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September 2005: Timothy Albrecht

University Organist Timothy Albrecht Launches the “Year of the Jaeckel”

Timothy Albrecht, Emory’s University Organist, kicks off Emory’s season-long celebration of Emory’s new 14-ton Jaeckel Opus 45, 3-manual, 54-stop mechanical action pipe organ with a free concert. The inaugural concert takes place in Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall on Sunday, September 18 at 4:00 p.m., and begins what Albrecht is calling the “Year of the Jaeckel,” after the organ’s builder, Daniel Jaeckel, one of North America's top builders of hand-crafted organs. The program includes Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565, Toccata op. 81 by Joseph Jongen, Widor’s Toccata from Symphony V, plus compositions by Dave Brubeck and Stephen Paulus.

Albrecht has organized thirteen other free organ events to celebrate the "Year of the Jaeckel," many of which take place during the Emory Organ Celebration Weekend, Friday-Sunday, November 4-6, 2005.

In a recent interview, Albrecht talked about his involvement in the planning and installation of the organ and what it means to Emory, as well as about his own history and work.

Q: I understand that planning for the organ began in the early nineties. Can you talk about this history?
A: In late 1991, we sent out four or five letters of invitation to state-of-the-art organ builders, including Daniel Jaeckel, asking them to submit a proposal for building a pipe organ for a concert hall that was yet to be constructed. Daniel Jaeckel was thus identified early on, but it was years before he actually had a contract. Meanwhile, the Schwartz Center was built, and the concert hall was designed for a pipe organ, albeit not yet contracted. There was a recess in the back wall with a curtain covering the space where the organ would go. Finally, around 2002, Rosemary Magee—then the senior associate dean of resources and planning for Emory College, now vice president and secretary of Emory University, and a huge advocate for the organ—convinced the trustees to sign a contract for the organ, and work on it began. I am very grateful to both Daniel Jaeckel and Rosemary Magee. Without these two there would be no organ.

Q: What has it been like over this past year-and-a-half watching the organ being built?
A: On the one hand, it has been humbling and thrilling for me, as very few organists get to shepherd such an endeavor and to work with such wonderful human beings as organ builder Daniel Jaeckel and our own Rosemary Magee. Certainly, without these two, there would be no organ in Emerson Concert Hall.
On the other hand, this past year has also been daunting (i.e., “scary”), because there has been quite a lot of responsibility and trust that many, many people have placed in me as Emory University Organist. Thank goodness, the Jaeckel Op. 45 has turned out both tonally and visually so beautiful! I certainly don’t deserve credit for its success—that goes both to Daniel Jaeckel and Associates as well as to Emory for seeing this process through (and we are now seeking a donor). However, if the end result had been a disaster, I certainly could justifiably have been blamed!

Q: What does the completion of the Jaeckel Op. 45 organ mean to you?
A: Coming down the home stretch at this point is primarily a feeling of elation, coupled with perhaps also a very slight feeling of exhaustion!

Q: How does this addition reflect the evolution of the organ program at Emory?
A: Our Emory University graduate organ degree programs, which now possess a rich collection of distinctive pipe organs (the 2005 Jaeckel Op. 45 in Emerson Concert Hall joins the 1981 Cannon Chapel Holtkamp organ, the 1982 Casavant Organ in Glenn Auditorium, and the 1985 Little Chapel Taylor and Boody organ), are poised as few other places in the country to make a large contribution.

Q: What were the events that led to your coming to Emory?
A: Having finished my doctorate at Eastman, I was teaching music in 1980 at a Pennsylvania college when guest Ralph Abernathy came to speak. I will never forget him saying, “I bring greetings from the greatest city in the world, Atlanta, Georgia.” Strange as it sounds, that was for me as a Northerner one of my first real exposures to the word “Atlanta.” In addition, I had never before heard someone speak so lovingly about a city. Then, shortly after that, I read in The New York Times where Atlanta’s Emory University President Jim Laney shared in an interview about both the new $100 million Woodruff gift and the need for Emory to be a good steward and not waste this huge amount. Soon thereafter, there appeared an announcement for an opening for Emory University Organist! Needless to say, I ran to the mailbox with my application. Almost 25 years later, I am just as excited to be here as I was when I first came.

Q: How many summers have you spent teaching in Vienna? Can you tell us a little about what it is like teaching there?
A: Yikes, tempus fugit: This Emory University Summer Abroad Vienna teaching started for me in 1986 and, with the exception of the one year that our daughter was born, it’s been pretty much a “given” every summer. It is a thrill for me, as we go together to first-rate concerts as part of the music course! Vienna is like no other place in the world: as the important center for classical music that it is, Vienna is simultaneously very classy and sophisticated, yet very much in other ways quite refreshingly “mom-and-pop.” For example, the two great performance venues, the Vienna State Opera House and the Musik-verein, both have superb acoustics and draw the very finest musicians who want to perform there. However, at the same time, Vienna is refreshingly quite down-home and natural, as one sees world-renowned musicians simply walking down the street, especially down the Kärtnerstraße! Also, I wonder where else one would find so many famous natives who simply list their names, addresses, and phone numbers in the phone book?!

Q: Aside from the mechanics of organ playing, what do you think is one of the most important things about the organ or organ music you can convey to your students?
A: Probably most important would be playing from the heart, without holding back. There is a favorite Bible passage from Deuteronomy that I quote often to our Emory graduate organ studio. Although the quote has to do first with one’s relationship with God, it certainly transfers as well to approaching music making: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your might.”

