A conversation with Rollin Smith
an interview by Christopher Houlihan
October 8, 2020 marks the 150th birthday of Louis Vierne, the nearly-blind French virtuoso organist and composer who presided over the organ of Notre-Dame Cathedral from 1900 until his death at the console in 1937—during a performance! On this anniversary, the organist Christopher Houlihan will stream a concert performance of Vierne’s music from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
In September 1970, in celebration of the centenary of Louis Vierne’s birth, Rollin Smith performed the composer’s six organ symphonies in a series of three concerts at St. Thomas Church, New York City. The six symphonies, multi-movement works for solo organ, makeup the backbone of Vierne’s expansive oeuvre for the organ. One of the first to perform all six of Vierne’s symphonies in public recitals, Dr. Smith was also the first to perform the complete organ works of César Franck in a single concert. He is the author of Louis Vierne: Organist of Notre Dame Cathedral (Pendragon Press) and editor of An Introduction to the Organ Music of Louis Vierne (Leupold Editions). He has written or edited many other books and music scores, and has authored countless articles on organ music and historic instruments.
Having myself performed several marathon performances of Vierne’s six organ symphonies in honor of the 75th anniversary of the composer’s death (Vierne2012), it was an honor to sit down with Rollin Smith to discuss one of our favorite composers and reception of his music over the past 50 years.
Christopher Houlihan: I wonder if you could tell me how you first came to know the music of Louis Vierne. Do you recall the first piece by Vierne you ever studied?
Rollin Smith: I was fortunate to have gone to a church with a fine organist—Broadway Methodist in Indianapolis, where Ellen English played. She was a great lover of Widor and Vierne and often played excerpts from their symphonies for preludes, offertories, and postludes. She also played the Fourth Symphony on a recital in 1960. I used to check Widor and Vierne organ music out of the Louisville and Cleveland public libraries when I was in junior high and high school and played them on the piano, even before I had organ lessons. My first Vierne piece was the Carillon de Longpont, followed by the Final of the First Symphony.
CH: Searle Wright, then president of the American Guild of Organists, wrote in the October 1970 issue of Music that his two desert-island composers were, firstly, J.S. Bach (“the obvious of every proper organist”) and secondly, Louis Vierne. Would you say Wright’s high regard for Vierne was common among organists in 1970?
RS: There have been ups and downs in popularity of most organ composers. Elgar and Saint-Saëns are good examples, though they never had much of an up! We go through cycles of the big three—Franck, Widor, and Vierne. They try to get Guilmant, but except for his Marche on a theme of Handel, he doesn’t get much traction. People will always play Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique and Gigout’s Grand Choeur dialogue, Mulet’s Toccata Tu es Petra. Now, 50 years after his death, Dupré’s music isn’t heard much, except for the Prelude and Fugues in B Major and G Minor. It all comes around to those big three that are heard frequently—at least excerpt from the Widor symphonies and Vierne’s miscellaneous works. Liszt has gone through cycles since he lived—both pianists and organists have championed his works at various times; for some decades his music is little played and then there’s a “revival.”
CH: William Leslie Sumner recounted a shift in the popularity of Vierne’s music as he experienced it, at least in England:
“It is just a third of a century since I wrote the obituary article about Louis Vierne, in this journal… Fashions in organs and organ music come and go, and the music of Vierne does not appear in the recital programmes as often as it did 25 years ago… some of the short pieces are still played as voluntaries, but a major work, played in its entirety, is not often forthcoming.” (October 1970, Musical Opinion)
He goes on to observe that the music of Messiaen, Langlais, and Dupré was popular in recital programs (all composers still alive at the time). In his assessment, Franck had not been entirely pushed aside, but Widor, Guilmant, and Vierne were not as lucky. Why do you think this was?
RS: That was one man’s opinion—and a dilettante at that. As I mentioned, music goes through cycles and it is unfortunate, that after the deaths of most composers, there is a marked drop-off of performances of their works. Langlais, Dupré, Sowerby, and Messiaen are good examples; some organist/composers never got off the ground: Fleury, Demessieux, Guillou. It’s the same with orchestral composers: Deluis, Elgar, Walton. When’s the last time you heard a piece by Roussel or d’Indy?
CH: Fair point! However, the centenary of Vierne’s birth does seem to have sparked quite a bit of reinterest in his music. Several music publications (and not just organ journals) published features on Vierne. You performed the six symphonies in a series of recitals to mark the occasion. What prompted you to do such a thing?
RS: Vierne was such a famous name in organ music and yet I had never heard much of it. Neither had anyone else. E. Power Biggs’s French record at Columbia University’s Chapel of the Final of the First Symphony and Virgil Fox’s recordings of the Scherzo of the Second were the best known performances. For those adventurous record collectors there was Édouard Commette’s late 1920s Carillon de Longpont, and few know that Fernando Germani recorded the Final (I) at the New York Wanamaker department store in January 1929. The organist of Canterbury Cathedral, Courtland Palmer, recorded the Berceuse there in 1929; Grover Oberle recorded the Toccata from the Fantasy Pieces and Scherzo (II) at St. Thomas’ in New York in 1941; and Marchal’s 1948 recording of the Impromptu. But those records didn’t get much currency. That was about it; and no complete symphonies. The organ at St. Thomas’ in New York was designed for French music and was an incredible inspiration to any organist who played it. I proposed the series to William Self, the organist, and Edward Wiest, a vestryman, and they gave me the go-ahead and we decided the beginning of the season before churches started up their fall programs would be a perfect time. It proved to be so, and we had great crowds for all three programs.
