At the visitation for Harald I was struck by the number of stories told by those in attendance. Perhaps we can put some of these here!

From the Day I was born!!

My lifetime relationship with Harald Rohlig began the day I was born. My Daddy was a student at Huntingdon College and was in Dr Rohlig’s class when they came to get him to go to the hospital for my birth. Dr Rohlig loved telling that story and, in true Rohlig fashion, every time he told it the story was more detailed and exciting. The last time he told it he had Daddy leaping over desks to run out of class with the students cheering him on.

Charlotte Nichols

My First Lesson

Fast forward 17 years to my first organ lessons with Dr. Rohlig. I was a summer student at Huntingdon and took private lessons. A summer of climbing the winding staircase to the third floor of Flowers Hall and spending time with a man I had come to adore. My childhood has been filled with stories of Dr. Rohlig and my thinking he was so awesome and handsome complete with that cigarette in the holder. I thought he looked so exotic. That summer I began lessons which lasted until his death in 2014. (With a few years off for school , family and life.)

Those times with him were magical. He told so many stories, taught me liturgy, discussed theology, and coached me on many life issues. After my own father passed away, he helped me through many things in my own life, all the time dealing with his own tragedies.

Charlotte Nichols

A Start with Airplanes

The stories from his own life were always intriguing:

When he was a young boy he was in the boys’ choir. He loved singing with them and spoke fondly of those times. He also told of being “suspended” from boys’ choir for a time. The choir sat in the balcony of the church during services. He and his friends started making paper airplanes and flying them out over the congregation. Obviously this did not go over well…he was suspended.

Charlotte Nichols

Home with a Friend

After the war Dr. Rohlig was back in school training as a musician. The schools had initiated an exchange student program with schools in England and other countries as a sign of good will. He met an English student who was studying theology at his school in Germany. They became good friends and one day his friend heard him practicing. The friend suggested that Dr. Rohlig come home with him on a weekend and play on the organ at his church in England. Rohlig agreed and off they go. He said he was much surprised when he met his friend’s dad…the Archbishop of Canterbury. Of course he enjoyed playing that organ and meeting the organist there.

Charlotte Nichols

Friends in Huntsville

After he moved to Alabama, he continued doing organ concerts around the world. He told of one trip to Huntsville Alabama to do a concert when he was a young man. His friends in the Huntsville area of course attended the concert and afterward went out celebrating seeing each other. His friends were from Germany and worked in Huntsville. Those friends included Wernher von Braun.

Charlotte Nichols

The next generation

When my daughter was 5 years old, she began taking piano lessons from Dr. Rohlig. What fun they had together. Those lessons included teaching a love for music that will last a lifetime for my daughter. Dr. Rohlig had 2 pianos in his office. Often my daughter would make up songs on her piano and he would accompany her on his piano. Sometimes he would let her dance while he played for her. He even let her get up on her piano and and dance. She played piano with her feet. Down the hall waiting for her lesson I would hear great laughter and yelling from both of them. What joy to experience music in such a magical way.

Charlotte Nichols

Mistakes

Many people have asked me over the years if I would be nervous if Dr. Rohlig ever came to hear me play at church. The answer is absolutely not. Dr. Rohlig taught me with calm acceptance of my errors. He played absolutely perfectly and as he said, if he made a mistake he worked in into the music so the mistake was not noticed. In lessons, when I made a mistake he would simply say, “now watch out” and point to the passage. He would play that part again for me and I could try again. His methods of teaching made music approachable and I felt anything he gave me was in reach. His praise was always right around the corner. I always knew that if he came to hear me play, my biggest cheerleader would be there pulling me through and accepting my faults.

Charlotte Nichols

"He is ever present"

There are not many days that I don’t think of him at some point. I practice most days of the week and he is ever present. I hear him saying “now watch out here”. I listen to his recordings and remember his teaching. His markings are in my music. I treasure my years with him and am ever grateful for those times in my life. So often when practicing I come upon a section which needs work. My first thought is I need to ask Dr. Rohlig what to do here. Oh how I miss those times but I know he is with his Heavenly Father enjoying making music for God in person. His lesson was not wasted on me….We make music to worship our Lord and Savior, not for man.

Charlotte Nichols

“Like a duck to water”

In the summer of 1977, the summer I turned thirteen, I got eyeglasses for the first time. Soon thereafter I began organ lessons with Harald Rohlig. Both events provided clarity and perspective in the way I see the world that endure to this day.

Larry Jones introduced me to Mr. Rohlig. Larry was an electronics teacher at the local technical college in Montgomery, Alabama where I was born and grew up. He was also the choir director and organist at First Presbyterian Church. We were one of those families who were present every time the church doors were open. In fact, I eventually had my own key (a Russwin) and opened the church at will – usually to practice the organ or climb the bell tower late at night with my buddies from the youth group.

It was after evening service one Sunday that Larry invited me up front to try the Gabriel Kney organ in the chapel that accommodated the smaller evening service. I would come to know that Mr. Rohlig had been the consultant for the installation of this chiffy two-manual Baroque instrument. Perfect for the renaissance of early music performance practice burgeoning at the time of its installation. Anachronistic for the revivalist Gospel hymns that were the actual fare of the service – with piano and organ together.

On the music desk was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in F from the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues. (I know that many scholars no longer think these were written by Bach, but I choose to believe they were.) After managing to read a bit of it at sight and rather enjoy myself in the process Larry asked me and my mother if we would like for him to introduce us to his organ teacher, Harald Rohlig.

