Legendary Salt Lake Tabernacle organist Alexander Schreiner helped aspiring organists to succeed. Though he died in 1987, his influence is still being felt in that regard, most recently with the announcement Feb. 17 of a new memorial endowment for organ studies at the University of Utah and the unveiling of the Alexander Schreiner Organ Teaching Studio at the university's School of Music.
Coinciding with those events was the announcement of the availability of a baccalaureate degree in organ performance with an emphasis in pedagogy.
The announcements came at an inaugural concert for the new Lively-Fulcher pipe organ in the university's Libby Gardner Concert Hall. Richard L. Elliott, one of Dr. Schreiner's present-day successors as a Tabernacle organist, performed the concert with an assortment of masterworks ranging from the 14th to the 20th centuries.
The endowment, established to further the study and appreciation of the organ, is funded initially by the Schreiner family and the Salt Lake Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
In remarks midway through the concert, School of Music director Robert Walzel said that when he was a boy growing up in southeast Texas, the first images he saw from Salt Lake City were of the famous Tabernacle Organ during the Tabernacle Choir's nationwide broadcasts. He continued to view them as a student and aspiring musician.
"So it was a great surprise to me when I accepted this position almost three years ago that we did not have an organ program here at the School of Music," he said. That has now been corrected.
He said it is fitting the endowment and the organ studio should be established in Dr. Schreiner's honor, as he was the first recipient of a doctorate in organ music from the university, a degree awarded in 1954.
Gretchen Schreiner Jackson, one of the four Schreiner children, remembered her father as a man with a sense of humor, patience, perceptiveness and "the soul of an artist."
The new bachelor's program at the university will help fill a void in the Salt Lake City area for advanced organ instruction, according to Robert Cundick, retired Salt Lake Tabernacle organist, the most recent inductee into the School of Music Hall of Fame and an energetic proponent and supporter of the program. He sees the availability of the degree as being a future boon to the quality of music in wards and stakes of the Church. It is a follow-up to an organ certification course that has been taught at the university since the beginning of 2003.
For 53 years, Dr. Schreiner's performances were heard in recitals and broadcasts from the Tabernacle. He became chief organist in 1963. His influence was exerted through chairmanship of the General Church Music Committee and as composer of a number of well-known hymns in the Church. One of his most notable achievements was the acquisition of the Aeolian-Skinner organ for the Tabernacle in 1949, replacing the previous instrument. He retired as Tabernacle organist in 1977.
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