I joyfully (and dulcily) present the following:
download [3.9 MB]
Labels: improvisation, organ
This weekend, I performed a noon-time half-hour organ recital. There were many people downtown, mostly families with children, seeing the sights, and preparing for the lighting of the city that evening.
I went outside to get a bit of fresh air a few minutes before showtime. The day had warmed up nicely. It might have been 40 or 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
I was standing next to a sidewalk sign advertising the recital. A young family rounded the bend and a girl, maybe 11 or 12 years old, sees the sign.
She laughs incredulously, "organ!"
Slightly offended, and not knowing what else to do I said, "yes, I'm playing a recital in a few minutes if you want to come by."
"Okay," she says, looking down at the sidewalk.
I went back inside and started the recital. She never showed up.
Labels: organ
THE ORGAN-BLOWER
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.
No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.
O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of thine
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's skill,
Those thousand throats were dumb and still:
Another's art may shape the tone,
The breath that fills it is thine own.
Six days the silent Memnon waits
Behind his temple's folded gates;
But when the seventh day's sunshine falls
Through rainbowed windows on the walls,
He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills
The quivering air with rapturous thrills;
The roof resounds, the pillars shake,
And all the slumbering echoes wake!
The Preacher from the Bible-text
With weary words my soul has vexed
(Some stranger, fumbling far astray
To find the lesson for the day);
He tells us truths too plainly true,
And reads the service all askew,--
Why, why the--mischief--can't he look
Beforehand in the service-book?
But thou, with decent mien and face,
Art always ready in thy place;
Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.
Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but all thy might,
Where honest labor does its best,
And leaves the player all the rest.
This many-diapasoned maze,
Through which the breath of being strays,
Whose music makes our earth divine,
Has work for mortal hands like mine.
My duty lies before me. Lo,
The lever there! Take hold and blow
And He whose hand is on the keys
Will play the tune as He shall please.
1812.
Labels: literature, organ
A great headline: "Toccata and feud erupts over historic French church organ" (The Observer)
Interesting conflict surrounding the appointment of an organist in Cintegabelle. I've played the organ there. It's fantastic; "one of the four finest in France", the church claims.
And one of the worst headlines I've ever seen: Manual pipe organ recital (Brisbane Times)
Yes, it is a "magnificent 4 manual pipe organ", but what the heck is a "manual pipe organ recital"?!
Labels: journalism, organ
The Organmaster Shoes store isn't just for shoes.
I'm not talking about shoe accessories, like the organ shoe brush.
I'm talking about the Prelude on Morning has Broken by A. Royce Eckhardt. This is the only item in the "Music and Books" category, for now.
You can hear a recording of this prelude [mp3, 3.3 MB] piece performed on the Galanti Organs site.
Labels: organ
Word out of Oberlin, Ohio is that there's an Organ Pump on Friday.
Labels: organ
The compline hymn Christe Qui Lux es et Dies in a setting by John Redford might be performed in alternatim, with the organ "singing" stanzas one, three, five and seven.
O Christ, who art the Light and Day,
Thou drivest darksome night away!
We know Thee as the Light of light
Illuminating mortal sight.
All holy Lord, we pray to Thee,
Keep us tonight from danger free;
Grant us, dear Lord, in Thee to rest,
So be our sleep in quiet blest.
Let not the tempter round us creep
With thoughts of evil while we sleep,
Nor with his wiles the flesh allure
And make us in Thy sight impure.
And while the eyes soft slumber take,
Still be the heart to Thee awake,
Be Thy right hand upheld above
Thy servants resting in Thy love.
Yea, our Defender, be Thou nigh,
To bid the powers of darkness fly;
Keep us from sin, and guide for good
Thy servants purchased by Thy blood.
Remember us, dear Lord, we pray,
While in this mortal flesh we stay:
’Tis Thou Who dost the soul defend—
Be present with us to the end.
Blest Thee in One and One in Three,
Almighty God, we pray to Thee,
That Thou wouldst now vouchsafe to bless
Our fast with fruits of righteousness.
1981 Brombaugh
Fairchild Chapel, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
David Sinden, organ
Labels: church music, organ, sounds
Most organs are equipped with pistons, buttons that store combinations of stops, or registrations, set by the organist. General pistons affect the entire organ; there are also divisional pistons which affect only a division of the organ. (Good Anglican organists rely heavily on the divisional pistons of the swell.)
I've played Holtkamps that have only six general pistons. I have played others that have 14 or 16. I'm sure there are organs that have more.
But here's what I've noticed about my playing on these different organis:
On the six-piston Holtkamp, I feel limited in registering pieces, but I make it work. On the plentiful-piston organ, I don't feel the pressure to conserve piston changes. But in registering my pieces I pace myself -- subconsciously, I believe -- so that I use all the general pistons available.
Now let me set some parameters. I'm not talking about a Bach Prelude and Fugue here. I don't become the reincarnation of Virgil Fox when confronted with an empty memory level and a piece of the Fifth Gospel. Nor am I talking about a full-fledged organ symphony with multiple movements and a host of possibilities for registration. And I'm not talking about pistons on different levels either. I'm talking about those pistons one would reasonably expect to be able to use in the performance of a single piece.
My thesis would be something like this: the architecture of the organ's memory aids affects my registrational response to a sizable romantic or contemporary piece organ music.
With six pistons, I fight the architecture; but with a dozen or more, I feel compelled to put furniture (IV rank?) in every room.