We met Rohlig on the third and top floor of Flowers Hall on the Huntingdon College campus. Rohlig maintained that it was “closer to heaven” compared to the administration on the lower floors. He was fifty and a bit, trim, wearing an open collar button down shirt, dress pants, and leather-soled lace up street shoes that were ready at a moment’s notice to provide a firm foundation on the organ pedals for the music of the great masters. He wore glasses and sported mutton chop sideburns. He had the most pleasant, genuine smile and ready laugh.

He took me into one of the three practice organs he had designed and had built for the college. This one was a tracker action instrument with a Rückpositiv (a division of pipes located behind the player) that contained a Holzregal – a buzzy little reed stop – that captured my imagination then and has not let go yet. He showed me around the organ, tried out my music reading, then began to teach me how to play the pedals. Afterwards he said to my mother in that engaging German accent he never lost, “He takes to the pedals like a duck takes to vater.” I was flattered, enthralled, and hooked.

Wallace Homady

Tuesdays with Rohlig

We set up lessons for Tuesday afternoons after school. Mr. Rohlig filled my head with all kinds of stories and images from his life growing up in Hitler’s Germany, theology, philosophy, and the art of fine living. Mother would pick me up after my lesson and the standing joke was, “Did you play the organ in your lesson today?” Sometimes the answer was yes and sometimes the answer was no. What our lessons lacked in systematic music pedagogy they more than made up for in pure, unadulterated inspiration. His stories came to me in bits and pieces in lessons over many years. What follows in the first part is a more or less chronological account of the stories of his life and our lessons as I remember them. I make no claim to historical accuracy. These are instead a true account of the lasting impression his life has made on mine.

Wallace Homady

“Boys, let’s see if you’ve learned your parts. “

By the time he was the age I was when I began organ lessons with him Rohlig had already had two important musical careers. He grew up near Osnabrück in northern Germany. He found himself in a line of 500 boys auditioning for three open spots in the Bremen Cathedral Choir. He won a spot. There were no sectional rehearsals to teach the boys their parts. They were sent to their rooms with a score and a tuning fork and expected to show up to the full rehearsal with the score learned. If they didn’t, there were 499 boys in line behind them ready to take their place.

They were scheduled to perform Bach’s Magnificat, a work that begins with the boys singing in three-part counterpoint. In the dress rehearsal with the orchestra the director said, “Boys, let’s see if you’ve learned your parts.” He gave a pitch and a downbeat expecting the boys to rattle it off perfectly on the first go, unaccompanied. They did it.

Wallace Homady

“I just want a drink.”

Rohlig was also a prodigy on the violin. By the age of twelve he was playing all the big concertos with his grandfather’s orchestra, the Robert Schumann Symphony. All he claims to remember is that he would go offstage after the performance and want nothing but a drink of water because he was so thirsty. But the lady that was his handler would push him back onstage for a curtain call – to thunderous applause I’m sure. He might have had an adult career as a violinist as well had not an explosion nearly blown his hand off. He had to “settle” for being a world-class organist.

Wallace Homady

“Like Boy Scouts on steriods.”

When he told me that he had been a member of the Hitler Youth I was appalled and asked him why he would do such a thing. He explained, “Vell, Vallace, you could say, ‘No’, but they had little vays of letting you know you had not made the right decision like your father lost his job and your family couldn’t buy bread at the store.”

He said that apart from the ideology that the Hitler Youth was the greatest thing for a boy. Like Boy Scouts on steroids. At the age of twelve he built his own hang glider and flew it.

Wallace Homady

“He was never the same.”

Rohlig’s father was a Methodist minister who resisted the Nazi regime. For his pains he earned a stay at a concentration camp for three years. At the end of the war he was freed but, in Rohlig’s words, was never the same. Rohlig himself was free during the war but spent the three years after the war in a French prisoner of war camp.

Wallace Homady

The Bridge at Remagen

The Nazis had spent the lives of so many of Germany’s youth in their effort to take over the world that they were forced towards the end of the war to conscript the sixteen year-old Rohlig. He fought at the battle for the bridge at Remagen.

Years later he would be the organist at Memorial Presbyterian Church in Montgomery, Alabama where my Uncle W. C., (aka Uncle Bubba) was a member. Uncle Bubba landed at Normandy on D-Day and walked his way across Europe managing to hit all the major historical events of the war in Europe including the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge and - the battle for the bridge at Remagen. Indeed, he and Rohlig had been shooting at each other across that bridge.

I once asked Uncle Bubba if he ever wanted to go back to Europe. He answered, “No, I walked across it once. That’s enough.” He only ever spoke to me about his experience in the war once as I drove him back home to Alabama from a family funeral in Texas. I wish I’d had a tape recorder going because I don’t remember a single specific about it save one. (Although I felt like a priest who ought to listen and not tell afterwards anyway.) The one thing he said that has stayed with me was his regret for “all those boys who died” which I understood to mean the ones he’d killed. He lived to be ninety and never quit having nightmares about the war.

Wallace Homady

The American Dream

Uncle Bubba respected the German soldiers while hating the Nazi regime. Neither he nor his brother, Uncle David who served in the Pacific Theater, set any store whatsoever by the French or the Japanese (or their “rice wagon” vehicles.) But a German soldier – or a good German car – was just fine in their book.

Rohlig sensed this in the American soldiers who ultimately captured him. He said they were so nice and respectful that he decided on the spot to move to America and become an American after the war. They swapped chocolate with him for whatever he had to offer. They treated him kindly.

Wallace Homady

“Totally against the Geneva Convention”

His American dream would be delayed by a three-year stint in a French prisoner of war camp on the Normandy coast. He and his fellow inmates were nearly starved and were given the task of looking for mines. They were sent out with prods they were to use to find the mines. “Totally against the Genva Convention” as Rohlig would say. He had no more love for the Frenchmen than my uncles. He couldn’t even bring himself to play French music – or at least none past Couperin. But, he said, the French women were a different matter.

