Albert Henry Beck (1894-1962)

Albert Henry Beck

(1894-1962)

Born in Baltimore on April 1, 1894,

one of Carl and Martha Seeberger’s six children, the

young Albert Henry was tragically orphaned at a young age, his German-born mother having died

in childbirth in January, 1899, while his father died a year later. The orphans were superintended

by their mother’s brother, Rev. George Koch, a pastor in Petersburg, Illinois, who worked to place

his sister’s children into Lutheran homes.

After two years without a permanent family, and in the

meantime having learned to speak both English and German, Albert was adopted by Theodore

and Mathilde (neé Patke) Beck, German immigrants and longtime residents of Decatur, Illinois.

His fluency in languages allowed him to skip first grade at St Johannes, the local Lutheran

parochial school, which he attended from 1900 until 1907.

His parents sacrifically nurtured his

musical inclination, as Beck later recalled of his grade school years:

I had also had one year of music lessons. We had learned many chorales and carols

and songs in school, but all these were learned by rote. None of the children in that

neighborhood played any kind of musical instrument, except the pastor’s and

teachers’ children. . . It is all the more remarkable that my parents bought me a

reed organ for sixty eight dollars. That was a high price for them to pay. My father

earned forty five dollars a month working as a carpenter for the Wabash Railroad. .

. It is a curious thing that when I had music lessons on that reed organ I

accomplished very little. I liked music and wanted to learn to play, but it was always

much more interesting to try to work out my own melodies.

After a year at the local high school,

in 1909 he began study at the Addison seminary,

preparing

for a career in the Lutheran teaching ministry. As it was expected that Lutheran teachers would

also serve as the congregation’s musician, the Addison seminary’s curriculum abounded with

musical instruction. Beck recalled the primitive conditions of the school as well as their daily

morning chapel services at which “Students would play for the singing of hymns. Everybody in the

First Class had to take his turn at playing the organ. Sometimes the singing was accompanied so

poorly that even the director could hardly suppress a smile, and he was a stern man.”

Beck soon

advanced in musical technique, remembering that “During those years I learned to play the piano

and the organ. I enjoyed practicing and made good progress. There weren’t very many who learned

to play well. Whoever did was called a ‘whiz,’ not at all in a derogatory way. The musicians were

popular, possibly because they could get a crowd together for a sing-session, which was another way

of passing the time.”

Beck’s matriculation at Addison coincided with the institution’s transition

into what would become Concordia Teachers College, River Forest, and in June, 1914, he was in

the first graduating class of the new River Forest campus.

Although direct evidence of his musical

instruction at Addison is scant, Beck must have studied organ with George Christopher Albert

Kaeppel, one of the first organists in the LCMS to attain some stature as a concert performer, and

who taught first at Addison then at River Forest until his death in 1934. Inexplicably Beck never

seems to have included Kaeppel in his list of teachers, but Kaeppel must have been a significant

musical influence. In one instance, Beck performed a vocal/choral excerpt from Kaeppel’s cantata

“Unto Us” at an organ dedication in York, PA, in 1922.

After graduation, Beck continued at Concordia, as he had been hired as “assistant

instructor in the musical school of the seminary,”

teaching organ, piano, and choir,

appointment “considered one of the highest honors. He is one of the two in this year’s class to

secure appointment,”

thus beginning a decades-long career at River Forest, where he was

affectionately known as “Professor Beck.” As auspicious as the position was made to sound in

media announcements, his assistant position initially involved teaching “Music, Geography, and

Penmanship.”

One of his primary responsibilities, however, was teaching organ and piano, a

daunting task involving forty lessons per week some years.

Nonetheless, Beck utilized his new

position to launch a number of new choral ensembles. Beck helped found and direct the

“Concordia Double Quartet” in 1914, an exclusive choral ensemble which performed art music,

touring in the Midwest on occasion.

He founded and directed the “Apollo Double Quartet” in

September, 1917,

and the next month organized the “Concordia Glee Club,” the progenitor of

the later acappella choir, but at the time only one of five “glee clubs.”

The multiplicity of these

glee clubs arguably diluted the musical resources of the college, and by early 1922 the students

stirred for a more substantial chorus:

During the past years many students had thought of some day organizing a large

chorus representing the entire student-body, but this dream had never materialized.

