Program Notes

When Greg Harrold asked me to write a piece in 1980 to inaugurate his Opus 3 organ, which he was building for the Parish of St. Matthew, Pacific Palisades, California, I was soon to set off on the journey of a lifetime—a sailing trip from Newport Beach to Tahiti and back aboard the yacht Brillig, a Peterson 44-foot sailboat. My partner Charlie Swigart’s brother and sister-in-law, Jay and Penny Swigart, bought the yacht in order to celebrate Jay’s completion of law school and to fulfill Charlie’s lifelong dream of sailing to the Marquesas Islands. I went along for the ride, and Jay and Charlie’s mother, Katie Swigart, joined us in Nuku Hiva.

The organ was being built, though not yet playing, when we left, but I knew its specifications and had descriptions from Greg of all the stops. I also took with me a Wurlitzer electric piano so that I would have a keyboard to work with on the boat. I wrote the pieces on our 23-day passage between Newport Beach and Nuku Hiva, the first of the Marquesas Islands we visited, and as we sailed around other islands between there and Tahiti. The resulting piece, ’Twas Brillig, is a light-hearted, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes romantic suite with nautical allusions.

I mailed a pencil copy of the five movements from the post office in Papeete, Tahiti, as the organ’s inauguration was to take place before our return. Lawrence Moe performed three of the movements on its inaugural concert in Greg’s shop, and Thomas Harmon gave the first complete performance on the very first Pacific Serenades concert in 1982, at the home of Leland S. Burns in Santa Monica.

The organ’s specifications are as follows:

Manual
Gedackt 8’
Viola da gamba 8’, starts at c’
Principal 4’
Octave 2’
Sesquialter II, starts at c’
Mixtur II

Pedal
Pulldown

Tremulant

Manual, 53 notes, C-e’’’
Pedal, 27 notes, C-d’

The registrations in the score are those used in the inaugural performance of this organ and are not intended to constrain the organist’s imagination in any way.  Please make the music as colorful as you see fit.

—Mark Carlson