Here's where things start to get interesting. Where do I, as a registrator (it's a word; think "orchestrator") draw the line when it comes to the number of pistons I set? Where's the ceiling?
If there were 20 pistons, would I expand my scheme to fill them? 40 pistons? 80?
ergonomics: Here's where we start to get into space considerations on the organ console itself. There's only so much room under the keyboards for buttons, so many larger instruments have "phantom pistons" that are programmable but not immediately accessible by a designated button.
Or what about 400? or 4000? There's no reason that those who design organ memory systems need to be so stingy with computer memory which is much cheaper, faster and more portable than they would like to admit (this is a different rant). There comes a point in memory design where the number of pistons available would be excessive rather than ample.
If the music influences the design of organ consoles, do the consoles then in turn influence the music? If organ designers added the "excessive" memory to their instruments (like those extra keys on Bosendorfers), would composers utilize the capability?
Speaking from hands on experience here, the only piece I can think of that could have made a dent in a bank of 400 pistons would have been Giles Swayne's Riff-Raff. The opening pages called for a shifting shimmer of similar sounds. In my performance on a conventional ten-piston organ, I was not able to achieve the variety of similarity that I think Swayne was after.
auralnomics: But this is as far as this kind of approach can take us. After a point, we enter the realm of intellectual exercise. When one piston is set with plenum and another piston later in the piece is set with the same plenum with an alternate 4-foot principal, we enter the realm of "variety" that can be programmed into an organ for no apparent reason. Ergo, I can't see a reason for the proverbial floodgates to be opened. The organ is an impressively complex device, and we can rattle off all kinds of combinatorics with even a modest 20-stop instrument, but the reality is that most of these combinations are effectively the same. The 400-piston organ would serve no purpose.
But, since I know you want to, here's How to simulate a 400 piston organ: Get a 16-piston organ with a "piston +" switch that advances from the last piston to the next memory level. You'll need to use exactly 25 memory levels.
And so, these two principles hold each other in tension:
When organists set up a big piece, they will mystically fill all the pistons available (Organist Law of Piston Expansion).
When builders design a big organ, ergonomics and auralnomics suggest the number of pistons should be somewhere between 6 and 20.
Labels: Giles Swayne, organ
I've had a good run on the organ bench.
I've played the organ at an Episcopal cathedral or chapel every Sunday for the last 59 Sundays.
If you dig a little deeper, my general organ bench streak goes back quite a bit longer than that.
Next week, both streaks ends immediately prior to my wedding.
It will be nice to have a break.
Labels: organ
It seems to me that being a good soloist ultimately comes down to how you play your ensemble.
Take Augustin Hadelich, the young, Italian-born winner of the 2006 Indianapolis Violin Competition whom I heard perform Saturday. He played well, and with character, but there was a certain self-centeredness to his interpretation of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. The tempo of each phrase was seemingly chosen with regard to how Hadelcih wanted his instrument to sound -- and the tempi fluctuated wildly.
This was distracting for me, as an audience member, because it seemed random. Maybe Hadelich doesn't really believe the Tchaikovsky is a worthy concerto and that he must put his own stamp on the piece for it to be effective. Or maybe he just has to be sure that his Gingold Strad will speak optimally at all times.
Either way, it seemed that Hadelich made these changes at the expense of the orchestra. I don't mean that he didn't talk about his ideas with the conductor ahead of time, I simply mean that the accompaniment didn't figure significantly in his decisions. To my thinking, this self-centered approach is a mistake.
As an organist, a soloist with a choral ensemble, if you will, I know that I play my best when I "play the choir" and the play to the choir's needs. Now granted, in modern terms, I am a soloist, but I could be considered an accompanying "ensemble".
I know that I am still learning to play the choir, and that it's not easy, but listening to Hadelich brought this concept into focus for me. Mature players are not musically self-centered, which actually brings the focus on their playing.
Life is better when we all get along.
More about the Tibia Liquida (see yesterday's memory - aided by alcohol) from Barry Oakley on this discussion of Odd Gadgets on Organs:
The idea to incorporate a Tibia Liquida at St Paul's, Newcastle-under-Lyme, came from the late John Norris who was organist at the church for more than 40 years. He saw the device on a cathedral organ in Germany (can't remember the name) during a holiday there. When the St Paul's Hill organ was rebuilt and enlarged by George Sixsmith & Son during the last decade, John requested they incorporate such a facility on the new console. It's been cleverly designed and constructed, featuring interior illumination and is complete with lead crystal glasses and a selection of miniature strong stuff. It used to be replenished on a quite frequent basis.
The "cathedral organ in Germany" seems to have been the instrument at Ratzeburg Cathedral. It had another feature as described in the same discussion by Jim Treloar:
As well as the drinks cabinet at Ratzeburg Cathedral, I seem to recall that the organist there was also a part time fireman and he had an emergency light fitted in case he was needed on the fire engine. It's over 25 years since I was last there but I understand it activated in the middle of a service once and he disappeared much to the surprise of those in the congregation expecting an introduction to a hymn.
Labels: organ
A new study finds that moderate drinking is good for memory.
At last, rationale for the "tibia liquida" (look under Accessories) on the organ at St. Paul's, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
The way I understand it, this stop knob opens a secret liquor cabinet on the console (saw this in an organ periodical a while back).
There's a good bet that the organist there plays from memory.
What with the blurry vision and all.
