Paul Manz -- In Memorium

Paul Manz, church musician par excellence and composer of the renowned motet "E'en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come” died in St Paul, Minnesota on October 28th at the age of ninety years. What a wonderful example he has been to church musicians throughout his long career -- his influence is far-reaching and has, and will continue to, affect generations of worshipers. The following information is taken from an extensive obituary written by Scott Hyslop, and found on the web page of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (alcm.org)

Manz had a very successful career as a concert organist, playing at venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., with the National Symphony; Symphony Center in Chicago, with the Chicago Symphony; and Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, with the Minnesota Orchestra.

His concertizing took him to some of the most glorious cathedrals and concert halls in the world, but he remained always fully rooted in the music of the church. He was a leader of congregational song first and foremost. As a composer, he used the classic forms of Buxtehude and Bach, and reinvented them with a fresh, American voice. His compositions are played throughout this nation, and indeed the world, in worship. Indeed, he set the bar high for church musicians throughout the United States.

His advice to new church musicians was "“Love the people you have been called to serve”.

The only child of Otto Manz and Hulda (nee Jeske) Manz, German-Russian immigrants who had come to America to make a better life for their family, Paul Otto Manz was born on May 10, 1919, in Cleveland Ohio. At age five, Manz began piano lessons. He went on to study organ with Henry J. Markworth, Edwin Eigenschenk, Albert Riemenschneider, Arthur B. Jennings, Flor Peeters at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Antwerp, Belgium, and Helmut Walcha at the Dreikönigskirche in Frankfurt, Germany. Manz would subsequently return to Belgium for three more summers to study with Peeters.

In 1943, Manz married Ruth Mueller. They had four children: David, who died at birth; Michael, John, and Peter, and also took in the four orphaned children of Ruth's brother and sister-in-law: Mary, Anne, Sara, and John. Ruth died in July of 2008. Throughout their marriage, she was his partner and support, and a great influence on his work.

In 1946, Manz became the full-time director of Christian education and music at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. The congregation was happy to share Manz's gifts with the wider church, and so his job description changed many times in his 37 years at Mt. Olive.

He served on the faculties at the University of Minnesota and Macalester College in St. Paul before he became professor and chair of the Division of Fine Arts at Concordia College in St. Paul in 1957.

Eventually, Manz found himself leaving the Missouri Synod as it struggled with many issues in the 1970s. He went back to full-time church work at Mt. Olive, which gave him a specific mandate to use his talents to serve the church catholic. In 1983, he accepted a call to serve as Christ Seminex Professor of Church Music and Artist in Residence at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and as Cantor at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke. Manz retired from LSTC in September of 1992, but continued to do workshops and master classes all around the nation.

The Paul Manz Institute of Church Music, based at the Church of St. Luke in Chicago, the Institute enabled him to continue to serve the wider church. At age 80, he retired from the Paul Manz Institute of Church Music and St. Luke Church.

Paul Manz’s organ and choral works are internationally known and are used extensively in worship services, recitals, and teaching, and by church and college choirs. His motet “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come”, having sold over one million copies, is regarded as a classic and has been performed and recorded in the United States and abroad.

Through the example of his life, through the legacy of his family, and ultimately through the legacy of music that he graced us with to stir our souls, to excite our imaginations, and to enable our prayer and proclamation, we hear Paul Manz say,

Thank you for the grace of singing with me across the years in good times and in bad, when our words have stuck in our throats and when our eyes have overflowed with joy. It has ever been a Song of Grace: ‘Love to the loveless shown that we might lovely be.’ I have just been the organist. Thank you for letting me play.