The Turn of the Page

It was a few days before my organ concert and I was doing what you'd expect me to be doing to prepare for an organ concert. I was standing in the middle of an aisle at Home Depot.

"Do you need any help?" Said a friendly guy in a bright organ jacket.

"I think I may be beyond help," I joked. Then I explained my predicament. I was trying to create a special effect for a Halloween concert. It involved page turning (that again?!?)...

One night, seated at the organ, having pretty much given up on finding that  @$!%#& lost chord, and attempting to instead practice for my upcoming concert, my mind started to wander in search of logistics. By custom and conservatory rules, pianists must memorize their music, and organists often do not--curiously, I had memorized the piano piece on the program, and one of the organ pieces, too, for convenience, but the others I thought I'd use music for, even if the notes were about the size of gnats in some of them.

(I should explain. Organists sometimes shrink down their music and put large numbers of sheets into these behemoth double decker productions that allow maybe 10 pages of music to fit on the music rack at once so no page turning is necessary at all. I had seen this before but never actually made one myself, before that last concert...)

But by the second-to-last piece on the program I was using three great rolls of music, 5 pages each. And I hit on the perfect person to help me unroll them when I was finished.

The Grim Reaper.

Early in the concert we'd had some fun with an incompetent page turner, and the idea that our newly digitized console has a GPS system (last year's revelation was that it now has a playback system and I thought I'd up the ante by making up this bizarre musical-navigation feature). Then, when it was time to play the Bach I spent some time telling the audience about the "dance of death" chapel in Lubeck and the enormous painting on the wall of death carrying everyone away. That turned out to be a nice setup for my page turner.

The audience didn't know he was there to turn pages at first. He stood at the organ long enough looking menacing that it looked like it was my time to go. Then he captured the roll of pages, held it victoriously aloft, and carried it back to the nether-regions from whence he came.

He did this a second time a few minutes later, emerging from his lair to traumatize the organist yet again. The third time, he thought he'd scan the audience for any likely candidates.

"Grim" was quite an effective page turner. I would like to thank Steve Shoemaker, who audience members might have noticed was about the same height as the Mr. Reaper, (Steve's one of the tallest guys in town), but he was seen conspicuously sitting in the audience before the concert, so the reaper must have actually been played by...

himself!

In any case, as I mentioned last week, the middle section of the Guilmant sonata movement I played at the end was too major key and songlike for the Reaper, so he skulked off to his lair. Imagine, I thought, if the final page turn of the concert could occur without anybody to do it, if it just floated off of its own ghostly accord!

I mentioned this to my wife, who is in the middle of residency interviews around the country this year and wouldn't be able to attend the concert. She didn't think it would work. Neither did a couple of other people I told it to.

But, I'm happy to say, it came off rather well. The helpful fellow at Home Depot found a couple of wooden dowels (because they didn't have clear plastic) and a very low budget solution (worthy of Hammer Films, no doubt) ended up looking rather spectacular, don't you think?

All this occurred at the end of the start of the repetition of the opening theme, the so-called "recapitulation" which is a very important spot to notice if you are trying to follow the structure of a piece of music. And I'm pretty sure the audience didn't miss it!

You can listen to this spectacular piece of music below: I'm still working on video from the concert itself. While I'm at it, I'd like to thank videographer Doug Abbott for all his time and expertise, and Michelle Wellens, who was the spirit behind the page turn! and also the voice of "Siri" in the aforementioned GPS sketch, along with Shane Smith, who played the hapless page turner (I'm so hard on my page turners!).

Guilmant: Sonata no. 1: III. Allegro assai (very fast)

(the page turning effect, and the start of the third section, occurs at  4:47-5:02)

The goblins are back

Around the fire, at the party after my organ concert a few weeks ago, she told me she really liked my comments about the muttering goblins and she'd been able to hear them.

Goblins?

As I've mentioned a few times this year, the absolute music folks aren't going to be happy that I brought ghosts and goblins into a perfectly good organ sonata, and probably cheapened the dignity of some highly regarded classical literature into the bargain. But here's my defense: it is useful as a guide to the listening experience. In fact, it obviously made a connection as evidenced by the woman's comments after the concert.

