On October 13, 2013, an afternoon concert was performed by Dr. John Stansell at First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Nashville, TN. The occasion was a celebration of fifty years of service of the church’s three manual Schantz organ.
For the music committee in charge of organizing this event, Dr. Stansell was the unanimous first choice to invite as the performer for this event. Having been raised as a child in the church, before receiving his advanced college degrees, leading to a career as a church musician and concert performer, Dr. Stansell was uniquely qualified for this event. His program was influenced by his experiences in Nashville, New York City and Germany.
The following words are drawn from Dr. Stansell’s program notes.
They have been slightly edited for the purpose of offering linear notes for this recording.
Thank you all for coming. There are so many friends, old and new. I am especially happy to see Peter Fyfe, my first organ teacher who turned 90 this year, and his wife Lois. When he sent me off to New York to study, the Bach “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” was my audition piece. I don’t know if he would approve of the way I play it now, but I know it’s very different from when I was 18 years old. Peter, I didn’t play this for you; you certainly don’t need to hear it AGAIN. But for everyone else, even if it’s not your favorite organ piece, it’s at least the most recognizable. It was a favorite of the late, great physicist Lee Davenport. I played it for his memorial service. His widow Doris flew here from Connecticut especially to hear this program.
Next I will play three little pieces. They are grouped together on your printed program because they’re meant to be a little set, uninterrupted by applause. The first requires no explanation. The evident contrast of loud and soft was one of the qualities of the organ that has always fascinated listeners. The second piece is by Niels Gade, Danish composer, contemporary and friend of Felix Mendelssohn. (You will read in my bio that the works of Mendelssohn played an important role in my education.) Mendelssohn died young and Gade actually took over the direction of the Gewandhaus Orchestra after his death. The piece is a showcase for some of the softer stops on the organ. The last is by Mendelssohn, an unknown work that had been composed on the back of a calling card (probably the combination of a large card and tiny writing) left at the offices of the publisher Novello on a visit there. It was shown to my colleague Prof. Wm. A. Little when he was editing Mendelssohn’s complete organ works for Novello. It’s short but charming with a clearly defined beginning, middle and ending.
(At this point I introduced the melody of the Pachelbel variations by having the audience sing it. It sounded great – the second time.)
There’s a long story about Saints’ Days, but I will give you the shortest possible version: Saints’ Days was commissioned by our friends Verna MacCornack and Keith Roberts to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my partner Michael’s and my togetherness. (It’ll be forty years next month!) Daniel Pinkham was a great 20th-century church-music composer and I was surprised when he agreed to accept this commission. He composed the piece incredibly quickly. It consists of twelve pieces representing a saint for each month of the year. I would love to play all of them, but that would take about twenty-two minutes. So I have chosen four that I think you’ll like a lot. The first is about St. Brigid of Ireland who turned her bathwater into beer. Mr. Pinkham said that the music “bubbles.” In the second piece you can hear the angel Gabriel with an “Ave Maria” motif. I think you can also hear that she’s not convinced of the angel’s idea, but finally agrees. The one about the birds and the one about the giant are clear musical portraits. You’ll get it.
We’ll sing one more hymn. This one is not in the hymnal in your pews. The committee for this hymnal perhaps rightly chose a German melody for this text. Rhosymedre is very Welsh. I had a small fan following in Germany and this setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams was their hands-down favorite piece. They loved it! I would always read the text of the first stanza and translate it for them, so they would understand what it said about God’s unconditional love for us, as unlovely as we are. (We sang.)
I will end the program with Mendelssohn’s First Sonata. As you read, I had a lot of dealings with these sonatas, including a recording that I made of all six in Germany. In a contemporary review of the Mendelssohn organ sonatas, the critic ventured that the First Sonata represented the conflict between good and evil. Mendelssohn didn’t like people giving meanings or assigning “programs” to his music. He wanted the music to speak for itself. But that critic’s idea does make sense. In the first movement there’s this angry, loud stuff which you hear interrupted by a quiet chorale tune as if in the distance, “Was mein Gott will, das gescheh’ allzeit,” roughly translated “what God wills, let that be what happens.” The struggle is particularly evident in the third movement, acting as a transition to the final movement where it’s clear that good has triumphed.
I will share two personal stories about this sonata. The first is about a time in my recital career in Germany when I was privileged to play at the Münster in Ulm, famous for having the tallest spire in Europe, and perhaps the biggest room I ever played in. I signed the guest book there, where among others Albert Schweizer had signed. I ended my program with this piece. When I took my fingers from the keys at the end and listened as the eight seconds of reverberation brought the sound back to me, overwhelmed, I put my head in my hands and wept.
Second I will share that I played this piece in 1974 for my mother’s funeral and again in 2003 for my father’s funeral. Those two saints of the church certainly knew about the struggle between good and evil. Their hearts are present in every seam of mortar in this building.
I was very optimistic and prepared an encore. Before the program I looked up the tune, Wunderbarer König, in the current Lutheran hymnal. It’s not there, though we certainly sang it when I grew up here: (singing) “God is in his temple, Let us now adore him, and with awe appear before him.” The composer of this piece is Johannes Mathias Michel. The piece is “Bossa Nova on Wunderbarer König.”