Meditation

This piece shows the versitility of the new AVO sample and features at various times the Positive Bourdon and Clarinette, the Swell Diapason and Vox Humana and the Great Gamba. Having two manuals under expression also helps with this piece.

Isaac van Vleck Flagler was born in Albany on May 15, 1838 and died on March 16 1909 in Auburn, New York. He is nearly unknown today, but he was an important American organist with a fascinating career in upstate New York.

He was organist/musical lecturer for the Chautauqua Institution which was founded by Methodists in 1874 in western New York as a summer educational center. In 1896, Flagler became one of the 145 Founders of the American Guild of Organists.

In his youth, Isaac van Vleck Flagler studied at the academies in Kinderhook and in Albany. From an early age, he showed a talent for music, especially by his brilliant piano playing. In 1854, when he was 16 years old, young Isaac became the organist at the Universalist Church in Poughkeepsie. During this time, he worked for the local newspaper and studied law over a period of four years.
As with Paine, Buck, and Thayer, Flagler decided to study music in Europe. He first went to Paris to study with Édouard Batiste, organist of Saint-Eustache.
After Paris, Flagler went to Dresden and studied with Gustav Merkel, a noted performer who, in 1858, became organist of the Kreuzkirche.
Flagler continued to play at First Presbyterian Church in Auburn until early in 1909 when he fractured his hip in a fall from a bicycle. He died at his home on March 16. His obituary in The Etude magazine stated that “his death is a distinct loss to the cause of music in America.
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/10246