Alexander Guilmant probably was not thinking about goblins when he wrote his sonata movement. There is nothing programmatic about it--well, maybe we should back up a little. A dictionary definition of absolute music (was it from Harvard's?) called absolute music that which "has no program, or no program the composer wishes to advertise" because you never really know what was in the composer's head at the time.

Being a composer myself, I can tell you that while I do not often use imagery or narrative as part of the formative process of writing a piece, there are times when some sort of emotional impulse leads to a specific choice of melody or harmony--times when a feeling prompts me to play a particular chord on the piano. In that moment, I'm not thinking that I'll put an A major seven flat nine here--I'm not thinking in terms of the names of the chord or the procedure, I'm thinking, or feeling, something not in words, and basically that impulse leads to a chord because I am expressing that thing with the chord the same way our needs to communicate something inside us lead us to make particular word choices, or figures of speech, or speak in long or short sentences. We are translating something that is not words into something that is. The impulse leads to the clarification of that impulse, with music just as in words. Other composers have clearly found inspiration in words and ideas; some are best at setting texts and show little interest in music that operates without some kind of companion for inspiration.

What I'm suggesting is that I don't think simply in terms of compositional procedures--in fact, that is probably only a small (but necessary) part of my thinking. Of course, those impulses can't always be translated into words, or, if they are, the point is that they have to be translated, because English isn't their native language either.

I can't say that all composers everywhere have this type of thing built into their system, but as a creative human, I can say with safety that some people, some times, must be familiar with it.

It is not the analytical language of transition, retransition, exposition, 2nd theme, and so on. Although it is useful as an anatomical language for composers and theorists, it frankly bores me. And I suspect it bores the audience, so when I talk about what to listen for in a piece of music, while I usually key in on the piece's architecture, I seldom use it.

Instead, I'll try to attach something, emotional, experiential, active, or something to the parts of the music, making the necessary disclaimer that this is not a view necessarily endorsed by the composer, nor is it (as I suggested with the Brahmsian ghost story last week) the only way to negotiate the listening experience. It is one useful way among many, just as the piece's meaning, if it is a meritorious piece of music, is hardly exhausted by a single explanation.

So back to the goblins. I had hinted that the opening idea had a rather Halloween, goblinesque association. It was a Halloween concert, after all, and it made sense to connect the ideas. But after the first section ended (2:36), there was something very different waiting for the listeners. The something was a beautiful, hymnlike-melody in a major key. There is nothing odd about this--many composers have contrasting sections in the middle of their pieces. And there is nothing odd about what Guilmant did next, either.

Most composers like to connect their ideas somehow. It seems amateur to simply drop one idea and forget about it, the way people often discuss politics: "and another thing....and that reminds me...they all should just...." tossing disconnected ideas into the ring every thirty seconds without developing any of them. Instead, Guilmant will find a way to work his way back to that first theme, but before he does that, he finds an ingenious way to connect them as well.

Enter the goblins, or rather, let them forget to exit. What I told the audience was that if they listened carefully they could hear, between each phrase of the hymn, the goblins muttering to themselves and biding their time. In just a few seconds, this imaginative shorthand enabled the audience to notice something that very few would have heard otherwise. It is that very rapid pedal figure that flits by at the ends of phrases starting at 2:44.

In anatomical terms, this is a leftover from the first theme, in rapid notes, which contrasts with the slow moving second theme. In a minute or so, Guilmant will begin alternating the themes with more regularity and gradually giving the stage more and more to the first, preparing its return. This is, from a procedural standpoint, pretty basic.

But it's not very alive, then, is it?

Dare I connect an emotion, an image, even a slogan from a horror move (...they're baaaaack!) to describe the hair-raising way in which Guilmant accomplishes this basic architectural feature of a sonata movement? (complete with spectral page turn!)

Why not? It worked. And it took far less time to expound than this blog. It made a connection. Somebody heard something they wouldn't have heard otherwise. Something very interesting a composer did that went by in an instant, but made the piece much more than mundane.

That's what images and ideas do. They help us form our own maps, our own connections to music. They interpret form and structure, as well as local ideas, melodies and rhythms. They are the stuff of us, just as our music is. They are not to be confused with the music itself, and they are not more than the temporary interpretation of it.

But they help us to connect, to relate. And that's significant.


