He was singularly magnificent, a patrician musical influence, and a Yalie to the core. He will be missed.
Mark Powell
American Radio Chamber Choir
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Condolences
Terry, I am sending a copy of this by hard mail to your mom’s address. Thanks for setting up this website. I have attached a couple of your dad’s pictures from when he was with us, though you may still have them around the house.
Dear Carol,
When I read of Fenno’s death, I pulled the 1949 Pasquaney Annual from the shelf. I did not have to look up on any database what his years were. It was his second summer as a counsellor, still four years before I was born. Yet I have felt his presence powerfully because it has endured at Pasquaney in the over half century since Fenno was here. The cheerful picture of him with his fellow counsellors, so many of them singers, made me realize how they must have enjoyed being together. I know they formed a quartet in at least one of those years. Fenno directed Yale musicians to Pasquaney long after he left. He was succeeded by Fred Pittman. Fred told me a few years ago that Fenno and Marshall Bartholomew (Mr. Barty) sat him down in the Yale Glee Club office in 1951 and told Fred what he was about to do with his summer: serve on the Pasquaney council. Fred has recently endowed a scholarship for campers from the
With warm wishes,
Vin Broderick,
Director
From Caroline Murphy '83 - Tasteful Modulations
Dear Members of the Heath family,
I have been so moved by the many postings to Fenno's blog, and wanted to include a little tribute of my own. I will both attach it and paste it into this message. My heart goes out to each and all of you!
Love,
Caroline Murphy
Tasteful Modulations
During these past couple of weeks, as the news about Fenno has unfolded, I have taken part in four different choral performances. Each event has felt like my own personal tribute to Fenno; along with many others who have contributed to this blog, I imagine that nothing would please Fenno more than to know how many of us have continued to raise our voices in song.
In the nearly 30 years since I joined the Yale Glee Club, choral singing has been one of the few constants in my life, keeping me afloat through a variety of life changes and feeding my soul. It is hard to imagine any of it without Fenno’s influence.
I had done very little singing before college, so my two years in the Glee Club opened up a whole new world to me. What a revelation it was to sing Bach’s B Minor Mass in the spring of my senior year! Last Friday, as Fenno was breathing his last, I was in the middle of a dress rehearsal with the Yale Camerata for another of Bach’s great works, the Christmas Oratorio. I found myself instinctively marking a few last fugal entrances with brackets and recalling that it was Fenno who had first taught me to do that when we sang the B Minor Mass. What I remember especially is the larger purpose those brackets served. It was not enough just to learn your own line and sing it competently. Fenno always encouraged us to get inside the music, to see how the different parts fit together, to breathe life into the whole and give it our all in the way that he did.
Fenno ended up having a further, quite unexpected but profound influence on my life. Shortly after I had moved back to New Haven in the fall of 1987, we ran into each other in the street, and he invited me to sing in the Battell Chapel Choir. Before I knew it, I found myself back in the Glee Club Room, rehearsing during lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Out of those years in the Battell Choir – which gave me my first substantive church experience – came, eventually, a call to ordained ministry.
It has also been a joy to get to know the Heath family: Terry during my Glee Club years and, in later years, Carol and the Heath sisters. Some of my fondest memories from the late ‘80s and ‘90s are of singing with Sarah (and Lucy, while she was still in New Haven) in a very informal women’s singing group called the “Sweet Alkalines.” Fenno was as enthusiastic about our ragtag little ensemble as he was about any other musical endeavor, even writing a few arrangements for us.
My favorite “Fenno-ism” was one he used in reference to his own compositions. Often, toward the end of a piece, he threw in a shift to a higher key. With a twinkle in his eye, Fenno always referred to these shifts as “tasteful modulations.” The twinkle let us in on an open secret: these signature modulations of his were really a strategy to ramp up the energy and dramatic impact of the music. In the hands of a lesser musician, they might have seemed like a mere ploy, but with Fenno they worked. Always. And they were indeed tasteful.
Perhaps one way to look at the events of these past couple of weeks is as the modulation of a song – the tasteful modulation of Fenno’s life song – into a different key. The song continues in a slightly higher key, shimmering just a little more brightly. I picture him telling us all about it even now, with a twinkle in his eye.
Caroline Murphy '83
I have been so moved by the many postings to Fenno's blog, and wanted to include a little tribute of my own. I will both attach it and paste it into this message. My heart goes out to each and all of you!
Love,
Caroline Murphy
Tasteful Modulations
During these past couple of weeks, as the news about Fenno has unfolded, I have taken part in four different choral performances. Each event has felt like my own personal tribute to Fenno; along with many others who have contributed to this blog, I imagine that nothing would please Fenno more than to know how many of us have continued to raise our voices in song.
In the nearly 30 years since I joined the Yale Glee Club, choral singing has been one of the few constants in my life, keeping me afloat through a variety of life changes and feeding my soul. It is hard to imagine any of it without Fenno’s influence.
I had done very little singing before college, so my two years in the Glee Club opened up a whole new world to me. What a revelation it was to sing Bach’s B Minor Mass in the spring of my senior year! Last Friday, as Fenno was breathing his last, I was in the middle of a dress rehearsal with the Yale Camerata for another of Bach’s great works, the Christmas Oratorio. I found myself instinctively marking a few last fugal entrances with brackets and recalling that it was Fenno who had first taught me to do that when we sang the B Minor Mass. What I remember especially is the larger purpose those brackets served. It was not enough just to learn your own line and sing it competently. Fenno always encouraged us to get inside the music, to see how the different parts fit together, to breathe life into the whole and give it our all in the way that he did.
Fenno ended up having a further, quite unexpected but profound influence on my life. Shortly after I had moved back to New Haven in the fall of 1987, we ran into each other in the street, and he invited me to sing in the Battell Chapel Choir. Before I knew it, I found myself back in the Glee Club Room, rehearsing during lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Out of those years in the Battell Choir – which gave me my first substantive church experience – came, eventually, a call to ordained ministry.
It has also been a joy to get to know the Heath family: Terry during my Glee Club years and, in later years, Carol and the Heath sisters. Some of my fondest memories from the late ‘80s and ‘90s are of singing with Sarah (and Lucy, while she was still in New Haven) in a very informal women’s singing group called the “Sweet Alkalines.” Fenno was as enthusiastic about our ragtag little ensemble as he was about any other musical endeavor, even writing a few arrangements for us.
My favorite “Fenno-ism” was one he used in reference to his own compositions. Often, toward the end of a piece, he threw in a shift to a higher key. With a twinkle in his eye, Fenno always referred to these shifts as “tasteful modulations.” The twinkle let us in on an open secret: these signature modulations of his were really a strategy to ramp up the energy and dramatic impact of the music. In the hands of a lesser musician, they might have seemed like a mere ploy, but with Fenno they worked. Always. And they were indeed tasteful.
Perhaps one way to look at the events of these past couple of weeks is as the modulation of a song – the tasteful modulation of Fenno’s life song – into a different key. The song continues in a slightly higher key, shimmering just a little more brightly. I picture him telling us all about it even now, with a twinkle in his eye.
Caroline Murphy '83
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