For him, it was the finest occupation imaginable this side of the celestial kingdom. But just as all musical masterpieces come to an end, John Longhurst on Nov. 25 caps his 30-year career as Salt Lake Tabernacle organist in his final broadcast with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of "Music and the Spoken Word."
Brother Longhurst, 67, is unreserved in his praise for his associates — the choir, organists, musicians, conductors and support staff — whom he calls "a wonderfully unified group" with one golden pursuit: "making music and furthering the work of the Church. We're all single-minded and working toward that goal."
That he would one day be part of that illustrious and singularly focused team never would have occurred to him as a child living on a ranch outside Placerville, Calif., near Sacramento, in an area so rural that he attended school for two years in a one-room building with a lone teacher instructing eight grades simultaneously.
But he showed promise early. After meetings in the tiny branch the family attended, he would go to the piano and pick out melodies he had heard. At age 4, he reportedly threatened to run away from home unless his parents bought him a piano. They complied.
"This piano must have come over with the '49ers in the Gold Rush times," he said. "It was a real antique. But it was a start, and my mother found a neighbor lady who taught piano who was willing to take me on at that early age."
When his father died in 1949, his mother moved to Salt Lake City with John and his older brother, where she could be closer to family and employment opportunity. Living in the Pioneer (later the Cannon) Stake in west Salt Lake City, the Longhursts attended meetings in a new stake center where a small pipe organ was installed.
"I heard the organists playing it, and somehow there was just a fascination," he recalled. "I don't know whether it was the wide variety of tone colors or the great volume one could get from it (for a teenager, that's a big thing)."
In those days, when the Church was smaller and more centralized, it offered 12-week courses of instruction in organ playing and conducting for ward musicians. Sixteen-year-old John signed up for one of those courses and thus came under the guidance of Tabernacle organist Frank Asper. As a culminating treat in that course taught in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square, Brother Asper took the students over to the Tabernacle and gave each the opportunity to play its famous organ. That was John's first encounter with the instrument that would be such a significant part of his life.
Encouraged by school counselors to pursue a civil engineering degree at the University of Utah, Brother Longhurst would decide later, during his mission to the Atlantic States with headquarters in Washington, D.C., that he would change his major to music. Returning home, he completed course work for a music degree in a couple of years, then went on to receive a master's degree from the university and then a doctorate from the illustrious Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York.
Meanwhile, he would serve a brief stint as a member of the Tabernacle Choir, beginning in 1963. At the encouragement of friends, he contacted director Richard P. Condie, who auditioned him briefly after one of the choir's broadcasts and said, "We'll see you Thursday night" for rehearsal.
"The audition procedure, I must say, has developed considerably since then," he remarked.
While in New York, he met his wife, the former Nancy Meldrim, from Syracuse, N.Y. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple in 1969 and have raised three sons and a daughter, with four grandchildren so far.
Teaching in the music department at BYU for eight years, Brother Longhurst was prominent enough that he was among those asked to audition to replace longtime Tabernacle organist Alexander Schreiner, who retired in 1977.
Since then, today's Latter-day Saints, most of whom have become Church members during Brother Longhurst's tenure, have come to see him as a fixture in the Tabernacle.
And though his position leaves little or no time to hold a ward or stake calling apart from home teaching, he has served, when the ward meeting schedule permitted it, as a pianist in Primary. "That's a lot of fun, because it gives you a chance to improvise a little bit," he said. "The kids seemed to enjoy that. We had a good time."
As Tabernacle organist, he has made at least two indelible marks which will probably last forever in the collective consciousness of the Church. One is in composing the music for Elder Bruce R. McConkie's famous valedictory hymn "I Believe in Christ." The other is in spearheading the development of the pipe organ in the Church's Conference Center completed in 2000.
"I was handed Elder McConkie's text shortly before the deadline for the printing of the new (1985) hymnbook, and I was asked to submit a setting for consideration," he recalled. As penned by the apostle, the poem had eight verses; Brother Longhurst was assigned to provide music for six of the verses.
"I thought, 'That's going to be like "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief."' So I lopped off two more verses and thought I would set four of them to music."
On the bus riding home from work, he pulled some manuscript paper from his bag and sketched out a melody, which he harmonized and refined at home. The tune name he gave it, as listed today in the hymnal, is "White City" because he was riding on the White City bus at the time he composed the melody.
Chuckling, he said, "People have these grand impressions of the Holy City and this, that and the other," little realizing that the tune is named after a Salt Lake County residential subdivision.
When his setting was selected by the hymnbook committee, Brother Longhurst was told that Elder McConkie wanted all eight verses included. With the deadline looming, Brother Longhurst got the notion to combine two verses into one. "So each time you sing a verse, you're actually singing two of his verses," he said.
With more time, he might have done things differently, he said. But it has worked. With characteristic modesty, he said, "People are so moved by the text that they seem willing to accept the music that goes along with it."
Regarding the Conference Center organ, Brother Longhurst is exclamatory: "Oh, what a job! My!"
When President Gordon B. Hinckley announced in April 1996 general conference that the building would be constructed, Brother Longhurst's mind reeled: "What in the world are we going to do for an organ?" he thought.
The early assumption was that an electronic organ would be installed. "But the choir having performed and recorded with this (Tabernacle) instrument, which is one of the premiere instruments in the United States, if not the world, to all of a sudden be performing and recording with an electronic organ just did not seem right. This is the musical face that would go out to the Church and the world."
Of course, no one realized that there would soon come a two-year period when the Tabernacle Organ would be decommissioned as the Tabernacle was renovated, and the Church would have to rely on the Conference Center instrument.
"How grateful we were that the First Presidency accepted the proposal that a pipe organ was a feasible solution and, in fact, supported us in feeling that it was the better solution," Brother Longhurst said.
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