I have some fond personal memories of Roger Wagner from 1968, when I attended the church music conference at Boys Town, Neb. I think he used to be there every year with his entire chorale and, of course, was one of the biggest of several major names to participate.

He conducted the conference in performances of the Bloch Sacred Service and the Bach St. John Passion, among other works.

His personality was very strong and colorful. He was passionately outspoken but also had a marvelous sense of humor. There were many troublemakers at this conference who wanted various types of liturgical trash in the name of "the spirit of Vatican II" and seemed determined to throw sand in the gears when it came to the conference's purpose of promoting the finest music. I understand there was even an unauthorized celebration of mass in one of the chapels one evening by a bunch of guitar-strumming renegades. Incidents like that probably contributed to this being the penultimate church music conference of the long series at Boys Town, and their being discontinued was a great loss to American church music.

I remember his efforts to get certain sopranos to sing with less vibrato. He told one after briefly hearing her, "you're ready for the Met!" (which was not meant as a compliment). He disliked the English mass ("Lord-have-mercy-lord-have-mercy-lord-have-mercy Christ-have-mercy-Christ-have-mercy-Christ-have-mercy Lord-have-mercy-Lord-have-mercy-Lord-have-mercy", he gasped, all in one breath, and then panted for about five seconds.) He could also be very severe with his own Chorale singers if he suspected that they had not done their assigned individual practice to familiarize themselves with new music.

In a number of discussions in which revisionist conferees challenged the standards he stood for, he often invoked "Pope Pius X, SAINT Pius X" in his encyclical Motu Proprio. Someone denied that it is any longer possible to hold up universal standards of beauty and excellence because various people find various music beautiful. His response to this was especially memorable. He retorted, "You wanna bet?" and then likened the pure counterpoint and harmonies of a Palestrina mass to a brilliant sunset, whose beauty is self-evident to all, regardless of their level of education, their understanding of what makes sunsets, or experience of sunsets being used by artists. What is less universal, he said, than recognizing beauty is desiring beauty. Personally, I think he was more right than wrong in this. In her book The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand said something rather similar. She observed that if you ask various people to describe the emotions evoked by a piece of music, there will be a great deal of agreement in their analyses. Yet there may be great disagreement as to whether the listeners enjoy the music and the emotions which it represents. And in a discussion about the function of art in a Bitnest list in which I am active (not made up primarily of artists), I opined that the purpose of art is to capture and transmit beauty. Many people disagreed, some saying quite baldly that their favorite art is deliberately ugly.

I also recall a wonderful anecdote, apparently true, about the boychoir school he used to have in California. A British "adjudicator" was visiting, who told Roger that the best choir he ever heard was that of Westminster Cathedral, and was particularly impressed by their ability to sight-read a polyphonic mass in performance.

It so happened that a package arrived on Roger's desk that day. He opened it in the visitor's presence, saying, "Oh, what have we here.... a new mass! We have been waiting for this music a long time. Why not sing it tomorrow?" Actually, these were replacement copies for one of the choir's most familiar settings, such a staple in their repertoire that they had worn out the original copies from long use and the characteristic pranks of the boys such as cutting out the letter "M" from "Mass" on the cover. But, not to be outdone by the choir of Westminster Cathedral, he would not inform the adjudicator of this fact.

Sunday morning, he passed out the new copies to the choir with instructions to read this beautiful new mass very carefully and do it as much justice as possible. And the performance indeed went well. Roger noticed the guest taking a particular interest in the ravishing singing of a solo boy during one of the movements.

Afterword, the adjudicator gave a glowing assessment of their accuracy, attention to dynamics, and spirit and declared that their performance was just as good as what Westminster would have done sight reading a new mass. And then he continued, "But one of you has done even more. Never in my life have I witnessed the astonishing feat of a boy sight-reading a difficult solo with the music held upside down!"

I don't imagine that there will be very many such anecdotes in a scholarly Festschrift. But they are part of what has made him an unforgettable personality, at least to this delighted conferee at an impressionable age. We must certainly give thanks for his work and lament the passing of the environment in which he pursued it.

Paul Emmons

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