When it was finally decided last fall to purchase new instruments for the band, it

was at once suggested that such a chorus be formed, to assist in this work by giving

concerts. The suggestion met with approval, and the “Concordia Chorus” sprang

into existence with Prof. A. Beck as its director. Too much praise cannot be given

this man, who, in the face of many difficulties, has molded these one hundred

voices into a harmonious unit.

During that first fall semester, the chorus prepared a Christmas program which toured local

churches and, “encouraged by this success the chorus did not, as was originally intended, disband

after the Christmas holidays.”

Rather, the choir prepared a series of concerts for the Easter

season, “in which the ‘Life of Christ’ was to be pictured in song. The director of this organization

[Beck] spent much time in selecting suitable pieces, and the result was a very pleasing and

extraordinary collection.” Thus did the “Concordia Chorus” earn merit for itself as a permanent

musical organization. Originally a men’s chorus, sopranos and altos were added to the choir with

the advent of coeducation in 1939.

Although he had entered into full-time teaching in 1914, Beck continued his own

education that fall, studying at the American Conservatory in Chicago first with Italian pianist

Sylvio Scionti before transferring to organ study with Wilhelm Middelschulte, one of the early

twentieth-century’s greatest concert organists and pedagogues who was at the time organist at St.

James Cathedral and for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In Middelschulte Beck found not

only a teacher, but a mentor and friend. Middelschulte considered Beck his “beste und beliebteste

Schüler” (“best and most beloved student”), and Beck became a frequent visitor to the

Middelschulte household, where he was often treated to a dinner cooked by Middelschulte or his

wife. Beck gained an affinity for Bach during these years, recalling that “There followed five years

and three summers of organ lessons from Middelschulte. The first two and a half years were

occupied by playing and studying nothing but Bach. It was Middelschulte’s point of view that if

you could play Bach, you could play any other music. . . I never regretted having been put on such

a strict diet of Bach.”

Beck launched into organ study, during the summer of 1915 practicing

eight hours a day, for “Middelschulte had a way of firing me with enthusiasm for the organ in the

way he was helping me.”

From Middelschulte Beck learned to play everything from memory

including the Guilmant Concert in D minor for organ and orchestra which the young organist

performed for American Conservatory commencement exercises in 1916. A review in Music News

in June, 1916, extolled the young organist for his triumph: “Albert Beck opened the program

brilliantly with the Guilmant Concerto in D minor for organ and orchestra and accomplished

wonders with the balky old instrument in the Auditorium.”

Beck also engaged in conducting

study with David Clippinger, a noted voice pedagogue, and William Boeppler, a distinguished

choral conductor based in both Chicago and Milwaukee, and a founder of the Wisconsin

Conservatory of Music,

and studied voice for two years with with American conservatory faculty

member E. Warren K. Howe.

The post-World War I years afforded manifold performance opportunities for Beck. The

end of hostilities provided enough reason for festivities, but Lutheran churches in particular were

eager to sponsor belated quadricentenniel celebrations of the Reformation. Beck observed:

There weren’t many well known Lutheran organists at that time. While both our

teachers colleges at Seward and River Forest produce good organists at times, these

organists seldom took additional lessons, once they were in office. Nor did such

organists gain much of a reputation except in rather limited boundaries. For that

reason the teachers at the colleges had more opportunities to play for special

occasions. The well known organists of that time were Haaase and Stelzer at

Seward, Kaeppel, Lochner, and (forgive me!) Beck. . . It was my good fortune to

have been asked repeatedly to play at church or organ dedications and for mass

celebrations. So it happened that I was frequently gone from River Forest to play,

sometimes Sunday after Sunday from October until the end of May.

Thus did Beck early cultivate a reputation for himself as a concert organist so that by the

end of his career he had performed in most states in the USA. In 1922, one reviewer wrote

enthusiastically of his dedication recital at St. John’s Lutheran Church in York, PA:

A fair sized audience thoroughly enjoyed the organ recital given last evening

on the organ at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran church by Prof. Albert

Beck, instructor of pipe organ at Concordia Teachers’ College, River Forest,

Ill. Prof. Beck is considerably under 30 years of age but his command of the

organ and his interpretation of a difficult program, proved that the

reputation he has gained has been well earned and that his future is bright.

. . Bach’s Fugue in D Minor with which Prof. Beck opened his program, is

one more infrequently heard than some of the other Bach compositions,

but was played in a masterly manner. His technique proved astonishing

when he played a pedal cadenza of his own composition to Handel’s

Concerto in G.

