Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 21, 1993 TAG: 9305210097
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But organist David Hurd, who will perform at St. John's Episcopal Church in Roanoke on Sunday, says this venerable affiliation is "kind of a mixed blessing" to someone who's looking for a new audience.
You can hear any other kind of music most anywhere, from concert halls to honky tonks to city parks -- but to hear an organ concert, you usually have to go to church.
"Along with public religion, with the practice of Christianity, there's been kind of a dip in the organ's popularity. It's somewhat according to the practice of church attendance," said the 43-year-old performer, who has won national and international prizes for his playing and who now teaches at General Theological Seminary in New York City. He is also director of music at New York City's All Saints Church.
"An . . . audience for the instrument, independent of church goers, is kind of hard to perceive," said Hurd in a recent telephone interview from his New York City home.
But although organ enthusiasts form a smaller subset of the fine-arts music audience, they make up in enthusiasm what they lack in numbers. And Hurd is a rising star among the cognoscente, with concert dates throughout North America, appearances on the public radio show "Pipe Dreams," and a slew of honorary doctorates.
He also has the distinction of being the best-represented composer in the current Episcopal hymnal, with about 70 pieces in all.
Hurd says he first encountered the king of instruments at -- where else? -- a church.
"I sorta grew up in church choirs," said Hurd. "I sang as a boy chorister" in parishes in Brooklyn and Queens.
"The power and the range of expression and the ability of the instrument, the breadth of high to low pitches, was phenomenal. That one instrument could produce so many tone colors and such a pitch, the sheer capacity of the instrument I found magical."
The musician says that, although the instrument's ecclesiastical associations may have dampened its acceptance somewhat in a secular era, churches usually have the best acoustics for organ music.
"The organ is very related to the room it's in. And churches are more likely to have acoustics which are favorable to the organ. Concert halls tend to be overly dry acoustically, and the organ there is less effective than in the local big church, which may have a very warm acoustic," said Hurd.
Professor Donald Moe, who teaches organ at Roanoke College, says the Aeolian-Skinner instrument at St. John's, which was installed in 1950, ranks as one of the better organs in the area. Boasting four manuals and 72 ranks, the organ gained a trompette en chamade stop and a positiv division from the Moller Co. in the '60s and '70s. It was extensively renovated last year.
Moe characterizes the instrument as "American eclectic," with "lots of mixtures and reeds on it that can be both Romantic and classical -- you can play Bach on it, but it also does very well with Franck and Widor and any of the French Romantics."
David Hurd's life as a musician, which involves teaching, playing, and weekly church work, bears a strong resemblance to that of the greatest organist-musician of them all, Johann Sebastian Bach.
Like Bach, Hurd writes prolifically for church choirs and organists and willingly produces practical compositions that fill weekly worship needs in ordinary churches. He has little use for the notion that worship music is an artistic backwater.
"Yes, that's the `paper-cup' mentality of church anthems: use them once and throw them away," said Hurd. "The whole notion of gebrauchs-musik, music for use, has been an important kind of music. Through the 19th century, music got elevated in an unnatural way to a kind of useless aesthetic regardless of its beauty, and it was at that point that people started frowning on music for use.
"But it seems to me that there's a place both for music that goes beyond any immediate utility, and music for use. Certainly there is bad church music, but it's like literature vs. newspapers -- there can be good newspapers and crummy novels.
"My object in writing music for use is to try to do the most challenging, the most interesting, the most thought-provoking thing that can be put into such a package."
There's another venerable aspect of organ-playing in which Hurd follows Bach's example, and that is the art of improvisation. Bach's improvisational skills were legendary, but the art nearly vanished among 20th-century players.
"I basically got interested in doing it because it was fun," said Hurd, who has won several prizes for his ability to improvise. But there was a time when any working organist had to be able to play convincingly without benefit of sheet music.
"Organists were called upon to bridge parts of the service that couldn't necessarily be predicted. It emerged very naturally that one of the skills of the organist was to integrate chant or other cantus firmus into the texture at will. With the availability of printed music the art was allowed to languish in some places," said Hurd.
Sunday's concert, sponsored by the Roanoke chapter of the American Guild of Organists, begins at 3 PM at St. John's. Admission is free, though donations will be accepted. On the program are works by Buxtehude, Bach, Jan Swart, and Vierne, plus Hurd's own "Toccata -- 1991" and "Arioso and Finale -- 1992."
Dave Hurd in concert Sunday, 3 p.m., St. John's Episcopal Church, Roanoke. 344-4437.
by CNB