Labels: organ
Congratulations to organist Scott Montgomery, who gave a recital in Charleston, West Virginia. A reviewer had this to say about the slow movement of Mendelssohn's Sonata No. 3 in A Major:
For me, this is where the music began. He handled the work like one might prepare a small fish, very gently.Justice, Rick. "Organ concert series begins with promising performance". Charleston Daily Mail 17 September 2007.
Um, what?
There's nothing fishy about Marilyn Mason's 60 years of service as a Professor of Organ at the University of Michigan.
A Houston music critic has a different fish to fry in his defense of traditional music and liturgy.
Though traditional Christian liturgy and music may seem flattened by the steamroller of "praise and worship" and other contemporary styles of worship, they remain the backbone of historical Christian services. Their roots lie in orders of worship formed at the start of Christianity and, for Western European and American denominations, music as old as the Middle Ages.Ward, Charles. "A sacred tie that binds. Houston Chronicle 14 September 2007.
Don't miss pages from Musurgia Universalis at Bibliodyssey.
Labels: literature, organ
One gets the sense that Finzi knew exactly what he wanted with the opening to this powerful anthem. Looking toward the end of the introduction, the organist encounters triadic triplets in contrary motion: a move one might expect to find in the coronation music of William Walton -- a triumphant shout indeed! This device, while powerful in its own right, also holds sway over the entire fanfare and helps dictate a tempo that is more majestic than virtuosic.
But Finzi's detailed articulation markings (ever present in the work of British composers, it seems) demand some very particular things from the outset of the work.
In the first bar, the half note is dotted; in the second the half note is undotted with a rest following. This is a key distinction, yet many organists will gloss over it by adding a Gleasonized rest in the first bar.
For guidance, the organist need only look to the choral entrance: "God is gone up". The dotted half note "God" elides with the eights "is gone".
Sung, it might be rendered "Gah . . diz gaw | nup"
Note repetition conventions be damned. I would vote for a fuller realization of Finzi's first note.
The tenuto markings on in the third bar do seem to benefit from a bit more separation.
And while, we are on the topic, the melodic contour of the fanfare is a bit remeniscent of the popular "Star Wars" theme, but eveyone knows the real "Star Wars" contender in Anglican church music is Dyson in D.
We've all heard it, the audio file dubbed "Messiah Organist on Crack", but unless you're an organist, you might have wondered how this could have happened.
I would postulate that the famous excerpt is a result of inadvertent transposer use.
Unless I miss my guess, the organist in question is performing on some incarnation of a pipeless (digital) organ. (If those really are pipes, they sound pretty nasty.) Many pipeless organs, like synthesizers, are equiped with transposers -- for you see, not being concerned with what pipes can play what notes, they can freely move the playable range of the instrument up and down willy-nilly.
There are two distinct designs for organ transposers. The most common is an inauspicious knob off to the side of the console that turns to the right to transpose up and to the left to transpose down -- usually about six in each direction (this just about covers all the keys). The other design, which is much less common, employs the transposer as a series of separate buttons underneath one of the keyboards.
A majority of all organ consoles, however, are equiped with buttons that look just like these: pistons. Each piston stores a specific, settable combination of stops. When the piston is pressed, those stops are drawn as if by magic!
So, the problem in this system of transposer buttons is that they can easily be confused with piston buttons. I believe that's what's happening here. Toward the end of the piece, the organist would want to add more sound; he would do this by selecting a piston.
Here's a possible rundown on the scenario:
- A mid-size church with an pipeless organ wants to perform selections from the Messiah. The bring in an outside guest organist who is relatively unfamiliar with the instrument.
- The organist hired typically plays at an Episcopal church where he is familiar with the technique of making small changes with divisional pistons (affecting only a part of the organ) and large changes with general pistons (affecting the entire organ).
- Toward the end of the "Hallelujah" chorus the organist presses what he believes to be a divisional piston (affecting the stops on a portion of the organ), but, in fact, he has inadvertently pressed the tranposer and lowered the organs pitch. (You can hear the organ's pitch separate from that of the orchestra's pretty early on in the excerpt).
- At the cesura, the organist takes advantage of the break in the action to hit a general piston. This adds to the organs sound considerably and the previous mistake becomes readily apparent to all. The organist continues playing while searching for means to make the correction which he finds only at the last chord.
The performance ends up sounding a little strange, but I would be lying if I said it couldn't have happened to me.
I was listening to the beginning of NPR's recording of Björk in concert at United Palace in New York city, when I was surprised by something that sounded an awful lot like organ music by Olivier Messiaen.
It is Messiaen.
Björk's song "Cover Me" quotes "Les Bergers" from La Nativité du Seigneur.
Of course, it's played on a silly synthesized generic 8' 4' 2' organ sound.
If you have the NPR audio file, try listening about 2:38 in to the track.
MyPipes.org, a website selling organ mp3s, did not impress me the first time I visited. Now that the site actually has content, my impressions haven't really changed.
The site looks cluttered, the graphics have an 80's sheen, and all the text is too small.
The photos are all poorly chosen. From the banner image at the top to the oddly cropped images of CD photography (one presumes?), everything looks sort of thrown together.
Part of the blame here must lie in the site's concept: getting away from the CD. Zarex is somehow under the misapprehension that to confuse the mp3 files available on the site with the CDs from which they come would be detrimental to sales. This is absurd. I would never have listened to these excerpts anywhere else, and was frustrated that links to the CDs from which they come are not provided.
