Over three quarters of a century, a flood of essays, critiques, and books has poured from Barbara Owen’s pen, typewriter, and laptop, together with quite a few periodical and anthology articles, entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music, and several other books, together with The Organ in New England, E. Energy Biggs: Live performance Organist, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music, The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms, and The Nice Organ at Methuen. She has served the American Guild of Organists as Regional Councillor and chapter Dean, is a Previous President of the Organ Historic Society, a Trustee of Methuen Memorial Music Corridor, and is at the moment lively as an organist, lecturer and organ marketing consultant. She labored as pipe voicer for the CB Fisk organ agency for a few years. She has additionally written 5 critiques for this web site.
The First Spiritual Society and the Methuen Memorial Music Corridor will have a good time her many accomplishments in organ constructing, preservation, scholarship, historical past, and music on Saturday, January 21, 2:00-4:00 PM on the First Spiritual Society of Newburyport, Nice St with ten distighuished audio system and 7 well-known organists. The readings and performances might be livestreamed HERE. Michael Barone (Pipedreams, American Public Media) will function Grasp of Ceremonies. Click on HERE for the entire program.
BARBARA OWEN was born January 25, 1933, in Utica, New York. She obtained her Bachelor of Music diploma from Westminster Choir Faculty in 1955, and her Grasp of Music diploma in musicology from Boston College in 1962, as a scholar of the eminent scholar Karl Geiringer. She pursued superior examine in Europe on the North German Organ Academy and the Academy of Italian Organ Music. In 1963, she started a distinguished 40-year tenure as Director of Music on the First Spiritual Society of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Between the years 1961 and 1979, she labored with the main American organbuilding agency, C.B. Fisk as a pipe voicer.
As a younger lady in her early 20s throughout the Nineteen Fifties, Ms. Owen outlined and mapped a brand new subdiscipline in American musical scholarship: the examine of Anglo-American organs, organ design, and organ music. In 1956, she and a handful of others based the Organ Historic Society, of which she grew to become founding president; that group now counts some 4000 members internationally and publishes a quarterly journal in addition to a collection of books, monographs, and editions. Ms. Owen was honored with its Distinguished Service Award in 1988, and designated an Honorary Member in 1998, in recognition of her contributions each to the Society and to scolarship. The American Musical Instrument Society honored her with its prestigious Curt Sachs Award in 1994.
Maybe most attribute of Barbara Owen is her unfailing generosity. She has selflessly suggested and aided different researchers along with her encyclopedic information about her topic, and the voluminous recordsdata of fabric she has collected. Over time, she has impressed and inspired numerous different music historians (the compilers amongst them) and fostered scholarship in American church music and organ literature amongst college students and seasoned students alike.
Now in semi-retirement from church music, Ms. Owen continues her scholarship with out slackening in tempo and degree of high quality. She is curator and founding father of the Organ Library of the Boston American Guild of Organists positioned at Boston College. Her work is internationally recognized and revered, and he or she is usually regarded each right here and overseas as one of many high half-dozen students in her subject. JOHN OGASAPIAN [1940-2005]
