Calvin Remembers Howard Slenk
For more than a quarter century, Howard Slenk played an instrumental part in Calvin’s music department. On January 2, 2025, Slenk passed away. He was 93 years old.
Slenk’s love for music was stoked during his time as an undergraduate student at Calvin in the early 1950s. In fact, during the 1953-54 academic year, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, after which he served in the United States Army in Germany.
Upon returning to the United States, Slenk completed a master’s degree and PhD in musicology from Ohio State University and, in 1965, he founded the music department at Trinity Christian College.
A few years later, he returned to his alma mater where he taught full-time for nearly three decades.
“Professor Howard Slenk was an accomplished musicologist, choral conductor, organist, church musician, and author,” said John Witvliet, the director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. “He expanded the horizons of the music department by recruiting excellent faculty colleagues, pioneering international tours for music ensembles, and pulling off some remarkably complex musical performances with student and community-based ensembles.”
Spreading enthusiasm and humor
Peter Tigchelaar was a longtime colleague of Slenk’s. While Tigchelaar was a biology professor, he says “music was initially the common denominator” of their relationship.
“Several years ago he decided to perform “King David” by Arthur Honneger for the spring oratorio offering. I was asked to be the trombone section!” said Tigchelaar. “In one section where the trombone solo mimics the heavy plodding of Goliath, Howard stopped the rehearsal to comment. ‘Pete, can you play that solo like an uncircumcised Philistine?’ I responded that in my years of lessons I was never taught to play that way. At that the point the rehearsal disintegrated. Years later when I tried to visit him weekly, he asked me if I remembered … . We had a belated good laugh.”
“He was a live wire: he combined great enthusiasm for his areas of interest with a strong sense of what needed to be done, with a running vein of humor along the way,” said Karin Maag, a former colleague of Slenk’s.
Maag first met Slenk in the late 1990s when she was working with him on a project to hold a festival of Psalms and to put out a CD of Genevan Psalm singing.
“He was the narrator for our Psalms festival, and came in costume and character as a sixteenth century church member – he threw himself with complete enthusiasm in the part,” said Maag.
Loved his craft and his students
Why he was so passionate about this work was two-fold. First, he loved his craft.
“Music is so important to us because of all the arts it is most like our lives,” said Slenk upon his retirement in 1995. “It moves in time, like we do, moment to moment. It speaks, like we do. It has a heartbeat, like we do. I believe that’s why it moves us the way it does, even without text. When there is a text, when you sing with an instrument in your body, and share it with people around you, it is the summit of human experience.”
And the other reason he directed every available choir, even beyond his formal retirement, and taught organ and music theory with such passion, is because he loved sharing this love of music with others.
“Working with students in the choirs and performing with them the music we have come to love so much has been the high point of my career here,” said Slenk upon retirement.
“Howard was a good friend and it was an honor to accompany him and Capella on their last spring tour. I will miss him,” said Tigchelaar.
Slenk is survived by his wife of 64 years, Marilyn, who also taught at Calvin University, his children Catherine (Gale) Tien, Joel (Judith) Slenk, Jerome (Tammy) Slenk, Christiana (Todd) Barry, 13 grandchildren, and six great grandchildren.
