Alumni Collaborate on Organ and Choral Music Book

Article supplied to the Houghton Milieu, appears here in its unedited form.

Timothy Sidebothom (’87) and Merle Baer (’51) collaborated in the production of a 68-page book of organ and choral music this past summer, for the Lancaster (PA) chapter of the American Guild of Organists, of which both are members.

The compilation, mostly the work of Reginald F. Lunt, who for 45 years was music director of First Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, consists of five chorale preludes for organ, based on hymn tunes including “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”; six organ transcriptions of works from the Baroque era; three original anthems; and a fourfold amen. Also included in the volume are brass quartet parts to accompany the famous Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony by Charles-Marie Widor, which Lunt commissioned from Hugh Alan Gault, a longtime music professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster. The brass parts for the Toccata were included in order to make them available to Lancaster musicians who might desire to conclude a festive service with this stunning composition.

Merle became involved in the project in May after reading a plea in the chapter’s monthly newsletter; the request was from a fellow member for someone to take over the project. The gent (Rick) making the request had hoped to convert the handwritten manuscripts to a typeset format using a computer program called Finale. However, being literally in his last month of life, he realized that it would never be possible for him to complete the project, which had been entrusted to him by Lunt’s widow following her husband’s death in 2005.

Merle Baer: “I made an appointment to meet with Rick to determine the extent of the project, and to decide whether I would be able to complete the task. Only 52 years of age, Rick had been a church musician for 35 years; his primary occupation was in the banking business. After chatting with him for 30-45 minutes, I returned home with the manuscripts but also with a very heavy heart. Rick was on oxygen, was hooked up to a morphine drip to relieve him of pain as necessary, and told me twice that his days were numbered. I’ve had almost no experience with that type of situation. On my way home, I wondered if I had become more involved in this endeavor than I really wanted to be. But then I reflected on what I had done—it amounted to a very positive deed, relieving a dying man of angst by taking the Lunt project from his mind. Rick passed into Eternity 15 days later.

“I undertook the project for three reasons: (a) I wanted to see the music in print; (b) I have loads of time to work on such a challenge; and (c) I had toyed with several such composition programs over the past 20 years and had developed a certain proficiency in using Finale.”

Finale, as well as a competitive product named Sibelius, is extremely labor-intensive ... using the mouse, one must literally click each note, rest, sharp, flat, natural, tie, dot (to increase the length of the note) into a line or space in the document on the screen. There exists a so-called MIDI link, enabling one to hook up a music keyboard to a computer via cable. That method, however, requires considerable practice on the organ keyboard in order to insure accuracy during the final step of inputting the notes. Obviously, there must be an organ keyboard linked to a computer, and such a setup was not available to Merle. There were other complicating factors: multiple key changes within pieces; frequent changes in time signature; and considerable usage of 16th, 32nd, and even some 64th and 132nd notes. All of these seemed to mitigate against the use of a MIDI-based system which, it was deemed, would have significantly increased editing hours prior to final printer output. It is estimated that several thousand clicks of the mouse were required in the production of the Lunt project.

MB: “When Rick turned the project over to me, he assured me that there was no deadline to the project. After sorting through the manuscripts for a few days, assessing how the project should be approached, my guess was that (it then being the third week in May) it should be possible to complete the task by the end of the summer. But it became apparent that some help would be needed in making editorial decisions throughout the process, and also in proofreading the final output which, it turns out, is considerably more difficult than proofing passages of English text. Tim Sidebothom, a friend of more than 20 years, came to mind. I contacted him and he graciously agreed to assist me in the project.”

Tim is a successor of Reginald Lunt; he has been music director at First Presbyterian Church in Lancaster for two years, in addition to teaching part-time in the music department at Lancaster Bible College. (Previously, he had been chair of the music department.) His education background—M.Mus. from Westminster Choir College and Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies from Drew University—makes him eminently qualified to edit music being readied for publication. Merle no longer plays keyboard instruments and, in fact, gave his entire collection of organ music to a relative several years ago, and had few resources at his disposal for making decisions on how to set up the pages of music. The two met weekly throughout much of the summer, taking an occasional week off to discharge other challenges.

