The Christian Musician
Dr. Gus, as he was affectionately called,
was Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Bob Jones University for over 40 years. The Lord fitted him for that work in amazing ways. He was an able administrator and he intimately knew all the arts. He was truly a Renaissance man. He was an artist. He was an actor. He was a singer. He was the conductor of the University Symphony orchestra for decades. He was a talented composer and arranger. And he was a lay preacher.
As a faculty kid,
music camper, music major, and faculty member, I observed Dr. Gus for decades. I thrilled to hear him sing, whether it was “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head” or it was portraying Dulcamara in Elixir of Love. I enjoyed his whole-hearted acting as Falstaff in Henry V. Even before I was a member of his orchestra his conducting of oratorios, operas, and symphonies shaped my appreciation for excellence and beauty.
I joined his orchestra, the BJU Symphony, at age 17. He made me, the little runt of the group, feel welcome. He was so good at not only getting us to play professionally, but to love the pieces we were studying. We performed a major opera every year, many oratorios, many symphonies and shorter orchestral works, and many other choral-orchestral works.
My happiest memories
of orchestra though, are the orchestra tours. We travelled to churches and Christian schools, presenting very fine sacred orchestral works that he had written or arranged. He had a burden to pass on to young people the love for excellence in worshipping the Lord. We had many fun experiences, including culinary ones—from being served fried chicken four days in a row, to being served two large suppers in one evening, to eating sack lunches at a truck stop.
My very first orchestra tour, when I was a freshman, we travelled to New England, and worked our way back down the East Coast. The last day of tour, I was very sick. I mean, we made sure we had a bag handy when I got on the bus. Not to sit, but to lie down on the fold down bed. That would have been embarrassing, because it was right inside the door, but I didn’t care. Dr. Gus sat in the seat right at my head and was very kind. It worked out well except when he pulled out some Spanish Peanuts, and the smell almost caused a problem for me! Anyway, when we got back to campus, Dr. Gus instructed the bus driver to head directly for my home, back campus. Somehow I got down the stairs of the bus, but before I started up the driveway, I felt myself being lifted up (I was 50 pounds lighter than I am now!) and Dr. Gus carried me into the house and laid me on my own bed!
Dr. Gus was committed
to excellence and to the Lord’s cause of Christian fine arts because he was committed to the Lord. He could have made much money and been at the top of his field if the Lord had led him that way. But the Lord had a better plan—to use him to shape and mold thousands of lives. Dr. Gus was content to live in a small house and receive small remuneration for his work. In return, the Lord blessed him abundantly and in heaven his reward is great.
Dr. Gus’s compositions encompass a wide variety of genres. He wrote classical and sacred pieces for orchestra, brass choir, string quartet, vocal solo, and choir. He wrote a violin concerto. He wrote several one-act operas and one longer opera, Simeon. An excerpt from that is below. He was commissioned to write an orchestral work by the Williamsburg, VA, Symphonia to celebrate Wiliamsburg’s 300th birthday. His soundtracks for the BJU feature-length films are widely known, including Flame in the Wind, Sheffey, and The Printing. But it is Dr. Gus’s sacred works that are his best gift to us. He left many excellent symphony and string orchestra hymn arrangements, as well as many hymns he wrote in collaboration with Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. My very favorite of them is Crimson Drops Outflowing.
By the way, when you click on the main link above, and listen to the String Quartet playing Songs of the Kings, look really close at the second violinist…..
Here are some links to a very small sampling of his musical output. Listen often!!
Various musical selections from Dr. Gus
Sampling of the soundtrack to Flame in the Wind
Songs of Deliverance (three Psalm settings, with Dr. Gus explaining parts of it)
“But I don’t know a thing about music. I can’t help my child!”
“We are an unmusical family; does my child have a chance to succeed in music lessons?”
I hear these comments fairly frequently, and the easiest way to answer them is to tell my story.
Although I studied with some very talented teachers, my story shows that the Lord can also use the very ordinary to accomplish His will.
I grew up on the campus of Bob Jones University, in the house where some of you have your lessons now. My parents were not musicians, but they were music valuers. I grew up hearing classical and sacred music on the radio because my dad was a radioman, working at WMUU until he became head of Audio Services at BJU.
From a small child I attended first-class operas and classical concerts, very fine sacred music concerts, and top-notch Shakespearean plays.
