By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)
Does your organ playing lack clarity of touch and you can't seem to hold the middle voices just right? I have a nice and painless solution for you. Yesterday as Ausra and I were entering the church, Vytautas was playing Bach's Prelude in C major from WTC II and it sounded quite calm, relaxed and actually already almost fit for the public performance. But as soon as he saw us, somehow his playing changed into the old manner - a little rushed and messy. He didn't listen to the dialogue between the voices and was only concerned with playing the correct notes. Because of the stress of someone else listening and immediate feedback obviously it didn't work so well. So then we suggested him the following trick: Play the last line 5 to 10 times at this slower tempo. He did and the result of this last line was beautiful. I joked that now he can play at least one line for the upcoming concert. Then we asked to play the line before that 5 to 10 times. Again it was beautiful. You see, we're I'm going with this? Work on your piece backwards practicing one line at a time 5 to 10 times and stopping at the beginning of the next line. We gave Vytautas a recipe for success - do this for 7 days in a row and see what happens when we'll meet again to critique his organ playing.
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By Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene (get free updates of new posts here)
Yesterday Victoria asked me to teach her about the 7th chord of the 2nd scale degree in minor keys. As I was going through all the different inversions, one of the prevailing questions was why this beautiful 4-note chord has so many resolutions? You see, technically we only use resolutions which you can find in real music. So, can you find a usage of this chord which resolves directly to tonic? Of course, this is very simple. But you have to double the third so that parallel fifths would be avoided (In A minor: BDFA-CCEA). What about going from ii7 to the tonic through the 3-note dominant chord? Yes, and then you have to triple the root of the dominant and make this chord incomplete (BDFA-EEEG#-ACEA). Can you resolve it to tonic through the 4-note chords (either inversions of D7 or vii7)? In the case of D7, two voices are moving by step and two are stationary (BDFA-BDEG#-ACEA). With vii7, only 1 voice is moving (BDFA-BDFG#-CCEA). What if you wanted to make it a resolution through BOTH D7 and vii7? Then you simply move one note at a time (BDFA-BDFG#-BDEG#-ACEA). You can also have the 5th resolution through altered 7th chord. Then you simply raise the 4th scale degree (BDFA-BD#FA-EEEG#-ACEA). Does it seem complicated? Sure it does. But the point is to resolve to tonic either directly or through the most common dissonant 3-note and 4-note chords. After you understand it in theory, play it in practice in all major and minor keys. As always aim for at least 3 correct repetitions in a row. Do you want to know if you're on the right path of your practice? Find an extra pair of ears/eyes that you trust and ask for feedback. Hope this helps. By Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene (get free updates of new posts here)
Do you sometimes find that even though you haven't played a piece or two in 23 years, you can play them much better than others which you are just sight-reading? I experienced this some 10 hours ago. Today I practiced 3 preludes and fugues by Bach: in C major (BWV 547), in C minor (546), in C minor (549) and Adagio from C major trio sonata, BWV 529/2. I have played all of them before, BWV 546 some 20+ years ago. Surprisingly, today I was able to do it slowly but quite fluently. Definitely better than BWV 545 in the past which was new to me. What's the deal with this? I think it depends on how well you have mastered your pieces before. It's like riding a bicycle, remember? Once you learn it, the old skill comes back quite quickly regardless of how many decades you haven't touched it. One more reason to be very precise in learning new music today, isn't it? By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)
Are you struggling to become a better sight-reader on the organ? You want to practice something like 2 hours a day but somehow you are not there yet. Something is holding you back. Maybe you don't seem to hold the persistent schedule of practicing, maybe you don't know what pieces to play, maybe you get overwhelmed with many other tasks that is on your to-do list. Or maybe it's a combination of things. Here's the thing: I was also struggling to perfect my sight-reading abilities for a long time. I remember when my first organ teacher gave me chorale preludes from Bach's Orgelbuchlein to choose, I tried to play them at home and it was a disaster. I couldn't even appreciate how beautiful those gems were at the time. That's how pathetic my sight-reading abilities were. Later I played organ music more or less regularly. But the breakthrough came only when I decided to use my skill in public, when I made my goal to try to sight-read a simple 30-minute organ recital without preparation. I deliberately chose rather easy pieces for the program because I knew these things will get stressful. Most importantly, I set a date and I worked until my fingers fell off. What happened was that the more I practiced, the easier it was to get to the real concert tempo with new pieces and to notice as well as execute the intricate details of the piece, such as articulation, tonal plan, thematic development, registration and manual changes, phrasing etc. The result of this experiment was that yes, the recital went well and I knew, it could be done - to perfect your organ sight-reading skills to a level where even more difficult repertoire could be performed without prior preparation. But first you have to set a specific date and give yourself some real accountability. What would happen if you failed? In my case, my audience would laugh at me and I would damage my credibility as a concert organist. Until you do that, until you figure out where's the gun to your head, your dream to sight-read better on the organ will remain... just a dream. Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #93!
