Organist Retiring on High Note

It was the power of the pipe organ that first grabbed Thomas Harmon as a lad of 11 when he heard it thunder at First Methodist Church in Springfield, Ill.

More than half a century later, as he prepares to step down as curator of UCLA’s five organs, Harmon has grown to cherish the more delicate qualities of the “king of instruments.”

“I appreciate the organ’s infinite variety of more subtle colors,” he says

After 34 years at UCLA, during which he oversaw refurbishment of Royce Hall’s famed organ not once but twice after earthquakes sent the towering pipes tumbling like so many pickup sticks, Harmon, 62, will play his farewell recital tonight.

A “privileged career,” he calls it. Privileged, perhaps, but also marked by challenges--as earthquakes, floods and performance-hall remodelings can attest.

When Harmon arrived at UCLA as a fledgling assistant professor after a year and a half as acting university organist at Stanford, he made it one of his first tasks to renew interest in Royce Hall’s rundown and nearly unplayable organ. Within a year, the instrument--created by the premier Skinner Organ Co. of Boston and originally installed in 1930--was once again in good form, with a new, movable console.

A thorough cleaning and the replacement of the worn leather covering thousands of pneumatic pouches and many bellows were completed in 1971--just in time for the Sylmar earthquake.

That temblor, Harmon says, dealt the organ a “discouraging blow,” causing a large set of pedal pipes to topple into 400 smaller pipes below, damaging all beyond repair and showering the freshly cleaned organ with dirt and plaster debris. The crushed pipes were replaced.

In the early 1990s, another releathering of the Skinner was ordered up. It was finished weeks before the January 1994 Northridge quake severely damaged Royce Hall and its organ.

With Royce in need of renovation, Harmon persuaded the university to enlarge and modernize the Skinner organ. A new five-manual, computer-augmented console was built. And the pipe chamber over the stage, which towers more than 50 feet above the auditorium floor, was enlarged. It now holds 6,200 pipes. After nearly six silent years, Harmon inaugurated the refurbished instrument in late 1999.

At a three-hour rehearsal Saturday morning, Harmon gave new meaning to multitasking. Sporting special thin-soled black shoes, his feet danced across the pedal keyboard and moved the slanted expression pedals, opening and closing large shutters above and behind the pipes to make the music louder or softer. His hands zipped across the five keyboards, creating a pleasing cacophony.

UCLA has been home to only three other university organists. The first, Alexander Schreiner, performed three recitals a week to large audiences from 1930 to 1939, and went on to redesign the Mormon Tabernacle organ in the 1940s. His successor, George McManus, was better known as a pianist. Then in 1941 came Laurence Petran, who served until Harmon came on board.

Harmon earned graduate degrees at Stanford and at Washington University in St. Louis. He also studied for a year in Vienna as a Fulbright scholar with Anton Heiller, one of several mentors who encouraged Harmon to specialize in the organ works of Bach. Harmon’s doctoral dissertation, “The Registration of J.S. Bach’s Organ Works,” still stands as the definitive study.

University organists are a relatively rare breed, probably numbering in the hundreds, compared to the thousands of church organists, Harmon noted. They can approach their careers in unusual ways.

In the 1970s, for example, Harmon gave his recitals in two parts. They would open in Schoenberg Hall, running until intermission, when he and his audience would migrate to Royce.

His farewell recital--in just the one location this time--will encompass sounds great and small, from the muscular “Prelude and Trumpetings” by Myron Roberts and Bach’s “Passacaglia” to Dietrich Buxtehude’s delicate “Fantasia on the Chorale.”

Among Harmon’s standout memories is serving as chairman of UCLA’s music department for seven years. He also fondly recalls collaborating with many big names, including Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Mehli Mehta (Zubin’s father) and the American Youth Symphony; and Jose Limon, the modern dance choreographer.

Colleagues laud him as an inspiring leader devoted to high standards of instrument building and musicology.

“He’s been a superb colleague and a good friend, one you could always count on,” said Ladd Thomas, a professor of music and chair of the organ department at USC’s Thornton School of Music.

If Harmon’s father had had his way, Thomas Harmon would have spent his career wielding a scalpel rather than pounding out organ works. He began college as a pre-med student, and his two younger brothers went on to become physicians like their father, who in his spare time was a talented saxophonist. He died in 1989, having accepted only with great difficulty Harmon’s decision to pursue a music career.

Harmon is phasing in his retirement. He recently stepped down after 20 years as organist at First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica. He will continue to teach at UCLA until June, when he plans to move to Medford, Ore., with his wife, Sue. The couple remarried in December after having been divorced for 14 years. They plan to spend their time cooking and gardening.

How successful he will be at leaving the concert organ behind remains to be seen. His relationship with the instrument, Harmon says, “was love at first sight--and hearing.”