When the Crystal Cathedral was seeking an organist and music director nine years ago, it had plenty of requirements. Formidable organ and choirleading technique headed a list that included ability to preside over an underground metropolis of editing studios and staffed offices, a sense of timing and organization you could run a railroad by, adaptability, energy, commitment, canny but goodhearted personal politics and tolerance of California's Hollywood-Disneyland showbiz approach. Since the Cathedral's resident tiger might happen at any time to drape herself over the Ruffatti console, partiality to cats and a sense of humor wouldn't hurt either. The choice was inevitable.
"I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I never expected anything that has happened to me--it was serendipity." Frederick Swann, who accepted the Cathedral post in 1982, was musing with his usual positive outlook in a private "conflab" (his own word) on a visit to New York City's Riverside Church, where he was organist and music director from 1957 till he went to Garden Grove. He will be back at Riverside again July 30, to celebrate his 60th birthday, 50th year as a church organist and 40th year as a teacher by playing a benefit recital for its choir on Riverside's Aeolian Skinner organ, over which he and its curator Anthony Bufano struggled long years to "make an honest woman of" (another Fredism.)
As the Crystal Cathedral's chief musician, Swann has been called "the most visible organist in the world." Is "visible organist" an oxymoron? Organists in performance are less visible than other instrumentalists, yet can create the hugest volume of sound. Hidden behind consoles of majestic instruments that occupy enormous space while their panoply of timbres fills even larger ones, organists personify the isolated individual as unseen musicmaker. (Compare their shy bows after recitals with the flashy curtain calls of opera singers who have no visible instrument at all.) In secret caverns below the Opera, the Phantom played an organ, as did Captain Nemo on his 20,000-league undersea journey.
The organ's very immobility creates its identity--like no other instrument, it is honored for installation, dedication, a new stop or an anniversary. (Not even the most famous Stradivarius of the most renowned owner gets this treatment.) Frequently asked to perform at these commemorations, Swann inaugurated the organ at Chicago's Orchestra Hall in 1981--playing the Saint-Saens Organ Concerto with the Chicago Symphony--as well as the Kney organ at Toronto's Thomson Hall in 1983 and in 1984, San Francisco Symphony Hall's Ru
But in addition to the figurative visibility of his recital career, he is seen on national and international TV every Sunday on the Crystal Cathedral's taped "Hour of Power" telecast. In a melange which might include a chorus from Mendelssohn's Elijah, a top pop singer, a Mozart overture on several pianos or the national anthem in 4/4 time, Swann leads his 110-voice volunteer choir from the imposing five-manual, 281-rank organ. He says he is in charge of the "legit" arm of the music program--organ, various choirs, children's choir, handbells and orchestra players; a 1988 Calgary recital review elaborates by coincidence: "An eclectic organist par excellence...able to encompass the broadest range of music imaginable with astonishing ease."
A number of East Coast colleagues as well as fans who miss him regard Swann's move west as a sellout. In his view, however, his mission was to bring some of what he had created on the East Coast out to Garden Grove, and he says it's been a healthy stretch to have "opera stars, Nashville hillbillies, the Westminster Abbey choir– something for everybody." Estimating "mainline" church attendance at 150, with organ recitals drawing 25-125, he asks pointedly, "Why do we have thousands?"
The casually-used term "organist and choirmaster" may be another oxymoron, since the roles require opposite skills. Choir directors, in performance seen and not heard, focus intimately on others--their need for breath, fellowship, guidance, stimulating rehearsal. Choirmasters also suffer the slings and arrows of outraged committee members and the lobbying of higher-ups. But as well as possessing talents and strengths peculiar to successful organists, Swann can steer the tricky shoals of individual relationships, choir management and church politics.
One of six children of a Virginia Methodist minister, Swann studied piano with the organist in an Episcopal church, but was more fascinated by the very large instrument he heard her practicing when he arrived early. As a reward for good piano lessons, she let him play the organ, and by the time he turned ten, he was playing every Sunday. Later, as a college student of Thomas Matthews at Northwestern, he was befriended by the organ architect Dr. William Harrison Barnes and his wife--"They kind of adopted me," he says--who helped him toward an organist's position at Evanton's First Methodist Church, and also introduced him to Riverside's flamboyant organist Virgil Fox and choirmaster Richard Wegley, both of whom he eventually succeeded.
