Podcast Episode: Chapel Organ Scholar Develops as a Musician, Leader, and Educator
Each week, Duke Chapel Organ Scholar David Lim plays the Chapel’s four organs dozens of times for services, weddings, rehearsals, demonstrations, and concerts. He is honing his skills as a church musician—from arranging music to administration to leading rehearsals—before he heads on to a job this summer as a parish music director. In the latest episode of our Sounds of Faith podcast, we talk with Dr. David Lim, and hear him play, to learn how he is developing as a musician, leader, and educator—and find out why he stuck a pencil in an organ keyboard!
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Transcript
James Todd: Welcome to Sounds of Faith, a podcast exploring traditions of faith, sacred music, and spoken word here at Duke University Chapel. During a recent concert here at Duke Chapel, organ scholar David Lim played this piece by J.S. Bach, Pieze d'orgue. It is one of the dozens of times each week that Lim is at one of the Duke Chapel's four organs playing for services, weddings, rehearsals, demonstrations, or concerts. As a Duke Chapel organ scholar this year, he is honing his skills as church musician, from arranging music to administration to leading rehearsals, before he heads on to a job as a parish music director. I'm James Todd, Director of Communications, and I am here with Duke Chapel organ scholar David Lim to learn about how he is developing as a musician, leader, and educator. Dr. David Lim, welcome to Sounds of Faith.
David Lim: Thank you, James. What a lovely way to spend a Tuesday morning.
James: Yes, right here in Duke Chapel. You've just been practicing the organ, as is your want, and we were listening there to Pieze d'orgue by J.S. Bach you played at a recent concert here. So I'm curious, how did you select the piece, and then the second layer is how did you select the Aeolian organ as the chapel organ to play this on?
David: So I didn't select it per se. Dr. Philip Cave, before I even arrived at Duke, had kind of sketched out his plan for the Bach series concert, and Pieze d'orgue was one of the pieces that he had on his repertoire list. And so I hadn't played it before and started learning it.
James: So this was an assignment that you started from ground zero.
David: Right. Yeah.
James: Typically, often by default, Bach organ pieces would be played on the other organ, the Flichner organ.
David: Yeah. That I think is kind of what people would expect. I like to do things maybe a little differently, perhaps to the bane of my existence, I don't know sometimes. But I thought the Aeolian offered a different lens to kind of view this piece of music that is kind of a staple of the organ repertoire. And so to use the Aeolian and to cast that piece in a different light I thought was a fun and exciting opportunity.
James: And so playing it on the Aeolian, obviously it's a piece you had heard before.
David: Yeah.
James: But in practicing to perform it in a concert, what did you learn about it musically? What kind of nuances did you find out?
David: Yeah. It is one thing to say woodshed it and learn it at the practice room, and then to come here and you kind of have to relearn what all your fingers have done because your ears are adjusting to the vastness of the space and the acoustic. So what I was finding is kind of my first go at the thing, things were getting kind of they were gumming up because the acoustic and the Aeolian is a big instrument. So I pared down my registration to something that is a little bit thinner and a little cleaner that helps the articulation kind of cut through the acoustic and so forth. And taking it to the harpsichord too just helped my articulation.
James: Pieza d'orgue, this was just one assignment you've had this year, and I'm wondering, you obviously applied to be the organ scholar here, moved from Minnesota. So what was it that you were hoping to learn or drew you to Duke Chapel, to the organ scholar role?
David: Well, it's a dynamic place. There's always stuff going on. I mean, every weekend there's concerts or lectures. So it's a very dynamic and engaging place like that. The Chapel music staff is such a great resource. Dr. Zeb Haibach, Chapel organist Chad Fothergill, and Dr. Philip Cave, there's lots of wisdom there to be gleaned and to be learning from. And so even though I have a terminal degree, my mother likes to remind me, you know, the higher you go, the more you realize you don't know. And so that was one of the things that was interesting about coming to Duke is realizing and knowing like yes, I know lots of things, but there's always more to learn, and Duke was a great place to learn yet more.
James: Yes. And I've seen you also with John Santuani, our organ curator. 'Cause you also have an interest in sort of the building of organs.
David: Yeah. And so it's been really quite a lot of fun to chitchat with John and go pester him in his workshop downstairs. And he's been gracious enough to kind of take me through the organs and kind of give me the insight, literally the inside scoop. Having him take me through the organs actually affects how I use the organs.
James: Interesting.
