Ms. Becky teVelde

Adjunct Professor
Introduction to Music
rebecca.te_velde@okstate.edu
405-744-6134

Ms. Rebecca te Velde, M.Mus., AAGO

In addition to her position as organist of First Presbyterian Church, Stillwater (since 1991), Ms. te Velde has taught Introduction to Music at OSU since 1999. She is an active performer and clinician for workshops pertaining to service playing, performance, and composition. She has performed in many states as well as in Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and England, and at regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists (AGO). She has also published articles in The American Organist and The Musical Times.

Ms. te Velde holds the M.Mus. degree in organ literature and performance from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, where her organ study was with Hugh McLean and composition with Jack Behrens. Post-graduate organ studies were with Flor Peeters in Belgium, Michael Schneider at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany, and Gerald Frank at OSU. Her undergraduate organ, composition, and church music studies were with her father, Lester H. Groom, at Seattle Pacific University. While in Germany, she examined the manuscript of J.S. Bach’s Eighteen Chorales for her master’s thesis on ornamentation in those works.

Many of te Velde’s compositions have been performed by the Stillwater Boy Choir, Stillwater Chamber Singers, and the OSU Women’s Choir. A concert piece for solo organ was premiered by Dr. Pamela Decker at the University of Arizona in 2003, and her prize-winning Variations on a Theme by Samuel Scheidt (Puer natus in Bethlehem) was premiered by the composer at the Region VII Convention of the American Guild of Organists in 2005. Her organ and choral compositions are published by Oxford University Press, Darcey Press, and Santa Barbara Music Publishing. A new collection, 28 Hymn Miniatures, was released by Oxford in 2008.

Ms. te Velde is a certified Associate of the American Guild of Organists (AAGO). She has served the AGO in many capacities at the local level, as District Convener for the state of Oklahoma, and as a member of the national AGO Committee for Educational Resources (2003-2009), the last two years as Co-Director.