"Fred is as exciting as Virgil Fox, without the cape and rhinestone-studded shoes," said Clare Gesualdo, who was a Manhattan School of Music organ student while he was chairing the department in the 1970's. "He's a master at registration and combining colors imaginatively. You can tell it's from the soul--anybody can push keys." Dr. Gesualdo, who turned pages for the Swann recording of Franck works that Stereo Review cited for special merit, remembers that "just being in his aura in that stressful environment with microphones and engineers, I was aware of his total involvement and concentration. He was an example to which we all aspired." Her praise is corroborated in a Kennedy Center recital review calling a Swann recital "the most impressive ever heard on that organ--one that demonstrated his brilliant technique and great musical sensitivity."
Swann once wrote in this magazine that the Crystal Cathedral's organ is "an unqualified success," though he concedes that at noon on warm days the building's 10,000 or so glass panes have allowed the organ "a few stunning displays of temperament." (Privately he likens the noise to a freeway pileup.) Bufano affectionately recalls a few displays on Swann's part too: "If one note out of 12,000 was out, he'd dial my phone that minute. He was always striving for the best job. When I first came to Riverside, the organ was great but had so many loose wires it looked like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. We spent years refining it--I was afraid to pick up the phone."
Acclaimed for his renditions of French music, particularly recordings of Franck, Swann outlined the importance of relating French music to the French organ, French acoustics, and French music history: "First there were the classics, then a musical wasteland, then the new Romantics. You even have to know life in Paris." But he worries about the organ recital's future: "Emphasis on historical accuracy is ending up in performances devoid of emotion and musicality. Every single rule has been followed but it hasn't made music. You have to take study as a tool to make music and infuse life. People are afraid to take chances--most of my career I've taken chances without knowing it. Fox and [E. Power] Biggs, the greats of this century, had champions and detractors. Nowadays you rarely hear anyone raved about or seriously criticized."
In choral music Swann favors the English tradition. Karen McFarlane, who over 25 years has variously been his secretary, assistant, friend and manager, remembers trying to find an organist to play Elgar's difficult score to The Dream of Gerontius, so that Swann would have hands free to conduct it. "We wracked our brains, but there was no one who could play it as well--we finally hired a conductor."
Among conductors for whom Swann accompanied was Maurice Duruflé, who led the Riverside Choir in his Requiem; the Duruflés had previously known Swann as a performer of Duruflé organ works, and had given their first public recital in this country at Riverside. On the occasion that Durufle conducted, Mme. Duruflé was at the gallery organ. (As to why she chose to participate, Swann says modestly, "She shares my love of cats.") Over the years, he estimates he has performed the piece 75 times.
When Dr. Clarence Dickenson, organist at Brick Church, had a heart attack, Swann, just out of Union Theological Seminary, was invited to take over, which he did concurrently with an associate position with Harold Friedell at St. Bartholomew's. The venerable Francois Courboin, still organist at St. Patrick's Cathedral, gave him lessons at no charge, a courtesy that Swann has since extended to many who request his coaching.
Though he probably wouldn't admit it, he is undaunted by huge administrative tasks. According to Riverside's associate minister Eugene Laubach, "He can't help organizing everything top to bottom, like a crossword puzzle with kinds of programs. He wants everything clean, and structures things according to what he can make of the variables." Trips, tours and services are planned months in advance, choir members find order-of-rehearsal sheets awaiting them, calls and letters are returned, there is time for cat care and enjoyment of his present Orange County home, and someone always knows where Fred is. "I have a terrific staff and a well-oiled machine," he says of the Cathedral, without reference to the oiler.
His skill at planning minutely was evident during the mid-1950's, when on occasion, after a 2 PM service at Brick, he would run down to St. Bart's for a 4:00 and then catch a cab to Riverside. Or, once, a morning service at Riverside, followed by an afternoon Messiah there, and then a frantic cab ride to Lincoln Center for the first Messiah Sing-In: "I was mad, but where else could you get that experience?"