The church in the nearby town had no organist. They caught wind that there was a German organist in the camp and sent for him there. He would come to the church under armed guard to play for the services. The ladies of the church knew about the conditions in the camp and always managed to hide a sandwich or other food in the organ bench. The priest was complicit and would distract the guard long enough for Rohlig to hide it under his clothes. He would take it back to the camp where he would parcel it out among his fellows.

Back at the camp there were firing squads and all kinds of tortures. When a crew found an undetonated bomb they were obliged to disarm it. They took turns being the one to do the disarming. On Rohlig’s turn he climbed into the pit they had dug under the bomb to pull the wires. The bomb exploded. Rohlig escaped with his life, and a badly wounded hand. It would take much rehab and determination to make it useful at a keyboard again.

The “Rohlig sound” at the organ always included a big bass sound. A very big bass sound. I have often thought he may have lost perception of some of the low frequencies in that explosion (along with many others in the war) and that he was compensating Beethoven style – making it loud enough to feel the bass.

Wallace Homady

Security

Before the war Rohlig attended the Bayreuth festival where the operas of Wagner were performed in their entirety each year. Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer attracted as he was to the Teutonic ideal of the “Übermensch“ (superman) that was played out in Wagner’s story lines.

Hitler would arrive in his motorcade surrounded by four tanks. There was no question of an attempt on the Führer’s life because if there was the slightest glint of steel among the throngs lining the streets as he arrived the tanks would train their turrets in that direction and fire indiscriminately. The result was that the crowd took care of any assassination attempt so as not to be killed themselves.

Later in life Rohlig got to the point where he couldn’t listen to Wagner any more. It’s over-the-top Romanticism would swell into memories of Teutons gone wrong, and, “and I ran to the record player and ripped ze needle off ze record.“

Wallace Homady

European Education

After the war Rohlig continued his musical studies both in Germany and in London. The chronology of this is fuzzy in my mind. In the chaos of post-war Germany the faculty was much depleted, and the students largely taught one another.

In London, on a dare, Rohlig played an orchestral concert as a trombonist. He had not previously played the trombone and had probably mouthed off to someone about how easy it would be. When they called his bluff he agreed to play the concert. He secretly had to practice his head off, but pulled off the concert.

Wallace Homady

Accent

Rohlig’s time in London marked his accent. When he didn’t sound German he sounded English. In sixty plus years of living in Alabama he never lost that accent. Some accuse him of keeping it on purpose as a trademark. In their defense it does seem unlikely that someone with his aural capacity in music wouldn’t be able to cultivate any accent he wanted. But he confided in me that this was difficult for him. He had tried and tried for example to pronounce “th” as Americans do by putting his tongue between his teeth, but he just couldn’t seem to do it. “Three” always came out sounding like “suh-ree” unless he said it too slowly for actual conversation. I, for one, wouldn’t have his accent sound any other way.

Wallace Homady

America. Hallelujah!

One week after his marriage to Ingeborg, they were on their way to America. Employers were opening up their businesses to Germans and other Europeans after the war, and Rohlig had had offers from all over the country, including the National Cathedral in Washington, D. C. But they wanted to start out “medium”, so they chose an offer from Linden, Alabama that, according to the misprint in their guidebook was a middle-sized city in the South.

In fact, Linden is a wide spot in the road on Alabama’s western border, near Cuba – not Castro’s – if you know where that is. It strikes me only now as I write this how home-like “Linden” would sound to a German given the big avenue in Berlin, Unter den Linden.

They arrived in this deep southern town and although it was not at all what they expected, they decided to take it as an adventure.

He played, Bach-style, for two churches in town. At his first communion service he discovered a cultural difference between Germany and America. In Germany communion is like an Easter celebration. In southern America it’s more like a Passion service, a funeral. So, he figured, “These Americans really like the Hallelujah Chorus, I’ll play that for the first communion” which he proceeded to do with full organ to the shock and awe of the entire congregation.

The organ was a shock and awe in and of itself. Shockingly awful. Accustomed as he was to the cathedral organs of Europe, the electronic keyboard appliance that presented itself in Linden was a come down to put it mildly.

Wallace Homady

American “Education”

The church ladies of Linden took the young German couple on as a project. They took them to the supermarket to show them how that worked. Rohlig said, “Of course, we had supermarkets in Germany, but we just played along.” At the check out a boy bagged their groceries. That they did not have in Germany. Rohlig thanked him and shook his hand.

Back in the car there was a stony, palpable silence. Perceptive and confused, Rohlig asked, “What’s wrong?” The ladies answered, “Well, Harald, that boy. We just don’t do that here. “ The bag boy had been black. Rohlig said to me, “And my mind began turning with the things I had just been through with the Jews in Germany.”

But Rohlig went right on shaking hands with everyone, black or white. One evening he looked out in his front yard and saw a cross burning there and a crowd of men standing behind it wearing white robes. With his symbolic mind he said to himself, “This must be some kind of folk festival. The cross represents the crucifixion, and the white robes represent the Holy Spirit.” So he went out to shake their hands.

They just stood there.

No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get anyone to respond to him. So he gave up and went back in the house.

“I had one good friend there who let me know what was what. He said, ‘Harald, you could have been killed!’ And when he told me who they were, I felt like such a dummy. Talk about an education, Vallace, I got an education!”