The buttons for manipulating each product are needlessly cumbersome and redundant. "Download to cart" one button says. "Listen 30"" says another. And these appear for every file (and they don't even work well -- see below). As a site offering mp3s for sale, users are going to expect to be able to listen to exerpts of files before purchasing. This doesn't need to be explained with so much text. A few universal symbols would suffice.
I must have clicked on "Listen to 30"" about six times before I realized that my browser was blocking a popup. How annoying. And when I did hear it, I was sure it didn't play the whole way through, but then I realized that someone did a remarkably poor job of fading out the excerpt the way online music perveyors have known to do for years.
And I must have clicked on "Download to cart" about six times before I realized that on the opposite side of the screen, in a red box viewable only by scrolling down, was an indication that had "1 item" in my cart. How anti-user.
The phraseology "Download to cart" presents its own set of problems. What am I doing when I click this button? Am I actually downloading the file? Or am I just tagging that file to be downloaded later, say when I hand over my credit card information?
Occasionally, by clicking on the title bar, I was able to get the site to tell me "There are currently no tracks available. Please try again at a later date."
I would love to try again, especially if Zarex would just put these up on iTunes. They would spend a lot less on MyPipes.org, and I'll wager that a lot more of their organ music would be purchased too.
The BBC reports that a 'Pipe organ' plays above the Sun.
Labels: organ, science and nature
Today on the current issue of Living Church, a periodical about the Episcopal Church and its affairs, I noticed the back cover was devoted to an advertisement for MyPipes.org
As you enterprising link-clickers have already discovered, there's nothing there! The site just says "Coming Soon" (which at the very least is a step up from the undercapitalized "Coming soon" and the hopelessly casual "coming soon"). But what is the site supposed to be?
Well, you guessed it: something about organ music. The advertisement prominently features an organ pipe and says something about organ mp3s.
I distinctly remember the phrase "turn your iPod into a virtual cathedral".
A quick check reveals that mypipes.org is registered by Zarex corporation. So, it could be interesting.
But let me just ask first: why take out such a prominent advertisment if the site isn't active at all?
Wasteful.
What about "Coming [small picture of organ pipe] soon"?
I mean, come on.
Labels: Advertising, organ, web
An article about Kevin Bowyer in today's New York Times mentions four pieces of organ music that I've never even heard of before.
- "Sieben Sterne" by Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943)
- "Manifold Music" by Milton Babbitt (b. 1916)
- "Natural Fantasy" by Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938)
- "Gmeeoorh" by Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
The author, Allan Kozinn calls the Xenakis a "real find".
I'd like to be able to find all of these.
Bowyer's interests tangent: From Bowyer's Wikipedia article: "He is a lover of real ale and malt whisky, and lists his favourite recreation as 'sleeping'."
Labels: Babbitt, Ferneyhough, Kevin Bowyer, organ, Wuorinen, Xenakis
There comes a time in every young organist's life when he must decide how to play the opening of Bach's G minor Fantasia and Fugue.
For me, that time is in a little under 48 hours.
I'm still working it out.
It's tricky.
Help?
Stay tuned for updates . . .
Pick truly hot Bach tune.
That's just one of the anagrams you can make from "Oliphant Chuckerbutty". Are there others anagrams, you ask?
And it's maybe the best anagram to offer up some biographical possibilities. Chuckerbutty (usually starting a sentence with a last name lends it some authority) played the organ both in the church, hence the Bach tune, and the cinema, hence the hotness of the aforementioned tune.
But let's face it. You can't have the name Oliphant Chuckerbutty and be anything other than an organist.
After learning your name at a cocktail party, imagine the following scenarios:
Scenario one: wherein Oliphant is a plumber
Q: So, Oliphant, what do you do for a living?
A: I'm a plumber.
Q: Um, I'm dangerously low on cocktail shrimp. See ya.
Scenario two: wherein Oliphant is an organist
Q: So, Oliphant, if that is your real name. What do you do for a living?
A: I'm plumber.
Q: No you're not. Aren't you the one that wrote that Paean by Oliphant Chuckerbutty?
A: Yes, it's just a little fanfare sort of ditty, just under three minutes. It starts out with a stereotypical fanfare kind of idea rising 1, 2, 3 deal accompanied by sixth, fourth and a third respectively. It has a few quirky bits, and carefully registered, could be interesting.
Q; Hm, I seem to be running low on cocktail shrimp. Can I . . .
A: I have to take issue with the rather boring and unsteady performance provided by Kalena Wheeler on this week's Pipedreams program. It just wasn't up to snuff. I mean, if you're going to play my music, you can at least play it well.
Q: Hey, do you know about the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet?
A: Ha. Chuckerbutty. That's a funny name.
Labels: Chuckerbutty, funny names, organ
There's a great little article in today's tomorrow's New York Times about a series of recitals at St. Thomas Church in New York. John Scott will perform the complete organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude over the next few Saturdays.
The reason? This year, as those of us who check up on anniversaries already know, marks the 300th anniversary of the death of Dieterich Buxtehude.
The instrument at St. Thomas is a great one: a Taylor and Boody. A Taylor and Boody in the back of an Episcopal church? What an interesting idea! I wonder who did this first?
The article quotes organists James David Christie and John Scott (organist), who is best not to be confused with John Scott (cricketer).
Mr. Christie is also playing the Buxtehude cycle on a Taylor and Boody: his instrument at the College of the Holy Cross. But that's not enough for the fanatical JDC. He is simultaneously giving the cycle on an organ at Harvard.
