At the Robert Cundick family cabin in Utah's Weber Canyon is a wooden plaque into which he has carved the proverb, "We believe the present is the golden key to the future."
The saying bears significance as Brother Cundick writes fine on his 26-year term as Tabernacle organist and prepares to fulfill another Church assignment.Last month, the First Presidency announced the retirement of Brother Cundick, 65, effective Dec. 1. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that he and his wife, Charlotte, will serve as directors of hosting at BYU's Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, effective Dec. 6.
"President [Gordon B.T Hinckley asked me if I was certain that I wanted to retire at this time," Brother Cundick said in a Church News interview. "I said well, yes, I started to prepare for my retirement the day I came on the job, thinking about what I would like to accomplish while I was here and the way I would like to leave things when I left."
For him, that meant having a strong musical staff in place: John Longhurst, Clay Christiansen and Richard Elliott. (Brother Elliott was appointed last April at general conference.) In addition, Bonnie Goodliffe and Linda Margetts serve as associate organists on a Church-service basis.
"I've been determined to assemble the strongest possible team to carry on the work here," he said.
As for the 18-month Jerusalem Center assignment, it will not be Brother Cundick's first experience with that facility. He was a principal adviser for specifications and selection of a builder for the center's large pipe organ.
"But I didn't think seriously that I would ever get over there, except maybe as a tourist someday," he said. "And then, out of the blue, President Howard W. Hunter and Elder James E. Faust issued this call to us."
A similar "out-of-the-blue" calling for the Cundicks came in 1962 from President David O. McKay. They answered the call and lived in England for two years, where Brother Cundick played recitals in the Church's Hyde Park Chapel.
Though some of his assignments may have been unexpected, Robert Cundick prepared early to accept them, consistent with the adage that the present is the golden key to the future.
"I started to take piano lessons at the age of 8," he recalled, "and after several years the Sandy [UtahT 2nd ward acquired a Hammond organ, one of the first that had come to the state of Utah. We were all fascinated by it."
At the time - 1938 - the membership was still small and localized enough that the Church could offer a series of 12 lessons for budding organists. Young Robert availed himself of these. Was he a prodigy?
"No, I don't think so," he said. "I think I was just a hard worker. All the girls in the ward who started when I did played circles around me. Of course, they matured earlier and had better coordination. But I stuck with it; they kind of drifted away."
Later, Tabernacle organist Alexander Schreiner accepted him as a scholarship student, meaning the venerable musician gave him private organ lessons for free.
"I may have been the only scholarship student he ever had," said Brother Cundick, who pointed out that these were the Depression years, and quality musical training in the valley was both scarce and expensive.
Another musical influence in his youth was Donald Olson, a BYU graduate and Utah Symphony member who taught music at Jordan High School in Sandy.
And he was blessed with supportive parents, Milton and Florence Pierson Cundick.
"Dad was a carpenter. Mom was a housewife and a daughter of Swedish immigrants. Dad sang and Mother played the piano, so I think we had a musical home, nothing special."
From his father, he learned to work with his hands, but the elder Cundick was determined his son not become a carpenter and encouraged him in his musical training.
Thus, by the time he entered the University of Utah after a stint in the Merchant Marines, Robert Cundick was giving piano and organ lessons and playing organ at the First Unitarian Church and Temple B'nai Israel Jewish congregation, and as substitute at a Christian Science church. Fortunately, those jobs occurred at times that allowed him to attend his Sunday meetings in the Salt Lake 33rd Ward and serve as organist there.
In addition, he played in jazz bands, served as rehearsal accompanist for Utah Symphony director Maurice Abravenel, and filled a teaching assistantship under Leroy Robertson at the university.
Working closely with Robertson, he earned a doctorate in music composition.
He met his wife-to-be while enrolled at the university. Living a block away from his home in Sandy, she took organ lessons from him, and a romance blossomed. She never became an accomplished organist, he said.
"She has concentrated on raising a family and later becoming a very high-quality school teacher," he related. "She retired this year after 21 years of teaching second and third grade in Salt Lake City schools."
The couple had five children in six years. All are grown now, and the Cundicks have 20 grandchildren.
Brother Cundick taught at the University of Utah for a couple of years after his graduation in 1955. In 1957, he went to BYU to fill in for Crawford Gates, who was on sabbatical.
"After his sabbatical, I stayed on," Brother Cundick said.
With help from his father, Brother Cundick built his family a home in Provo. Dallin H. Oaks, a future member of the Council of the Twelve, later purchased the home.
Brother Cundick taught at BYU until the mission call to England in 1962. After the mission he returned to BYU. A year later, the appointment as Tabernacle organist came to him, extended by President Hugh B. Brown who was acting for the First Presidency.
"I had some inkling that it might happen," he said. He had served from time to time as a substitute organist in the Tabernacle. "But in the Church one can never be certain beforehand what's going to happen. I was just glad at that time in my life that the appointment came so that I could get on with my living rather than wondering if I would ever serve in the Tabernacle."
With his future solidified, he moved with his family to Salt Lake City and went to work.
"It's been one memorable experience after another," he said. "Each day is so filled with wonderful, unexpected opportunities. The choir has traveled so extensively since I've been here. It's gotten busier all the time."
In addition to the recently concluded tour to eastern Europe, the choir has traveled in northern Europe, twice to Japan and England, and to Australia and New Zealand.
"I practice as much as I need to to accomplish what I need to do," he said. "Frequently, I put in an eight-hour day practicing."
Other duties entail custom arranging and composing for the choir, accompanying the choir on engagements that number well over 100 a year, and hosting visitors at the organ.
"The visitors are guests that the Church would like to do something special for, in addition to professionals from throughout the world who've heard of the organ at Temple Square and the program here and have come to find out more about it. It has been a cross-section of professionals, government leaders, business executives and long-time fans of the choir."
In the course of his duties as organist, Brother Cundick has been a prolific composer whose works number well over 100, including two hymns in the current Church hymnbook, "That Easter Morn" and "Thy Holy Word." He has never catalogued his works, and most are unpublished. He considers his composing just part of the job.
"Every now and then, something will turn up, and I will say, oh yes, I did write that. I'd forgotten all about it."
In fact, personal aggrandizement in a worldly fashion seems to have been absent from his agenda during the time he has been Tabernacle organist.
"I've been blessed profoundly throughout my tenure here at Temple Square," he reflected. "I've never regretted it for anything. Every time you do the Lord's work, you get blessings proportionately. And this has been a fantastic opportunity to serve, an opportunity, really, to be engaged in missionary work for 26 years, because that's what Temple Square is all about, finally. The majority is indirect missionary work, but it's definitely missionary work."
Music was a wonderful way, he said, to introduce the peoples of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe to Mormonism recently.
"They were just hungry for it in those concert halls," he said. "They would start that rhythmic applause that was so typical over there, clapping in unison. It was just electrifying. They demanded more and more, until finally we had to quit to conserve our voices after six or seven encores."
Such is the potential of music in introducing people to the gospel, he said.
But Brother Cundick is concerned about the future of music instruction among young Church members.
"My concern is that parents and children are not placing a premium on learning to make music oneself," he said. "They're purchasing it instead, and playing it back. If ever the adversary had a powerful tool, it's in persuading youth that they should be spectators and listeners instead of active participants."
In that regard, electronic synthesizers and computerized musical instruments could be tools for good or bad, he said; good in the sense of lending flexibility to musical creativity, but bad in the sense of discouraging musicianship and proficiency.
The sign on the Cundick cabin wall might be regarded as his warning to the rising generation: "We believe the present is the golden key to the future."