways
to phrase them, and pace them. I have
all those markings in my score, and I treasure them. This is what I remember from him: using your ear, pacing, getting the big line, and musical
playing. That’s what he wanted, musical
playing.
RK: And, as a composer, he was always aware of
the structure of the piece. And, it was
the same with Bach, not just the French romantic composers. It was a question of clarity.
There are several things that have crossed my mind that need
mentioning: First of all,
Cincinnati. After I left the chapel, I
stayed on at Columbia until 1972, earning a bachelor’s degree in French in
1969, and a master’s degree in French in 1972.
My doctorate is in music from Northwestern University. But, my other degrees are in French from
Columbia. So, I was still around even
though I was no longer Searle’s assistant.
In 1968 I went through the big turmoil at Columbia, when the whole
thrust of the university changed. And,
by 1971,the trustees had decided they weren’t going to fund a chapel music
program because everything had become, well, sort of folkloric. The Catholics decided they would finally use
the chapel (for years they had not), and we changed the seating so that it
became a chapel in the round. This, of
course, isolated more and more the so-called organ and choir loft. So, the whole scene changed, and the program
became increasingly less funded.
By 1971 Searle was not in the position to do the sort of things he
wanted to do. So, when Gerre Hancock
decided to leave Christ Church, Cincinnati and move to New York, Searle was
offered the position, and, of course, that is what Bruce was just talking
about. And, fortunately for Louise, who
was devastated after working for Searle for 30 years, she managed to take the
job as Gerre Hancock’s secretary at St. Thomas Church. (She wasn’t prepared to leave New York when
Searle did.)
BB: She was a native of Manhattan.
RK: E. 31st St., born just down the
street from the Chapel of the Incarnation, she and her sisters and
brothers. Three of them in particular
were active in the choir, Louise, Catherine and Viola.
But, Searle went to Cincinnati, and, unfortunately, was very unhappy
there. The dean of the cathedral wanted
him to punch the time clock at the cathedral at 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. As Bruce has mentioned, Searle was a night
owl, and did his best work between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. The dean gave him a very hard time about
this, and there were a number of unpleasant confrontations. So he was very unhappy with this
situation. I believe he was finally
asked to leave, and the congregation rose up in Searle’s defense. So, he pacified them by staying an extra
year. Many years later John Crumb (who
knew me as Searle’s assistant, and who also confirmed me at the American
Cathedral in Paris, when he was Bishop of Western Europe) told me in Paris, (I
was in Europe quite a lot those days, and we would have lunch) “I was Bishop of
the Southern Diocese of Ohio then, but I could do nothing. I could not interfere with the running of
the cathedral because that was the dean’s precinct, not mine.”
When Searle left the church he stayed in Cincinnati for a year or two,
and, I think played in some bars. He
was a very good jazz pianist. So, he
didn’t sit around idly.
Then, the Link professorship opened up at the State University of New
York in his hometown in Binghamton. It
was the Edward Link endowed chair. And,
Searle knew Edward Link, the man who invented the Link Trainer, that, until
recently, pilots would use to train themselves. The professorship was offered to Searle, so he left Cincinnati
and moved back to Binghamton.
A student of his was organist at his home church, Trinity Episcopal
Church. But, the position was open at
the Congregational church, and Searle took that for the last 20 years of his
life. He loved the Aeoian-Skinner organ
there dearly, and presented Anglican music to the Congregationalists of
Binghamton!
Another thing that should be mentioned about Binghamton, is while
Searle lived in New York City in the forties (while he was organist at Chapel
of the Incarnation), he was conductor of the Binghamton Choral Society. He would take the train up every Monday,
commuting from New York City to Binghamton, for the rehearsals.
BB: Were you aware that he gave psychological
tests to soldiers returning from World War II?
He told me that, because I’m one of the few that plays his
“Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue.”
You play it, I play it, Fred plays it, and of course Marilyn, to whom it
is dedicated.