It's great to see Buxtehude's organ music written up in the Times like this. It's great to see it performed, especially by wonderful musicians on wonderful musical instruments.
The conclusion of the article bodes particularly well for inhabitants of the largest city in the country:
New York has long had a good supply of fine organs. Now with the additions of recent decades and with a good supply of enterprising organists, it promises to become an organ capital worth a listener’s journey, if not necessarily on foot.Oestreich, James R. "Organ Fanfare for Buxtehude. Who?" NY Times 18 January 2006.
Labels: Buxtehude, churches, James David Christie, John Scott, organ
William Crotch has a funny name. I know this because choristers laugh when you say it. Also, on a few copies of the choristers' music, his last name is circled.
So, ha ha. Very funny. But who is this William Crotch exactly? Well, turns out his name may be funny, but Crotch was a serious musician.
The son of a carpenter (like Jesus?), Crotch was a musical child prodigy. At 18 months, he was already picking out tunes on the family house organ (also like Jesus?)
Now, back in the time of Crotch (is that a good name for a band, or what?), the circus was a popular form of entertainment. Unlike today, however, circuses (pronounced: SIR-cuh-sees) consisted not of animal entertainment, but mostly child entertainment. It is for this reason that persons with Dwarfism were often employed by later circuses: they were the new "children" in an era of oppressive child-labor laws.
HIDDEN (a Crotch size clarification): There's nothing small about our Crotch. He eventually reaches full size.
In the circus, William Crotch resided in a tent that contained an organ, whereupon he would bedazzle his listeners with his improvisations. These were probably not great musical feats, but for a two year old to improvise chords to a melody learned by ear is certainly something. Also, he got free cotton candy.
HIDDEN (inappropriate remark): One wonders if this tent had a fly, and whether it was open or closed.
Today's "soccer moms" descend from a league of overbearing "circus moms" who enlisted their young children in these precocious presentations of prodigy. Crotch's mother, Isabella, accompanied Crotch and the circus on a grand world tour.
HIDDEN (another one): It was in this way that her young Crotch gained much exposure.
Anyway, long story short. Crotch the freak-show boy-wonder grew up to be Crotch the mildly adequate composer. Though he did play the organ at Kings College, Cambridge, which is pretty cool.
Incidentally, when I program my own concerts, I want to end up with a poster that looks like this:
Crotch
selections from Palestine
also, music by Bach, including his
Air on the G String
Crotch also may have provided the basis for Louis Vierne's Carillon de Westminster if he did indeed design the Westminster Chime.
Crotch the painter: Crotch's talent didn't limit itself to music. He was also a painter.
Alma mater tangent: It is with not a small amount of pride and a tinge of nostalgia that I note that an image search for crotch brings up a number of unflattering pictures of Paris Hilton and photo taken in an Oberlin music theory classroom.
Labels: Advertising, funny names, King's College (Cambridge), Oberlin, organ, William Crotch
The Prelude should draw one into the service. In this instance, listening to "America the Beautiful" arranged by Carmen Dragon, I believed I was being drawn into a late 1930s Disney cartoon.
Luckily, Erik Wm. Suter was able to create a much more suitable prelude on the organ using America the Beautiful as a theme for a very refined improvisation.
But little does it matter on an occaision of such "civil religion", because there is a great deal of unscripted maneuvering that has to occur. There are a couple of band numbers after Suter's prelude and before Bishop Chane's reception of the body.
But from what I can tell from the streaming audio, and my memory of Ronald Reagan's funeral (11 June 2004), this manuevering music is performed from outside the cathedral, and so it is the organ that has the last word from the liturgical authorities.
There's only so much of the state that the church should let inside, really. And thank goodness for that. Only those of you who were able to watch on television will know whether George W. Bush was able to follow the verger this time. Judging from the audio, he does seem to get to the microphone very quickly.
The Old Testament Lesson, Isaiah 40:28:31 was also read at Reagan's funeral. This lection, however, is not perscribed by the Book of Common Prayer. Neither is the New Testament Lesson as it was read (through the first part of verse six, not the entire verse). So I have to agree that it was a silly case of scripture splicing, but I think it's unpastoral to hold Gerald Ford and his family to BCP rubrics on this reading, and not the other two.
Tangent: Robert Certain alluded to the 2006 General Convention in his sermon. Turns out he updated a blog during the convention.
Labels: BCP, funeral, George W Bush, Gerald Ford, National Cathedral, organ, scripture, verger
Psalm 80:1-3, 14-18
Sirach 48:1-11
Matthew 17:9-13
In the Gospel reading today, Jesus is talking in cryptic terms about John the Baptist. He's comparing him to Elija, and eventually the disciples get it.
But on Wednesday this week, Jesus asks "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind?" (Matthew 11:7). The answer from the crowd is apparently "no", because Jesus goes on to ask, "What then did you go out to see?" (11:8).
But wait a minute. We organists are precisely interested in reeds shaken by the wind.
And prophets too, I guess.
Labels: Advent 2006, organ
On 29 March 1909, Englishman Arthur Scott Brook filed a patent for an organ pipe open at both ends.
That's right. Both ends of the pipe are open and unobstructed.
This means that the wind needs to enter the pipe in a different way (i.e., not from the toe), hence the "blow aperture".
Why have I never heard about this before? Have any of these pipes been built?
What would this sound like?
