Dr. René Frank's Biography (continued)

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On Thanksgiving Day, 1947, the Franks arrived in San Francisco. From there Mrs. Frank took a plane to Philadelphia where they were to stay in the home of a missionary they had known at Nino Oka, a health resort at the foot of Fujiama, Japan. René followed by train with the few belongings left to them They remained in Philadelphia until the Spring of 1942 at which time René took a position as instructor of music at Pikeville College in Kentucky.

In the fall of 1951, the Franks moved to Fort Wayne and immediately René set to work at Indiana University to obtain his graduate degrees, earning his M. Mus. in 1953, and his D. Mus. in 1956. For his doctoral study, René composed the ''Passion Symphony”, a work which he always considered his masterpiece, for into it he poured himself without stint. Some things came to him without seeming effort, but this work required much toil.

Concerning his music, Dr. Frank’s major professor at Indiana University wrote: "The greatest stylistic influence in his own work was certainly Hindemith, and more specifically the Hindemith of the ‘Gebrauchsmusik’ period; he found himself a simple and direct mode of expression, technically not very complicated, clan and unpretentious.” René liked contemporary dissonant music, but felt that this element was only temporary, so curbed its use in his own composition. He could not abide atonality and the electronic productions of such composer as Stockhausen, for to him this music was symbolic and even symptomatic of the unresolved confusion of mind and spirit in the present age. This same feeling carried over in the field of art of which he also was fond.

For many years after coming to Fort Wayne, Dr. and Mrs. Frank spent part of their summers in Wisconsin to escape the hay fever season, during which René suffered greatly. There he came to know Dr. Thor Johnson, Director of the Interlochen Arts Academy, who pays him this tribute:

From our initial acquaintance several years ago, I was immediately impressed with the great beauty of his personal mission in life. It was always apparent that he knew that he was called to be a servant of our Lord. I always felt better after having been in his presence.

Dr. William Ballard of Northwestern University said of him:

As a person, René always proved himself affable, thoughtful, generous, appreciative, warm, approachable, kindly, concerned for the welfare of others, communicative — in brief, simpatico, to use an Italian adjective for which there seems to be no easy English equivalent.

Dr. Bernhard Heiden of Indiana University, who was René's major professor, also remarked, "René was a truly modest person, and I believe his music reflects this quality." Along this vein, this writer for one will never forget how he insisted from the beginning of our acquaintance that I address him as "René" — none of this "Dr. Frank'' stuff!

In the Fort Wayne area, René was an active member and participant in the Performers Workshop, where his chamber and solo works were played and respected by the leading musicians of the community I had the privilege of attending the premiere of his Christmas oratorio, "And God Came”, performed by the Indiana Central College Choir in Indianapolis in the fall of 1960, and of conducting its first performance the next year in Fort Wayne with the assistance of some members of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra. This orchestra, in 1959, under the direction of its conductor, Igor Buketoff, performed the "Passion Symphony" and in 1962 the song cycle for baritone and orchestra, "Triptych of Heavenly Love," sung by a Fort Wayne musician friend, Mr. Henry Simminger.

One of the orchestra members with whom René had much in common as a musician, said of him:

He taught me that the tongue blessing God without the heart is but a tinkling cymbal, the heart blessing God without the tongue is sweet but still music; both in concert make their harmony, which fills and delights heaven and earth. With the passing of his body, part of me died also, but his spirit will live on and from this I can get strength to know and reason what really is one’s purpose on earth.

It has been my privilege to know and work with Dr. Frank as a friend and colleague for the last four years. During that time I saw many sides of his character, both his weaknesses and his strengths. He was a man of strong conviction (born and bred in him in Germany), and wholly loveable. It was the man — the Christian man — that made the musician: the man transformed, inspired, and infused with a burning desire to please God. This he did in his professional contacts in the Fort Wayne area and elsewhere, in his work as teacher and administrator, and in his earnest longing to see his Jewish friends and relatives won to the Savior.

I first met René Frank when the National Church Music Fellowship held its convention in Fort Wayne in 1956. I was impressed by his almost fatherly kindness and deep devotion to God. As I listened to his organ preludes being performed, I knew that here was a dedicated Christian musician with skill and originality in composition. I was eager to perform at least a portion of the "Triptych," which I did subsequently, and also heard a performance of his violin sonata, op. 35, and the Variations on "O come, O come, Emmanuel," for violin and piano. Members of N.C.M.F. also have performed a number of his works including the more recent male chorus, "Warfare and Victory," op. 46.

If any one word could be used to describe Dr. Frank's influence on those of us who knew him best and on people wherever he went, it would be the word "inspiration." The Spirit of God filled him, and his music had an inspired quality impossible under any other circumstances. I think Harold Best of Nyack expressed it most aptly when he said:

René was first of all a worshiping Christian whose deep love for Christ made it impossible for his music to come first. What he composed was therefore always the result of his experiences in the things of God...René created out of a deep undisturbed, wholly committed life of worship and adoration...he learned, perhaps better than most, that mere technical display and aesthetic profundity, while necessarily present in the greatest music, must often be set aside for an elemental simplicity; a simplicity akin to the simplicity of the Word: easy to grasp, but fresh and pregnant in a way hard to explain. He seemed to have been given this gift only as he grew humble in his experience with Christ and more skillful as a composer. René was this a man who reduced praise to its keenest essence without falling into the lush trap of pseudo-simplicity which has ensnared so many who speak of simplicity without knowing that it is a cheapness and immediacy which have beguiled them. His simple music had all the raw materials of his complicated music and was thereby elemental rather than elementary. One could always envision the large in the small and the complicated in the simple; one could recognize that each proceeded out of a single, undeviating core of integrity, mellowed by years of musical discipline and softened by the Holy Ghost, whose help to be sure, was invoked at each turn of phrase and choice of text.

René was a personal inspiration to me. In other words, the things that I have said above concerning René are things that I must do, and must surrender to, and I know this largely because I have known René.

Though I have sought to do so in this article, I have been unable to separate the man from his music, for the two seem inseparable. A few further comments about René's music by musicians who knew him should he made here, however:

The greatest characteristic of René's music is its virility. His music always seemed to move with a firm sense of musical line. He wrote what he felt and what he knew and that was large indeed. In his sacred music for example, the "Five Psalms" or the "Six Hymn Preludes" and numerous anthems, he was always able to infuse a kind of masculine strength which distinguished his music as vastly superior to most of the run-of-the-mill sacred music published today.

 — Frederiek Jackish, Wittenberg University.

As a composer he was a man of imagination and insight, founded upon tradition, yet able to reach into uncharted waters with security and success. His thinking was infallibly instrumental, though he recognized the capacity of the human voice and restricted his compositions for voices to the capacity of that instrument. His harmonic idiom was logical and within grasp of singers which is not always true of even the most widely recognized contemporary composers.

— William Ballard, Northwestern University.