With the improvised pedal cadenza, Beck was already

demonstrating his interest in composition, a skill which he

would develop throughout the 1930s, and which he had studied

at the American Conservatory with Arthur Olaf Andersen.

According to one reviewer, “A performer-audience relationship

is established by Mr. Beck at his recitals in that he personally

explains his selections before each number is rendered.”

Beck

himself was more circumspect about the idea of performing,

recalling that “Going out to play has a spirit of adventure. One

sees many different places, meets many different people, enjoys

a certain amount of admiration, glories in the so-called glamour which unavoidably attaches itself

to anyone connected with the arts. . . sometimes it would pay to play, sometimes it would not, but

it was all in the service of the church.”

These early years demonstrate his wide-ranging musical interests, in this case concertizing

and composition. Although his career trajectory would take him to heights as a teacher and

conductor, he would always nurture an interest in solo performance and composition. Beck

graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the American Conservatory in 1917, although he

Beck from an early concert announcement.

contended that “At Concordia a degree meant little or nothing. It was important to be a good

teacher.”

He later received a Master of Music degree in “Organ, Composition, and

Orchestration” from the American Conservatory in 1934. His years at the American Conservatory

were musically and personally fruitful. Arthur Poister studied with Middelschulte at the same time

as Beck; both Beck and Leo Sowerby studied composition with Arthur Olaf Andersen.

Beck was promoted to full professor at Concordia in 1923. Reflecting this change of status,

the 1925 Concordia yearbook finally includes Beck in the listing of permanent faculty, noting the

schools at which he studied (but not from which he necessarily held a degree) as “Concordia

College,” “American Conservatory,” and the “Wisconsin Conservatory.” (Although “penmanship”

is still one of his classes.) Likely his study at the Wisconsin Conservatory referenced his time

studing with William Boeppler. In 1926, Beck was apparently able to relinquish penmanship

duties as his courses were then only enumerated as organ, piano, singing, and music theory.

Beck had married Esther Wetzel in August, 1922, at Zion Lutheran Church in Wausau,

Wisconsin.

Three children were born to the couple: Lois (b. 1924), Paula (b. 1925), and

Theodore (b. 1929.) Esther, also a musician, would die in 1933, leaving Albert to raise three young

children.

In 1931, he was appointed parish musician at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, the

mother church of Lutheranism in Chicago, and a founding congregation of the LCMS:

First Saint Paul’s had not previously had a choir, but when Beck arrived, he asked

Pastor Henry Kowert if he might establish a choir. There was an overwhelming

initial response of 72 people! In 1935, the choir presented a “Christmas

Musicale,” which included a new piece composed by Prof. Beck, various scripture

readings, vocal solos, and other choral pieces. . . Choir rehearsals were held on

Friday nights. In the 30s, the choir had regularly about 60 members, but

gradually that number declined to about 40 in 1942 and about 20 in 1956, surely

a sign of changes in the community and Lutheranism in the city. In 1951, a new

3-manual Casavant organ was installed in the church under Prof. Beck’s

guidance.

By the 1930s, the Concordia choruses were growing and developing under Beck’s

leadership, the annual spring tours earning the ensemble and its director some prominence. The

Lutheran Witness speaks to Beck’s success in catechizing his choir to appreciate Bach:

Our normal students at Concordia Teachers’ College, River Forest, are singing

Bach, and we are told that they prefer his music to that of all other composers. A

splendid program was given lately by the chorus under the direction of Prof. A.

Beck at various points in Michigan and Indiana, the entire second part of the

program being given over to seven Bach numbers. A newspaper critic says: “To

lovers of sacred music the group by Bach telling the story of the life of Christ was

sublime both in subject and execution.”

By 1938, the chorus had grown to such a degree that a men’s touring ensemble had been formed,

in that year performing a Michigan tour in which Beck delegated to the young Paul Manz, then a

student at Concordia, directorship of an octet.

Beck’s daily work focusing now more on choral

conducting and administration, he availed himself of summer study with F. Melius Christiansen,

the founder and director of the St. Olaf chorus, whose summer “Christiansen Choral Schools,”

established in 1935, were offered throughout the country for professional conductors to hone

their skills

and from which Beck earned a “Choirmaster” diploma.