Wallace Homady

Heart of Dixie

Linden could neither hide nor hold the Rohligs for long. Huntgindon College in Montgomery soon sniffed him out and snapped him up to teach in their music department. He was for several years also the organist and choirmaster at Memorial Presbyterian Church. And then for fifty years he was the organist and choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Wallace Homady

Stream of consciousness

I tell the Rohlig stories all the time, in rehearsals, in class, at dinner parties, over drinks, wherever they come to mind. The preceding stories lend themselves to a chronological ordering. Those which follow do not. I reserve the right to group two or three together in a row because they fit nicely, but by and large they appear like they do in every day life – in whatever order they popped into my head.

Wallace Homady

Shaped-note oratorio

In Linden Rohlig passed out scores of the music of the great masters, Bach, Palestrina, and the boys to the faithful members of the choirs there. They protested that they couldn’t read that kind of music. Rohlig asked them what kind of music they could read. They answered “Shaped-note music.” So Rohlig made shaped-note editions of the music of the great masters and away they went!

Wallace Homady

“Almighty God is not a mouse!”

I discovered the extent of Mr. Rohlig’s accomplishment bit by bit on my own with very little help from the man himself, reticent as he was to taut himself. I was dumbfounded to uncover a volume of his organ compositions in the local music store, Mary’s House of Music. I was chuffed to find out that my organ teacher was published composer! I bought it straight away and went home and played it immediately. And then I was aghast. Sure, the form was the familiar chorale prelude as Bach or any of the other north Germans I had come to love might have composed, but the harmonic language was a brittle, dissonant thing, strange and uncomfortable to my ears. Indeed an affront to what I had come to know as good and beautiful. The last chord of one piece ended on a clashing sonority, a G major chord in the hands and an A flat in the pedal. No resolution. I took the score to my next lesson and with all the cheek and presumption of indignant youth called him on the carpet. What could he possibly mean by this?

“Vell, Vallace, almighty God is not a mouse!”

Wallace Homady

A farting rhinoceros

One of Mr. Rohlig’s organ teachers back in Germany insisted on a good, firm pedal line and ridiculed those who played clipped, cutesy pedal notes as sounding like a farting rhinoceros. Rohlig said, “And you know, Vallace, I have heard this as the zoo, and it DOES sound like a farting rhinoceros!”

Wallace Homady

Rohlig gets a cough

Mr. Rohlig had all the patience in the world for a student trying to perfect his playing. But very little for a professional performer who played below standard. He said, “You know, Vallace, some of these concerts are just so bad, I can’t listen. Rohlig gets a cough and has to leave.”

Wallace Homady

A good stiff beer

Rohlig attended such a concert with a lady friend who was also an organist. This time he felt obliged to stay until the end but the concert was so bad – maybe the rhinos were farting wildly - that they ducked out immediately at the end. “Let’s go get a good stiff beer.” said Rohlig, “I need to get my bearings!”

Wallace Homady

I only like it a little better

Eventually I studied both piano and organ with Mr. Rohlig, alternating weeks. There were two pianos in his studio one of which was a Chickering that bore the indentations of decades of fingernails crashing above the keyboard. I remember playing the second movement of Mozart’s Sonata in C Major. As I played the written part Rohlig invented a stunning second piano part on the Chickering doubling the bass line at the octave and making me feel as if I were accompanied by a whole orchestra. I was transported. Never had I experienced musical collaboration at such a high level. When I expressed my feeling of transport Rohlig told stories about improvising with his fellow students at the conservatory. How they would call out which key they were going to and be so in tune with one another as to be able to improvise simultaneously four, six, or even eight hands.

We moved on in time to play Bach’s Concerto in D Minor as arranged for two pianos. As the same feelings washed over me he said, “You know, Vallace, when I play this concerto with my female students I tell them that if I have the choice to play this with them or make love to them, I’d rather do this. But I only like it a little better!”

Wallace Homady

Among whom I am a dwarf

Topics for discussion in our lessons were broad and wide-ranging and often tended towards philosophy and theology. But more than what he had to say about any of that I was most impressed with the self-effacing way of he had of talking about it.

“The great thinkers, among whom I am a dwarf , . . .”

One man’s dwarf is another man’s giant. Next to him I felt perfectly Lilliputian!

Wallace Homady

Strawberries, whipped cream, and brandy

It wasn’t all soul and intellect. Rohlig talked about the glories of the creature’s physical life as well - how as a young man accompanying women singers he would steal kisses from them and how much he liked strawberries – “especially with whipped cream and a little bit of brandy poured over.”

Wallace Homady

“With the permission of almighty God, I lied.”

Rohlig had very particular ideas about what kinds of music are appropriate for the worship of almighty God. Only the music of the great masters was good enough and among those preferably only through Johann Sebastian Bach - with a few twentieth century composers making the cut.

When it came to music for weddings the traditional “Here comes the bride” of Wagner and Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” did not make muster. For him the Wagner mocked Christian marriage by saying, “Sure they were getting married and all but there vould be these little ‘side trips’.” And as for Mendelssohn, “He never intended this music for the church – the couple just ‘rides off into the sunset.’”

One couple for whose wedding he was to play were adamant about having this music. Try as he might to diplomatically persuade them otherwise they insisted. As a final resort he told them, “The truth is it’s too hard for me. I can’t play it. Vallace, with the permission of almighty God, I lied.”

I tried to keep the faith on this point which worked until my cousin asked me to play for her wedding. She must have known – probably from our grandmother – about my “Rohlig scruples” against those pieces. When she called to ask me to play she said, “I want you to play for my wedding, and we’re having ‘Here comes the bride.” That was that. You can be all high and mighty with other people, but there’s no convincing family!

Wallace Homady

Sand in the organ

Rohlig was playing for commencement exercises in Flowers Hall at Huntingdon College one spring in the 1950’s early in his tenure there. Right in the middle of the ceremony the auditorium organ died a dramatic death, moaning, wheezing, crackling, and jangling as it breathed its last. Rohlig moved to the piano to finish playing the ceremony.

