From the Dean
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David
Enlow, Dean |
Dear Colleagues, We had quite a conference this past month,
with the large scale of the works of Brahms,
Karg-Elert, Reger, and their contemporaries
joining the suitably enormous situation of
St. John the Divine to celebrate German Romanticism,
with performances from students of Paul Jacobs
during his master class, and recitals by
John Scott and Isabelle Demers (Dr. Scott's
being a pre-conference event at St .Thomas's).
We also had special lecture topics from Tina
Frühauf and Michael Musgrave and tours
of the Cathedral's organ and building. Much
food for thought!
Without reviewing every moment, suffice
it to say all who attended seemed well pleased
by the material and inspired by the playing;
our 'new' Sub-Dean is to be congratulated
on preparing an excellent event, and our
thanks go to his program committee also.
Special thanks must go to our hosts at the
Cathedral, Kent Tritle and Raymond Nagem,
who made the day run very smoothly for us
in a very complicated and large institution.
Your chapter board also met that day over
sandwiches, and we are being as diligent
as possible about your chapter business.
With AGO examinations, the chapter competition,
and more great program events coming up this
term, it's full steam ahead for your chapter
board members. We noted with some pleasure
that chapter membership has actually grown
in the past several years.
You will have by now received or will shortly
receive the chapter directory. As I mentioned
in a special message, there is a slight wrinkle
this year, and the position listings are
incomplete. If you need help with the instructions
in my last message on how to update your
position listing for future years, your chapter
leadership is ready to help. Just get in
touch with Larry Long at registrar@nycago.org
or with me at david@davidenlow.com. The directory
is a very handsome volume, and I am grateful
to all the advertisers for supporting the
chapter while reaching out with information
on their products and services.
With the hope that March shall truly leave
in lamb-like fashion,
Yours truly,
David Enlow |
Members From
the Past
George Hafemann, Philip Baker, Stephen Danziger, David Higgs,
Donald McDonald, Brian Harlow, Robert Vogel, Michael Kaminski,
John Van Sant, and Frank Crosio each correctly identified
Charles Dodsley Walker (1920-2015) in last month's issue.
The photograph, from 1941, shows Charlie at the console of
the then new Aeolian-Skinner organ in Christ Church, Cambridge,
Mass., where he was assistant organist during his years as
a graduate student at Harvard.
Charles Dodsley Walker, 94, died in New York City on January
17, 2015, following a brief illness. At the time of his death
he was the conductor of the Canterbury Choral Society and
organist and choirmaster emeritus of the Church of the Heavenly
Rest in New York City, and was the artist-in-residence of
Saint Luke’s Parish, Darien, Connecticut.
In one form or another for most of the 20th century—continuing
into the 21st —Charles Dodsley Walker was active and
prominent in the cultural life of New York City, directing
the musical activities for churches, schools, and secular
organizations. He was also a Fellow of the American Guild
of Organists and was president of the AGO from 1971-1975.
Born on March 16, 1920, in New York City, into a family with
roots in Michigan, his family soon moved to Glen Ridge, New
Jersey. There, at Christ Church of Bloomfield and Glen Ridge,
he first sang in a choir and played the organ. In 1930 he
was admitted to the Choir School of the Cathedral Church of
St. John the Divine where he sang in the cathedral choir directed
first by Miles Farrow, and shortly after by Norman Coke-Jephcott
who was young Charles’ first teacher, with whom he studied
organ, harmony, and counterpoint in weekly lessons. Upon graduation
Charles went to Trinity School in New York, while continuing
his study with Coke-Jephcott. He soon assumed the duties of
school organist at Trinity, playing for daily chapel services.
As he told The Diapason in a 90th birthday interview in the
March 2010 issue “They then brought in a French teacher
to play the organ who simply couldn’t play, so I went
up to the headmaster and said ‘I can play’ and
so I became the school organist.”
Upon the advice of Channing Lefebvre, organist of Trinity
Church Wall Street, CDW went to Trinity College in Hartford,
Connecticut. It was his desire to receive a liberal arts degree
while still studying music seriously, as his goal was to have
a classroom teaching career in addition to being a church
musician and organist. So it was that he pursued a major in
modern languages with concentration in French, while also
studying organ with the college’s organist and music
professor, who just happened to be the leading proponent of
the French school of organ playing in America at that time:
Clarence Watters, a protégé and friend of Marcel
Dupré. While at Trinity College CDW held his first
church appointment at Stafford Springs Congregational Church
in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, about halfway between Hartford
and Worcester, Mass.