More to explore: Google's Patent Search returns 701 results for "organ pipe"
Labels: organ, organ pipes
Psalm 103:1-10
Isaiah 40:25-31
Matthew 11:28-30
Sometimes I wince when I play the piano. I can't help myself. It's such an ugly, terrible instrument. This is compounded by the fact that I am a poor piano player.
The piano is a violent instrument; it thrives on attack. The organ is peaceful; it responds to release.
When playing the piano, notes must be played with awful decision and striking force. When playing the organ, sounds can be caressed out of the instrument as the finger's motion corresponds to air entering the pipes.
When a pianist makes an errant decision or motion, the note has been struck and sounds just as forcefully as do correct pitches.
When an organist makes an errant decision or motion, there is often time to remove the finger from the key without the mistake sounding fully.
In this way, the organ is "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Ps. 103:8).
Who would dream of putting a heathen piano in a church, the realm of the holy organ?
To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.Isaiah 40:25
To what can we compare the organ, the King of Instruments?
The organ's love and superiority, however, come at a cost: weight.
Organs weigh a lot, sure, but organists have to deal with the weight of sustaining pitch. Whether this is tenuously achieved through electric means, or geniunely achieved through the heaviness of a mechanical relationship, the organist is keenly aware of this responsibility: the duty of duration.
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’Matthew 11:28-30
Labels: Advent 2006, organ
Last week I participated in a Human-Computer Interaction design class at the invitation of Indiana University informatics professor Marty Siegel. Our discussion was entitled "Human-Music Interaction"
Preparing for the session certainly got me thinking a lot about organ console design, and all of this came fresh on the heels of my discovery of a coupler on my organ at the cathedral. I've been working there for about two months and it took me that long to find this coupler.
Now, most organists are shaking their heads in disbelief at this point, so let me say a few things in my defense.
- I had looked for the coupler, just not that hard.
- I had only really hoped for it maybe once or twice.
- Since finding it (stumbling across it, really), I haven't used it.
How is it that an organ console can be so poorly designed that standard feature could be hidden from it's primary user for hours of use?
Answer: organ consoles are generally poorly designed, and I think they could be a lot better.
For instance, on this organ the couplers are sort of scattered all over the place. Most of the pedal couplers are in the pedal division, but one of the pedal couplers is located in the division itself. Strange. And this is not the only instrument that is a little disorganized when it comes to the console.
To help us in our quest, I think it's important to look to organs of the past, and organs of questionable repute (theater organs) because the trajectory gives some hints as to where we might go. The theater organ, which is called on to play music of much greater complexity than the standard organ repertoire cannot afford to be poorly designed, and generally they are designed well.
Blockwerky beginnings
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and Blockwerk, a formless void of organ sound. Organs were large and loud, and they were loud all the time. There was no control over what parts of the organ would play. The whole thing would play the whole time.
Then someone said, "Man, that high-pitched mixture sound is really annoying. I wish there were a way to stop it." And lo, stops were born.
GOOD DESIGN: Stops gave the organist control over the organ's resources. All stops operate independently of each other, and so the myriad resgistrational possibilities were born.
Pulling out all the stop styles
But organ builders were (and continue to be?) so enamored with this control, that they often fail to take into account visual and physical design aspects of the stop controls themselves.
Stops started as knobby things that could be grasped easily with the hand, and their arrangement, due to mechanical issues, generally had some connection to the divisions of the organ.
Examples in modern instruments: The Fisk organ at Old West Church, Boston, and the Jurgen Ahrend organ in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, France both have Positiv stops that are actually on the Positiv. While it is certainly difficult to make over the shoulder adjustments while playing, the location of the pipes controlled by these stop knobs is obvious.
Since the advent of electric stop action, however, things have changed. Stop knobs have become smaller mushroom shaped objects. They are no longer meant to be grasped with the hand, but flicked with the finger. On the other hand, multiple stops can be grasped at once. Meanwhile, stop layout has become more variable.
One might make the case that stop knob size, and the number of stops that can be engaged simultaneously with a single hand correspond to changes in historical voicing styles. North German Baroque instruments have large, widely-spaced stop knobs. These are meant to be drawn deliberately, one at a time. Large orchestrally-voiced instruments generally have small, clustered tabs. These are meant to be engaged in groups.
FUTURE DESIGN: Take a look at the Wannamaker organ in Philadelphia (pictured right). Here, the sheer number of stops (and divisions) created a serious design problem. Divisions are separated by color, rendering their contents clear to the organist. Here also, stop tabs replace knobs to save space. While this may be a step in the right direction, stops as such are not visually distinguishable within divisions.
Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the famous French organ builder, also used color to his advantage. Spoons, mechanical controls that were operated by foot, were labeled in colors that corresponded to the divisions they affected.
For further discussion: Are stop knobs (pull to engage) preferable to stop tabs or rockers (press to engage), or is their another option that enables the organist to manually manipulate his sounds easily? Organists press the key to engage pitch. Should stops mirror this action (tabs) or should they distinguish stop selection by a pulling, gathering motion (knobs)?
Worthwhile wording
Whatever mechanism is chosen to engage sounds, that stop will need to be identified in some way. This is generally done with the stop name followed by the Arabic numeral indicating pitch (ex. Principal 8').
This is a poorly conceived system, especially between organs that all have essentially the same tonal options, but with different names.
It would be much more logical to rely on the number to convey sound information. Organists don't look for a specific stop name when they sit down at an organ, they look for the 8' principal (which is usually called 8' Principal -- 8' Montre on a French organ). The design of stop labels should reflect this. The number should be the most prominent, with the name included in smaller type as a means of largely esoteric information.