Afterwards, the college president rushed up to Mr. Rohlig and asked, “Harald, what happened?” He answered, “I’ve been warning you that the organ was on its last leg and that we needed a new one.“

That may have been true, but Humpty was pushed. “Someone” had stolen into the organ the night before and filled it with sand and coat hangers.

A lady appeared next to the college president – a benefactor of the college - equally curious as to what had gone wrong. She asked Rohlig, “How much will it cost to get a new one?” He named a figure (having already designed the new organ to the last detail.)

She wrote a check.

Wallace Homady

Royal Purple

Whereas my home church gave me the imminence of God and fellowship, Rohlig’s church, St. John’s Episcopal, gave me His transcendence, transport, and rapture. The high vaulted, deep blue ceiling, the Tiffany windows, the language of the 1928 prayer book, the vestments and processions, the choir singing like angels from the back gallery, and above all Rohlig’s organ playing all conspired to create in me a sense of awe and wonder at the majesty of God.

Rohlig invited me from time to time to sing with his choir especially for the midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I remember standing at the back of the church ready to process with the choir singing the first hymn. When the verse about the wise men rolled around Rohlig changed the registration of the organ and the whole church filled inexplicably with the most beautful royal purple I have ever seen.

Wallace Homady

“Ladies, please don’t viggle.”

Rohlig always insisted on and got an ethereal, straight tone sound out of his choir for the Renaissance polyphony by which they they presented their best to almighty God. When a little vibrato would creep into the sound during rehearsal Rohlig was famous for saying, “Now, ladies, please don’t viggle.“ I’m pretty sure he was quite fond of feminine “viggling” in other contexts, but he wouldn’t stand for it in church.

Wallace Homady

Of great Merit

The smell of Merit cigarettes will forever be associated in my mind with organ lessons. Rohlig chain-smoked them during our lessons. So much so that Mother once asked me, “Do you ever smoke with him?” The truthful answer was, “No.” All the practice organs had cigarette burns on level surfaces where he would place his cigarettes as he demonstrated at the keyboard.

People smoked back then. I remember (old) Miss Sadie Alexander, my first grade teacher, smoked in class. We all sat “Indian-style” in front of the half-circle desk a relative had custom made for her classroom. We called it “Indian-style” back when people smoked. She would say, “Children, give me your eyes.” Tim Berryhill and I would pretend to pluck our eyeballs out of their sockets and roll them across the floor to her. Fred (now Alan) Enslen remembers an incident I don’t recall but do believe wherein Miss Alexander asked the class to give her a two syllable word. I raised my hand and answered, “Stu-pid.” Alan says “and she reached out with her nine-foot yard stick and slapped you across the knees.” What!?!?! It was a two syllable word!

In second grade I had a friend down the street, Amy. Her dad was in the Air Force and had a crew cut, aviator sunglasses, and a convertible sports car. He’d take us for a ride. I loved the smell of the first puff of his Winston cigarettes lighted with a Zippo. After that the smell was nasty. But something about that whiff of Zippo gas and the first puff of smoke I liked. And that musical click when he closed the lighter.

I was always trying to steal kisses from Amy, and she would fight me off. We were watching Bugs Bunny one afternoon as he was dressed in drag to trick Pete Puma. Bugs was fighting off Pete’s advances and looked into the camera and asked, “Goils, is this what you have to go through?” Amy answered with an emphatic, “Yes!!!!”

Wallace Homady

In the time of one cigarette

I sat for many hours waiting on lessons with Rohlig on the third floor of Flowers Hall. There were practice rooms and professors’ studios all up and down the hall. There was a constant cacaphony as all manner of instrumentalists’ and singers’ individual practice room work mixed together in the corridor. Rohlig said, “It’s like it’s own little symphony.”

He took his time with each student. Lessons almost never started on time, but you got your due when it was your turn. Just before my lesson one week as I waited in the hall a college student came running up to Mr. Rohlig saying that she needed a flute solo to go with an organ chorale they were about to play for performance class. Rohlig took the score, sat down on the bench in the hallway, lit a cigarette, and oblivious to the Flowers Hall symphony swirling around him heard the score in his head and composed a flute part. All three of us moved into the organ practice room where he played the chorale and she the freshly minted air for flute. He picked up his smoke, took a long drag and grinned, “In the time of one cigarette!”

Wallace Homady

Look at the little baby

Mr. Rohlig apologized profusely to me in a lesson one day for chewing gum. He was trying to quit smoking and was using nicotine gum. His wife gave him no end of grief about it.

“Mrs. Rohlig stopped smoking on a Tuesday. She just decided to quit and that was that. Now she laughs at me, ‘Look at the little baby chewing his gum!’”

Wallace Homady

That’s a WONderful procedure!

After several unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Rohlig stopped smoking definitively after having triple bypass surgery.

The summer after my first year in graduate school at Westminster Choir College in Princeton I worked in the Summer School Office. One of my duties was to shuttle the musical dignitaries who came to teach back and forth to their hotels.

In making shuttle conversation with Gerre Hancock, long time and much beloved organist and choirmaster at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue in New York, I brought up Mr. Rohlig, my main currency in the conversational trade of “who do you know” in such circles. Dr. Hancock did indeed know Mr. Rohlig and asked about his well-being. I reported I was worried because he was facing triple bypass surgery. Dr. Hancock, a veteran heart patient himself, said, “That’s a WOOOOONderful procedure.” (his voice rising characteristically on the ‘won’) “He’ll feel SO much better.”

Wallace Homady

You ape him

I went to Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi to study organ. I went there because my friends from church did and because I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to study music, French, or pre-ministerial studies. They offered all three.

