Lynnwood Farnam Brief Biography
Walter Lynnwood Farnam (he would drop the name "Walter" later in life) was born in Sutton, Quebec on January 13, 1885. He showed a keen interest in music very early on in life, and started piano lessons with his mother at age six. Later, his family moved to Dunham, Quebec and the Dunham Ladies' College accepted him by special arrangement as a piano student. He was already very interested in the organ and kept notebooks full of organ photos. The first reed organ he ever played was in the Wesleyan Methodist Church (later the United Church) in Dunham and the first pipe organ he ever played was in All Saints' Anglican Church in Dunham. During his last two years at the Dunham Ladies' College his piano teacher was Mr. George W. Cornish. In 1900 Farnam, after a competition held in Montreal, was awarded the Lord Strathcona Scholarship to study piano at the Royal College of Music in London, England. During his four years there he gradually shifted his focus to the organ. His organ teachers were James Higgs, F.A. Sewell and W.S. Hoyte.
Upon his return to Canada he became the organist at St. James' Methodist Church in Montreal (now St. James' United Church) from 1904 to 1905. Between 1905 and 1908 he was the organist at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church, and was the Director of Music at Christ Church Cathedral from 1908 to 1913. In addition to his church duties, he started to give frequent organ recitals. He taught, in 1912 and 1913, at the McGill Conservatorium, now the McGill Faculty of Music.
In 1913 he moved to the United States to take a position at Emmanuel Church, Boston. When he auditioned for this post, the committee asked him what he would play and he handed them a notebook containing a list of 200 pieces which he had memorized, saying "Anything in this book." Needless to say, he got the job. Under his supervision a 140-stop Casavant organ was built at the church, at the time the third-largest organ in North America.
In April 1918, just a few months after the dedication of the new Boston organ, Farnam accepted a position a Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He did not start there until 1919, however, as he volunteered for a year in the Canadian Army. He was never sent to the front but performed mainly musical and clerical duties in England. Upon his return he remained at Fifth Avenue only a year, however, leaving for the Church of the Holy Communion in 1920, which was also in New York at 20th Street and Sixth Avenue. He held the position until his death 10 years later. It was during these last 10 years that his reputation and influence truly reached their peak.
He travelled extensively, both in North America and Europe, playing around 900 organ recitals in his lifetime. His recitals at the Church of the Holy Communion were legendary, especially his Brahms and Franck series in December 1927, his Bach and His Forerunners series in 1929-1930, and his complete organ works of Bach series in 1928-1929, which was the first truly complete Bach series to be finished in the world. It was so popular that he had to play each program at least twice.
He also championed contemporary organ music, especially from France. He was close friends with Marcel Dupré and Charles Tournemire, among others. The following organ works were dedicated to him: Louis Vierne's 6ème Symphonie, Leo Sowerby's Symphony, Marcel Dupré's "Souvenir" from Op. 27, and Harvey Grace's "Resurgam."
In 1927 he was appointed director of the new organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was highly sought after as a teacher, and his students included Carl Weinrich, Alexander McCurdy and Ernest White. In 1930 he was made Honorary Doctor of Music by the Cincinnati Conservatory.
His one composition is the Toccata on "O Filii et Filiae" (which can be purchased through Sheet Music Plus), published posthumously by the Theodore Presser Company in 1932. Farnam recorded this piece on a roll for the Welte Philharmonic organ, and is reported to have used it to try out the "full organ" sound of different organs he visited.