Beck established the

Chicagoland Acappela Chorus in the early 1940s, an ensemble consisting of members of local

church choirs which, in a 1942 concert at least, found the “Lutheran group of 58 voices [singing]

from a wide range of choral masterpieces.”

Beck dedicating an organ in Indiana.

No longer a novice conductor or composer, Albert Beck’s choirs grew in reputation as the

1940s progressed, now frequently performing his own music. His Fourteen Anthems for the Church

Festivals, self-published in 1938, were not only pieces he had written for the Concordia choir but

also expressed Beck’s interest in providing practical music inspired by the liturgical year. A home

concert in March of 1946 included “a group of choral settings arranged by Prof. Albert Beck,

director, and sacred numbers from the Russian, Scandinavian, and German schools of choral

music. The motet for double choir, “Come, Jesu, Come,” by Bach, will be played.”

Indeed, this

ambitious program included music of Gretchaninoff, Tschesnokoff, and Glinka, albeit performed

in English. Notable, too, were Beck’s own Four Choral Settings of the familiar hymns “From Depths

of Woe,” “Abide, O Dearest Jesus,” “Come, Thou Almighty God,” and “Praise to the Lord.”

During the next Advent season, the choir would premiere Beck’s motets “From Heaven Above”

and “Mary.”

Only a month later, the reviewer in the DeKalb Chronicle would report on the

Concordia choir’s “trip before the Christmas season, [which] offered the Sycamore community an

outstanding Christmas and religious program last evening. The chorus appeared. . . before a large

audience [and] presented a program that was of unusual beauty. Prof. Albert Beck directed the

choir in its group of selections which revealed the intensive training and achievement that the unit

has attained. He also delighed the audience with several organ selections.”

In May, 1947, the

reviewer in the Freeport Journal-Standard noted that the

56-voice chorus of Concordia College, River Forest, under the admirable direction

of Albert Beck, director, gave an excellent concert Sunday evening in Immanuel

Lutheran church. . . The audience was impressed by the fine organ-like tone,

produced with such ease and alertness by the singers. The voices were well

balanced, and as an a cappella group, keeping perfect pitch, the chorus gave a fine

performance. . . The program had unusual interest for it included numbers

appropriate to church festivals throughout the year, starting with Advent and

concluding with Thanksgiving Day.

Arranging the concert according to the liturgical year seems to have been one of Beck’s

experiments in programming during the mid-1940s, possibly reflecting the renewal of appreciation

for liturgical concerns generally within the LCMS at the time. This particular concert also featured

Walter Pelz playing two solo pieces (Vierne’s “Finale” from Symphony #1 and the Bach “Fugue in D

Major”), highlighting how many significant church musicians and organists were professionally

formed during the Beck years at River Forest.

Although Beck’s career had become choral-oriented, he never lost his penchant for organ

performance, and that both Manz and Pelz, themselves towering figures in Lutheran organ

performance and composition during the twentieth century, were shaped musically by Beck should

suggest the integrity and creativity with which Beck performed. A review of an organ dedication

Beck played in 1950 suggests the virtuosity of the event, although no program is given:

A large crowd was present Thursday night when Prof. Albert Beck presented an

organ concert at the Zion Lutheran church under the auspices of the senior

choir of the church.

Playing the numbers from memory, Prof. Beck brought out tones of the organ in

full, executed the various combinations in a pleasing manner, and interpreted

the definite mood of the music. . .

Prof. Beck plays most of his organ concerts from memory, and has memorized

108 musical numbers.

In 1933, his pastor at First St. Paul’s had asked him to program patriotic music for

Memorial Day. Not finding any suitably churchly music, he composed a quodlibet setting of “My

Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “Praise to the Lord,”

noting that “writing music is fun. It’s a most

unpredictable kind of creative work.”

Thus did

he accumulate so many compositions that by

1945, he had self-published his 76 Offertories on

Hymns and Chorales. Suited to the Pericope for Each

Sunday of the Year, a highly practical collection of

organ settings which was eventually published by

Concordia in 1973. He followed this with a

similar organ collection in 1952, 36 Preludes on

Hymns and Chorales, again self-published.

Beck

himself stresses the practical nature of his organ

works in the preface to the 76 Offertories:

These offertories are intended as an aid to the organist to establish better unity in

the church service. The sermon is frequently based on the pericope for the Sunday,

and if the hymns are selected by the pastor they have a direct connection with the

sermon. But the organist’s music does not always help to keep the service a solid

unit, as it should be. One reason why the music is not bound together with the

other parts of the service is because there is little of such material available to the

average organist.

