Let Us Now Praise Famous Organists

I have written before about the power of media (books, in particular) as tangible objects. This point was driven home today as I was cataloging (a word that looks misspelled, but isn't) my organ literature. Much of it, as it happens, is inherited, and I hope to someday pass it on to someone else. Much of the inherited stuff, it appears, was itself inherited, for many of the older volumes are marked with the distinctive signature of a Hans Vigeland (a wonderfully Norwegian name). My curiosity piqued, I hurried to the internet, where a summary search reveals that Mr Vigeland was an "internationally acclaimed organist and arranger" from Buffalo, New York. For a man who's been dead for decades, there's a remarkable amount of information to be found about him:

• Before joining (or being conscripted into?) the army, he was organist and choirmaster at First Congregational Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was a soldier at Camp Croft, South Carolina, and served as organist in town. This hilariously inaccurate 1941 article from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal describes a concert he was to give at the First Baptist Church there. (The article was clearly written by a newspaperman with no knowledge of music: "This piece opens and closes with a light scherzo sounding pattern, the middle section contrasting in touch, in the form of a canon." "The main theme is introduced in the pedal, and because of its treatment is compared to what is nowadays associated as a passacaglia." "Handel, who was Purcell's successor as England's outstanding composer, is said to have been strongly influenced by Purcell's music." Huh!) A guest article Vigeland wrote for the Herald-Journal reviews a performance of The Pirates of Penzance. The money quote? "Miss Platt's singing was as easy to the ear as her appearance to the eye."
  
• From 1949 to 1975 he served as organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo, where he must've presided over the installation of the 84-rank Aeolian-Skinner organ completed in 1958.
  
• His son Nils is now chair of the composition department at the Manhattan School of music, and is famous enough to warrant his very own (one-sentence) Wikipedia page.
  
• Knut Nysted, a notable composer whose choral music you might actually be expected to've heard of, was apparently a friend: he dedicated at least one piece to Vigeland, and in copies of programs (tucked away into the very music I now possess) one sees that Vigeland played pieces by Nysted.
  
• One suspects Vigeland may have had a sense of humor. He was known to "play" Cage's music. He is responsible for the placement of the image of Duke Ellington among the saints in the windows at Westminster Presbyterian.
  
• Vigeland was among the party to greet visiting composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Buffalo airport; he spoke to RVW about his admiration for the composer's Christmas cantata Hodie. "I've just learned," RVW replied, "in your state of Texas, that it should be pronounced Howdy."

In any case, it seems Mr Vigeland was quite the fellow. And I now have some of his organ music!