[listen]

Where the rabbit comes from

There are really two major differences separating persons of eminent ability and recognized genius and people who spent their lives on the couch watching television. One of those is the willingness to work, very hard, for countless hours at whatever it is they are pursuing.

The other is the ability to even believe in the utility of work to start with.

What I mean is that a lot of not very successful people don't even believe in work as being much of a factor. They tend to believe that people who are brilliant at something are just that way because that's the way they are. They may even think that those folks never have to break a sweat: it all comes naturally. And, of course, if you aren't one of those brilliant people you might as well not even bother because it either happens or it doesn't. no effort is required; none will make any difference.

It's a convenient little belief system.

What I'm about to do is mess with a closely related symptom of this mindset which is the thrill of not knowing where something came from or how it got there--the kind of astonishment that comes when a magician suddenly pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

The thing is, the rabbit had to come from somewhere.

In fact, great classical composers can usually be found to have had influences of one sort or another. Other composers. The works of other composers. Teachers. Mentors. Musicologists spend a lot of their time tracking these down so they can ruin everybody's fun.

No, really, they find it fascinating, and it is not meant to ruin anything. The astonishing thing is that when people find out something they somehow thought was completely original sprang from somewhere else, they find that disappointing.

Why is that?

Today's exhibit is the towering Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. I played it on my organ concert just over a week ago. What you may not have noticed is that a few weeks before the concert a couple of little organ pieces quietly entered the pianonoise catalogue. These were a couple of passacaglie (what in heaven is the plural of passacaglia, anyhow?) written by a French organist who, while quite famous in his own time, has left barely a mark on musical history. His name was Andre Raison, and the reason for my interest in his music is that someone found an interesting similarity between his piece and Bach's. Basically, the theme is the same:

[listen]

A passacaglia is a kind of piece in which there is a continually repeated musical idea in the bass, and each time that 'theme' is repeated, different things occur in the parts above it. It is a chance for a composer to pour his ingenuity into a form which, thorough the restraint of constant repetition, allows the composer to find as much variety as he or she can in the counterpoint of a single theme.

Raison managed to get about 90 seconds out of his; Bach decided maybe it would yield around seven or eight minutes, and then attached a fugue that added six minutes more. But there is another difference.

Raison's theme is four measures long. Bach's is twice that. Assuming that the young Bach started with Raison's theme in front of him, he appears to have extended it, which was a very wise idea.

Where did he get the extension? There is a theory that what he actually did was to combine two of Raison's themes from two different pieces. The one you just heard furnished the first half, and the second, despite being in a major rather than a minor key and being pitched a step down, can be shown to have the same notes as the rest of Bach's theme, provided you take both themes and transpose them to c minor.

[listen]

At this point someone always puts up their hand and asks "couldn't Bach have just come up with the tune on his own?" We are nothing if not suspicious of a little scholarship. And I would have to say that the theme seems so natural, and Bach so clever, that it does seem possible for Bach to have simply thought of the tune himself. But it is quite likely that he took it from somewhere as well.

I haven't had a chance to check the musicological literature as I was preparing for the concert. It may be that someone has established a definitive link between the pieces. It is possible (but not likely) there is even a copy of these pieces in Bach's hand. Often, though, that is not the case and all we can do is make a good guess. What we do know about Bach is that he often used the works of other composers for study and imitation. There are, for example, several organ transcriptions Bach made of concertos by Vivaldi and others (I played one a few years ago). Bach was aware of composers all over Europe and often wrote pieces in the 'French' style, or the 'English' style, or in imitation of some kind of piece that was popular in one of those places. This practice was hardly limited to Bach: composers did this frequently. You learned from others, and then you tried to surpass them.

The most obvious point of contact between Bach and another composer is Dietrich Buxtehude. We know that Bach spent three months with Buxtehude when, as a young organist, he took a 250 mile trip to visit him at his church in Lubeck. Perhaps it was Buxtehude who showed Bach the Raison pieces. Buxtehude himself wrote several passacaglie (there's that darned plural again) and when I get a chance I'll be looking for similarities between his and Bach's to see if there were more influences.

