Fall 2005 - St. Charles Preparatory School

The Ohio State University to major in
organ (performance) with a minor in voice
after having started to pursue simultaneous
degrees in teaching and music.
After his graduation from OSU, he
pursued a major in composition and theory
and he also continued organ study. He
completed his masters in sacred music
studies at Union Theological Seminary in
New York in 1971. Yeager proceeded to find
a full-time job at a church in Indiana
where he was organist and choir director of
multiple choirs. After three years he
moved to Colorado and entered a Doctoral
program.
The Doctor of Music Arts is a performance
oriented terminal degree (aimed at
teaching). “In addition to the six full
recitals required for the degree, I wrote two
dissertation length papers on historical and
practical aspects of the organ and its
New lungs
Josephinium seminarian Christopher Golliver displays the organ’s
restored exhauster/bellows. They draw air through the instrument’s
harmonica-like reeds to create the familiar rich and mellow tones of a
traditional parlor organ.
Ravages of time
Golliver displays the original bellows, caked with dirt and dust. A new
one was made by hand cutting new material.
The Distinctive Leader in Catholic Education
construction.” Five years of research and
travel to major libraries led him to complete
the papers to receive the degree in
1985 in Boulder, Colorado.
The position at the Josephinum came
open in 1984 and, by chance, he was
suggested to the school’s academic dean as
a possible candidate. After a lengthy
discussion and brief audition, he was
accepted by the school and was formally
appointed by the papal delegate, Yeager
began his Josephinum teaching position as
an assistant professor in sacred music,
coincidentally, on the feast of St. Cecilia,
the patron saint of music.
“It seemed that every aspect of my
life’s study, beginning with those first days
at the reed organ at St. Agnes under Fr.
Schmidt, the music and chant at St.
Charles with the wonderful mentoring of
Msgr. Gallen, and all the subsequent
organ, voice, and other
scholarly work had
equipped me to provide the
Josephinum with its own
specialized program in
sacred music,” Yeager
said.
When he arrived
at the Josephinum,
Yeager recalled, “the
College’s expectations
were modest. Teach basic
Mass chants to seminarians
in theology preparation,
and lead the Schola
of singers for Masses.
There was little in the
way of a music curriculum
other than chant class and
the schola.” But Yeager
had more ambitious goals.
His first one was to create
a full curriculum in sacred
music that matched the
expectations of the
program of priestly
formation and other
church documents on
liturgical formation in
seminaries.
“At present we
have a core course in
sacred music required of
all theology students
covering the basic history,
documents, and definition
of sacred music,” Yeager
said. “The chant courses
have been expanded,” he
said, (and) “I offer a music
history/appreciation
course for college students. And I reestablished
the Josephinum Choir that was once
the great and renowned men’s chorus
famed in central Ohio for the first half of
the 20th century.”
After completing his masters in Divinity
in 1985, he advanced step by step to the
rank of full professor. In addition to the
music curriculum, he is most proud of the
Josephinum Choir that, in addition to its
two professional recordings and two European
tours, won a prize in the music
competition in Frankfurt in 2003, sings
regularly at parishes around the diocese,
performs a public concert every spring to
a packed chapel at campus, and is planning
its second European tour – to Italy —
in June of 2006.
Yeager has earned many prestigious
and important awards, two of which he
holds close to his heart. As a graduate
assistant at the University of Colorado, he
received in 1976 the Dean’s Top Ten
Graduate Teaching Assistants Award for
his work in the organ department. And
after his doctoral graduation at Colorado in
1985, the graduate committee on arts &
humanities selected Yeager’s dissertation,
Chronicle of Organ Reform and Unequal
Temperaments and the Organ, as one of
two winners of the Chancellor’s Dissertation
Award.
The nominating committee for the
dissertation award wrote: “Dr. Yeager’s
research links both the technical and the
humanistic aspects of the history of organ
playing with great skill, based on a vast
amount of reading of largely inaccessibly
literature. It thus constitutes a significant
contribution to our knowledge of organ
playing.”
Dr. Yeager is quick to say: “Whatever
honors or achievements I have obtained in
my life and work during and after college
all trace back to the formative study at St.
Charles. At every moment along the way,
bachelors, masters, doctorate, I had a
strong leg up on my colleagues because of
things I learned and knew at the hands of
great men like Monsignor O’Dea, Monsignor
Gallen, Father. Haluska, Father
Luchi, Father Geiger, Father Lehnhart,
Father O’Brien, John Rectanwald, Jack
Ryan et al.”
“The content of the curriculum (at St.
Charles), with its emphasis on classics and
critical thinking, gave me enormous tools
for graduate study. The striving for
excellence, inquisitive scholarship, rigorous
research and creativity in writing all
flow from classes there. We were challenged
to go beyond the merely acceptable.”
45