Herbert Boswell Nanney was a young boy when he first heard the organ in his local cinema in Whittier, Calif. He was thrilled and inspired by its triumphant sounds but had to wait until his feet reached the pedals before he could play.
Nanney came to Stanford in 1940 as the assistant to Memorial Church organist Warren D. Allen. He stayed for a year before leaving to serve in a hospital battalion in France. He returned to Stanford in 1947, received a master's degree in music and then joined the faculty. From the mid-'60s until his retirement in 1985, he headed a new doctoral program in organ performance.
Walter Hewlett, a student of Nanney's for eight years, organized a retirement party that doubled as a 300th Bach birthday bash. Thirty former students from as far away as Paris and New York performed Bach for nine hours. "Herbert Nanney established personal relationships with his students," Hewlett says. "He had a way of getting the best out of each one."
Nanney played at some 5,000 weddings at the church. He enjoyed recounting stories of his performances, one of which featured him falling asleep at the organ, waking up in time to play the traditional wedding march. "I don't know if it's true or not, but that's the way he would tell stories--in all seriousness," says current University organist Robert Bates. "He was one of the best-liked people on the campus."
Nanney, after whom the Fisk-Nanney organ in Memorial Church is named, died in May, of heart failure, at the age of 77. He is survived by his wife, Jean D. Nanney, of San Jose, and a son, Duncan L. Nanney, of Palo Alto.