Since the offertories in this volume are based on hymn tunes or chorales which are

related to the pericope for the Sunday, they will help to emphasize the thought of

the sermon.

If one or the other of these offertories is not long enough, it can be repeated, if

necessary, with a change in registration.

The music is written on two staffs in order to accommodate organists who do not

have a pipe organ with pedals. Organists who play a pipe organ will play the lowest

note of each chord on the pedal, as it is done in hymn playing.

This orientation to practicality is of no special note in modern times in which publishing houses—

and composers--know their markets well. But this recognition of the needs for the average church

organist was still in its infancy. Although certainly music had been composed for practical church

use in the prior decades, Beck was here providing a modern interpolation of what he thought

organists needed. No longer did they require “Zwischenspiele” or interludes between hymn

phrases which had been a staple of many previous volumes. By 1945, most Lutheran organists were

playing from The Lutheran Hymnal of 1941, and needed service music based on the hymns (and

versions of those hymns) found in that hymnal. Beck was certainly among the first to supply

organists with service music oriented around the new hymnal.

His compositional style is unpretentious and practical, certainly intended for the average

church organist and parish choir. His Fourteen Anthems for Church Festivals (1938) represents a series

of homophonic motets in which the text, provided in both English and German, is clearly

declaimed. His harmonies are largely diatonic, with a few chords essaying into Victoriana. They are

all relatively short. His organ works are likewise brief, simple, and suitable for offertories,

postludes, or hymn introductions.

ST THOMAS from Beck's 76 Offertories on Hymns and Chorales.

By the late 1940s, Beck had relinquished direction of the Concordia a cappela choir to

Victor Hildner, director of the Concordia high school choir. In 1956, First St. Paul honored Beck

for his 25 years of service to the church, in which Dr. Walter Wolbrecht, executive secretary of the

Board of Higher Education for the LCMS, preached in the morning services, while Martin

Koehneke, president of Concordia College delivered the sermon at the evening service.

In 1958,

Beck was honored with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Concordia Teachers College in

Seward, NE,

where his son, Theodore (“Ted”) Beck had taught in the music department since

1953. Nearing the end of his career and life, the citation on this degree exemplified Beck’s

vocational life:

Albert H. Beck, a gifted musician and a competent teacher of the art of music, a

composer of note, a devoted servant of the Church, has given freely of his talents in

unselfish service as professor of music and director of choirs on the campus of his

alma mater, and has influenced his students toward a deep appreciation of the

Lutheran heritage of church music and through them raised the standard of music

in the Lutheran Church—Missour Synod. His modest and unassuming ways have

served to lend emphasis to the art he so ably fostered by precept and example. His

loyalty, his devotion, and his service have been an inspiration to his students during

the decades of his teaching. In recognition of the signal service rendered,

Concordia Teachers College is honored to confer the degree Doctor of Laws upon

Albert H. Beck, musician, artist, teacher, and humble servant of the Church and its

Lord.

His final years on the faculty allowed him some respite from choir directing and touring, which

were always somewhat stressful, and Beck settled himself into his hobbies, most notably painting,

even exhibiting his work at Concordia, Seward, in 1956.

During 1957, he enjoyed a long-awaited

sabbatical, painting, writing, and traveling across the country.

After failing to appear at First St. Paul to play for that year’s Ascension service, a welfare

check revealed that Albert Henry Beck had died peacefully in his home on the Concordia campus

the day before, May 30, 1962,

his funeral held at Grace Lutheran, River Forest, the next

Monday. The flourishing of Lutheran sacred music during the third quarter of the twentieth

century, a flourishing for which Beck himself had laid much of the groundwork, seems ironically

to have negated some of his memory. After Beck, the Concordia, River Forest, music department

was now prepared for the work of Richard Hillert, Carl Schalk, and Paul Bunjes, to name only a

few of the great figures whose careers in sacred music would thrive in subsequent decades.

Certainly these scholar musicians were able to succeed as they were due to Beck’s leadership in

choral and organ performance as well as liturgical compositional practice. Beck’s legacy would

continue not only through these intellectual heirs, but also through the hundreds of students he

taught who now were ensconced in teaching or music positions throughout the LCMS, following

the example of their teacher and serving the church humbly and faithfully for decades.

Albert Beck from the 1950 Concordia yearbook, Pillars.