His last recital was at the Church of the Holy Communion on October 12, 1930, after which he had to enter the hospital. He died of liver cancer in New York on November 23, 1930. His death was universally mourned as a great loss to the organ and to music in general, and at his funeral on November 25 at the Church of the Holy Communion there was no music out of respect for him; the vested choir marched in silence behind the crucifer. Two trees were later planted in his honour: one on the grounds of the Dunham Ladies' College where he had studied (by then renamed St. Helen's School, which has since closed), and the other, with 11 other trees planted for former soldiers, along Next-of-Kin Memorial Avenue in Woodlawn Cemetery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
He was an incredibly virtuosic performer, who nevertheless played with profound sensitivity and respect for the music, as not all virtuosi do. Precision was key to his playing, both in technique and in his genial registrations. He was extremely gifted and worked extremely hard, but always used his playing to showcase the music he performed rather than his technique. He was also known as an extremely kind, generous and patient man. He was devoted to his parents and sister (he never married) and to his large circle of friends. He was very temperate, never smoking or drinking; in fact, he even copied the hymn "Unfurl the Temperance Banner" into his diary as a teenager. He took many photos and wrote everything down in little notebooks, including specifications of and comments on the organs he visited. It can be quite confidently stated that he singlehandedly elevated North American organ music to a level which had been unimaginable before him.
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Farnam made no records, but recorded several rolls for four different player organs. The repertoire he recorded, as reported in The American Organist 14, no.1 (Jan. 1931): 26-27, with some additional corrections, was:
For the Austin Organ (Recorded in 1930)
According to some of Farnam's students who heard these newer records when they were released, they are often not accurate reproductions of Farnam's playing. The Welte records were recorded on a copy of the player organ Farnam played on rather than the original one, and the Austin recordings sometimes had different registrations and even tempi than Farnam had used.
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The most complete source of Farnam information is the Farnam collection at the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It includes all of Farnam's papers, notebooks and music, which he willed to Curtis when he died. It also includes John G. Greene's "Preliminary Notes for a Biography of Lynnwood Farnam." Other general biographies of Farnam are:
The Diapason published a series of critiques of Farnam's complete Bach series by Herbert D. Bruening starting in vol. 20 (Jan. 1929). Bruening then wrote "Critic Recalls Bach Series 25 Years Ago by Lynnwood Farnam" in The Diapason 46 (Dec. 1954). This magazine, like The American Organist, published a string of tributes to Farnam after he died, notably in their Jan. 1931 issues.
The American Organist published a series called "Ten Years of Farnam and Weinrich" which included the complete recital programs of Farnam and his pupil Carl Weinrich at the Church of the Holy Communion, 1920-1930. These appeared in vol. 15, no. 12 (Dec. 1932); vol. 16, no. 1 (Jan. 1933); vol. 16, no. 3 (Mar. 1933); vol. 16, no. 4 (Apr. 1933); vol. 16, no. 10 (Oct. 1933); and vol. 16, no. 11 (Nov. 1933). This includes the programs up to Feb. 1928 - presumably the list continues in the 1934 issues but we have been unable to confirm this.
Other miscellaneous pieces of interest are:
Note: The title The American Organist has been used by two magazines - one published between 1918 and 1970 and the other starting in 1967. Volume numbers were duplicated. Consequently, readers who wish to acquire these articles are advised to search by date rather than by volume number.
Discography
Selected Bibliography
For the Aeolian Duo-Art (Both of these records are on one roll)
For the Welte Philharmonic Organ (Recorded in the first part of 1925)
For the Skinner Organ (Recorded July 29, 1925)
The Jepson "Pantomime" from the Skinner roll is available on the 2-CD set "The E.M. Skinner Player Organ at Elm Court" (JAV-123) available from the Organ Historical Society. The Austin rolls were later put on a record called "An Organ Recital by Lynnwood Farnam" (Classic 1040). Most of the Welte rolls were put on three records from the "Pipe organ masters" set by Fulton Productions, Inc. of Tulare, California in 1963 ("A Pipe Organ Concert by Lynnwood Farnam," UF-1, UF-2, UF-3).
In addition to editing the Oxford edition of Bruce Simonds' Preludes, Farnam wrote the following articles:
After Farnam died, The American Organist published a series of 6 extensive articles about his life in vol. 14, no. 1-6 (Jan.-Jun. 1931), by A. A. Burr, Alexander McCurdy, Jr., and Scott Buhrman.
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