Calvin Hampton’s creative voice was an immensely important one within the New York musical world of the 1960s and 70s. His reputation spread much wider, of course, yet it was in New York, and a specific corner of the city-which-never-sleeps in which he found his own bohemia; a unique social and musical personal laboratory. A virtually exact contemporary of Gerre Hancock uptown at Saint Thomas, it is perhaps fitting that we are able to honor Hampton’s musical significance here in his adopted city. Appointed Organist and Choirmaster for the Parish of Calvary, Holy Communion and St George’s Episcopal Church in Gramercy Park in 1963, it was here where Hampton instituted and hosted between 1972 and 1982 what became hugely popular midnight (mainly) organ concerts every Friday. These formed a mix of musical offerings which, early on, included appearances of his own rock band, Sevenfold Gift. He encouraged his audiences to lie on the floor, confronting and delighting them, sometimes with experimental lighting, but always with an eclectic musical mix which ranged from soaring Bach to his own often audacious music.

Hampton’s idiosyncratic, and often controversial, ideas on organ tonal design led, over a twenty-year period, to a transformation of the organ at Calvary, an instrument originally constructed by Roosevelt in 1887 but entirely re-ordered in 1936 by G Donald Harrison of Aeolian-Skinner. There were pipes in the instrument made by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, imported by Hampton himself from Paris (the Cavaillé-Coll orchestral oboe remains part of the instrument, yet the organ today sadly suffers from neglect). At a time when neo-baroque aesthetics often dominated American builders’ work in both church and concert hall, Hampton remained a continual advocate of a consciously symphonic approach.

Born in Kittanning, Pennsylvania on 31 December 1938, Hampton entered Oberlin Conservatory in 1956 to major in piano and horn, but switched his major to organ in his sophomore year, studying with Fenner Douglas. He continued his studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg before returning to the US in 1961 to work with Arthur Poister at Syracuse University. He was organist at that time at St Peter’s Church in Cazenovia, New York, before moving to Calvary parish two years later. In 1980, Hampton conducted the St George’s Choral Society in what was believed to have been the first complete US performance of César Franck’s Les Béatitudes, a work signalling his interests in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music (he transcribed and recorded for organ orchestral and piano works including Franck’s D minor Symphony, and Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, at a time when few organists aired such transcription:

The dazzling display of tonal color and contrast achieved during the performance [of Mussorgsky’s Pictures] left listeners with a lasting impression of how really fortunate we are to have in our midst such a musician, a term which so few players of musical instruments really deserved to be called, as Calvin Hampton … Mr Hampton is indeed a genius, gifted with a sense of feeling and expression second to none; one of the rare organists who have the nerve to perform orchestral music on the organ.
(Raymond Brubacher in Theatre Organ Bombarde, March 1969)

After a lengthy illness, Hampton died prematurely of AIDS at the age of 45 on 5 August 1984 in Port Charlotte, Florida, and his grave in Ravenna bears the epitaph he himself wrote: 'Calvin Hampton—Maker of Music'. His estate was managed by Harry Huff, a long-time friend of Hampton’s and successor to his organ position at Calvary. Huff recorded a number of Hampton’s works, and collaborated with Wayne Leupold to ensure Hampton’s music was published and thus known.

Several of Hampton’s organ works were recorded after his death by Harry Huff, David Higgs, Cherry Rhodes and Herndon Spillman, yet this recording appears to be the first commercial release of his somewhat neglected choral music. A handful of orchestral works remain extant; the Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra, a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet, Percussion and Strings (1973), and a Concerto for Organ and Strings (1980). These await revival too. Calvin Hampton’s contribution to contemporaneous hymn writing was significant, and twenty of his hymns were published by GIA for the 1980 Hymn Society of America Convocation in Princeton, NJ. He composed eleven major organ works between 1973 and 1983, and these are important contributions to the instrument’s literature.

In 1980, Hampton was commissioned by Wayne Leupold to compose a suite of three pieces, each in the style of one of the three great twentieth-century French organ composers, Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen, and Jehan Alain. Pageant, the third, honors Alain, and its incessant, driven rhythmic motives seem to recall his gallic forebear’s well-known Litanies. Hampton died before the manuscript of the Three Pieces was complete, but he managed to discuss details concerning registration, notation, and interpretation with Leupold, who came to publish all three in 1992. Hampton’s final solo organ work, Fanfare for the New Year, was written in December 1983 in response to a request from Harry Huff, then organist at St John the Divine in New York City, for that year’s New Year’s Eve Service. Featuring the cathedral’s renowned State Trumpet, it was performed there at midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1983 (Calvin Hampton’s last birthday). The Concerto for Organ was written in 1981, and commissioned by the Holtkamp Organ Company. It is dedicated to Cherry Rhodes and Ladd Thomas who performed it first at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Originally comprising two separate movements, Hampton reordered the concerto into a single span, its varied material being marked by a Stravinskian ‘block-like’ approach to colour and texture. Stark juxtapositions of contrasted and motivically-organized material abut each other, where clearly-etched sections address the ear abruptly. The comparisons in this respect to the first movement of Marcel Dupré’s innovative Deuxième Symphonie (of 1926) seem remarkably clear. This approach makes for an unusual musical demeanour, reflective of a strikingly different aesthetic from that which a traditional title such as concerto (or indeed symphony) might suggest. This seems like ‘new’ music, for in its modernism, it sounds as fresh and compelling today as it did forty-five years ago.