David: Like in that Pieze d'orgue piece, that last section, the fast section. I was using primarily the solo division, which is on this side of the chapel.
James: Left side.
David: And I wanted to use some stuff from that side because it's right in the front of the case, and so it speaks kind of most promptly down the nave, and it's the most clear thing to use. And so in that section that kind of demanded a good attempt at clarity, using stuff up in the solo division helped achieve that.
James: Even the sort of mechanics and physics of it matter.
David: Yeah.
James: So you mentioned there's always a lot going on here. You recently played a piece that was kind of an interesting choir and organ piece. It's Weary of All Trumpeting by our own music director.
David: Yeah.
James: Zebulon Highben. So I want to listen to that and then get you to talk about why this was such an interesting piece for you. So that is Weary of All Trumpeting by Dr. Zebulon Highben, Chapel music director, as played by Dr. David Lim on the organ with the Duke Chapel choir singing in a recent Sunday morning service. So David, I'm wondering what, of all, you've played tons of hymns and anthems and postludes and preludes in services here. Why does this one stick out as an especially sort of interesting piece for you?
David: Well, for a lot of reasons. One, the text is kind of a very arresting text. The imagery of the trumpet in kind of two forms, kind of the weary trumpet, and then also kind of the clarion call to.
James: What is being expressed. Through this Weary of All Trumpeting text that's coming out musically?
David: So in film music, there's this thing called Mickey Mousing, where the sounds you hear directly relate to what you're seeing on screen. And so my brain kind of operates through that lens every so often. And so the title Weary of All Trumpetings, okay, what's a weary and a trumpet kind of sound? Okay, so that kind of is immediate fodder for me at the organ and then accompanying the choir.
James: 'Cause you're choosing stops.
David: Right. Exactly, yeah. And so I think what I ended up going with is the stop over in the choir division, which is there.
James: On the right.
David: And it's called the orchestral oboe, and it's, if you look at the pipes, they're very thin, and so they kind of produce this very, it's not a robust sound. It's a very peculiar sound that kind of cuts right through the texture. And so to my mind, in that moment, weariness and something that is related to a trumpet kind of sound that we would get. Then later on in the piece, I think in the third stanza, things kind of bloom from there. And so in that moment when things get big, and it's kind of one of those clarion call type things, one of the big tubas in the solo gets used.
James: You switch stops.
David: And so that's, yeah. And so that is a proper trumpet sound. So kind of again relating or conveying that duality of the kind of trumpeting that's happening.
James: Now, in a recent Sunday service, you actually stuck a pencil in an organ.
David: Sorry, John.
James: And as far as I know, you didn't get in trouble for that.
David: No, I don't think so.
James: Okay.
David: Actually, I think John may have encouraged me to do it. I forget which.
James: Okay. So yes, what is the story about sticking the pencil in an organ?
David: So I played this piece by Paul Hindemith, who's a German composer, and he wrote three organ sonatas. And so I played the first movement from his first organ sonata. Music likes themes. A theme is presented. More often than not, the theme has a friend, another theme. So one of the themes comes back at the very end, and in the score, it comes kind of in the middle of all the textures. It's kind of buried. And one thing that a mentor of mine taught me when I was learning this piece is that you take that melody that's buried, you solo it out somehow. That creates problems in that spot though because you're holding, I think it's B flats in octaves, and my hands are not big enough to reach so far. And so to kind of play all of the notes, you have to stick a pencil into one of the keys so that that high pitch sustains through all of that, and you can manage all of the other moving voices. And then at the very end, you take your fourth and your fifth finger, and you kind of pull the thing out. It's kind of reading between the lines of what the composer has given you on the page.
James: He doesn't say at this point stick a pencil in.
David: No.
James: You're just like how can I keep all these notes in the melody going. Okay.
David: Yeah.
James: I think it would be a great thing if a composer told me please yank the pencil out.
David: Yeah.
James: Yeah.
David: On the music staff what notation would that be.
James: Yeah.
David: That's a note for whoever is right.
James: That's something.
David: Listening out there will figure it out.
James: Yeah. So we've been talking about Sunday service, but you also play regularly for the Evensong service, and there's a contrast here in the sort of style.
David: Yeah.
James: So Evensong is English cathedral music.
David: Yep.
James: The Evensong singers, it's a highly auditioned choir, very high level of musicality. Dr. Philip Cave conducts. And you rehearse regularly with the group.
David: Yep.