Peter Infanger was the choir director and organ professor and Virginia Hoogenakker taught violin, theory, and was department chair. We used to spell her name to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song. H – o – o . . . g – e – n . . . a – k – k – e – r. Hoo- gen – NAKker!

I’m sure I never shut up about Mr. Rohlig. On breaks I would go back home and have lessons with him to check everything I was learning against the master’s opinion. I must have been exquisitely excrutiating to teach.

While I was studying at Belhaven Mr. Rohlig came to Jackson and gave an organ recital on the Austin organ at the Northminster Baptist Church where I would give my junior and senior recitals.

In class the next day Miss Hoogenakker who had been at the recital accused, “You ape him.“ I didn’t like the word at all. I was my own man!!! But now I am sure she was right. How could I not consciously or sub-consciously emulate the man I so venerate(d)? Emulate is still a nicer word than “ape”.

Funny story on those recitals at Northminster. I played a Bach trio sonata for my junior recital – the one in E flat. With the score right before my eyes I totally lost my place in the second movement and started making it up. Mr. Avery, the piano professor, sat next to Mr. Infanger at the recital. He leaned over and commented to Mr. Infanger, “This isn’t one of Bach’s more inspired middle movements.” To which Mr. Infanger replied, “Most of it isn’t Bach.”

Wallace Homady

It IS enough!

Rohlig once told me the story of an old veteran cellist who had seen and played it all. He was playing in the orchestra for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah that featured a young baritone in the title role. When he got to the big, famous aria he had sung himself completely out and was tanking. The old cellist leaned over to his stand partner and whispered, “It is enough!”

Wallace Homady

I just didn’t show up.

Mr. Rohlig certainly could be naughty. He had been training a local choral society to sing Handel’s “Messiah” and they just weren’t getting it up to his standard. “So, Vallace, I just didn’t show up any more.”

At the time I thought he was more than a bit rude. In my adult career I have come to understand this move. Adults, bless their hearts, unless they were properly trained in their youth are hopeless in my experience. Week after week you train them in the same techniques and the following week you have to do it all over again, Groundhog Day style. My hat is off to all directors who successfully work with adults.

Wallace Homady

I think God will remember our four-footed friends.

Mr. Rohlig had a love for “all creatures great and small.” He told me once that in heaven, “I think God will remember our four-footed friends.”

There was an “interregnum” or “entre deux guerres” period in my life that I style as a “personal sabbatical” - but I was really just without a job. I went back home to Montgomery – we’ve all done it – and leaned on the support of my parents. Mr. Rohlig hired me to sing in his choir.

I showed up for rehearsal one evening with Mitsy, a white Alabama terrier mutt I had that day adopted from the Humane Shelter. I didn’t want to leave her alone first thing. Mr. Rohlig kindly invited her to come to rehearsal. “I’m sure she will just sit quietly under your chair.” He was absolutely right. She did, contentedly soaking up the Renaissance polyphony swirling around her. That night began a relationship that lasted thirteen years, arguably the most successful domestic relationship I’ve ever managed to have.

Wallace Homady

Bach with tremulant

The members of Memorial Presbyterian Church didn’t know quite what had hit them when Rohlig showed up to be their church musician. He played full throttle Bach and all the rest for them. The rank and file, including my Uncle Bubba, didn’t know what to make of it. “Rohlig plays so loud!”

Mr. Rohlig hypothesized that they just wanted to be lulled to sleep rather than considering the deep matters brought to the fore by great music and theology. So he conducted a little experiment. He played the same music, but on soft string stops with full tremulant. When they said, “Harald, that was beautiful!” he exclaimed, “Aha, just as I thought!”

Wallace Homady

Guru for a day

Mr. Rohlig was the clinician for a church music conference, “You know, Vallace, guru for a day.” When they took a break for a meal he overheard conversation that denigrated the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues of Bach. Rohlig tapped his glass to get everyone’s attention and proposed that since they were so easy he was going to pass around a hat with numbers 1-8 in it. Any one who thought they were “so easy” would draw a number and play the corresponding “little” prelude and fugue in front of the conference. He didn’t get any takers. So he said, “I’ll play them all then.” After the meal everyone trundled off to the sanctuary and he played all eight – to thunderous applause.

Rohlig himself wrote seven little preludes and fugues, not presuming to do as many as the great man himself.

Wallace Homady

Almighty God has got to come up with something better than the Christian Church

Rohlig sometimes despaired of the state of the church. Bad theology. Bad music that souds like bad Broadway. Living rooms where sanctuaries ought to be. The priest babbles during the sermon. No one can hear it so they put in a microphone. Then it’s too echoey so they put in cushions and carpet. Then you can’t hear the music. “These people are able to operate in the every day world, why do they come to church and stop thinking? Almighty God has got to come up with something better than the Christian Church!”

Wallace Homady

Mary the Apostle

Growing up very Protestant – evangelical, reformed Presbyterian to be precise – I had a hard time with the Catholic view of Mary. And I was very dubious about the Catholic Mass. As usual, I passed all of this past Mr. Rohlig. He assured me that while the Catholics may go a bit far, the Protestants don’t give Mary enough credit. “She ought to be on a par with the apostles at least.”

One “organ” lesson I will never forget is the one where we read through the Roman Mass together. “The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit.” “You see, Vallace, the priest and the people greet one another back and forth”

He went on to point out the Biblical foundation of the rest of the Mass calling the Roman Mass “the great-grandaddy of all church services.”

I protested, “But what about spontaneity and being led by the Spirit?”

Rohlig calmly explained. “Have you ever noticed that in their ‘spontaneous’ prayers, people always end up praying for the same things? When the liturgy is the same every time your mind is free to soar. Each individual can mentally fill in his personal needs while everyone prays together communally.”

