New Bösendorfer Piano Enhances Musical Offerings

During a Sunday morning worship service this fall, interim Chapel Organist Chad Fothergill and Organ Scholar Daniel Jacky both squeezed onto the bench in front of the Chapel’s new Bösendorfer 225 grand piano. With their combined four hands, they accompanied the Chapel Choir in singing a setting of Psalm 146 by the contemporary American composer Emma Lou Diemer. Later in the service, Fothergill returned to the piano to lead the congregation in singing the hymn Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service and then played J.S. Bach’s Prelude in B minor during the collection of the offering.

In the same service, Chapel Dean Luke Powery offered a dedicatory prayer for the instrument saying, “Dear God, Before whose throne, trumpets sound and saints and angels sing the songs of Moses and the Lamb, send your blessing upon us and upon this piano, which we dedicate to your praise and glory.”

Later that day, students with the Duke Catholic Center gathered around the piano to rehearse with vocalists and an instrumental ensemble and then led the congregation in song during the evening Mass.

This single day, September 25, 2022, gives a glimpse at how the Bösendorfer piano has become a regular part of music in the Chapel, enhancing worship services, weddings, concerts, rehearsals, and public demonstrations. Purchased jointly by Duke Chapel and the Catholic Center with support from donors, the Austrian-made piano was procured from Ruggero Piano of Raleigh and delivered to the Chapel in August. It replaces a smaller, aging piano at the Chapel. Guest artist Cole Burger gave the first full-length recital on the new piano on March 19.

“The Bösendorfer gives us a piano that is of the caliber of our many organs and that’s important for a couple of reasons,” says Dr. Zebulon Highben, director of Chapel Music. “Firstly, when we think about its use in worship, there are genres of congregational song that are best led from the piano, including some of the music that comes out of some Black Church traditions. Other music that is more idiomatically suited to piano leadership than organ leadership includes music of the global South, folk hymnody, and Western European art song from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

According to Dr. Highben, the new piano is also valuable for instruction during choir rehearsals and accompaniment of visiting choirs, especially during a statewide choral conference held earlier this year at the Chapel.

“This instrument is really well suited to broaden the type and kinds of repertoire that we might feature in worship and in concert performances,” Highben says.

Andrew Witchger, director of music for the Duke Catholic Center, also emphasizes the Bösendorfer’s role in supporting a wide range of music.

“There is so much music inside this piano,” Witchger says, playing snippets on the piano to illustrate his point. “So whether it is something more royal or something more upbeat, this instrument is just a joy to play.”

In the Catholic Center’s liturgy, the piano is the central instrument for the music, which is led by Witchger and ensembles of student vocalists and instrumentalists.

“Here on a college campus when you have so many students who have the ability to play instruments you want to include as many students as possible,” Witchger says. “We use a lot of different instrumentation and when you are playing with strings, woodwinds, trumpets, percussion, and guitar, you use the whole fortepiano to keep up with all those instruments.”

Seated at the piano, Highben lists the strengths of the Bösendorfer compared to the old piano, including sensitivity to touch, a clearer timbre, and sound that carries throughout the Chapel.

“It’s a little bit like a Rolls Royce versus an old Chevrolet,” he says. “It’s just a night-and-day difference in what we’re able to do with an instrument like this.”

Witchger says the quality of the piano has a spiritual dimension.

“There’s a lot of music inside every instrument,” he says, “and the Holy Spirit just speaks through an instrument like this as soon as you place your hands and play a chord ”

As an organ scholar this year at the Chapel, Daniel Jacky has played regularly in worship services and concerts, assisted with choir rehearsals, and received regular lessons and coaching in organ playing, conducting, and vocal techniques. This immersion in sacred music has prepared Jacky for graduate studies at highly regarded conservatories from whom he has already received acceptance offers.

“It’s been a great breadth of experience,” Jacky says. “There’s organ, there’s continuo, there’s conducting— and I’ve done a lot of all of it.”

“The people here are really supportive,” he says. “They want to see you do well.”

Jacky came to the Chapel from Oberlin College and Conservatory, where he was a Stamps Scholar with majors in mathematics and organ performance. His role at the Chapel is supported jointly by the Chapel and the American Guild of Organists (AGO) for the inaugural AGO Organ Scholar Program.

The Duke Chapel Choir, with its ninety voices, will tour Ireland and Scotland in May of 2023.

Beginning on May 19, the choir heads first to Dublin where they will sing in a service at Whitefriar Street Church and then give a concert at Christ Church Cathedral. From there, they travel to Glasgow to perform a joint program with the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir at their Memorial Chapel, followed by another concert at Glasgow Cathedral. Next, they head to Edinburgh for a concert at St. Giles Cathedral, and then on to Holy Trinity Church in St. Andrews to assist in a worship service in the morning and give a concert in the afternoon.

This 2023 Chapel Choir tour builds on a longstanding tradition of the choir sharing its music ministry around the globe. Previous choir tours have gone to Spain, Poland, China, Turkey, Greece, and Germany, among other destinations.