This picture is of my parents—Corban and Sue Tabler; my sister, Maria; and me. Maria is holding our Siamese, with the dignified name of Fluffy. And yes, my sister is older than me, but always more petite.
When I was in fourth grade at Bob Jones Elementary school the Lord used my mommy to start my musical training. She told me to pick an instrument—I was going to study it for at least two years. Although I was not opposed to the idea, I might not have taken the initiative without her. I chose violin because my friend’s mother was the teacher. Her name was Joan Mulfinger, graduate of Eastman School of Music, and then head of the BJU string department. For the next two years I was one of her “pupils” (the word she would use) in a string class.
I was an average student but got the enthusiasm award! Because I had no musical training before the class, I was slightly behind in my knowledge of basic music reading. I remember thinking, “Oh this is the part I don’t know, so I won’t listen.” (!!?) So of course, my ignorance was perpetuated. My grandmother took this picture of my sister and me (to the right) playing our violins after we had been studying for three months. It is embarrassing! Please don’t copy our technique!
I remember starting out elementary orchestra as a 5th grader in the back of the 2nd violins, and being stupid enough to think that the music “didn’t work”. It didn’t occur to me that the trouble was with me--I was not playing what was on the page! By the end of my 6th grade year I was in the front of the 1st violins, but still an average student. That year I continued in string class but had Dianne Pinner as my teacher.
Did I like to practice? Not particularly. I remember my mother setting the timer for 10 minutes, but I came out early, thinking surely the time was up! The look of disappointment on Mrs. Pinner’s face is forever etched in my mind when she asked me, as a 6th grader, if I had practiced a certain assignment, and I said no.
My 7th grade year brought my first private lessons, and I was really nervous! Because I was sick for the first two weeks of my junior high career, I began in the very back of the second violins in the BJJH orchestra. The director was Jay-Martin Pinner, and I loved orchestra! Also, because I had missed the first two weeks of school, I flunked my first general music test. Not a promising outlook! But by my 8th grade year I was competing for concertmaster of the orchestra with my friend, Martha Mulfinger, the daughter of my first teacher.
I entered the high school orchestra (which met 5 times a week for 50 minutes) my 9th grade year, with Jay Pinner as the conductor, taking violin lessons from Susan Quindag. I again, was not showing much promise for a violin career, nor was it in my mind. In fact, the summer after my freshman year I took rhythm lessons from Dianne Pinner. We sat on the couch, I feeling clumsy and stupid, and patted and clapped rhythms. She was so patient with me! During later high school summers I began taking violin lessons from Jay Pinner. I was visibly shaking the first lesson. My junior year I was competing for the top couple of seats in the orchestra, and my senior year I was concertmaster, and first violin in the Academy string quartet. I also performed in the 2nd violins of the Bob Jones University orchestra, under Dr. Dwight Gustafson’s baton. For my final concert with the high school orchestra I had won the conducting contest, so I directed them in the first movement of Holst’s Saint Paul’s Suite, and I also played a memorized solo with the orchestra—Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto.
This is a picture taken after I graduated from college, but it shows Lance Flower (beside me-on the left), who I will mention shortly, and Jay and Dianne Pinner. All three of these people were used of the Lord as my teachers. They were on the music faculty of Bob Jones University.
During the last two years of high school I was searching for what the Lord wanted me to major in in college. My interests were music, carpentry, and animals. I loved carpentry, having studied it for three years in high school. By the way, if you come to your lesson at my house, I made the walnut cedar chest in my studio. If you come to my parents’ house, I made the cherry end table next to the couch. It is really really fun to turn a piece of wood on a lathe and come out with beautifully shaped table legs! (Except when you hit a knot while it is spinning, and the thing breaks and comes flying out at you!)
I also loved my animals! The Siamese that is shown in the first picture was my pride and joy. This Brittany, Sunshine, was quite the handful, but we loved it when she had puppies! After Fluffy, the Siamese, came Kitter, shown in the next picture. And of course, there was a menagerie of wild rabbits, squirrels, turtles, and fish.
Anyway, the Lord used Jay Pinner to inspire me to be a string teacher. As I explored the music education major, there were things about it that scared me silly! “How can I think that I play well enough to be a violin major?” “How will I ever survive my senior recital?” “Will I survive even the first day of student teaching?” I spent much time praying the psalms that ask the Lord to teach me His way. And He showed me that I should be a music education major. The feelings of inadequacy remained, but I knew that the Lord planned this for me, and He was the One Who made me and would be the One to look to. As a violin major I studied with Jay Pinner, and at the beginning he knew how much I needed help—we had two lessons a week, and sometimes three.