I shouldn’t really put quotes because I am paraphrasing many years later. But that was his intention. It made sense to me then, and still does today.

Wallace Homady

The remnant mentality

I was the about the only kid in town – no, I was the only kid in town - who played the organ. Rohlig did a great job of giving me a sense of purpose, mission, and worth in my solitude. He showed me how we could trace our musical lineage through music teachers all the way back to Johann Sebastian Bach himself. He explained how almighty God always kept a “remnant in Israel” who hadn’t bowed the knee to Baal. He said we were the chosen few selected to transmit the true faith to the next generation. Heady stuff for a teenager.

Rohlig himself sometimes suffered keenly from this “remant mentality” saying with Elijah, “And I, only I am left.” to the point of unhealthy depression.

I had the privilege later in life of bringing a Gileadan balm to soothe this malady. I assembled a group of my own students in Montgomery one summer to sit at the feet of the master and learn. We called it “Rohligfest.” I introduced them to their “musical grandfather”, and they got to experience their own Rohlig stories in first person.

Transmission complete. Seeds planted in the next generation.

Wallace Homady

I vill be available for all forms of surgery on Monday

Huntingdon College awarded Mr. Rohlig an honorary doctorate. I congratulated him on this in my organ lesson the week he was to receive it. Ever self-deprecating he joked, “Yes, Vallace, I vill be available for all forms of surgery on Monday.”

Although he was introduced to me as “Mister” Rohlig, I had always thought of him is being worthy of “Doctor”. It turns out that I was right. When Rohlig came to America he already had an earned doctorate but, naughty man, never admitted it. He confessed to me much later that this was due to the fact that he hadn’t much esteem for the accomplishment of his colleagues with so-called “doctorates” and didn’t want to be associated with the term. Cheeky!

Wallace Homady

Look at you!

Rohlig had a sweet way of turning a compliment back on the giver. My mother once complimented him on looking trim and he said, “Look at you! Look at you!”

He credited the stairs in Flowers Hall with his fitness. There were three floors of them which he ascended and descended several times every day. A very practical Stairmaster.

His daily routine included arriving at the the college in the morning (“I am an 8:30 person at the college”), teaching all day, home for dinner, then off to St. John’s Church to practice the organ for several hours. People were sometimes surprised to hear that he still practiced. But he was there every night perfecting repertoire and working out improvisations.

Wallace Homady

I think vhat happened . . .

When notes would go awry under my fingers during lessons, Mr. Rohlig always had an explanation that avoided assassinating my musical character. He never said, “You missed a note” but rather, “Vell, Vallace, I think vhat happened vas . . .” Then he would propose a way to fix it. Very affirming.

When I would miss an accidental he would excuse it blaming those long measures Bach wrote and how easy it was to forget one by the end of the measure.

His very presence would fix things sometimes. I would struggle with a passage I was practicing all week long. Then I would bring it up in my lesson and not miss a note. I’d say, “I promise I messed this up all week!” Rohlig would chuckle understandingly and say, “Daddy is here. Everything is all right.”

It was.

Wallace Homady

Buy a Bösendorfer

Rohlig taught hundreds of us along the way. Parents would bring their young children to him for piano lessons. He believed firmly that a beginning player ought to have the best instrument possible. A good instrument responds and sounds good right away. It makes you want to play more whereas a bad instrument discourages continuing. So important for ear and synapses alike to be formed by a good instrument at the beginning.

Rohlig had a method of convincing the fathers of these budding musicians to buy the best instrument they could afford. They would typically want to buy – or borrow from Aunt Gertrude – the least expensive spinet they could find until the child got better. Rohlig would tell them that in order for the child to get better they needed the best instrument possible, a Bösendorfer. “How much?” “$40,000.00” he’d say with a straight face.

After that they were glad to “escape” with buying a really nice piano that didn’t cost that much.

I substitued at the organ on Rogation Sunday for a little Episcopal church south of Jackson, Mississippi one week during college. Afterwards I was kindly invited to lunch at the beautiful antebellum home of a couple who were both doctors. They owned a Bösendorfer and were storing a second one side by side with it for a friend. No one in the household played the piano!

In my own experience I began piano at the age of seven. My mother convinced my dad to buy me a new piano – a Cable-Nelson that still stands in their home. After a year I quit. About a year after that I asked Mom if I could start taking lessons again. She said, “You can start yesterday!” in a way so vehement that I immediately understood the major strife she and Dad had had over the piano - until that moment successfully concealed. But she knew her willfull child would never stick with piano study until he decided to. I was off to Mrs. Bonnefield, a “saint of God” neighborhood piano teacher whose systematic, competent training gave me a solid foundation for “Rohlig study” without which I very well might not have survived.

Wallace Homady

Many are called, but few are chosen

During one of our organ lessons there was a soprano practicing next door and, bless her heart, she sounded like a screeching cat. Rohlig leaned over to me and said, “Many are called but few are chosen!”

Wallace Homady

We offer it to God, and God gives it to the people

Rohlig never worried about whether or not people “liked” his music in church. His philosophy was to prepare the best music he knew to the highest level of performance he could attain and offer that directly to God. “We offer it to God, and God gives it to the people.”

He felt the best place for the organ and the choir was in the rear gallery behind the congregation. Down front became too much of a performance with the emphasis on the performers. In the back the music became the focus instead of the ones making it and rose like incense to almighty God.

Wallace Homady

All smiles

During a piano lesson in Rohlig’s studio there came a knock at the door. It was Deborah, Mr. Rohlig’s adult daughter. The room lit up with smiles. In fact, all I remember about her short visit is that both of them smiled broad, bright, full-teeth smiles for the duration. People say things like “You could feel the love in the room” that seem cheesy and sentimental. In this case, it was true. After she left he absolutely glowed for the rest of the lesson.

