Uncle Auguste was a successful and well-connected Parisian businessman. While visiting him and his wife, Mathilde, Albert mentioned his desire to meet Charles Widor. “Well, then, you really must,” Aunt Mathilde said. “We have a mutual friend. I will write you a letter of introduction and have it sent to Monsieur Widor today.”
Albert could hardly believe his good fortune. A letter of introduction was just what he needed! Throughout the next day he waited nervously to see if Charles Widor would respond. He did, and better yet, he invited Albert to play the grand organ at Saint-Sulpice the following Wednesday. It would be a dream come true, and Albert could hardly wait for the day to arrive.
Chapter 6
A Man of Many Talents
Albert set out mid-morning the following Wednesday for his appointment with Charles-Marie Widor. Getting there proved challenging. Paris residents were celebrating a new alliance between France and Russia. Previously the French had had few alliances with other European countries, and this new alliance made them feel safer, especially from attacks by Germany and the Austro-Hungarians. That morning a street parade was taking place in honor of the agreement, which was known as the Dual Alliance. Russian sailors in crisp, white uniforms marched in the streets along with French soldiers. It seemed to Albert the whole population of Paris was out in the streets celebrating.
Albert pushed through the crowd but made slow progress. By the time he reached Luxembourg Gardens, it was almost time for his appointment. He ran through the gardens to make up for lost time. When he exited at the north end, he jostled his way through two more blocks of people until the imposing structure of the church of Saint-Sulpice towered over him. He headed to the lane at the rear of the church and was soon standing before Charles Widor’s door. Albert took a moment to catch his breath before knocking and entering. Charles Widor sat at a grand piano with an attached foot pedal unit mimicking organ pedals, which allowed him to play bass notes with his feet.
“I’m Albert Schweitzer,” Albert introduced himself.
Charles stood, walked over to him, and shook Albert’s hand. “It’s busy out there today.”
Albert nodded. “I’m sorry to be running late.”
Charles waved his hand. “So, you play the organ, Monsieur Schweitzer? What will you play for me?”
Albert relaxed. “I will play Bach, of course.”
“Good. Good,” Charles said, leading Albert from his music room into the cavernous, silent nave of Saint-Sulpice. At the back of the nave sat the enormous organ. Albert stopped and stared at it for a moment. “Magnificent,” he whispered.
“The most beautiful organ in the world,” Charles agreed as the two men climbed into the organ loft. Albert slid onto the organ bench while the master organist sat on a seat to the side. The pipe organ had five manuals and one hundred stops. Albert sat quietly for a few moments before he began to play. Immediately the church filled with swirling chords of music. Albert was transfixed. He shut everything else out, even Charles Widor, and focused solely on playing the chorale prelude. When Albert had finished, Charles stared at him. “How soon can you come to me for lessons?” he asked.
Albert felt a chill run down his spine. The greatest pipe organist in the world was offering him lessons. They worked out a schedule so that for the next three weeks Albert could play the organ at Saint-Sulpice under Charles Widor’s direction. Despite there being a thirty-one-year age gap between the two men, they bonded over their love of music. At one lesson Charles said, “You will understand what I mean when I say that to play the organ, your whole will must be filled with a vision of eternity.” Albert nodded. He understood exactly.
At the end of the three weeks, Albert left Paris to begin his studies at Strasbourg, where he moved into his tiny rooms at the Theological College of St. Thomas, a branch of the University of Strasbourg. He loved the rooms from the moment he stepped inside. Two large windows looked out over a walled garden. A fringe of poplar trees grew on the bank of the Ill River, which wound its way through the city to the Rhine two miles away. Even though the Rhine flowed north for another 350 miles before reaching the North Sea, Strasbourg was a bustling port filled with fishermen, shipbuilders, quays, and traveling boats.
Albert loved the fact that the city had a long history, reaching back over nineteen hundred years. During that time some significant events had taken place in Strasbourg. In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg developed the first printing press about a mile from where Albert was now living. In 1520, three years after Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, setting the Protestant Reformation in motion, Strasbourg became one of the earliest cities to embrace Luther’s teaching. John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, preached at the Church of St. Nicholas in 1538. The following year, while still in Strasbourg, Calvin produced the second edition of his Institutes, enlarging it from its previous six chapters to seventeen. In fact, just on the other side of the Ill River from the Theological College, sat the church where John Calvin had preached. It was a small, brownstone Gothic structure with a high-pitched roof built over 450 years before. It was the same church where Uncle Albert Schillinger, Albert’s mother’s brother, had been the pastor.
Albert was glad he’d saved enough money to buy a bicycle while he was a student in Mulhouse. He was able to use the bike to ride the mile over narrow cobblestone streets from St. Thomas to the main university campus, where he attended a lecture every weekday morning at eleven.
Once in Strasbourg, Albert met with the university faculty and set himself an ambitious course load. He would study for a degree in theology and also take classes in music theory and philosophy.