This is hardly a disappointment to me. I find it fascinating to trace the connections. It doesn't make Bach a two-bit plagiarist with no compositional genius. Even if we posit that he "stole" the theme (and if Raison found out and reacted the way Clementi did when Mozart cribbed a theme from his piano sonata for use in the "Magic Flute" overture then we have to admit composers didn't always encourage such borrowing)--even then, he did something quite amazing with what he found. It is as if Raison was sitting on a gold mine the whole time and didn't realize it. And Bach did.

But then, Bach was Bach. Ask any organist. See if they don't sound in awe and enthusiasm just saying the name. I'm not saying it might not seem a bit over the top. But it's true. The man could write music like nobody else.

Listen for yourself to the great

[Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor]

The speed of scary (part two)

Organist can be a cranky lot.

If you go listen to any of the numerous videos organists have posted on Youtube and scan the comments, there be invariably somebody there complaining about the tempo the organist took. This seems to be unique to organists. Pianists will complain instead, when confronted with some outstanding recording by some great pianist of their time, that some OTHER great pianist played the piece infinitely better. Pianistic partisanship is a cult of personality; for organists it comes down to the metronome.

I don't usually post to Youtube (I have my own index of nearly 500 mp3 files on my own site without an accompanying comment board) so I am not often eaten for lunch by fellow organists whenever I put up a recording, but the other week when I posted a short piece in preparation for last Friday's recital, I imagined what they would say.

It was just too darned fast.

Actually, it probably was. I had a teacher in college (I was a piano major) who would get out her metronome the first week my violinist partner and I brought in a new piece and tell us it needed to be faster. Since we'd only been playing the piece for a few days at that point, that was natural. It was also natural that, given a little more time, the notes would become gestures, and our comprehension of the piece would allow us to speed up. Her strategy may have made that natural acceleration process worse: the second week when we brought the piece in it was always too fast! By the third week even baby bear would have enjoyed it.

I often have a very narrow window to record pieces before I have to turn my attention to something else. The Toccata by Gigout was not a particularly difficult piece, so about 3 days into the process I made my first recording, by which time I was just able to play the piece competently, but was also pretty nervous, and, I will maintain, didn't know the piece well enough to slow down.

This argument flies in the face of what every teacher ever told me (it probably belongs with the old "this sounded better at home" which I usually answer by telling my students "of course it did" and then explaining why that is entirely likely but ultimately won't work as an excuse during a concert) which was to play everything slowly and gradually speed up, or that, if you can't play the piece slowly you can't play it quickly, to which I say, nonsense.

You have to be a pretty advanced musician for the "nonsense" to stick, however. Most amateur musicians play too fast and too sloppily. You'll notice that the recording I'm about to share with you is pretty articulate. The reason it is so fast is that I was thinking in gestures. For me, whole groups of about eight notes played in one hand position often feels as if I am standing still. They are not eight distinct bits of information, they are like eight syllables in a sentence in my native language which I can spit out in a unit without thinking about it (so can you). Like a major league hitter, who can slow down a fast pitch in his mind in order to key on it and hit it, there is very little effort required to execute groups of notes taking up a beat or two of space; they are all part of one grouping. This allows me to go very fast. It actually takes more effort to slow everything down and think in terms of individual notes.

I tried that a week later, unsuccessfully. I found that the tempo wasn't completely constant because as of yet I couldn't accurately maintain a complete evenness of notes, and at the slower speed, any slight variation would jump out at you. The tempo speeds up at times, particularly toward the end. This is too bad; I might have been able to highlight some of the majesty of the grand sonorities at the slower speed, and, given a few more days to get used to it might have worked.  I've posted it below anyhow to compare it to the others, and so you can hear that I don't get things right all the time (consider it an outtake!).

Just days before the concert, I tried again, and this is the recording that made the catalogue. It is probably still too fast for many organists, but I think it is just about right. The challenge of finding the right tempo, for me, is to find something that is just slow enough that the long notes have time to build, and that the crescendi are suspenseful. It takes time to anticipate; if you deliver right away the impact is gone. But some of the recordings I've heard sound too much like finger exercises, a symptom of too slow a speed.

