Focus on Organists: Hymn Playing Masterclass with Christopher Anderson

Saturday, 23 February, 2019, 10am
Zion Lutheran Church
6121 East Lovers Ln
Dallas, TX 75214

Dr Christopher Anderson, Associate Professor of Sacred Music at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, will guide and advise organists in their most important and useful task of leading congregational hymn singing. Hymn playing is the most important job of the organist, but is too often overlooked in the organist's other necessary preparations. Organists are invited to come prepared to play a hymn for which Dr Anderson will make suggestions about tempo, registration, and other performance issues. Organists do not need to play and can benefit simply from hearing others, but playing is encouraged. This session will be of great assistance to those preparing for AGO certification, of which hymn playing is an integral component. This is event is free.

Christopher Anderson is Associate Professor of Sacred Music at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where he teaches graduate courses in history and theory in the Perkins School of Theology and the Meadows School of the Arts.

Anderson is a scholar and organist whose work has centered on early musical modernism, modern German history and philosophy, the organ’s position in Western culture, and the composer Max Reger. He has written extensively on Reger and his music in two books, Max Reger and Karl Straube: Perspectives on an Organ Performing Tradition (Ashgate 2003) and Selected Writings of Max Reger (Routledge 2006). In addition, his many essays appear in German- and English-language journals. His seminal 2003 study of Reger and Straube is the first extensive survey of any aspect of Reger in English and was the winner of the prestigious 2006 Max Miller Book Award, given by The Organ Library of the American Guild of Organists via the Boston University School of Theology. Recently, Anderson translated into English the second volume of Jon Laukvik’s Historical Performance Practice in Organ Playing (Carus, 2010) and edited the first complete survey of organ music in the twentieth century, Twentieth-Century Organ Music (Routledge 2011). Currently he is writing the first biography of Karl Straube, the early twentieth-century Leipzig organist and Thomaskantor whose work is central to the organ and church music cultures of modernist Germany.

Anderson is active in the Organ Historical Society and serves as an advisor for its publishing program.
The Church Music Institute (CMI) is dedicated to the advancement and stewardship of the best sacred music for the use of Christian congregations. Using proven practices, CMI trains new generations of clergy, musicians and laypersons for leading worship through workshops, courses and conferences across the country. CMI also houses the most extensive online library of choral and organ music anywhere.