CH: For your series’ program, you approached several prominent musicians to comment on the symphonies, including Nadia Boulanger, Marcel Dupré, and Maurice Duruflé, all students of Vierne. A brilliant idea. Had you met any of these luminaries prior to writing them? Vierne and Dupré had a tremendous break in their relationship and didn’t speak for the last two decades of Vierne’s life, so it’s somewhat surprising to read Dupré’s warm comments about the third symphony. What do you make of that?
RS: I had not met any of them, although I had corresponded with Dupré. It always struck me how gracious the greats can be. Dupré is an interesting case. Vierne’s Third Symphony was dedicated to him and he played the Adagio and Final on his visits to America from 1921 to 1924. Then when the rupture, as the French say, occurred (Vierne was extremely jealous and paranoid, not without justification, certainly) he stopped playing it. After Vierne’s death in 1937, Dupré played those two excerpts again. But, you notice there were a lot of composers Dupré didn’t play—Bonnet, Langlais, Gigout, Reger, Sowerby.
CH: You also took part in a one-day marathon concert of Vierne’s six symphonies at the Cathedral-Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, performing alongside Robert Glasgow and John Rose. That concert has been credited as a major turning point for Vierne performances in the United States. What are your recollections of the 1976 Newark marathon?
RS: There was a festive atmosphere at that program. It was certainly easier on the players to only have to do two symphonies. From the surveys of program listings in The Diapason and The American Organist, there really wasn’t any uptick in Vierne performances; still the Carillon and Final of the First, with an occasional Naïades, Impromptu, and Scherzo (II).
CH: There are dozens of commercial recordings of Vierne’s music available today (including his piano, vocal, chamber, and symphonic works), and even several complete sets of the six organ symphonies. Prior to your marathon performances, were there many recordings of Vierne’s symphonies available? I know only of Pierre Cochereau’s 1955 recording of the second symphony from Notre-Dame Cathedral.
RS: Just as I was getting up the symphonies, Pierre Labric’s recordings of the complete symphonies came out, but I didn’t know it at the time. A recital with a complete symphony was indeed a rarity.
CH: In the 1970’s, you made several recordings of Vierne’s music on a variety of pipe organs, including four of the symphonies. Do you have plans to re-release any of these recordings in a digital format?
RS: The OHS is about to release the Second Symphony recorded at All Saints, Worcester, Mass., and I’d like to do the miscellaneous pieces recorded at St. Thomas’ in New York, particularly my transcription of the Marche triomphale du centenaire de Napoléon, which is stunning on that organ—there’s hardly a piece bigger or louder when it gets going!
CH: It appears as if the outburst of performances, recordings, and research throughout the 1970s certainly helped to shift perceptions of Vierne’s music. The American Organist dedicated their November 1980 issue to Vierne, and his portrait even made it on the cover! For the issue, you compiled a list of corrections for the printed scores of the symphonies. These and other corrections were later published in your book on Vierne, and many have since been incorporated into recent editions of his music. Why was it necessary to compile a list of corrections? It’s quite a long list!
RS: As you know, Chris, with Vierne’s chromaticism, chords can be written any number of ways and not sound “wrong.” There are many repetitions of sections with different notes and chord spellings, and even transposed sections that differ from the first. I had Charles Doersam’s score of the Vierne Fourth and he corrected a number of what appeared to be wrong notes; Alexander Schreiner had compiled a list of corrections that Vierne gave him for the five symphonies that he’d studied with Vierne, and Carl Weinrich, who played them all in New York in 1932, was good enough to make a list of what he’d found. So with those to go on, I decided to enlist some French organists who were close to Vierne and they were very forthcoming. Since then, a lot of other people have gotten into the act and, incorporating my list, have published them under their own names.
CH: Your book on Vierne, first published in 1999, is required reading for anyone studying Vierne’s organ music. It is expansive, with extensive annotations of Vierne’s memoirs, analyses of his recorded performances, and stylistic insight for performers. I get the impression it is the culmination of decades of research. Have you [or others] made any big discoveries about Vierne since its publication?
RS: Scholars are generally not very generous with their research, always planning on that book they will publish in the future. Most almost never publish, and the contents of their file cabinets either end up in an out-of-the-way library or the dump. I know of several private archives that will never see the light of day. The two German editions of the complete organ works have uncovered some new sources, so those are undoubtedly the most reliable editions of Vierne’s music.
CH: We are once again in a period where Vierne’s music is largely accepted and widely performed by organists. Perhaps performances of a complete symphony are still fairly uncommon, but they are not unheard of, nor derided. However, Vierne’s music is still largely unknown among general music audiences and critics. What advice would you have for a listener, perhaps someone largely unfamiliar with organ music in general, when approaching Vierne’s symphonies for the first time?
RS: That’s a difficult question to answer. Vierne is almost a “niche” composer; his music is very rarified, very personal, and not given to popular appeal. He, himself, knew the Final of the First Symphony, which he called “my Marseillaise,” and the Carillon de Westminster had popular appeal. Yet, he never wrote any other such instantly accessible pieces. The Scherzo of the Second comes nearest, and maybe the Final of the Sixth. I love the Final of the Fifth, but the long contrapuntal interludes tend to lose the audience.
CH: What are your hopes for the reception and performance of Vierne’s music over the next 50 years?
RS: When you look at all the composers who have fallen by the wayside, it says a lot for Vierne (and Widor) that so much of their music continues to be played. We may not hear complete symphonies, and in the case of Vierne there are a lot of “incidental” pieces, but it is rare not to see their music on recital programs. I don’t think any better music will come along, nor music that has endeared itself to the organ community, so I expect the same situation to obtain in the future.