Organists, being a group of people, tend to be very doctrinaire in their pronouncements; they don't seem to be willing to entertain a real discussion about the proper tempo rather than just passing judgment and quitting the field. But I find the subject far more interesting. There are many things to consider, like the acoustic environment or the mechanics of the organ. What will it permit in terms of key action, and is a church with a 20 second reverb going to reward the same tempo as one that is completely dry? Not likely.

And then there are philosophical considerations. How does the piece unfold; how does it speak to us? I've often found great performers can find very different tempi and yet still make the piece very much alive.

And in that sense, we all should aspire to the words of Dr. Frankenstein when we play a piece. The words, and, of course, the results.

It's alive!


Gigout: Toccata in b minor (too fast version)

Gigout: Toccata in b minor (too slow?)

Gigout: Toccata in b minor (just right?)

The speed of scary

What makes something scary?

One of the great ironies from last week's concert is that by far the most reaction-grabbing item on the program was the first: the famous Toccata and Fugue in d minor by (perhaps) J. S. Bach. This was the item I just HAD to play. And it isn't a surprise that it went over well. People know it. And most people like what they know and know what they like. Even the music streaming service Pandora has been party to the phenomena. Put the entire world of music in all its infinite variety merely a click away and most people are still not curious enough to try something new. When I post something off the beaten path it can go all week at the top of the pianonoise homepage without a single click. Something famous on the other hand might get a lot of attention. Despite most people knowing very little of the classical literature, those same people will naturally assume that if they don't know it it must not be that good. Which means they'll never find out they were wrong.

But fear, one reasons, ought to be another thing altogether--or perhaps the reason for the avoidance of anything new. Fear is something you experience in the face of the unknown. Not simply because you might not like something but because it could genuinely harm you. Fear is not the guise of the familiar; it is the costume worn by the thing without a face, or even a recognizable human form. It is unknown, unnamed. It is a force, a concept.

In other words, it is a little strange that people came out to a concert that was supposed to be scary in order to experience the familiar; the part where the guy in the phantom costume launches into the Toccata and Fugue on a gothic sounding pipe organ. We all know that image and that sound. There isn't anything scary about travelling a path well lit in the mind.

Then again, that is part of what makes Halloween what it is, I argued. It is a chance to be afraid in a safe environment, to laugh at our fears. And for many of us, it isn't really a scary holiday at all. It is more of a carnival.

Afterward, there was plenty of chance to be afraid. The rest of the concert consisted of pieces that most people did not know. These were all pieces from the organ repertoire. All of them deserve to be heard, all could qualify as "scary"--mainly just through being in minor keys, really--and all offered a chance to experience something new and be changed by the experience. And several people found that they really enjoyed that. Which made being "your host" for the evening really gratifying. After all, as an organist, I am a keeper of a very impressive crypt full of some amazing music, and most of the year it is behind several layers of rock and a fence with a mental KEEP OUT (you might not like it) sign. It isn't easy to access, even for the intrepid traveler. Even our classical radio station doesn't play organ music. Where would you go to hear some if you wanted to?   (::cough:: pianonoise)

We do have a small group of organists in town, with their own chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and they do give concerts sometimes (attended usually by 30 to 50 people). Friday night was a full house (200-250?) and some of them (I could tell from the comments afterward) made a real connection with some new music. That is about as rewarding as it gets. And if others were merely entertained--well, it's not so bad, either. I'd like to think Friday was pretty entertaining as well. Usually after one of these events, which feature about 45 minutes of music and a half hour of commentary, someone tells me that I missed my calling as a stand up comedian.

I was also told that my talk was informative. This is a good combination, it seems to me. I'll try posting it by next week so you can make up your own mind. Stay tuned.

A Brahmsian Ghost Story

One of the things that I learned before last week's mostly organ concert is that I can play the piano in very low light, including pieces with leaps and hand crossings. Hopefully the audience found out, if they didn't know it already, that they would like to hear more from that Brahms fellow.

The only piano piece on the program was a Brahms rhapsody, specifically the second one in g minor. I was practicing it a few years back and decided it might not be a bad selection for a Halloween concert. So with a little help from the resident Steinway and Mr. Brahms, I told them a ghost story.

Brahms's disciples would shriek that what he wrote was absolutely music and music alone, which meant it should be completely independent from any ideas or narrative. Making a ghost story out of it would certainly be sacrilege.