With a simple short-hand, all major stop families could be codified with symbols. Principals are underlined, reeds have a degree circle, strings are italicized (maybe not a good solution, but works well on the computer). Flutes, the most ubiquitous sound family on the organ, receive no symbol. Mixtures have long been easily identifiable by their Roman numbers.
8
Principal
8°
Trumpet
8
Viola da Gamba
8
Flute Harmonique
MM
Millenial Mixture (Y2K edition)
This is merely a sketch of a system that could certainly be expanded to designate for short resonator reeds (·), celestes (±) or horizontal reeds (). Certainly one doesn't want to go overboard with this. The goal is not to show every detail of the tonal disposition but to easily identify stop family through a series of limited symbols (maybe five or six) rather than a slew of stop names (fifty or sixty). The only example I ever recall seeing of a symbol on a stop knob is Skinner's Flute Triangulaire which is sometimes labeled with a small open triangle.
To be continued: Topics for part 2 of this article: usable registration assists, combination action, artificially intelligent combination action, sequencers, James Higdon, thinking beyond single points of contact for input controls, thumb slides
Labels: organ
Sursa Performance Hall, Muncie, Indiana
Yes, the organ says "October 22, 2006". That was yesterday.
Is writing the dedication date this prominently a new trend in organ nameplating? We think it's a bit tacky . . .
Labels: organ
21:59 Pipedreams is going to be awesome tonight. It's a program called "Scandinavian Surprises". The link isn't up on the Pipedreams homepage yet (this is one of the earlier broadcasts of the program) but the program's page is ready. I'm especially looking forward to the Finnish component: organ music of composer Joonas Kokkonen. Not surprisingly, this is on a Finlandia CD.
22:02 BBC News is on now. I'm getting excited! (Not about the North Korean nuclear test thing.)
22:10 It's on! (Like Donkey Kong!)
"Clean lines, no nonsense . . . functional" Comparing the music to modern Danish furniture. I guess we had to expect this.
22:12 Knut Nystedt. I've seen this name a bunch, but I've never heard anything by him. This Toccata, Op. 9 is his second composition for organ. I like it.
22:15 Getting bigger. Very palatable.
22:16 A nice piece. Doesn't do a whole lot, but it would be very accessible.
22:17 Now for a "quiet prelude on a Norwegian folk tune". I'm not holding my breath.
22:19 At least it was short.
22:20 Now a piece for choir and organ by Ståle Kleiberg. Very engaging off the bat. Great sounds. Good choir. Reminds me of something I can't quite place. Almost Lauridseny, but not quite. Okay, there's a chromatic turn. Just for color it seems. Pretty.
Surfing simultaneous with "Scandinavian Surprises": Army Strong. I can see two approaches to this advertising campaign. One, hairy man beats chest and says: "Army Strong!" Two, a large pickup truck that we are told is built Ford Tough "Army Strong". Either way, dumb.
22:23 These triplets are sounding very Sibelian (the cantatas), but way moderner. This is eloquent, I know.
22:24 A grand pause. Maybe a little overdue.
22:26 Over? A little unconvinging. The toccata starts. I wish it had been part of the choir and organ piece, it might have made for a nice contrasting section. But, as it is, I see why Michael Barone chose to play this afterwards. It will leave the listener with more closure, presumably.
22:29 Pan-scandinavian! This means Finland! Kokkonen followed in the footsteps of Sibelius. Nuts, it seems that these are arranged opera themes.
22:30 Strings sound slightly of theater-organy. Disappointing so far. Just some rambling harmonies. I don't really hear "themes" here. Principal color is much nicer. The work is taking shape. This could go somewhere.
22:31 Nice fuller-sounding restatement. I get the Sibelius connection somehow. What was rambly before now has purpose, direction.
22:32 Reeds introduced. Later, mixtures. It's quite full already. Is this a Howellsian Psalm-prelude sort of structure? Even bigger now. It must climax soon.
22:33 Yes. I suspect the climax is here. Disonances lead to a nice C Major resolution.
22:34 Drops all the way back to soft string opening. This would make a great prelude? I hope?! Yes!
22:35 Barone outlines the structure I've written here. More on Joonas Kokkonen.
22:35 Bach? Boring! (At least, not a Scandinavian Surprise. Well, the registration, a little.)
22:41 Blah, blah, blah. Buildings look better on the web, not the radio. Play some more organ music.
22:42 Oh wait. He was just breaking up the prelude and fugue by talking. This is boring.
22:55 At no point during the Icelandic meditation have I been really interested. I am going to the kitchen for a snack. I can only hope that it will be over when I return.
22:58 Perfect timing. Ian Quinn is at St. John's Cathedral Albuquerque? So he does.
22:59 I like hearing the Marcussen organ in this performance. And I recognize this as the piece used in the program's introduction, so I know it gets better.
SSSS: "Last week, Scots composer James MacMillan, also a Catholic, blasted trendy music as 'smiley and cheesy' claiming it ruined services and was driving congregations away. . . . James MacMillan slammed popular folk hymns as “neither contemporary or popular and barely music.” Source.
23:08 Aha! Andreas Dében to the rescue.
SSSS: Not only has porn star Crissy Moran (if that even is her real name) decided to "to go back to [her] one true love who is Jesus", but she has begun writing Christian poetry. I can't tell you how excited I am at the prospect of writing an a capella setting of this. Well, maybe I'll throw in a cheesy 70s synth track.