James: How has Evensong in particular figured in with your formation here as an organ scholar?
David: One, it's a different service. I think people are used to kind of Sunday morning stuff, word, water, bread, wine, communion, all of this kind of all of the preaching, all of this stuff. So just kind of in and of itself as a worship service, it offers something very different.
James: Yeah.
David: And I think that nourishes people in a different kind of way. And so to be able to kind of do that on a regular basis like we do here is really edifying for me personally and hopefully for the other people who attend, for the singers, for the whole lot. They undertake different repertoire than chapel choir or different styles of repertoire. There's lots of stuff that's been composed in the last 50 years that they undertake, that it challenges them in a way, and they also undertake a lot of Renaissance motets. The whole Anglican psalmody format is one of the most difficult things organists can do. Your eyes are bouncing between a psalm tone and text, and responding to the choir, and kind of portraying what's happening in the psalm tone. And so that's just a very kind of nuanced discipline that organists sometimes don't have opportunities to dig into. And so I appreciated kind of getting into the weeds of all of that.
James: So talking about evensong as something that you were sort of newly focused on here at Duke Chapel, you already know you've got a job lined up for when the organ scholarship here finishes. You're gonna be a music director at a parish back in Minnesota.
David: Yep.
James: So congratulations.
David: Thank you.
James: That's an organ scholar success story right there. And I'm wondering what from this year you imagine taking into that job that either you might start with right away, if I don't know how rehearsals are conducted, or that you kind of have in your back pocket that once you get settled you know here's something I'm gonna pull out and try at this parish.
David: Yeah. I'll be ending up at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is kind of a really healthy, robust parish in the Twin Cities. So I'm really looking forward to that. There's innumerable things that I'll take with me to that position.
James: Yeah.
David: You mentioned rehearsals. With evensong rehearsals and chapel choir rehearsals, and seeing how Dr. Cave and Dr. Highben lead rehearsals, you're always kind of, so to say by osmosis, gleaning tips and tricks that are helpful to ensembles. And so there's a pile of stuff that I'll take to those ensembles at Gloria Dei and kind of steal a little bit of their magic here and there.
James: Yeah.
David: Pragmatically, to operate in a system like Duke Chapel where everything kind of affects everything. And being able to communicate and kind of do the admin, kind of the unfun things.
James: Yeah.
David: So to say, the non music side of positions like that, to have spent some time in such a network. Like Duke Chapel, and to see how a healthy system can operate, I certainly wanna kind of take that model of a really big program, a really big parish church.
James: Yeah.
David: Chapel program, what have you, and kind of use some of those systems that exist here for the music program there. And I'll have to get you a report when I land there.
James: Okay, yeah.
David: And let you know.
James: In six months, right?
David: All of the things I've stolen from Duke.
James: Yeah. Certainly it's a big operation here, so you'll take that with you.
David: Yeah.
James: So I wanna wrap up with as you're looking ahead and if when you look back on this time, this year here at Duke Chapel, if there is a piece of music or a moment that when you look back might be a touchstone for you.
David: Now that's a question. Good on you. You could go for the obvious answers.
James: Yeah.
David: I mean I've played for the Archbishop of Canterbury, services when he was here, or noted theologians like Barbara Brown Taylor, et cetera. I think what I'll take away most not that I'm not appreciative of those moments and those opportunities but it's the small moments like right now. Chit-chatting with you.
James: Right.
David: Or chit-chatting with John downstairs, or dropping into someone's office, or having a cocktail after. It's those kinds of moments that I think I will miss most. Sorry that I don't get to annoy you next year. But I mean it really is those small moments of engaging with your colleagues and the people who enrich the work that you do that I will miss most I think.
James: There's a musical theological community here that's kind of organic and robust.
David: And so kind of the day in and day out of all of that, and the joy that comes from being surrounded by people who so deeply care about what they do, that is really a joy and a treat, and I will miss experiencing that and sharing that with everybody at Duke Chapel.
James: Wonderful. Dr. David Lim, thank you for sharing your music, your talents, your insights, your chit-chatting with us. And I know there's still more time at the Chapel, but certainly best wishes at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul, where you will be director of music.
David: Yeah.
James: So congratulations again on that.
David: Thank you. And thank you for a lovely interview. Best way to spend a Tuesday.
James: This has been Sounds of Faith from Duke University Chapel. Learn more about the Chapel's mission, ministry, events, and programs at chapel.duke.edu.
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