A Family Program for Voices, Recorders, and Viols

From: Music Educators Journal Pre-Convention Issue, February-March, 1962

Except for the modern dress of the performers it might well be an eighteenth century performance. The music is Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and the accompanying instruments are viols and recorders. The audience is obviously captivated by the simple beauty of the rendition and by the artistry of the family giving it. John Gerrish, Sr. and John, Jr. play the viols and sing the bass and alto lines of the chorale. Mrs. Gerrish and son James sing the soprano and tenor parts, doubling on recorders. Mary and twelve-year-old Catherine play recorders and double as singers now and then. It is a performance of real quality as are the other parts of the program which include compositions by Machaut, Dunstable, Josquin, Tallis, Telemann, Quantz, as well as Brahms, Breydert, Hindemith and Percy Grainger. Despite the musical worth of the presentation it is the family group itself which fascinates all who are fortunate enough to hear the Gerrishes. They invariably prompt remarks which add little to the reputation of television and other spectator sports as influences for good. Those with a family and any love for music are seized with the desire to go home and do likewise.

How is it done? How did the Gerrishes get that way? What should you do if you wish to develop a musical family group of your own? John Gerrish’s philosophy and his approach to music provide some answers.

First, he believes in the importance of great music for parents who wish to cultivate in their children a sound sense of values. Secondly, he believes that great music is easily made enjoyable while youngsters are engaging in the hard work necessary to attain skill. Like any good teacher John Gerrish knows that it takes planning to motivate students but that proper motivation is the key to successful learning.

The environment of a home with two parents trained in music is in itself motivation and, if opportunities are provided for the children to participate, they will. Once started on the road the natural attraction of great music lures them on to broader experience and new skills.

Oldest son John, now an engineer, is a case in point. His first instruments were the baritone horn and the trombone. He learned to read the treble clef while playing the soprano recorder and incidentally he learned to sing, for Mr. Gerrish believes that “if you can’t sing it, you can’t play it.” Thus whenever John would ask for help with a trombone problem his father would sing the passage using the moveable do sys-tem. John Jr. learned to do the same without realizing it. Later Ernest White introduced him to fixed do. By this time he was interested in the “Harvard Anthology” and was spending much time at the piano. Eventually he studied the recorder with Alfred Mann and the viol with Werner von Trapp. In the family singing he is usually a counter tenor, frequently playing another part simultaneously on the viol. All the children learned to sing while playing and the emphasis has been on working toward independence. Mr. Gerrish reports that “there has always been resentment at having some one on my line. Of course Baroque music is built to order for this attitude and we have used plenty of it.” A glance through John’s record collection is revealing: Dorsey, Dowland, Monteverdi, Mulligan, Scheidt, Schutz, Shearing ....

One of the characteristics of all children is the desire to participate in adult activity. They reflect this in their play and in their impatience to wear high heels or drive the car. Rather than emphasizing formal music lessons the Gerrishes provided opportunities for their children to share in the musical activity of the home and the children were quick to see that with a little effort they could enter this adult world on an equal basis.

James, with a baritone horn, learned to read the bass clef by “helping” with the pedal line of Bach organ works while John, Sr. “practiced” the manual parts on the piano. Catherine was introduced to the alto viol in the same way. James earned 25¢ a page for proof reading the soprano recorder album which Mr. Gerrish prepared. Mary realized a similar windfall on an alto recorder collection. Moveable C clefs were learned in a pragmatic fashion when Palestrina had to be sung from a photostated open score. Mary, who had seen no need to learn the bass clef, developed a notational system of her own to enable her to arrange several songs she learned from the Trapp family.

The Gerrishes have a studio in Vermont near the Trapp lodge and a warm friendship has grown up between the two families. Hedwig Trapp helped Mary achieve a true alto quality in her singing and this provides another clue to Mr. Gerrish’s teaching method. Realizing that there are times when “parents don’t know anything,” he sees his job as recognizing an interest and a need in his children and then finding an outsider who knows what to do.

Even resistance to music seems unable to stand up against such surroundings. James, who is now 19, threatened, when he was 12, to get a lawyer to prove that under the Bill of Rights of the Constitution he did not have to play trombone. Now in college, and still professing disinterest, he plays sousaphone in the band (to help his ROTC status he claims) and, as a tenor, he has developed a bent toward show business. He has written a musical comedy and a comic opera but both works remain unscored. James intends to hire someone to do the scores, if possible. Failing that, he may have to look into the matter of learning how to do the scoring himself.

This musical family lives in New Jersey where Mr. Gerrish is connected with both Caldwell College and Newark State College. He is organist-choir director of a suburban church. He and his wife met as music students at what is now State University College of Education at Potsdam, New York. He says “it came naturally to teach the children as they grew up.” Naturalness seems to be the key to this family’s music making for the children think that all homes in the United States are filled with de Rore, Lassus, and Sweelinck. May they soon be.

C.L.G.

Do-it-yourself Christmas cards have been a family tradition for years with Gregorian chant a favorite subject as in Cathy’s 1961 card printed by a stamp cut from an old inner tube.

John, Jr.’s card includes his own composition, a three-part canon at the fifth.

 

Music Educators Journal, February-March 1962

Back to the Gerrish Family History Page

Back to 100th Birthday Celebration of John O. Gerrish

More Family Photos of the Past

Wikipedia Page for John Gerrish

Copy of Wiki Page

Back to Interactive Museum Timeline

Museum caretakers: Jim Gerrish (#2 son of John O. Gerrish) and Frederick Goode (grandson of John O. Gerrish)