260px|thumb|Virgil FoxVirgil Keel Fox (May 3, 1912 in Princeton, Illinois – October 25, 1980 in Palm Beach, Florida) was an American organist, known especially for his years as organist at Riverside Church in New York City, from 1946 to 1965, and his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Bach in the 1970s, staged complete with light shows. Showing musical talent at an early age, he began playing the organ for church services as a ten-year old as well as at a local movie theater "APOLLO THEATER" owned by his father.

Early career

Beginning in 1936, Fox was organist at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore while teaching at Peabody. His extemporaneous hymn accompaniments at Riverside's Sunday services and concert performances were widely acclaimed, and fans would wait after church services for hours to meet him.

While serving regularly at Riverside Church, Fox also performed at several other concert venues. As a representative of the U. S. Department of State, he performed at the First International Conference of Sacred Music held in Bern, Switzerland in 1952. In 1962, he also appeared with his fellow organists E. Power Biggs and Catherine Crozier to inaugurate the newly installed organ at Philharmonic Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center. Over the years, he was even invited to perform at the White House as a pianist on three separate occasions. The Heavy Organ concerts exclusively featured works of Johann Sebastian Bach accompanied by a large-scale light show, "Revelation Lights" by David Snyder, that was synchronized with the music, thereby bringing together aural and visual elements. The spectacle attracted enthusiastic audiences numbering in the thousands, but was not without its critics. William F. Buckley was reported by the New York Times as saying Fox, "must have figured that it was more important to fill the house with listeners who would hear Bach for the first time than worry about those who would resolve, like me, to have heard Fox for the last time". Time magazine reported that Fox earned between per performance (comparable to in dollars).

Fox also continued to concertize in more traditional concert settings as well. In 1974, he appeared in the inaugural recital of a new Rodgers organ at Carnegie Hall after assisting in its design. In the winter of 1975 he returned to Carnegie Hall and appeared with the American Symphony orchestra under the baton of Richard Westenburg in the Albert Schweitzer Centennial Concert. Several years later in 1977 he also performed in a sold-out concert featuring the music of Bach at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. His last commercially released recording, though unauthorized, was made at his return (by popular demand) to Riverside Church in concert on May 6, 1979.

In his 50th year of performing on the organ, Fox gave his final public performance with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on September 26, 1980, although he was racked with pain from metastasized prostate cancer that resulted in his death the following month.

Music

Fox always stressed pushing the limits of the instruments available to him, rather than requiring that they, or his playing, be authentic to the era of the music. His style (particularly his taste for fast tempos, intricate registrations, and a willingness to luxuriate in sentimentality) was in contrast to that of many of his contemporaries, such as E. Power Biggs.

Fox was also famous for his musical memory, and could instantly recall over 200 concert works. He played all concerts from memory and very rarely read from written scores even when playing alongside an orchestra.

Many organists, however, strongly criticized Fox for his unconventional interpretations of classical organ music.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his controversial approach to organ music, Virgil Fox attained a celebrity status not unlike that of Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould. The New York Times said of him, 20 years after his death, "Fox could play the pipe organ like nobody's business, but that is not all that made him unforgettable to so many people across the country. He made classical organ music appeal even to audiences that normally wouldn't be expected to sit still for it."

Honors

Fox was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. He designed the 1964 Reuter Pipe Organ at Bucknell University and was awarded a Doctorate Degree. He was greatly debilitated and in considerable pain from the disease when he gave his final performance on September 26, 1980, with the Dallas Symphony. Fox died on October 25, 1980, followed by a private funeral held at Casa Lagomar conducted by his longtime assistant and adopted son, David Snyder.

In a sign of continued recognition unusual for a performer (as distinct from a composer), Virgil Fox memorial recitals and concerts have been staged years after his death. In May 1990, for example, a Virgil Fox Memorial Concert was given at the Crystal Cathedral organ by Frederick Swann, who was his successor at Riverside Church. On what would have been Fox's 80th birthday, a special tribute in his memory was broadcast by KBYU-FM in Provo, Utah. Entitled Virgil Fox: American Virtuoso, the May 3, 1992, radio program, produced almost twelve years after his death, included an excerpt of Swann's Crystal Cathedral memorial of 1990 and highlighted a virtuoso performance of Joseph Jongen's Symphonie Concertante by Fox in Tokyo, Japan, recorded fifteen years previously. Also that month, an "Organ Greats Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs" concert was held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. In 2012, the centennial year of his birth, a tribute to Fox was included in an organ concert held at a church in Vancouver, Canada. Many of his recordings have been re-mastered and are widely available on compact discs, as well as regularly heard on radio programs featuring organ music, such as Pipedreams and Sacred Classics.

A compilation of Fox's arrangements of organ works by J. S. Bach, George Frideric Handel, Franz Liszt, Camille Saint-Saens and Richard Wagner was published by Alfred Music Publishing in 1994. At the Organ with Virgil Fox contains several musical scores of some of Fox's most frequently performed works along with his markings, registrations, and transcriptions for students of the organ.

Biographies written about Fox after his death include the controversial Virgil Fox (The Dish): An Irreverent Biography of the Great American Organist (2001) by his former manager, Richard Torrence (2001), and Virgil Fox — His real life... with secrets you never knew (2020) by David Snyder. The Virgil Fox Society, formed to perpetuate his memory, established the Virgil Fox Scholarship under the auspices of the American Guild of Organists in 2002.

Archived works and displays

  • The Virgil Fox Collection at the Organ Historical Society contains manuscripts, correspondence, programs, transcripts, videos and organ specifications by Virgil Fox.
  • The Discography of American Historical Recordings catalog at the University of California at Santa Barbara contains thirty- eight audio recordings on the Victor and Decca labels by Virgil Fox from the years 1941-1977.
  • Various Fox relics including items of his stage clothing, the actual record that inspired his arrangement of "Come, Sweet Death" and the organ console from his Englewood, N.J. mansion, are on display by the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ at Macy's Center City in Philadelphia.

See also

  • Organ
  • Electronic organ
  • Pipe organ
  • Classical music

References

  • The Virgil Fox Legacy
  • The Virgil Fox Society
  • Virgil Fox YouTube Videos
  • The Virgil Fox Allen Touring Organ
  • Review of "The Fox Touch"
  • Entry at discogs.com
  • Virgil Fox interviewed by the music critic Robert Sherman at Wnyc.org
  • Virgil Fox at findagrave.com