After graduating from Trinity College he enrolled in graduate
school at Harvard University studying musicology, choral conducting,
theory, and composition with Walter Piston, Archibald T. Davison,
and Tillman Merritt. While at Harvard he was assistant organist
of Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working under
W. Judson Rand.
His studies were interrupted by service in the Navy where
he served in a number of non-combat capacities. Following
military service he completed his master’s degree at
Harvard in 1947 and was appointed simultaneously to his first
two New York City jobs: organist and choirmaster of St. Thomas
Chapel (a chapel of St. Thomas Church, now All Saints Church)
and director of music at Trinity School, his alma mater. He
was all set to embark upon a secure career as a church musician
and teacher in New York when a thoroughly unplanned and felicitous
(his word) event occurred: he learned of the opening for organist
and choirmaster of the American Cathedral in Paris. The dean
of the cathedral was a New Yorker who just happened to be
in town, so Charlie called on him and was offered the job
on the spot! He took a modest cut in salary to move to Paris,
but did so gladly to immerse himself in the French culture
and music he had grown to appreciate during his undergraduate
study. At the cathedral he succeeded Robert Owen who was in
France studying on the GI Bill. While in Paris he made the
acquaintance of and collaborated with the leading French organists
and musicians of the day, including Pierre Duvauchelle, Nadia
Boulanger, Francis Poulenc, a young Ned Rorem, Maurice Duruflé,
AndréMarchal, Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen,
and Jean Langlais, with whom he and his family remained particularly
close. In Paris he also met Janet Hayes, an American soprano
studying with Boulanger in France and performing throughout
Europe. After a brief courtship they were married in the American
Cathedral.
While in Paris CDW was also the director of the American
Students’ and Artists’ Center, a comprehensive
educational and social organization with nearly a thousand
members which was administered under the auspices of the cathedral
and its dean. He held this full-time, non-musical job concurrently
with his position at the American Cathedral, and it provided
a secure living including an apartment. But the demands of
this entirely administrative job soon left him looking for
a change and, when he heard of the vacancy, he applied for
the opening at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue
and 90th Street in New York. Armed with letters of recommendation
from Canon Edward West from St. John the Divine, and the Rev.
C. Leslie Glenn and the Rev. Francis Bowes Sayre (later dean
of Washington Cathedral), his clergy colleagues from Christ
Church in Cambridge, he was offered the position. One of the
unsuccessful candidates, from whom CDW unknowingly had asked
a reference, was his old teacher, Clarence Watters! Donald
Wilkins succeeded CDW at the American Cathedral.
CDW began his duties at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in
January 1951, and he founded the Canterbury Choral Society
in Advent of the following year. Initially conceived as an
adjunct Evensong choir for the church’s music program,
the choral society soon adapted the pattern of inviting members
of the community to join the church choir by audition for
presentations of oratorios with full orchestra at three concerts
each year in the Church of the Heavenly Rest. The group continued
to operate under the aegis of the church until 1988 when CDW
left the church, at which time the choral society became an
independent organization, even though they maintain a close
relationship with the church and still present most of their
concerts there. On special occasions the Canterbury Choral
Society did present concerts in other venues such as the Cathedral
Church of St. John the Divine, Avery Fisher Hall, and Carnegie
Hall, including several performances of the Mahler Eighth
Symphony assisted by various choirs of children from area
schools and churches.
Concurrent with his position at Heavenly Rest and Canterbury,
CDW at various times taught at Kew Forest School, Chapin School—where
he was head of the music department for twenty-four years,
New York University, Union Theological Seminary School of
Sacred Music, Manhattan School of Music, and SUNY Queens College.
In 1969 he co-founded, with his wife Janet Hayes Walker, the
York Theatre Company. He directed the Blue Hill Troupe, performing
all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in fully staged
productions several times during his thirty-five-year tenure.
He was a founder of the Berkshire Choral Festival in 1982,
and was the organist of Lake Delaware Boys Camp for fifty
years in the summers from 1940-1990. Given the number of organizations
he led and the length of his tenures, it is not an exaggeration
to say that Charlie Walker’s sphere of influence reached
thousands of persons, young and old.
In what others would call their retirement years, Charlie
Walker never lessened his professional activity. From 1988
until 2007 he was the organist and choirmaster of Trinity
Church, Southport, Connecticut, directing the church choir
and a community chorale, sometimes in joint concerts with
the Canterbury Choral Society in New York and Southport. From
2007 until his death he was artist-in-residence at Saint Luke’s
Parish in Darien, Connecticut, where he assisted in playing
and directing weekly rehearsals and services, and taught young
choristers in the RSCM Voice for Life curriculum. During all
this time he continued his vigorous leadership of the Canterbury
Choral Society, never missing a concert until close to the
end of his life.
Janet Hayes Walker died in 1997 and in 2001 Charles Dodsley
Walker married Elizabeth Phillips, who survives him, as do
his children Susan Starr Walker and Peter Hayes Walker, and
three grandchildren.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, March 21 at
3:00 pm in the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York. Interment
will be in the family plot in Niles, Michigan, at a later
date.
In a follow-up to his 90th birthday interview, in the June
2010 issue of The Diapason, when asked how he would like to
be remembered, CDW said:
“Well, I feel that to be a good church musician, doing
your job from Sunday to Sunday, is a very worthy thing to
be doing, and if you have the good fortune to be able to develop
more elaborate musical programs—that’s good, too.
But our job as church musicians is to provide, with the resources
available, the best possible music for our church, week by
week. I like that.”
Neal Campbell |