MB: “I didn’t ‘punch in’ and ‘punch out’ each time I sat down to work on the Lunt project. However, I estimate that possibly I spent between 200 and 300 hours on this task. The manuscripts tended to challenge the capacity of Finale, and in a few cases it was necessary to figure out ‘workarounds,’ when Finale documentation provided no clues how to solve the problem. For example, each ‘system’ in organ music consists of three staffs. When we came to ‘A Mighty Fortress,’ the second section was for pedals only and that called for a single staff. Apparently Finale is unable to change the number of staffs within a document; it was not only a matter of making the page look good, but also to save an extra page in the final book. So I broke ‘A Mighty Fortress’ into three separate files: two pages of three staffs; one page of one staff; and finally back to three staffs for the final five pages. A similar instance occurred in one of the anthems, at an especially troublesome area where different text in the four voices on four distinct levels had me scratching my head for a while until I solved the problem and was able to make everything work out perfectly.”

An asset which these music typesetting programs have is that each time a note is entered, the tone is played through the computer’s speakers; that makes it simple for one with an alert ear to ascertain whether the correct note has been selected. Further, at any point the entire piece (up to that point) can be played for what might be termed an “aural proofreading.”

Tim, a member of the Lancaster chapter board of directors, offered to handle the reproduction and binding of the booklets, which are being sold at a nominal cost to members. Proceeds help to fund a series of organ recitals in Lancaster, as well as to provide grants to young people who are interested in studying the organ.

The “Musical Legacy of Reginald F. Lunt—1917-2002” was presented at the September 18 meeting of the Lancaster chapter, the first of the 2007-08 year, to great acclaim. Tim hosted the audience of approximately 150 at First Presbyterian and, along with three other members, played three of Lunt’s creations, plus “Now Thank We All Our God” by Karg-Elert (brass and organ) and the Widor Toccata. In the audience were Reg Lunt’s widow, Rick’s widow, and Kathryn Byers Johnson, a concert pianist who frequently played piano concertos with Lunt at a Sunday afternoon concert series; Lunt played the orchestra parts on the organ.

Lunt received his training at Westminster Choir College, and later spent four months in Paris studying with famous French organists Langlais, Marchand, Dupré, and Duruflé. Monsieur and Madame Duruflé made three trips to Lancaster to play recitals and to direct the Duruflé Requiem, scored for organ, orchestra, soloists and choir.

Tim Sidebothom: “Most of the music ... are pieces that he dedicated to local people when they were in need of a special piece or things that were written in their honor because, in his perception, they had done something noteworthy for the community. He was very generous in that way; one of the compositions on the Sept. 18 program was dedicated to and performed by an organist at the First Reformed Church.”

Lunt apparently had a great sense of humor; when a friend fell on ice during a severe winter in the ’90s, breaking his right wrist, Lunt wrote a piece for pedals only, dedicating it to his fallen friend and entitling it “Thoroughly Educated Feet.” Tim and Merle also found hints that  Lunt possibly had large hands, evidenced by wide spans in some of his chords. The editors tried to make the chords more easily playable for organists with smaller reaches, without destroying the integrity of the music.

During the Lunt years, another composition, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” was played at each communion service at First Presbyterian. Tim Sidebothom points out that he’s heard comments from church members who even today do not consider it a true communion service unless they hear the Lunt arrangement of “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” (the name of the tune).

Timothy also contributed a short preface to the volume, based on his observations of Lunt’s 4-1/2 decades of service as detailed in the church’s archives. A two-page foreword was included, written by Rick’s widow, resulting from conversations with Mrs. Lunt.

The editors feel very gratified in realizing that their work this past summer resulted in an increase in organ literature available to the church musicians in the Lancaster area.