By LINDA STULL MOELLER ’66 | Photos WARTBURG COLLEGE ARCHIVES

This year, the Wartburg Community Symphony celebrates its 70th anniversary and the persistence of a young conductor who found a way to create an orchestra at a college with practically no string players.

Ernest Hagen joined the Wartburg College music faculty in September 1952 as instructor of public school education and director of instrumental organizations. Along with directing the concert band and teaching music classes, he also began organizing an orchestra to complement the college’s strong choral and band traditions.

“He was a busy guy, but he was pretty determined to make it work,” recalled Everett Blobaum ’54, a music major who played clarinet with the orchestra.

Hagen’s solution to the string shortage was to create a college/community symphony, recruiting adults from a 50-mile radius to join the group. He sometimes took his small daughter along on recruiting trips.

“Dad would hear of a farmer who played the violin and off we would go,” recalled Caryl Hagen Stalick. “This farmer, J. R. Compton, was missing a finger on his bow hand, but he was happy to be playing again and became a prominent member of the orchestra.”

A small chamber group performed at the December 1952 college Christmas program. Hagen ended his first year at Wartburg conducting 54 musicians, including 16 students, in the first Wartburg Community Symphony concert on May 23, 1953, in Knights Gymnasium. It attracted an audience of 500.

“I don’t remember any student string players,” Blobaum said of that first concert.

Under Hagen, the orchestra presented concerts in November and May, and the enthusiastic area musicians in the group played a summer pops concert.

By November 1953, concert attendance reached 1,000, firmly establishing Hagen’s college/community orchestra.

“His enthusiasm was infectious,” said Stalick. “His players played their best for him. And that’s what made his concerts so exciting.”

The first of 11 conductors so far, Hagen conducted his last WCS concert in November 1958. His replacement was Robert E. Lee, a high school band director in Wisconsin who joined the faculty mid-year as instructor of instrumental music. He taught music, directed the concert band, and conducted the Wartburg Community Symphony. Unlike Hagen, who had spent a year in Berlin, Germany, studying orchestral conducting under Vienna Philharmonic conductor Clemens Krauss, Lee had no previous orchestral experience.

“He was more of a jazz musician than anything,” recalled his wife, Dr. Joyce Lee.

Lee, who died in July 2022, once reflected that his first WCS program might have been “too ambitious.” He had to call out rehearsal letters during the second movement of a Bizet symphony, “but we made it through that first concert and continued to build the orchestra and play some nice things.”

Lee invited Ernest Hagen to come back and direct a 10th anniversary concert in February 1964, which was Lee’s last season with the orchestra though he continued teaching music and directing the band, retiring in 1995 after 36 years at Wartburg.

Dr. Franklin Williams replaced Lee as WCS conductor in fall 1965, serving until 1979 and then again from 1982 to 1984.

“The opportunity to conduct an orchestra was a large factor in my decision to join the Wartburg faculty,” Williams said, but when he arrived for the first Tuesday evening rehearsal, he was “astonished to find what appeared to be a small band with a string quartet awaiting my first downbeat.” Wartburg students and a few faithful community musicians came to the weekly rehearsal, but the entire orchestra never got together until the afternoon dress rehearsal preceding the group’s Sunday evening concerts.

“I began to think of this as Coronary Sunday,” said Williams, who now lives in Florida. “How do you prepare a program with one full rehearsal?”

Williams approached the Wartburg Community Symphony Association board with the possibility of funding a string scholarship program. He credits the support of Robert Gremmels ’52, a board member and fellow Wartburg professor, for getting the program off the ground with fundraising efforts that included WCSA season memberships, a cookbook, and an annual antique fair in Knights Gymnasium.

“The string scholarships quickly began to build a good core of enough orchestra string players to form a Wartburg chamber orchestra,” Williams said. Weekly rehearsals with more players also improved the Wartburg Community Symphony and allowed the group to present additional concerts.

Harold Motter, concertmaster and string teacher during Williams’ first years with the orchestra, left at the end of the 1967-68 academic year and was replaced by Harold Sundet, to whom Williams attributes much of the success in the orchestra’s continued development.

“He was a most effective leader of the violin section, and his advice was invaluable in the selection of music that would bring out the best of the orchestra’s capabilities,” Williams said. Shortly before Williams’ retirement in 1984, Sundet moved to an administrative position at Wartburg after a medical condition limited his ability to play the violin. The family is still represented in the orchestra by John Sundet ’80, a retired high school band director who played with his father as a student and has now returned to the violin section.

When Janice Wade joined the Wartburg faculty in 1987, she became the first female conductor of the Wartburg Community Symphony and one of only 27 female conductors in the country. A graduate of Drake University, she had previously founded and conducted the Des Moines Community Symphony and spent 10 years teaching in Des Moines public schools. She programmed several silent films for WCS concerts and arranged two cruises where WCS musicians entertained passengers on the SS Norway.

“This orchestra was definitely her joy,” said her spouse, Lura Works Wade, who served as concertmaster during Janice Wade’s 24 years as conductor. “It’s why she came to Wartburg. She had a definite vision for the job.”

As professor of violin and viola, Janice Wade taught college string students and for a time offered free lessons during May Term. She introduced a Saturday afternoon Christmas concert geared to children, often featuring narrated stories or puppets in a program that started with Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride and ended with White Christmas.

To give the orchestra more visibility, Wade scheduled a WCS concert during Homecoming Weekend. She brought in a variety of guest artists to inspire students and audiences and added six professional positions to the orchestra.

Wade commissioned a work by Des Moines composer Linda Robbins Coleman for the 50th anniversary of the symphony in 1992. In all, she commissioned and premiered 14 works during her tenure and secured rights from the Ford Made in America project for WCS to become the only Iowa orchestra performing the state premiere of America the Beautiful, a work by composer Joan Tower. She retired in 2011 and died in 2018.

In addition to Hagen, Lee, Williams, and Wade, other WCS conductors with shorter tenures included John Bentley (1964-65), Lathon Jernigan (1979-82, 1985-87), Walter Temme (1984-85), Dr. Daniel Kaplunas (2011-15), Dr. Jacob Tews (2015-19), and Samuel Stapleton (2019-21).

Dr. Rebecca Nederhiser has led the symphony since 2021 and is passionate about continuing to grow and nurture this unique community partnership.

“As we celebrate our 70th anniversary, we look toward the future with hope and excitement,” she said. “The growth and innovation of the symphony in just two years is a foreshadowing of a new dawn for the organization, one in which anything is possible.”