But as Schumann, who had to be considered in the anti-programmatic camp, complained, composers shouldn't provide programs for their pieces because the audience is robbed of the chance to determine one for themselves. This is hardly the same as saying there should be no such ideas inspired by the music, rather it is saying that the audience should be allowed the freedom to create it, rather than having the composer insist on one interpretation himself. This is an interesting proposition. Schumann's response to the person who asked what his etude meant, therefore, (which was to sit down and play it again) does not necessarily mean that the music meant only itself, but that he couldn't, or wouldn't, explain it in words. I would group his response with that of Aaron Copland, who said, if asked if the music meant anything, he would say yes, and if asked if he could explain what it was, he would say no. There is a deliberate vagueness there.

On Friday, I told the audience that I had a ghost story, but I didn't fill in any details (other than suggesting the Black Forest as a possible backdrop). This could have been a useful listening exercise.

Now in any piece of classical music, particularly one that is seven minutes long, the structure of the piece is very important. If you can't follow the musical argument for several minutes, you are likely at some point to get bored or confused. And yet it is unlikely that most members of my audience had such listening skills. Traditional analytical terms like exposition, transition, 2nd theme, development, recapitulation and all that only go so far anyway. I am conversant with them, but frankly, they make the musical process sound rather dull. I am also likely to zone out when program notes consist mainly of a musical blow-by-blow description of a piece, particularly when it is limited to musical procedures--the sort of thing 21st century composers often write about their own music ("it is based on a four-note motive which is then played backwards against a descending scale derived from the first three notes transposed up a third set against the remaining notes in the brass..." sheeesh.)

Using one's 'romantic' imagination can be a nice corrective (or rebellion) against that sort of thing, but it is also a way for the mind to attempt to find a coherent structure for the piece. The part where they are walking happily into the forest, the place where it grows dark, the part where they see a lonely house in the distance and make for it... as naïve as it might sound to an academic or a professional musician, making a "story" out of a piece of music takes the music out of passive sound absorption and into the realm of raw material out of which sense--and form--is derived. At least, that's the hope. And as story, there ought to be some narrative continuity, which is just what the audience needs to find. All the better if they find it themselves.

Framing the piece as a ghost story did something else, too. I had an interesting conversation with a pianist after the concert in which I pointed out that pianists of today tend to maintain consistent tempi and minimize dynamic contrast. We are still, it seems, in reaction against Romantic "excess." This is one case where the recent authenticity movement fails to be authentic at all. The irony is that we are so busy rescuing the Baroque and Classical periods against Romantic 'vandalism' that we fail utterly to realize that when we are playing Romantic music, that those very discards ARE authentic. Brahms's score is full of places where the music goes from piano to fortissimo in just a beat or two, and while the tempo fluctuations are not similarly marked, those pianists who survived into the early 20th century showed us that in the 19th tempo was much more fluid, and that the net effect was far more dramatic. Pianists of the time may have been more technically sloppy, but they played with far more emotional impact. Even if we find that embarrassing.


With any luck, telling my harrowing tale from the keyboard the other night made me approach the piece more like Brahms himself would have. Unfortunately, only one wax cylinder of his playing survives, and it is so distorted that it is hard to know how he played. But at the very least, I got to run an interesting experiment, which may have gone against the grain of many a modern pianistic approach, a good deal of which in the end is as much a reflection of fashion as authenticity.

And if that thought scares some of you, well, BOO!

Brahms: Rhapsody no. 2 in g minor, op. 79 n. 2

Be very afraid....

Tonight is my subtly named "Scary Organ Concert." I plan to give my audience a scary experience. About time I turned the tables, isn't it?

I mean, preparing a recital is often a scary experience for the artist. There is a deadline, there is a lot of music to prepare, there are often scads of details to take care of that have nothing to do with the music...

I don't want to give anything away before the concert tonight, so I'll just obliquely suggest that there will be a few surprises.

Sometimes those details are what make the concert for some folks. I could, after all, just come out and play the organ, bow and leave, and that would already require preparation, but, usually, when I give a concert there are other dimensions. That's probably why we had a pretty full house for an organ concert last year and why I'm anticipating another one. It doesn't mean I compromise the music, though. Tonight's concert is all original organ music--no transcriptions, no theater organ--and some of it is Bach. It will be an occasional challenge to the ears, unless you happen to be a Bach lover or a classical music expert. On the other hand, there will be moments of near-Vaudeville, too, and I'll do plenty of talking. This time-honored mix of high and low art is something I learned from Shakespeare, so you know it's got quite a pedigree.