Today's guest is an American concert organist Wyatt Smith who is a native of Rapid City, South Dakota. He performs with “nuance, polish, and personality” (Michael Barone, APM Pipedreams). Wyatt concertizes extensively throughout the United States by keeping an active concert schedule. he has performed in twenty-eight states throughout the US over the last seven years, and more recently in Europe. Notable performance venues include the US Air Force Academy Protestant Cadet Chapel (Colorado Springs), St. Thomas Church (New York), St. Andrew’s Cathedral (Honolulu), St. George’s, Hanover Square (London), St. Mark Episcopal Cathedral (Seattle), the Spreckels Organ Pavilion – Balboa Park (San Diego), National City Christian Church (Washington D. C.) King’s Chapel (Boston), Trinity Church – Copley Square (Boston), Woolsey Hall – Yale University (New Haven), William Jewell College (Liberty), the Community of Christ Auditorium and Temple (Independence), the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (Los Angeles), and Overture Concert Hall (Madison). He performed at the 2012 AGO National Convention in Nashville, Tennessee as a Rising Star, having won the AGO/Quimby Regional Competition for Young Organists - Region VI in 2011. His performances have been heard on several episodes of American Public Media’s Pipedreams. His achievements in performance were recently recognized when he was named as a member of the "Class of 2016" by The Diapason's program, "20-under-30", which recognizes young leaders in the fields of organ, harpsichord, carillon, and church music. Wyatt has a passion for commissioning and performing new works for the organ. Over the last several years, he has commissioned and premiered works by David Cherwien, Carson Cooman, Emma Lou Diemer, Kurt Knecht, Kristina Langlois, Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, among others. Wyatt is currently a doctoral student at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he studies organ performance with Dr. Carole Terry. He received his Master of Music degree from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale School of Music, where he studied organ performance with Dr. Martin Jean. His Bachelor of Music degree in organ performance is from the University of South Dakota, where he was an organ student of Dr. Larry Schou. Wyatt is the Organist at St. Alphonsus Parish in Seattle, Washington, where he plays the Fritts-Richards organ, Op. 4. In this conversation, among many other things, Wyatt talks about his experience in playing Bach's trio sonatas, Matthias Weckmann's gigantic cycle "Es ist das Heil" and his newest research on the late works of Max Reger. Enjoy and share your comments below. And don't forget to help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends. Thanks for caring. Listen to the conversation By Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene (get free updates of new posts here)
Why when you are practicing your organ piece for months sometimes you don't see any improvement but at some point all of a sudden your playing gets more fluent, almost overnight? This question bothers me a lot. Last Tuesday I heard one of my students play Prelude and Fugue in D minor, BWV 554 from the score with Vidas' fingering and pedaling. She was struggling to play it clearly and without stopping from September! And only this Tuesday it started to sound like it could be ready for public performance in a few weeks. 8 months had passed without any noticeable improvement! What's the matter here? I think the improvement was there but we couldn't hear it. Do you think that she should have just stopped practicing and showed up this Tuesday? Of course not. So what about you? Do you have a piece which you play for months without any result? Do you feel like spinning your wheels in organ playing? Actually you're not spinning your wheels (if you're practicing honestly and regularly). And it's just a matter of time when the real breakthrough will reveal itself. Progress can't be rushed. By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)
When Ausra and I had traveled across Lithuania with numerous organ demonstrations, we found many village churches which housed beautiful yet small organs. Sometimes local organists asked us to play some hymns during the service which preceded our demonstration. Before doing that we would listen to the local organist register the hymns and were often amazed at how boring and one-sided their choices were. John from Australia also has this challenge. The organ at his new church has 2 manuals and pedals - only 13 stops total - multiple 8' stops, a few 4' stops, 2-rank Mixture and Bourdon 16' in the pedals (plus the usual couplers, of course). He wants to add variety in his hymn playing registration but fears that his playing would be too soft to lead congregational singing. It doesn't have to be this way. I had an experience in the US playing 3 stop one manual organ (Gedackt 8', Flute 4' and Principal 2' in the facade) on Saturday night services at our Grace Lutheran church chapel. You wanna know what I did? I counted how many color combinations can I have in this instrument. And I used them all in my hymn playing: 8, 4, 2, 8/4, 8/2, 4/2, 8/4/2. 7 combinations! Not once was I criticized about the stop choices (the pastor didn't like my tempos sometimes but that's a story for another time). Can you count how many combinations are there on a 13 stop organ? I tried to do this on my "Creative Small Organ Hymn Playing Registration" training but I literally lost count. Be brave. Make your goal to find one more registration combination which nobody else uses. Remember, there was a point in history when a mixture had more than 50 ranks! (and no possibility to separate them into different stops). By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)
