JOHN SCOTT Virtuoso Organist and Director of Music at St Paul’S Cathedral and Saint Thomas Church in New York
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JOHN SCOTT Virtuoso organist and director of music at St Paul’s Cathedral and Saint Thomas Church in New York In the world of church music John Scott was a master in the mould of JS Bach. At the height of his powers, Scott transformed Saint Thomas Church in Fifth Avenue, New York where he was organist and director of music, into a place of pilgrimage. It is as much as many musicians can do to reach the top in one role, but Scott was unusual in combining two in one person — world-class organist and world-class choir trainer. He remained quietly spoken and humble. If the rector thanked him for a thrilling performance, he would blush and say: “Thank you Father, that is very kind of you to say so but it was the choir who did it.” He understood every detail of the ceremonial as much as the motes on the hundreds of pages of music manuscript — Easter with brass, the Fauré Requiem with orchestra, a Handel concert with period instruments. The church was often full to overflowing and people travelled from all over the world to hear him play the organ and listen to his choir. However, Scott was not a US native but a red-headed Yorkshireman who was always prepared to stand his ground and prove himself right. He thought it was amusing when Canon Carl Turner was appointed rector of Saint Thomas Church because Turner was born in Hull. “Well, Father”, he used to say, “They appointed me and I’m from Wakefield.” John Scott was the youngest of three children born to Dr Gavin Scott, a Wakefield GP. His father worshipped, played the organ and sang in the choir at Wakefield cathedral and passed on his passion for music to his son who became head chorister. However, along with several of the other boys, his voice changed and he began singing as a baritone. Jonathan Bielby, the organist, had no choice but to retire him. Scott, already in love with the life that would claim him, was reluctant to go and asked if he could play at Wakefield. Bielby, in need of help, told Scott to practise, and return in a month with a list of pieces he could play. He expected two sides of A4. A week later, Scott came back with eight sides of hugely difficult pieces. Bielby took over his tuition but saw himself as guide rather than teacher, because, even at that point, Scott’s technique was phenomenal. Soon after this, in 1971, Scott was elected to membership of the Royal College of Organists. He was still in his teens when he was awarded the college’s associateship diploma with Limpus Prize. His mistakes were so rare that it became a challenge among organists to listen for anything at all. Throughout all his subsequent years at St Paul’s in London, just one wrong note is attested, during Zadok the Priest. It can be the mark of a bad musician to blame his instrument for error but Scott never did this, even when it was in fact the fault of the instrument. On one occasion, while he was still at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield, Scott played harmonium in Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle which Bielby was conducting in Wakefield cathedral. Towards the end of the first part he began pedalling more and more furiously as the instrument lost wind. One of the pedals was disconnected. He and Bielby spent the whole interval lying on the floor, trying to connect the offending pedal with a piece of string. Scott went up to St John’s College, Cambridge as an organ scholar in 1974 serving as assistant organist to George Guest. On one occasion, when Guest became ill, Scott had to step in with almost no notice to direct the college choir of boys and men in a live broadcast for the BBC. He was soon invited to play an evensong at St Paul’s in London. St Paul’s and Southwark together hatched a plan to lure him to London after his four years at St John’s were up. Southwark found him a place to live. He became organist at St Paul’s in 1985 and director of music in 1990. There was less need for the strict security measures and an established organist could easily gain entrance to a cathedral past the night watchman. Scott practised at St Paul’s and Southwark through the night and into the early hours of the mornings, until he was note perfect in all of his vast repertoire. During his time at the cathedral he directed services to mark the 100th birthday of the Queen Mother and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. By 2004, Scott was considering his next steps. The choir master Barry Rose was watching a football match in Manchester when he received a call from the director of music at Saint Thomas Church, a French gothic-style church in the Anglican Catholic tradition which is at the heart of Episcopal church life in New York. Saint Thomas Church wanted to know: “Who is there?” Inevitably, Scott’s name came up. The announcement soon came that he was to cross the Atlantic. Churches in the US pay high salaries for good musicians and while he was not in the least mercenary, Scott joked before he left that he would be earning more than the Archbishop of Canterbury. Scott and the team at Saint Thomas Church had innumerable plans for the future. He was energised about the building of a new organ. He had a deep Christian faith and insisted that Bach’s motto, Soli Deo Gloria, The Glory to God Alone, which Bach wrote at the end of all his sacred compositions, should be carved in the new organ case, as a reminder of why excellence in liturgical music was so important. He also wanted endowments to support choristers and encourage new compositions from young musicians. Scott had found happiness with his second wife, Lily Ardalan, and she is expecting their first child. As well as his wife, he is survived by his children, Emma and Alex, from his first marriage to Jane Lumsden (daughter of the organist Sir David Lumsden) which was dissolved in 2010. When he played the organ he nearly always got a standing ovation. He played pieces that other organists did not want to play. His playing of baroque music was exemplary. He was at home in every style, especially Tudor music, his idol Bach, the romantics and modern music, much of which was inspired by, and specially written for him. His concerts received superlative reviews in The New York Times. Sir Simon Rattle asked him if the choristers of Saint Thomas Church would sing in his performance of the Bach St John Passion with the Berliner Philharmoniker, staged by Peter Sellars, in 2014. After the last performance Sir Simon praised the choristers as among the best he had ever worked with. Fans would travel across continents to hear Scott because they knew beyond doubt that every recital would be a special musical occasion. Yet in spite of his apparently seamless rise to greatness, he did not achieve all his ambitions. He once let slip to the organist at York Minster, John Scott Whiteley, that he had dreamt once of being organist there. He did play at York many times, and Whiteley turned the pages for him in the minster as he ripped through an electric performance of the Moto ostinato of Petr Eben. Both John Scott organists found amusement in the similarity of their names. After Whiteley won the National Organ Competition in 1976 and Scott won the Manchester Competition in 1978, they would take joy in appearing together in the programmes in the same recital series. Asked to give a recital at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St Petersburg, Scott noted with amusement the confusion of the Russians in a letter to Whiteley: “Someone sent me an advance flyer with, you guessed it, you instead of me. Not only that, but the hotel booking has you sharing the room with my wife. Now steady on.” Scott never stopped working and travelled the world on many tours and under the Hyperion label recorded a body of work now regarded as classic. Under his direction, St Paul’s choir toured three continents. In spite of the radical changes in church music, Scott never lost his faith in the public appeal of English choral music. While at St Paul’s he told The Times: “I’ve often snuck in at the back of the cathedral during evensong and watched how the music touches the congregation. It inspires them, in the same way as the magnificent architecture does.” John Scott, organist, was born on June 18, 1956. He died from a heart attack on August 12, 2015, aged 59 .