RK: I just saw Marilyn this week, and told her
about the memorial service they’re planning at St. Paul’s Chapel on October 17th,
and said “wouldn’t it be wonderful if you played the “Introduction, Passacaglia
and Fugue.” She said, “Not now.” I still may try to talk her into it, though,
and others, too. It’s a wonderful
piece, and Searle was very proud that he had one more variation in it than
Johann Sebastian Bach.
BB: The reason I knew about the psychological
testing was I played the “Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue” on my master’s
recital at St. Thomas, and I had to get a background on the piece for my
program notes. So, he and I sat in the
Pit at Union, where he and I had coffee and I wrote away furiously what he was
saying, while I had him pinned down. He
talked about his years at Columbia, taking, as you said, the non-degree
program. He could have gotten a
bachelor’s and master’s degree very easily.
RK: But, he became too involved with music
professionally, which was what he was meant to do.
BB: But, then he told me, at the end of the war
he gave these psychological tests to boys returning home so that they could be
placed.
When did he get the FTCL?
RK: Well, I think he was given the Fellow of
Trinity College, London at the ICO in 1957.
He also had his FRCO, Fellow of the Royal College of Organists.
Those were wonderful years, and I met all of my professional contacts
through Searle. I met Marilyn Mason in 1958
when she came to Union to teach. It was
just across the street, of course, so she was over all the time. She had her boys and mother with her, and we
had lunch often.
Searle was also the first person to encourage me to go to Europe. I would never have gone on my own. In 1964 my wife and I went, and we were only
going to be in London for four days, and Searle had bought up tickets for the
Proms, had arranged for Sir William McKie to have us all to lunch at his club,
arranged for me to sit in the organ loft while Simon Preston played a Sunday
afternoon recital and Searle and Elizabeth sat down in the nave, then
afterwards, Simon, Searle, Elizabeth and I went out to a pub down the street,
and later ended up at Simon’s apartment at 1:00 and talked until 3:00 a.m.
Searle inspired me to contact Marcel Dupre, which I did through S.
Louis Elmer in 1966. And, I had met the
Durufles in 1964, and went to Paris for the entire summer for the first time in
1966. Then I went every summer for 20 years,
plus taught there for three full academic years, 1970 to 1973. I established all my European contacts
mainly through Searle, and really owe him for anything I’ve been able to do.
LM: Did you do many oratorios at St. Paul’s
Chapel?
RK: Oh, yes.
If we did them in March, they would be done primarily with organ
accompaniment. One year we did the
Verdi “Requiem”. Searle conducted and
played from the console, and I turned pages.
Afterwards, the bass soloist said, “Please, please let me take the tape
home and listen to it.” Searle thought
highly of the soloist, whose wife was also in the choir, so, he very
reluctantly let him take it home with him.
Unfortunately, he left it on the subway, and none of us ever heard that
tape.
BB: Earlier, when we were in the other room, you
were talking about the premieres. He
would premiere William Walton pieces, too.
He premiered “The Twelve.”
RK: And we premiered the “English Mass” of
Herbert Howells. I’d never seen a double
dotted thirty-second note in my life until I saw the organ part in that
piece! I never see that piece being
performed – the “Requiem”, yes, but not the “English Mass”.
We did the American premiere of the little mass for boys’ voices by
Benjamin Britten, which he used with the girls. There were so many premieres I couldn’t possibly remember them
all without getting out the programs, which I do have.
LM: Do you have the tapes, too?
RK: Searle had most of them. I have a few, but I think he had them all.
BB: What’s going to become of those things,
Ralph?
RK: Good question. I’ll never forget this one piece of Gustav Holst that has an
organ fugue at the beginning, then the orchestra takes over.
BB: The “Choral Fantasia.”
RK: A wonderful, wonderful piece. We did it several times.
And, one year we did Lili Boulanger’s 24th Psalm, for brass,
harp, organ and choir for the November concert. This is a funny story.
It’s not a work you hear frequently.