I immediately began helping Dianne Pinner teach string classes at the elementary school, back where I began my music training nine years earlier. It was a wonderfully helpful experience to be in the classroom day in and day out with a professional teacher, observing and learning. During my sophomore year I had my own class at the elementary school, something I continued to do for the next 15 years or so. I also began teaching some private students, picking up quite a number for the summer. I studied violin (not rhythm!) with Dianne Pinner in the summers.
I started working in the BJU string instrument repair shop with Jay Pinner my sophomore year. I had hung out there as a late high school student, so of course, he put me to work. I now worked there 4 hours a week during the school year, and much more during summers and Christmases. I am so very thankful for the long apprenticeship I had with Jay so that I could learn many skills in that area. I continued to work there, and after he retired from that I took over, and I still maintain BJU’s string instruments.
What a privilege to sit under the baton of Dr. Dwight Gustafson with the Bob Jones University Symphony Orchestra for so many years (from late high school and through my faculty years) and be a part of many major operas, oratorios, and symphonies, and wonderful, God-honoring sacred music, both from the classical realm and from Dr. Gus’s own writings and arrangements. I went on 11 tours with the orchestra. The two most memorable ones were the 10-day New England tour—the one where I ended up really sick… but you can read about that in Dr. Gus’s article above—and the October 2001 one, only weeks after the tragic 9/11 airline attacks. We flew to Colorado, and boy was everyone in the airport and at the Air Force Academy on high alert!
Well, did I survive my senior recital? By God’s grace I did, and so did Mr. Pinner. Most of it had to be memorized, and that was the great terror for me. At the final check for the recital, with other string faculty and Mr. Pinner listening, I played straight through my recital. Or, at least, I was supposed to play straight through it…. I could not remember the Mendelssohn concerto last movement! I failed that check! The faculty left except for the Pinners and my accompanist, Lance Flower. While I was crying, the Pinners insisted I do it again right then. So off I started, and, with tears rolling down my cheeks, I played straight through it. So of course, Mr. Pinner said, “If you can do it while you’re bawling, you can certainly do it at the recital!” And I did. Was it perfect? No—I let down too early and missed a couple notes right in the last 20 seconds. But the Lord enabled me and Mr. Flower covered for me!
Did I survive my student teaching? By God’s grace, but I was so very glad when that was over! My teaching at the elementary classes helped me greatly, especially when my supervising teacher left me alone in the classroom to teach the very first day I arrived. I was not scheduled to teach for several weeks, had not prepared, and had no idea any of their names or what music they were working on, but here we go!
The minute I knew that God wanted me to be a music education major, I knew He also wanted me to get an advanced degree. So I continued my studies with Jay Pinner as I earned my masters. I was a Graduate Assistant in the String Department, which meant I was part-time faculty, part-time student. I taught private lessons, but the big thing was conducting the Junior High orchestra that I had been in myself ten years previously. That was very difficult for me as a new teacher, because I didn’t know how to handle 60 kids, every one with noise makers in their hands. My attitude was, “Two years, and I’m outta here!” But by the time I finished my degree, I was asked to stay on as string faculty. That was a hard decision because it was such an easy decision. I wanted to stay, and everyone assumed that I was going to, but I needed a strong confirmation from the Lord that that was what He wanted me to do. The Lord did confirm that, and I continued what I had been doing, but now as a full-time faculty member.
This picture is of my sister Maria and me playing violin together for my parents.
For the next 24 years I was part of the string faculty at BJU. During that time I studied violin for 20 semesters with Dianne Pinner. How she ever put up with me that long I’ll never know! I repaired thousands of instruments, taught thousands of lessons, coached many chamber ensembles, and conducted many junior high orchestras. I began teaching two classes of String Pedagogy (String Pedagogy is the study of teaching private string lessons.). I also maintained a small home studio.
In May of 2018 I resigned my position at BJU, and the Lord has blessed greatly in providing students for me—you! I am teaching more hours than I did as a full-time BJU faculty member! Although I miss conducting a school orchestra, I am blessed to have a small youth string ensemble at my church, Mount Calvary Baptist Church. I am thankful to be able to use the gifts the Lord has given me there, and to minister to my students so that you will, Lord willing, serve the Lord through Christ-honoring music.