“He gave the love of beauty”

At the Auxerre recital, Houlihan opened with an American piece by Leo Sowerby, for which he had won a first prize in the prestigious Albert Schweitzer International Organ Competition. The Auxerre program included some of music’s most treasured works, including pieces by César Franck, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Louis Vierne. For Houlihan, it was an occasion not to be forgotten. “I told Christian I knew this would be something that would stay with me for the rest of my life, and that it would probably be one of the most special recitals I will ever get to play,” he says.

Houlihan delivered a breathtaking performance, but Rose—who assisted him that day at the organ—says his student passed on something even greater. “He gave the love of beauty,” explains Rose of his student since age 12. “If you have the gift to appreciate something incredibly beautiful, whatever that may be—it may not be music or paintings, it may be language or mathematics—if you feel that passion about what you love and about your gift, you can’t help but want to share that. It works not just as a performer, but also as a teacher, as I pass it on to Chris and as I see someone who has that same passion.”

Rose recognized this passion early when Houlihan, not yet a teenager, arrived an hour early at a recital so he would have a prime view of the organist at work. That moment made Rose recall his own youth, when he began studying with his beloved organ teacher, Virgil Fox, who in turn had studied with the French organist Marcel Dupré. “The way I told Chris to place his foot on the pedal during his first lesson was what Dupré told Fox and what teachers before told Dupré,” says Rose of the lineage. Yet, these moments between teacher and student often extend beyond the tangible. As Rose explains of his time with Fox, “It was being able to go to the New York Philharmonic and go backstage with him and have Thanksgiving dinner at his house as a student. Times like these form your being.”

So when Rose stood next to Houlihan at a French organ they had only known for a day, he watched proudly as the lineage carried on—a lineage that includes not only the techniques of great French performers but also evening gatherings at professors’ homes and conversations on crisp, fall days on the Long Walk. And trips by retired professors to far continents in support of their former students.

On that early March day in France when the Trinity family came together far from its Hartford home, Minard was reminded of how these moments distinctly define his alma mater. Before President Jones left the Minards’ apartment last fall, he had one last question for Christian: “What would you say to Trinity students?” As alumnus and president sat side by side, the reply slowly began to reveal itself on the monitor: “Jamais ne le prenez au hasard”— never take the College for granted.

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