Written by Benjamin Kolodziej, MSM, MTS. February, 2023. Thanks to Dr. Steven Wente, current

organist at First St. Paul’s, for providing material for this essay, and to the Beck family for access to

Beck’s unpublished biography.

The 1923 Concordia Annual (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1923): 24.

Albert Beck, unpublished “Autobiography,” August, 1960: 2-3.

First St Paul’s Lutheran Church Anniversary Book (Chicago: self-published, 1942): 17.

Beck, “Autobiography,” 12.

“Churchman Honored: Prof. A. H. Beck, Decatur Native, Given Degree,” The Decatur Daily Review (Decatur, IL),

May 17, 1958: 22.

Herald and Review (Decatur, IL), December 21, 1910: 19.

Beck, “Autobiography,” 14.

Ibid, 15.

“175

Anniversary Moment,” First St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Chicago, http://docs.fspauls.org/FSPHistory6.pdf

(accessed December 12, 2022).

“Beck Organ Recital Enjoyed by Audience,” The York Dispatch (York, PA), January 20, 1922: 4.

“Appointed Assistant Instructor of School,” Herald and Review (Decatur, IL), September 6, 1914: 16.

“Albert Beck” (Obituary), Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1962: 40.

“Former Decatur Boy Assistant Professor, Herald and Review (Decatur, IL), May 31, 1914: 14.

The Echo (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1914): 13.

Beck, “Autobiography,” 20.

The Last Leaf (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1917): 63.

The Last Leaf (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1918): 34.

The Last Leaf (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1918): 66

The 1923 Concordia Annual (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1923): 77.

Ibid.

The Pillars (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1948): 33. 3

Beck, “Autobiography,” 28.

Ibid, 28.

Ibid, 29.

Music News, Vol. 8, No. 25, June 23, 1916: 6.

William George Bruce, History of Milwaukee City and County, Vol. II, (Milwaukee: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1922):

276.

Beck, “Autobiography,” 34.

“Beck Organ Recital Enjoyed by Audience.”

First St Paul’s Lutheran Church Anniversary Book (Chicago: self-published, 1942): 17.

“Set Organ Recital at Local Church,” Southern Illinoisan (Carbondale, IL), November 26, 1949: 3.

Beck, “Autobiography,” 39.

Ibid, 32.

Ibid, 34.

The Concorifor (River Forest, IL: Concordia Teachers College, 1926): 12.

“Marriage Licenses,” Wausau Pilot (Wausau, WI), August 24, 1922: 6.

“Death Notices,” Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1933: 12.

First St Paul’s Lutheran Church Anniversary Book (Chicago: self-published, 1942): 16.

“News and Notes,” The Lutheran Witness, Vol. 49, No. 5, March 4, 1930: 79.

“College Chorus Will Sing Here,” Lansing State Journal (Lansing, MI), May 1, 1938: 20.

John Ohles, “Christiansen, Frederik Melius,” in Biographical Dictionary of American Educators (Westport, CT:

Greenwood Press, 1978): 266.

“Set Organ Recital at Local Church.”

“A Cappella Choir Giving Concert in River Forest,” Chicago Tribune, April 19, 1942: 139.

“Concordia College Chorus to Present 28

Concert Today,” Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1946: 185.

“River Forest Singers Will Appear Here,” Daily Times-Press (Streator, IL), May 24, 1946: 5.

“To Direct Chorus,” Evansville Press (Evansville, IL), November 22, 1946: 9.

“Fine Program Presented by College Unit,” The Daily Chronicle (DeKalb, IL), December 19, 1946: 2.

“Concordia College Choir Gives Fine Concert in Freeport,” Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, IL), May 5, 1947:

12.

Walter Pelz graduated in 1948.

“Large Audience Hears Concert at Lutheran Church,” The Muscatine Journal (Muscatine, IA), December 1, 1950:

Beck, “Autobiography,” 43.

Both volumes are published by the Leupold Foundation.

Albert Beck, 76 Offertories on Hymns and Chorales (River Forest: self-published, 1945): preface.

“Church to Honor Organist for His 25 Years of Service,” Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1956: 255.

“Churchman Honored.”

“Concert to Feature Compositions of Concordia’s Professor T. Beck,” Seward County Independent (Seward, NE),

May 2, 1956: 1.

“Albert Beck, 68, Professor of Music, Dies,” Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1962: 81.