Swann has conveyed the drama of the church service since he first became Riverside's organist, fresh out of military service with degrees in music and sacred music, working with and then succeeding Virgil Fox. "Fred was a service player par excellence," recalled Rev. Laubach. "He was enormously creative about shape and theatricality, and brave enough to go against absolute arbiters of church style who preferred to sit in silence rather than hear the organ played as filler. He blew that purism out of the water, covering everything in the world. In the Litany of the Cross, he could pause at any part--no one ever did it as well. It was a yeasty time, working and dreaming together. We innovated the Tenebrae service, Lessons and Carols, Epiphany. His playing could be big and showy or soft and precise--a blowout anthem followed by a half-voice orison. I always felt better when he played the service.” In Swann's registration, Amazing Grace evokes the wistful quality of a bagpipe, and at Christmas, the lead-in to Silent Night bursts out of a suspended nebula onto a 6/4 chord that sends worshipers fumbling for tissues.
"It used to be said," Rev. Laubach observed, "that Virgil Fox gave concerts and Fred Swann played services. You could tell the difference by the superb congregational singing with organ." On "Hour of Power" broadcasts, the hymns unfold and open, rising a half step with more brilliant registration at each verse while the camera drifts through the congregation.
Swann is equally sensitive to spatial drama. Rev. Laubach tells of a time they visited a cavernous church in order that Swann, who was giving a recital there, could check the sound reflection of its stone and echo of its vault before crafting a program. Or, a friend visiting Swann at the Crystal Cathedral may be shown to a seat in the empty stadium-sized, glassed-in sanctuary while Swann builds a customized five-minute improvisation to show off sections of the composite organ that Fox originally designed, from the most hushed reeds to the reverberating ranks of trumpets. Once at Riverside, Swann invited a beginning student--friend of a friend--to play while he silently pulled stops, creating effects the man now swears he would never know how to replicate.
During the 70's, concert hall performances of sacred music increased, causing an attendant decrease in demand and funds for salaried choir concerts in church. Nonetheless, Swann's good personal relations and gift at management and morale- maintenance kept Riverside's 70 choir members loyally committed. Did they, rarely, have to come early? Swann brought donuts. Were they kept late? They went home early next time. Picnics with ridiculous printed menus were held at his house. Once, he invited the choir in shifts for Baked Alaska--it was long ago, but people remember this kind of thing.
"I have formulas for vowel sounds and tuning, but not morale," he explained. "I let singers know I care about them and care about the music, and that we are working for one common goal."
"Fred's love and concern for each individual has turned us into one of the finest choirs in the country," says a 30-year member of the Crystal Cathedral choir. "He's a premier organist who can play the most intricate accompaniments and help us sing from memory, but he can communicate one to one if someone is sick. Everyone thinks the world of him." A 20-year Cathedral choir member notes, "We've had good leadership, but not as kind and loving; he's a people person as well as a good musician. There really is nothing I would rather do [than sing]Thursday night or Sunday morning." (To memorize the music they tape rehearsals on their own recorders and play them over and over in their cars. They want to.)
No one needs a glossary of Swann's wry little affair with the English language: sopranos are Valkyries or high types, and they sing discounts; altos and basses are low types. Letters begin, "Dear SATB's, and others...," "Dear Peacocks..." The rehearsal pauses for denouncements; before service the choir must be fed and watered, afterward they disrobe. In performance they cover themselves with glory (although he may have chosen to cover them into oblivion with full-throttle registration.) His alma mater is Onion Biological Cemetery, and he calls the organ his stove.
The console bench at Crystal Cathedral is on public view, but in other churches he has used the privacy of that space for sight gags--perhaps with a prop or costume--that only the choir could see, ensuring their smiles in the chancel.
Giving a recital on his 60th birthday for a choir's benefit indicates that Swann's Way--doing plenty and relishing it--is alive and suits him well. "He admirably fills his role as church musician," says Karen McFarlane, "and enjoys himself, for that matter." Reflecting in a personal sense, Swann doesn't even mention music: "I'd like to be remembered for a charmed, blessed life. I've been given much and honestly tried my utmost. I've cared about the people I've worked with and I've come across a lot of nice letters." Is he 100% fulfilled and happy? Let those who are pose him that question.