Retired Seton Hill organist, instructor gets honorary degree from university

Edgar Highberger’s lifelong love of the organ continues to bring him joy in listening to the playing of many of the former students he guided as an associate professor of music at Seton Hill University.

That legacy, along with his contributions in his hometown of Greensburg and in Westmoreland County as a musician and philanthropist, are part of the reason the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at its recent December commencement ceremony.

Seton Hill President Mary Finger, in presenting the degree, told Highberger he has “inspired generations of Seton Hill students and fostered a love for music in the community.

“You’ve demonstrated exceptional skill in guiding young musicians, cultivating talent and shaping the future of sacred music.”

Highberger taught at Greensburg’s Catholic liberal arts university from 1979 until his retirement in 2016. While performing as the university’s organist, he also taught courses in organ, music history and sacred music — developing degree and certificate programs in the latter subject area.

Outside of the university campus, he was organist and minister of music beginning in 1965 at First Presbyterian Church of Greensburg, where he was succeeded by William Jeffrey Jones in 2022.

Highberger also was accompanist for the Westmoreland Choral Society from 1977 until his retirement from that post in 2010.

“I loved working at a church-related school,” he said. “In my retirement, I listen to several of my students who play (church organs) weekly. I listen to 50 church services on the computer.”

One of his former students, 1993 graduate Mike Long, is now university organist and director of sacred music at Seton Hill. Following Highberger’s example of service to an area church, Long also is organist and minister of music for the Latrobe Presbyterian congregation.

Long credits Highberger for the patience he showed students, his willingness to spend extra time with them and his efforts to match them with opportunities to substitute for organists at area churches.

“He would meet the student wherever they happened to be and take them forward,” Long said. “Not all professors can do that.”

The complexity of the music a student was able to play wasn’t as important to Highberger as was the quality of their performance.

“I was just as happy when a student who wasn’t playing difficult music played beautifully and played well,” he said.

“He used to say, ‘Marry your metronome,’” Long recalled of Highberger’s longstanding advice to budding organists, urging them to use the device to help maintain the tempo of their performance.

”That instills a solid pulse and rhythm no matter what pace you’re working on,” said Long.

“If you practice slowly with a metronome, you can play anything you want to play,” Highberger said. “Start very slowly and give it time.

“I did use a metronome a lot, though I don’t anymore. It built the music into my system, and then I was free to be expressive.”

In recognition of his devotion to his students, Seton Hill previously named Highberger Professor of the Year in 2005 and presented him the faculty award for Excellence in Liberal Arts Teaching in 2009.

“Since I was a child, I’ve been interested in music,” said Highberger, who took piano lessons in his youth. When he was in fifth grade, his grandmother bought him a recording and the score of Handel’s “Messiah” — an early indication of his interest in sacred music.

“I always wanted to be a church musician, but I also wanted to teach at the college level,” he said.

Highberger earned advanced degrees in music education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and in organ performance at Carnegie Mellon University.

He completed post-graduate work in organ and in English cathedral music at the York Minster in York, England.

Initially, Highberger taught music in Hempfield Area and Greensburg Salem public schools before joining the Seton Hill faculty.

He founded a local chapter of the American Guild of Organists there in 1987.

“I have a special feeling in my heart for Seton Hill,” he said, noting his mother, Virginia, and an aunt, Mary, entered the education field after earning degrees there.

His wife, Joanne, also a Seton Hill alumna, worked at a series of Allegheny Energy power stations after earning degrees in biology and chemistry.

About 15 Seton Hill students have benefited so far from scholarship funds the Highbergers set up at the university in 2014 and 2019.

They also initiated a fund at First Presbyterian that has provided a Baldwin piano for the church sanctuary and helped to cover fees for singers and musicians.

Long recently donated a Steinway grand piano to Seton Hill’s St. John Chapel in honor of his former teacher.

He said Highberger “had care for his students in their entirety.

He had care and concern for their well-being.”