We could not find a harpist, but someone recommended a harpist that had
recently escaped from Hungary. Someone
in placement at Juilliard recommended her, and it was my job to get the score
to her. I made contact with her, and
she could hardly speak English. She
told me to leave the score in a bar on the west side, at something like 30th
and 9th Ave. I went to the
bar, and the bartender said, “Oh, she just left. She’s just down the street,” and gave me the address. So, I found it and knocked at the door,
which opened a just a crack, and I passed the score through this crack, and
tried to make it clear to her when and where the rehearsal was, all the time
talking through this crack! So, I went
back up town and told Searle, “We’ve got a cuckoo playing this harp part who
doesn’t know right from left.”
Well, sure enough, she showed up for the rehearsal. Rehearsals were always tense, because Searle
had a habit of putting too much music on a program. You didn’t mind so much at the program, but the rehearsals were difficult
because of the tremendous amount of music to cover in the allotted time. So, anyhow, I had warned him about this
woman. She came in and looked at the
harp, saying, “Oh, I can’t play a harp with red strings.” (American harps have red strings to show the
separation of the octaves.) Searle told
her she needed to play, so we began.
She really couldn’t play, and just did glissandos. Searle didn’t know what to do, because he
wanted to do the piece very badly. For
some reason he couldn’t dismiss her, so his solution was to finally put her up
behind the altar so nobody could hear her, and he told the brass and me to play
louder. We laughed about that for
years. I think her name was Fairy
Helny.
BB: Bob Baker always said Searle’s programs were
comprehensive. Talk about a study in
literature! Everybody at Union said,
“Whatever you do, get to Searle’s program at Columbia. You’ll be exposed to literature you’ll
probably never hear again.”
RK: He’d go to the Three Choirs Festival and
bring back works that nobody else had ever heard. When I first went there, Dr. Dickinson, at 92, would come to the
concerts, and the Binghams. I’m still
friendly with the Bingham family.
BB: Searle would go get Seth Bingham for
programs at Union. I remember playing
in an organ class for Dr. Bingham when Bob Baker had to be away. Bob always ran organ class, so Searle went
and got Seth, who arrived in his beret.
He was a nice man.
RK: And, Madame Bingham would sit me down at
Chock-Full O’Nuts at 116th St. and Broadway and teach me my
irregular verbs because she was Swiss French.
BB: He told us about retiring from Madison Ave.
Presbyterian Church, with a twinkle in his eye, saying, “There are three ways
to get off an organ bench: You can get
off voluntarily; you can die; or you can be removed by the ecclesiastical
authorities. I chose option one.”
RK: Both he and Madame Bingham had a wonderful
sense of humor. Their son Alfred died a
few years ago. His daughter is a good
friend of mine. She lives in Chicago,
and raised four boys. Eleanor, his
daughter-in-law, is 95 and quite alive in California. “Piccolette”, otherwise known as Frances, is in a nursing home
outside of New York City. Her daughter
is nearby to look after her.
LM: At his 86th birthday party in
Bethlehem, I overheard Searle Wright say to Marilyn Mason, “Seth was a young
old man.”
RK: And a very generous one. He wrote many reviews for The American
Organist, not the magazine we know by that title today. He got me interested in the French school,
telling me about his encounters with Widor and others, and encouraged me, along
with Madame Bingham, to study French.
This is one of the reasons I was able to deal so well with the Durufles.
Searle, as a composer, would work until the wee hours of the
morning. His organ and choral works are
known, but he also wrote a lot of chamber music that is not well-known. He has a wealth of material.
LM: How did he do it all?
RK: And, there was also his interest in the
theatre organ, which I never saw as the primary avenue.
BB: No.
It was not.
RK: But, he loved it, and I have been in his
presence when he talked to George Wright and Billy Nalle. When I called Billy the other week, where he
has retired to his hometown of Ft. Myers, Florida, he was so overcome all I got
was silence.
Frequently, after our Friday night dinners at Mother Schraft’s, we
would go over to the Music Hall after the show was over, and go up to one of
the studios. For two hours, Searle and Billy
would take turns playing, and George Wright, if he happened to be in town. Searle would frequently visit George Wright
in California, and Searle would teach George a Franck Choral, and George would
help Searle with his theatre organ playing.
At the 1956 convention, when George Wright was supposed to play the
milkman’s matinee at 3:00 a.m. at the Paramount Theatre at 43rd and
Broadway, at the last minute he wasn’t able to, so Searle took over,
entertaining several hundred organists.