Wallace Homady

Some things are for God’s eyes only

As a young man Rohlig went traveling in Italy with a friend. They had heard about a relief or a painting in an Italian church by a great master, which one I forget, that was hidden under the raised altar. They went to the church to try and see it. It was cordoned off. Rohlig took advantage of a distracted guard to step over the cordon and slip under the altar like a car mechanic. He felt hands on his ankles and was dragged out. Looking down at him the guard said, “Some things are for God’s eyes only.”

On the same or another trip to Italy, I don’t know which, Rohlig attended Mass. It may have been at St. Peter’s or the Sistine chapel or some anonymous parish church. In any event he found himself seated next to a devout old Italian lady with her rosary. He was fumbling with the missal and struggling with the language. About the time of the Our Father she patted him on the knee and said, “You say it in your language.” He changed to German, “Vater unser in Himmelreich . . .” and the church and the world became a little more Catholic.

Wallace Homady

“A good organ is like a good woman. She responds!”

Mr. Rohlig had many good organs and two good women in his life. He always had an eye for the ladies - right into old age - and they for him I dare say, but there were two that in their turns were “the one”.

Ingeborg was a German violinist who married him, accompanied him on his American adventure, gave him two children, Detlev and Deborah, and was the voice of domestic stability and reason in Mr. Rohlig’s heady, artistic life. When she died we almost lost Rohlig too.

Enter Jeanette, an American widow and former Rohlig organ student from the early days. Rohlig says, “She saved my life.” He calls her, “Darling”, or I should say, “Daaahling.” She brought the joy back into his life that went with Ingeborg’s passing and nursed him back to health. They had several vital, active years together before sickness and old age began to exact its inevitable toll. As of this writing, Janette is still seeing to his every need. He doesn’t “receive” often anymore, but all of us who love him are grateful to Jeanette for dedicating her life to caring for the one we hold so dear. He needed her. She responded. A good woman indeed!

Wallace Homady

Wrong Notes?

Sitting in the Gallery on Sunday morning was such a joy. As closely as I listened to his playing, I sometimes thought there was a rare wrong note in pieces familiar to me. But, not being sure about that, I asked him if he ever played wrong notes and if so, why was it so difficult to be sure they were indeed wrong notes. He grinned with that "superior" look and stated " I repeat the mistake and incorporate it into the music. Most people never know!"

Jeanette Rohlig

Wrong Notes 2

The wrong note story above reminded me of another "wrong note" situation. In the many pieces he wrote for me, he often used an A-B-A form where there was a first section (A), a second section (B) and a return to the opening A section to conclude the piece. Many composers use an abbreviation for going back to the beginning -- Da Capo (D.C.) meaning just go back and start over. I don't recall Harald ever doing this. He'd always write it out. When I used the computer to enter the notation, I'd often see something in the repeat of the A section that wasn't quite the same as it was the first time. One particular measure may have two eighth notes and a quarter note, and in the ending A section at the same place in the music, the same pitches were written as a quarter note and two eighth notes. I stopped pointing out these "errors" after a time or two of him telling me "No, I wanted it just slightly different the second time."

Dennis Herrick

Too Difficult

Harald loved to tell this story!
In the usual meeting with the bride to plan music for a wedding, the mother of the bride demanded "O Promise Me". No matter what reason he gave for not including it, and there are so many, and after much harassing from the mother of the bride over a period of time, he resorted to this; "Madam, I am embarrassed to tell you that this piece is too difficult for me to play!" She never bothered him again.

Jeanette Rohlig

Organ Registrations

One of my favorites is:
He was playing for the wedding of a child of former Huntingdon student at one of our local churches. As he was practicing before the service (he did not attend wedding rehearsals because he knew "what was going to happen"), the priest came up and made some organ registration suggestions. Calmly, he looked, as only he could, and said, "Madam, I didn't realize you played the organ. From which conservatory did your get your training?" Reportedly, she went away and he went back to practicing.

Randy Foster

Notating the music

Over the years Harald wrote many things I played on trumpet. He almost always had these composed in his head then just wrote it in notation by hand. When he brought the notation to me (handwritten) I put it in a computer program and made it look better. I thought that was a good partnership. He wrote the music and I made it look pretty!! After it was in the computer I could play it back and often this was the first time he'd heard it. On more than one occasion he said "It sounds like I thought it would!!"

Dennis Herrick

Yet to be Composed

Harald and I often played for various convocations at Huntingdon. In 1993 we were asked to do a selection on the Founder's Day program. He said he would write a new piece for this occasion. I thought this was great!! As the date approached Harald would drop by my office and say they wanted the name of the piece to put in the program. He said "I keep telling them it's not written yet! It's yet to be composed". This happened several times. When he finally brought me the music to put i notation, there wasn't a title on the manuscript. As a joke I titled it "Yet to be Composed" -- the title stuck!!

Dennis Herrick

Improvisations

For most of this past summer I was working on this web site. Most of the source material was from radio shows Harald had done in the early '60s. Most of the music on the tapes was introduced by him, but often the last selection wasn't introduced. I learned he had to have 24 minutes of music on the tape. He would have a list prepared and when he finished playing that he'd look at the clock to see how much time remained. 3 minutes? OK, then there was a 3 minute improvisation to fill the time. Even knowing that I had to play these for him to make sure that was the case. For all I knew it could just as well have been a piece I didn't know that filled the time. So I would start the music playing..... he'd nod his head "Yes, this is improvisation". Then after a little bit more he'd say "That one came out pretty good!" I don't think he'd heard many of these before!!

Dennis Herrick