Albert did one other thing before settling into university life. He rode to St. William’s Church with a letter of introduction to Ernst Munch from his brother Eugène. The brothers were both excellent organists, and Albert hoped that Ernst would take him on as a student. He was not disappointed. Ernst welcomed him warmly. He’d already heard from his brother in Mulhouse and had been waiting for Albert to arrive. Albert was excited when he learned that Ernst, who was the choir director at St. William’s and taught organ at the Strasbourg Conservatory, was looking for a new choir organist. He offered Albert the position, which Albert gladly accepted.
St. William’s was several blocks from the university campus. Albert loved everything about the church. It was built as a monastery in the fourteenth century by a knight who had returned home to Strasbourg unharmed from the Crusades. The church’s nave had high ceilings that provided excellent acoustics and housed a wonderful pipe organ that produced notes that were crisp and clear.
Albert felt an immediate connection with Ernst Munch. Although Ernst was fifteen years older than Albert and had a wife and six young children, the two men spent hours together making plans to hold Bach concerts at St. William’s. Whenever Albert was able to fit it in, he made short trips to Paris to take more lessons from Charles Widor.
In April 1894 Albert’s life in Strasbourg was interrupted when he was called up for a year of compulsory military training in the German army. At nineteen years of age, he was drafted into the army’s 143rd Regiment. Albert moved into a barracks outside of town along with about a hundred other young men the same age, most of them farmers’ sons from the surrounding countryside. Albert was resigned to the training, except for losing a year of study at the university. However, an army captain took pity on him and gave Albert permission to attend his morning lectures, as long as all his army duties were completed on time. Albert was delighted. Each weekday morning after drills in the barracks square, he bicycled into the old city and listened to the lectures before pedaling back to training camp. In the evenings, while the other soldiers passed their time playing cards or telling jokes, Albert studied his pocket-sized Greek New Testament.
Although none of his fellow trainee soldiers were studying, they didn’t tease him because of his study habits. Albert supposed that because of his height (over six feet tall) and his physical strength in manning ropes and dragging gun carriages through muddy ditches, he’d already proven himself.
In mid-April 1895, Albert’s year of military training was over. He returned to the Theological College of St. Thomas in top physical condition and with a clear idea of what he particularly wanted to study. During hundreds of hours reading the Greek New Testament, he’d become fascinated with the different accounts of Jesus’s life recorded in the Synoptic Gospels (the first three books of the New Testament). His reading left him with many questions: Which Gospel was the first one to be written? Which Gospels had been written using that first one as a source? Why did the Gospel of Matthew include things Jesus said that didn’t appear in the other Gospels? And how did that change the way Christianity developed?
Now that Albert had a focus for his studies, he worked harder than ever. In the spring of 1896, Uncle Auguste and Aunt Mathilde sent him a ticket to a concert in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, where the famous German composer Richard Wagner had built a large concert hall. Although Wagner had died thirteen years before, his widow, Cosima, kept his memory alive with an annual concert in his honor. The concert had grown to be one of the most renowned musical events in all Germany. Albert knew he was lucky to have a ticket, except he had no money to buy a train ticket for the nine-hour trip to Bayreuth. Because missing the concert was out of the question, Albert cut his food budget from three meals a day to one until he’d saved the money for the train fare.
As soon as he arrived in Bayreuth, Albert knew his visit would be worth the sacrifice. It was amazing to be in the presence of so many others who shared the same passion for music as he did.
On the way home, Albert stopped in Stuttgart, Germany, to see the new pipe organ recently installed in the Liederhalle, where he was given permission to play the organ. Albert was shocked to discover it was the worst pipe organ he’d ever played. The notes sounded jangly and indistinct. How, he asked himself, would anyone think this new modern organ was better than the old handcrafted ones Europe’s greatest composers had played on?
Albert left Stuttgart deeply troubled. If pastors and town leaders continued replacing grand old pipe organs with these inferior-sounding modern instruments, soon there would be no place to go to hear the music of Bach or Wagner the way it was meant to be heard. By the time he got off the train in Strasbourg, Albert was determined to do something about the situation. In addition to his theology, philosophy, and music studies, he would study how classical pipe organs were built and learn how to preserve them. The daunting task involved visiting small churches in the German and French countryside and urging pastors to restore their organs rather than getting rid of them as the instruments aged. As his studies progressed, Albert soon knew enough that he could repair organs himself.
Over the summer of 1896, twenty-one-year-old Albert was ready for a rest. He rode the train to Guns-bach to spend two months with his family. He found his parents in good health and spirits and his younger brother and sisters happy. Although he loved Strasbourg, Albert was glad to be back in the village. He helped his father in the garden, played the church organ, and took the church youth group on several day excursions into the mountains. He also went to Colmar to visit his oldest sister, Louisa, who had recently married Jules Ehrtsmann.
Walking through Colmar’s streets, Albert could see versions of his life stretch out before him. He could become a country pastor like his father, with a wife and children running around the manse. He could become a concert organist and make a name for himself as an expert on Bach. Or he could work his way into a full-time college professorship. In addition to his doctorate studies in theology, his philosophy professor, Dr. Ziegler, also had him hard at work on a second doctorate in philosophy. All these career paths were exciting possibilities. It was just a matter of deciding which one to follow. Or was it? Something deep inside Albert bothered him. He had so many good career options to choose. But what if that wasn’t what God wanted for him? What if God had a different plan for his life?