I have a student who always does the opposite of what I say. She usually plays a lot faster than she should and this is especially obvious for inner voices when the texture is more complex than normal. She takes on quite advanced pieces which are well beyond her level. The result is a messy performance. Of course. For 5 years she has been doing this. And don't get me wrong. She is polite, agrees with me all the time. BUT she never actually does what she promised me to do. For 5 years she isn't getting anywhere with her organ playing! In fact, it seems to me she is regressing somehow. This last time was different, though. She came in prepared and her first try was already better than anything she has played for me in months. I was surprised and asked her to slow down even more. She played it again and the second time was better still. Those inner voices were much clearer now. One last time she played for me, I slowed her down and actually for the first time I started believing she could be ready to play it in public in 4 weeks from now. Imagine that! Just 3 really slow repetitions in a row and hope was on the horizon. Before that only Ausra believed she could master it in time. Can you do that with your organ piece? By Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene (get free updates of new posts here)
We had a harmony lesson with Victoria yesterday in which she told me she's reading Wiser Than Despair by Quentin Faulkner about the evolution of ideas between music and the Christian Church throughout history. This brought me some amazing memories when Vidas and I were studying at UNL and took this class with Prof. Faulkner about music and the church. He really is one of world's foremost experts in this field (along with being an excellent Bach scholar). Here's an excellent idea from this book of why do we sing in church: Because we cannot remain silent when we encounter the transcendental or the divine and words alone are not enough to express our sense of awe. So the communities that struggle with singing in church may also struggle with this sense of awe and gratitude. People who gather to church services because of pure tradition but they don't believe fully of what kind of miracles are taking place, don't want to engage and participate fully in the service and in the singing of hymns from their hearts. On the first class Prof. Faulkner had us write an essay about how would music liturgy look like in our ideal church service. It was interesting to explore our worldview of what kind of music should be included in the ideal church service situation, if we were completely limitless. What would your ideal music in the church situation look like? By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)
One of our subscribers was wondering whether or not my Melodic Dictation Master Course Level 1 is a good fit for her. These types of dictations are being taught at National Ciurlionis School of Arts in Vilnius, Lithuania where I teach. Right from the start, from Grade 1 students start writing short 2 or 4 measure phrases. The teacher would play the melody several times quite slowly and the student would write it down without looking at the keyboard. The treble A is given with the tonic chord of it's key. If you know the circle of fifths, you can discover how many accidentals does this major or minor key have. So basically is a process of notating on paper what you hear. Later we make the melodies longer - 8 measures. Different keys, different meter signatures. In Grade 6 we add a a second voice. In Grade 7 we add simple chromaticisms. In Grade 8 the second voice moves to the bass clef. In Grade 9 we have modulations and temporary tonicisations during the dictation. In Grade 10 we start 3 part dictation. In Grade 11 the dictation further complicates and in Grade 12 it's like a small polyphonic composition in 3 parts, maybe like an exposition of the fugue. Usually the dictation is played as many times as there are measures plus a couple more times to edit it. I have to point out that dictation is only 1/5 of the activities our school does in ear training. The other 4 are: 1. Singing 1 part or Two part or Three-part melodies (one voice is sung and the rest are played. 2. Sight-reading one one-part melody. 3. Singing elements of musical language: tetrachords, scales, modes, intervals, chords, and chord progressions. 4. Listening and writing down the above elements of musical language. In the 9th grade we start music theory and in Grade 10 - Harmony. In the end the student becomes a complete musician because they can understand music that they see, hear and play on a deep level. Some of them go on to create and improvise music of their own instead of just performing what others have written. Hope this helps to decide if this course would work for you. [Thanks to Dolly] |
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
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