Of Hampton’s choral music, little is widely known today, yet a number of his liturgical hymn tunes have found their way into American hymnals. Two are represented on this recording. Most high, omnipotent, good Lord and My country ‘tis of thee are representative of Hampton’s compelling Romantic predilections for arch shapes and eminently singable lines, while his liturgical setting of the Creed has become better-known through its inclusion in the 1982 Episcopal hymnal. This setting is affecting in its repetitive sing-ability, utilizing a limited melodic compass designed originally for congregational compatibility. However, its subtle variations in motif and phrase lengths lend it an interest seldom found in perhaps more common and four-square offerings. The arrangement heard here, expanded to incorporate additional harmony and discantus lines appropriate for a four-part choir, is Hampton’s own.

The Cantata for Palm Sunday was written in 1981 for Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis, the request of Organist and Choirmaster Philip Brunelle. Originally having asked for a one-movement anthem setting verses from the hymn Sing my tongue the glorious battle, Brunelle was apparently surprised when a full cantata arrived. The cantata thus comprises five brief movements centered on a substantial and exquisite central movement (Faithful Cross). The harmonic stasis of its opening evokes a cross-like statuary, yet the lines dissipate into fluid malleability as the tree’s branches respond to a passing breeze (‘None in foliage, non in blossom … thy peer may be’). As the ‘boughs bend’, a solo movement succeeds this and picks up the linear breeziness (‘thy relaxing sinews bend’), before a fanfare-like doxology concludes (‘To the Trinity be glory’). Hampton’s bi-tonal harmonic palette, marked in the dynamic opening movement (‘… the glorious battle’ with its mocking ‘hosannas’) appears here once again.

I wonder as I wander (1979) is a traditional arrangement of a familiar and much-loved John Jacob Niles carol tune, its simplicity drawing Hampton into creating an uncomplicated, yet hauntingly affecting setting. Hampton’s Christmas Oratorio was composed for the 1963 Christmas pageant at Calvary, and the Magnificat is excerpted from this—originally for accompanied single voice. The text is non-liturgical, and does not use the familiar English Prayer Book words. It omits the customary Gloria Patri, and ends with arching and wordless vocal ribands. The Cantata for Pentecost (1977) is a five-movement cantata, this time briefer than that for Palm Sunday, but it deploys greater forces to include percussion besides the organ. The opening fanfare refrain ‘Hail, Lord God, the holy ghost’ serves to bookend the work, its being repeated latterly without variant as the closing movement. A harmonically primitive and modal second movement features a soloist in call-and-response (‘Gracious spirit light diffusing’), accompanied by choral interjections and bell chimes. The fourth movement is marked by the organ’s sharply-etched ostinato motifs, punctuated by brief references to the bookend movements’ fanfares. The lyrical grace of the fulcrum central movement recalls the warmer harmonic climes of Hampton’s hymn tune style, and is set for solo tenor (‘Spirit, man for sin reproving … naught but pleading love perceive we’). In At the Lamb’s High Feast (1979), one might be forgiven for anticipating an ebullient and dramatic setting of the Easter text—one which opens with the words heard at the tomb on that first Easter morning by the two Marys, uttered by an angel atop the rolled-away stone. The hushed tones of ‘He is risen’ grow here to an animated and finally ecstatic ‘Alleluia’. However, the brilliance comes by way of affecting word painting in relating the ‘tide flowing from his pierced side’, with fluid lines marking ‘gives his sacred blood for wine’. The Alleluias subside quickly to return the sentiment to that of the opening’s awe and wonder. Bread of the world (1977) unfolds over a simple drone (pedal C) with canonic lines following at varying intervals, employing subtle variation in melodic contour, and ending with a peal of distant ‘Alleluias’. A charming organ ostinato accompanies this final peal, as if angels now danced upon the proverbial pinhead.

Hampton’s choral music is idiosyncratic, and is continually pervaded by a sense of the unexpected. Most of his texts are traditional, and perhaps familiar from the music of other writers, yet Hampton continually demonstrates having seen them through a different creative prism. His choral settings display a synesthete’s ear for colour, a command of contrapuntal dialogue, but also a harmonic and melodic sensibility of unusual imagination. An experimental partiality appears to the fore in his music too—representative of a dynamic creativity perhaps rarely found within the confines of an often more reactionary musical world. While so much church music can seem innocuous, Calvin Hampton’s reflects a creative flair within the ecclesiastical orbit that—for this writer—recalls the musical adventurousness found in the finest mid-20th century church music; arguably comparable to the Britten and Tippett of Rejoice in the Lamb, the canticles Collegium Johannes Cantabrigiense, to Giles Swayne (Magnificat), Stanley Glasser (Windsor Canticles), Lennox Berkeley (Five-part Mass), Kenneth Leighton (Columba mea), or Ned Rorem (O God my heart is ready, Exaltabo te Domine). Hampton’s unique voice is one of rare breadth, and it is hoped that this present recording, made in his adopted New York, the city which continually inspired his creativity, and gave voice to his music, may help in some way to stimulate greater interest in both his choral and organ music.

Jeremy Filsell © 2025