The Sounding Board - Memorial Church - Harvard University

2
My Dear Friends,
It seems only yesterday that I wrote this column in the Spring
2010 issue of The Sounding Board, and here we are at the
beginning of a brand new academic year and Fall Term. All
of us in The Memorial Church hope that you who are reading
this enjoyed a pleasant, productive, and restorative summer,
and are filled with renewed energy to once again take on the
pleasures and challenges of the new year. To all freshmen in the
Class of 2014 and their freshmen parents and guardians I offer
a particularly hearty welcome: we hope you will be with us in
the pews or celebrate with us from afar, wherever you might be.
Our programs extend well beyond our Sunday services and daily
services of Morning Prayer, as you will read in the following
pages of this newsletter.
Huge things have happened with our organ project during the
course of the summer, including the removal from Appleton
Chapel of our C.B. Fisk organ, Op. 46, which is on the way to
its new home in Austin, Texas. At present we are using a small
Holbrook organ as we await the installation of a three-manual
1929 Skinner organ, Op. 793, which will be in place in Appleton
Chapel in time for the Christmas Carol services on December
12th and 13th, and featured in an official dedication recital by
Professor Thomas Murray of Yale University on December 14th.
As you remember, the new mechanical-action organ, Op. 139,
currently being designed and built by C.B. Fisk of Gloucester,
Massachusetts, will be installed in the rear balcony next summer
and ready for the Easter Sunday service in 2012.
The restoration of the beautiful Appleton Chapel Palladian
window to its rightful role of illuminating the church, long
anticipated and awaited, is now a wonderful reality and worthy
of all of our hard work and of the architect’s original intention.
The placing of the Fisk organ in front of it in 1967 was a necessity
of the time; now I walk into the chapel and rejoice in the light
bathing it while brightening the entire church. I am deeply
moved by your generosity in contributing to the Appleton Chapel
Restoration and Organs Fund, which, as you know, is also a
celebration of my ministry to The Memorial Church as I look
Fall 2010
From the Minister
The Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes
to my 2012 retirement. This project is to be my legacy, and I am
grateful to all who so kindly consider it both materially in their
continuing generosity, and in their prayers.
Music in this church continues to flourish under the direction
of Edward Elwyn Jones, Gund University Organist and
Choirmaster; Christian Lane, Assistant University Organist
and Choirmaster; and Carson P. Cooman, Research Associate
in Music and Composer in Residence. We are continually
blessed with beautiful sound in our Sunday services and daily
services of Morning Prayer, and beyond those in concerts given
throughout the year. On Sunday, October 17th, the Harvard
University Choir presented its Fall concert featuring American
choral music, Randall Thompson’s Frostiana, and Alice Parker’s
cantata, Melodious Accord; and on Halloween, Sunday, October
31st, the Choral Fellows of the Harvard University Choir joined
the Boston Camerata, under the direction of Anne Azema,
for a concert celebrating Music and Marriage in the Italian
Renaissance. Also on Halloween, the annual Halloween recital
was performed by members of the Harvard Organ Society at
midnight in The First Congregational Church. The Harvard
Baroque Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Phoebe
Carrai, will present a concert, Le Gout Francais, of works in
the French style on Sunday evening November 21st; and the
Christmas Carol Services, this year the one hundred first, will
be held on Sunday, December 12th, at five o’clock, and Monday,
December 13th, at eight o’clock. The Thursday Midday Recital
Series continues to be performed by outstanding organists on the
Flentrop organ in Adophus Busch Hall on Thursdays at noon
through the eighteenth of November.
With the greatest happiness I look forward to preaching during
the Sunday services, as does our resident clergy, and we welcome
as well to our pulpit such preaching luminaries and friends as are
listed elsewhere in The Sounding Board. Our preaching palette is
rich with talent, and my hope is that you will come on Sunday
mornings whenever you are able. Our speakers at the daily service
of Morning Prayer are also both distinguished and diverse, and