In any event, I've had a real adventure getting everything ready on time (or trying) so I'll keep this blog short and just let you know that over the next week I'll be telling you all about it as well as posting video and/or audio of the live event as soon as I can get things ready. You'll have to give me a few days, though, since it is also All Saint's Day Sunday (four services) and I have a Halloween party to play Saturday with my band, and a lengthy choir rehearsal Sunday for the following week's concert. I am planning to be a bit tired on Monday morning.

Happy Halloween!

Taking on a cliche

When I mentioned that I was going to play an organ recital last year at this time, people wanted to know if I was going to play the piece. You know, the FAMOUS one. The one that goes....

DADADAAAAAAA!!!!! deedeedeedee DUH! DAAAAAAAAA!!!!

In other words, the entirety of the known organ literature!

It can be tough to be an organist, or at least lonely. I've read that only about one in every two hundred people regularly attend classical music concerts. Of these, I'm betting that only about one in a hundred know or are interested in the pipe organ. That's a pretty small group, limited to mostly other organists.

On the other hand, it leaves quite a bit of virgin territory for those with missionary zeal, like a young John Wesley, who thought it would be a grand idea to leave England and go preach the gospel to the Indians on a continent he didn't know among a people he didn't know to bring them a religion they'd never heard of. Because why bother trying to convert your next door neighbor? That would be boring! He would have made a great organist (aside from not liking instrumental music). As it is, he will probably be rolling over in his grave a week from Friday, when I give my next organ concert.

Last year, having just refurbished the console of our organ at Faith to fix some longstanding issues with the relay system and some very outmoded parts, and having added a few bells and whistles into the bargain, we moved the console out onto the floor (the first time that was possible) and I invited the entire church and a large chunk of the community to come celebrate this exciting instrument in all of its relieved post-operative glory.

It's an organ recital, remember? Wasn't likely to have people knocking each other down to get in like a Black Friday sale at Walmart. We advertised how much fun it was going to be. I did my best to convince people that organ recitals really weren't that scary. And a large chunk of the community actually showed up, practically filling the sanctuary (upwards of 250?). It was the first time I'd seen that many people at an organ recital in this town. Not that I've been to more than a handful, but it's usually 30 to 50 people. And that enthusiastic throng was on their feet at the end, demanding an encore. I hadn't prepared one so it is a good thing I can improvise! Somebody called out a hymn and I gave them an energetic rendition of "I'll Fly Away!"

That concert was right before Halloween and people kept asking if I was going to play scary organ music. Part of me found this annoying. After all, why does the organ always have to be associated with the Phantom of the Opera and haunted houses? People who attend our "traditional" services know that it speaks with many voices. It can be majestic, consoling, humorous, full of vigor and enthusiasm, somber, melancholy--only the strength of our imaginations limit the possibilities.

On the other hand, I thought, the organ does scary pretty darn well. Better than any other instrument, in fact. So if people want scary, well, let them have it. And while I'm at it, I can mention that none of the pieces on the program were actually written for Halloween and what it is about the organ that has always provoked such a thrill and a shudder in its hearers, and what a pagan holiday like Halloween is even still doing in a (post) Christian world. I'm making this concert sound like a symposium, aren't I?

Well, it won't be. Just like last year, it will be a blend of erudition and slapstick; entertainment and thought provocation, and a variety of music from several times and places, with a few tricks up my sleeve. Unlike last year there will not be ensemble pieces but I do have a small cast of helpers. And the lights will be a lot lower. Also the concert is on Friday evening this time, because there is nothing at all scary about Sunday afternoon.

By taking on a cliché, I get to explore it, and to have some fun with it. Besides, there is still that kid in me that enjoyed the thrill of the Toccata and Fugue which I played as a teenager. And what organist doesn't enjoy the sound of the pedal reeds and the manuals on full, the organ blazing away at the finale of the Passacaglia in c minor?

I think we'll all have a scary good time. Stay tuned.