LM: He told me that was his favorite organ in
the United States.
RK: That organ was sent to Wichita, Kansas, and
they built an auditorium for it called Century Two, and they moved Billy from
Morningside Heights to Wichita to play it for fifteen or twenty years.
The theatre organ was always dear to Searle’s heart, but it was not the
main thrust of his artistic career.
BB: To Searle, music was a way of life. He ate, drank and slept music. His days
started at noon. He played a recital
here in the late 1970s, and took the bus down, loving the trip. We had a
custodian at the time named Alan Hunter.
And, it turned out that Searle and Alan had been to camp together in the
1920s. I just left Searle at the church
to practice, and Alan said to me the next day, “You know he practiced until
4:00 in the morning.” One time he was
working on a very difficult piece, and called Mina Bell at 4:00 in the morning,
saying, “That piece is HARD!”
RK: She must’ve suggested it.
BB: But, he always used to say, “There are no
difficult pieces, only unfamiliar ones.
Your job as a musician is to make that which is unfamiliar
familiar.” And communicate it.
RK: What we’ve done here this afternoon is just
the tip of the iceberg. It will take a
major biographer skilled in the techniques of biography to cover all this
material. All the programs are still in
existence, and need to be researched.
It was too rich a life to cover.
It was always interesting to have lunch with Searle and his mother and
father. He lost his father while I was
his assistant, and it was the weekend of a Spring Festival. Clarence died on Wednesday or Thursday, and
Searle went up to Binghamton to make arrangements for the funeral, came back to
conduct the festival, then went back up to Binghamton that night for his
father’s funeral.
Clarence was the opposite of Josephine. She was the dowager empress, very stately and polite. Clarence was very quiet and reserved. A few times we were in Butler Hall when
Virgil Fox walked in and joined us.
Then Josephine would really laugh.
But, she was generally more reserved.
They made two annual trips to New York, arriving for a week for the
November concert, and then for a week at the May concert. They did not usually come to the March
concert. After the school cut the
funding for the chapel music program, Searle went to Cincinnati from about 1971
to 1978, and took his mother with him to live in a nursing home there. That is where she died. She was buried in the family plot in
Binghamton.
LM: How did Mr. Wright become affiliated with
Union?
BB: Well, he had studied improvisation with
Frederick Schlieder, and was hired to succeed him in 1952, I believe. And, they always had several teachers on the
faculty there. Bob Baker was a close
friend, and Harold Friedell was also on the faculty.
RK: Charlotte Garden would come in from
Plainfield, New Jersey several days a week, and Union would avail itself of all
the great organists. There were a lot
of them, some greater than others, and it was an easy way to get a
distinguished faculty.
BB: That’s really what made Union what it was.
RK: Morningside Heights became this Pantheon,
like sitting on a hill in Athens. There
was a program almost every night at Juilliard, Union, St. Paul’s Chapel, and MacMillan
Theatre, where Otto Luening was delving in electronic music. He and Searle were also good friends, and we
would often go out to Oriental restaurants in Morningside Heights that he liked
to frequent. Thos were interesting evenings.
What can I say? This was
certainly better than any university education. Searle Wright’s knowledge was encyclopedic. I cannot imagine a more thoroughly trained,
competent, inspiring musician in the field of Sacred Music.
BB: Searle liked to talk, and talk, and talk,
and he said, “I was vaccinated with a phonograph needle.” He was very articulate, not only in music,
but was conversant in many interesting fields.
RK: I have to tell you about a funny picture I
saw in Ann Arbor last week with James and Mary Ann Wilkes. Dr. Wilkes is retired assistant associate
dean of the School of Chemical Engineering, and is an amateur organist. He helped me with my lectures this past
week, getting the computer and projector arranged through the school of
engineering. The music school didn’t
have one. Jim put my documents into
power point. We went through all of
Searle’s pictures. There was one from
1997 when he was on a diet, and he is standing in front of about 10 bottles of
salad dressing, smiling and looking at all these little bottles of
Worcestershire Sauce... (End of tape)