Q: What led you to become an organist? Has it been a lifelong passion?
A: My father, James H. Albrecht, was an organist and we would often go to recitals together when I was a little boy. Those were the days when Virgil Fox was on tour—I still remember some of those events, perhaps more as drama and theater than just as music!

Q: Tell us about some other musical activities you have undertaken recently, alone or with your family.
A: My wife, Tamara, our daughter, and I just returned this week from Alaska, where Tamara conducted a young children’s musical development workshop for area pedagogues. In Fairbanks, I presented a hymn-playing/improvisation master class, played a hymn festival, and performed a dedicatory organ recital at Zion Lutheran Church in Fairbanks. The recital program included Handel’s Organ Concerto op. 4, no. 5, with our 16-year-old, Esther, playing bassoon in the orchestra.

We also made the trip somewhat of a family vacation, driving south to Valdez where we went on an eleven-hour cruise out into the Prince William Sound, driving into Denali State Park, et al. Thus, we spent quite a few overnights in bed-and-breakfast accommodations, with all three often sharing a room. Changing planes in Seattle en route home, Esther said to me, “Please, Dad, no more family time for a while.”

Q: Back to the Jaeckel Op. 45 pipe organ, what makes it so special compared to other organs both in Atlanta and in the Southeast?
A: As Emory University Organist, having worked on this project since 1991, I need to be very careful about how I answer that. Certainly, after almost fifteen years, I am very attached and almost parental about all this, which means that I must be intentional in being objective!

The special features of our Emory Jaeckel Op. 45 are not directly related to size and scale. Even though our pipe organ is the visual focal point of Emerson Concert Hall, we all know that “bigger is not always equated with better.” Besides, there are certainly larger instruments to be found here and there. Still, it is an undisputed and objective fact that our Jaeckel Op. 45 is the largest mechanical key action concert hall organ in the Southeast.

Because of geographic proximity, Emerson Concert Hall cannot help but immediately beg a comparison with nearby Spivey Hall, which is also noted for its elegant ambience and fine acoustics. However, Emerson Concert Hall is a much larger performing venue, whereas Spivey Hall excels especially as a smaller, chamber music venue.

What also makes the Jaeckel Op. 45 special is that it is a musical instrument with mechanical key action, which is a 500-year-old organ building principle that history has proven to be a most effective construct for music making. The direct connection between organist and pipes achieved by a fine mechanical key action (also called tracker action) means everything for achieving sensitive articulation gradations of both the initial attack and the decay of the sound. Certainly, a violinist or pianist could not imagine being separated in space from one's instrument; the same is true for the organist. This tangible connection that we have in Emory’s Jaeckel Op. 45 is one extremely special feature. It is also pedagogically very special for an institution like Emory University, which prides itself on teaching, to have an instrument with the sensitivity the mechanical key action of the Jaeckel Op. 45 affords.

In comparing the Jaeckel Op. 45 with other prominent large tracker pipe organ installations in the Southeast, one thinks immediately of Duke University's 1976 Flentrop organ. However, the Durham instrument is located in a worship space, Duke Chapel, rather than in a concert hall like the Emerson Concert Hall. In addition, the design of Duke University’s Flentrop is specifically biased toward eighteenth-century north European organ music. Emory’s Jaeckel Op. 45 is Janus-faced—not only is it capable of authentically playing the German Baroque masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach and music associated with Alsatian organ builder Andreas Silbermann, but also it is well suited for performing symphonically conceived solo organ literature as well as organ plus orchestral/choral repertoire. (The Jaeckel Op. 45 uses Andreas Silbermann’s organ building orientation for two of its keyboard divisions.) Having a mechanical action instrument in a concert hall that can do the golden age organ literature of Bach and other repertoire so well and so easily makes our Jaeckel Op. 45 versatile and special.

The "Year of the Jaeckel" will celebrate this diversity in a rich panoply of musical offerings. We have recitals that play the Jaeckel Op. 45’s early-music strong suit. For example, Columbia University Organ Professor Gail Archer will showcase on November 6 (3:00 p.m) the music of Jan Pietersoon Sweelinck and the early North German Baroque composers. There are also many recitals featuring the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. Other events feature the French romantic tradition: Parisian organist Vincent Dubois will perform a concert on November 4 (4:00 p.m.) devoted to French Fireworks, and the Emory Symphony Orchestra, Emory University Chorus, and organ will team up on November 5 (8:00 p.m.) for Saint Saëns’s Symphony III (Organ). In addition, there are world and United States premieres of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Stephen Paulus, and our own Emory music composition faculty.

In summary, the Jaeckel Op. 45, whose construction is based on the rediscovered mechanical action organ building principles, is equally at home with keyboard music of the early German baroque composer Samuel Scheidt (born 1587) as well as with contemporary German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. It is not simply tied to one niche in a particular historical performance period. “Hunting with the hounds and running with the hares” is not always a compliment but, in this case, it is one, because the Jaeckel Op. 45 can do both, authentically and genuinely, without sacrificing intrinsic integrity. How is that possible? That has to do with the artistry of Daniel Jaeckel. The end result is a very special instrument indeed!

Edited by Nancy Condon
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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