23:19 I'm afraid "Finnishing" up with works for organ and instruments isn't going to cut it for me tonight. It feels like a cop-out. Working full time and late night organ music on the radio don't really mix. At least, it's gotta be better than this if I am going to stay up for it. I'll hope for better next week.
Labels: organ
You know how movies on DVD are really cool because they have special features? You know, like deleted scenes and alternative endings and actor/director commentaries? Well Anglican church music also has special features. Here's one of them:
In the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (Collegium Sancti Johannis Cantabrigiense), AKA "the St. John's service", Herbert Howells (1892-1983) includes a nifty little back page for an Alternative Ending to the Nunc.
The alternative ending is marked with an asterisk by Novello, Howells's publisher.
* The alternative ending may be used if desired.
for [sic] alternative ending, see overleaf.
The two endings diverge at the words "world without end." In what I will call the original version, this unison line begins on an E-flat; in the alternative ending, it begins on F, a whole step higher than the original. Both of these lines travel the octave, meaning that the trebles then sustain a high E-flat in the original; F in the alternative.
Two endings diverged on yellowing parchment, and I took the one the choir did.
In the original the E-flat divides to become C and F (part of an F Major sonority) and then reconvenes to crown a D Major chord. In the alternate, however, the F triumphantly divides, first leaping up to F and A, then triumphantly resting with D and F-sharp.
The two endings still manage to end in D Major, but voicing of the alternative ending is much higher.
Interestingly, the choral crescendo is absent from the alternate ending. This is sort of par for the course with my experience with Howells, but it does make me wonder if it means anything.
There's something delightfully revealing about Howells's craftsmanship here. He can start with two very different places for his melodic line (a whole step is, after all, a big amount of step), and still weasel his way back to D Major.
These endings aren't drastically different from each other, and after the lay clerks have a couple drinks in the pub after evensong, they probably won't even remember which version they perfomred.
So why then did Howells take the trouble to include the alternative ending in the published version? Maybe he couldn't make up his mind? Or maybe he thought that St. John's could use the alternative ending for feast days? It does have a little more oomph (that's a technical term when it comes to the Anglican tradition), but not a whole lot.
Written in March, 1957, the alternate ending of the St. John's service predated the introduction of the DVD by about 40 years. Tune in next time for a "deleted scene" in Charles Hubert Hastings Parry's I Was Glad.
Word choice tangent 1957: alternative; 2006: alternate. Synonymous?
Recording tangent: I can't understand why St. John's didn't record their own service on the excellend Howells disc they have recorded for Naxos. What gives? Does anyone own/reccomend a recording of the St. John's service?
Recently, a nearby religious establishment has been snubbed by an earnest, albeit completely clueless organist.
Organists often have delusions of holy grandeur.
By entering church in a serious way whilst still young, they are fascinated by their proximity to holy people, things and words.
Here in the church, they talk to these people, study these things, and then, before you know it, throw big, holy words around and develop their own ideas instead of letting the church think on their behalf.
Letting the church think on their behalf can also be a bad thing. I'm just joking around here. The conscience of the individual must be respected, but does anyone's conscience fit squarely within denominational guidelines? And if not, should you start your own sect?
Everyone experiences this religious formation stuff differently, organist or no. It's a complicated process. So I don't mean to belittle religious formation, but let me tell you a little about my experience, and the experiences I think organists should have.
Been to church lately? How do you know what church to trust? How do you know what God to believe in?
If any of these questions interest you, you're in kind of an ideal position, as an organist. You see, organists actually get paid to go to church. There are very few other lay people for whom this is an option.
Now a story: back in my day, when organs still had pipes, I would get up early on Sunday morning, commandeer the family vehicle and navigate to a distant corner of our sprawling metropolis. There, I would engage elderly protestants in conversation and provide organ music for a religious gathering. Visiting these churches for one day, sometimes just one service, was an interesting and educational experience. It was usually possible to discern the health and polity of these congregations in a relatively short period of time.
Somehow, I was always able to answer the call of a religious institution that asked for my services as an organist. This was how I played my one (and only) Christian Science service.
Christian Science tangent: It is important for me to point out, even at the expense of the point that I might get around to making later, that the service was neither Christian nor scientific. They did read aloud from a textbook though.
Kwanza services? Right on. Within reason, I never said no to an opportunity to play the organ.
You know, being a guest organist is different than being an employee, and I understand that. But what I cannot understand is how any organist could not be where I am. I guess I subscribe to process theology for organists and I believe that organists need to go through this process, or something like it:
- Organists need to be able to play for religious services. (Both "need to be able" technically and "need to be able" opportunistically.)
- Therefore, organists should seek out as many opportunities to perform for religious services as reasonably possible. (This satisfies both, see?)
- Through this process, organists must be respectful of unfamiliar or uncomfortable faith traditions in order to be successful.
- This respectfulness leads an organist in to an open-minded awareness and dialogue with other faith traditions.
With only a few years of organ gigs, I came away with a sense that the Judeo-Christian religion is thriving in myriad forms in Southwest Texas. I'm sure it is in other places too.
However, some might say that this organist process theology I've outlined doesn't really focus enough on playing. They'd be right. It focuses more on being a decent human being. And not just a tolerant human being. Tolerance implies power and superiority. I'm talking about real decency and dialogue.
You know, some things are actually more important than playing well.
?
Hint: If you already know what's going on here, you might start over and check the first letter of every paragraph.
Labels: organ
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