So you want to become a professional performer with advanced experience of improvisation, especially within a liturgical context. You heard this calling and you have answered it. Maybe not right away, maybe you were hesitant to set out to achieve your dream at first because deep inside you knew that you will have to confront some serious challenges in not too distant future. However, living your life without the organ improvisation has proved to be like you were not reaching your full potential and this feeling has become worse than the actual challenges that are waiting for you along the road. That's why you decided to start your improvisation journey after all. This journey probably began with lots of initial momentum and high spirits but as the time passed, you feel like it's getting more and more difficult to advance. You have met your challenges. The first one for you was the lack of learning resources. Sure, there are numerous method books that teach improvisation but the problem is that none of these learning materials are meant specifically for you. Some of the method books contain too much theoretical explanations while lacking graded exercises; others might have plenty of exercises but they seem to be too dry and too many - you don't feel any progress as you progress. Luckily, you have found some model pieces of your favorite composers that you want to decipher and create some improvisational experiments out of them. You don't want to become another Bach or Buxtehude but you feel like following the footsteps of the masters might lead you to some interesting discoveries of your own along the way. Then there came another, even greater challenge - as you were studying your model pieces, somehow you felt stuck multiple times because you were not sure what all Baroque pieces have in common. In other words, you didn't understand the musical elements that comprise the musical style of different historical periods. The thoughts of quitting and that improvisation was not meant for you were frequent at this point. Regardless of all the fear that you might be lost, that you will never learn to improvise in the Baroque style within the liturgical context, you were able to face this challenge with a calm scientific and systematic stance. Although the Baroque pieces might have very advanced polyphonic techniques, by looking at the composition deeply you were able to discover the essence of counterpoint. This gave you the strength to continue. However, the last challenge made you rethink the efficiency of your practice in general because you felt like you might spend hours and days practicing improvisation but your goal, like the sun on the horizon just kept moving away from you. Here you realized that your lack of efficient practice techniques inhibited your progress not only in improvisation but also in organ playing in general. But at the same time this realization was like an eye-opener to you, you started to see what was always under your nose - you began to understand that the way you learn a new and advanced organ piece is essentially the same as the way you learn to improvise in a certain genre. Extremely slow practice of fragment by fragment and voice by voice are vital here. Essentially you have to depress the key or a pedal only when you have figured out what comes next. Your road has not ended yet but you now have a clear and calm mind and feel like you are on the right path. Will new challenges await for you around the corner? Almost certainly. Will you give up and return to your pre-improvisational life? Not possible - there is no coming back. Only forward. [Thanks for Callum for inspiration] Voice leading challenge:
Supply the bass part to the above excerpt which is taken from my Processional March in C Major (try not to look at the answer ahead of time). Sight-reading: Fugue (p. 6) from 12 Pièces, Op.16 by Leon Boellmann (1862-1897), French Romantic composer and organist. Hymn-playing: Breathe on Me, Breath of God
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When you do this exercise, after about 90 seconds you will start to think "what am I doing here? This is nonsense." A lot of people quit here.
Then 5 or 6 minutes into the exercise, it will start to be even more difficult to continue. "I can't do it any longer. Let me play REAL music." Even more people quit here. For those that continue, about 8 minutes into the exercise, it will begin to make sense. If you survive those 10 minutes, you will feel great and kind of sad you had to stop. Yesterday we discussed the procedure in creating chordal echos when improvising on any hymn tune. Today's lesson will be focused on a different technique - melodic echos. It's a very colorful way to demonstrate two different manuals and the reed stop in the pedals (if you have one). I hope you will experiment with this technique on a hymn tune of your choice.
Echos are very useful if you want to improvise on hymn or choral melodies. An echo is the technique used in organ improvisation where you take an excerpt of the hymn tune (anywhere from 2-8 chords) and explore different colors, manuals, ranges of the keyboard, dynamics, and keys. In this video I will teach you how to play en echo based on just a few chords. It is a beautiful way to demonstrate your instrument to your friends or family and even during public performance.
Last Saturday I played an improvisation recital in my church (Vilnius University St. John's church). The idea was to improvise on the chorale tune "An Wasserflussen Babylon" - the famous melody that Johann Adam Reincken from St. Catherine's church in Hamburg used to create a long chorale fantasia. Probably out of huge respect to Reincken, in 1722 J.S. Bach improvised in front of him on the same tune for half an hour and received the following compliment from the old master:
"I thought that this art was dead but I see that it lives in you". Without any intention to surpass Bach or Reincken I wanted to try to improvise an hour-long recital based on this chorale tune only. We could all imagine that it could be done for an hour if we use different chorale melodies and create a number of various pieces but is it possible to use just one melody for an hour and still make an interesting music for the listeners? In other words, is it possible to create a long chorale fantasia that the listeners would appreciate? I didn't now that of course ahead of time but since these sort of musical experiments, challenges, and adventures are my daily bread, it seemed like a great idea to try out and see what happens. The style and the techniques for this improvised chorale fantasia were taken from the models of Franz Tunder (1614-1667) who was a predecessor of Dieterich Buxtehude in Lubeck's St. Mary's church. Incidentally, this year the entire organ world celebrates Tunder's 400th anniversary (as well as C.P.E. Bach's 300th anniversary) so I hope you will do something interesting with his numerous pieces. I already played one recital with Tunder's music this spring - it takes two hours to play his entire organ works so maybe I will do the second half later this year. So anyway, I had to keep track of the time during my improvisations. This is because it was only one long improvised piece as opposed to some 10 shorter compositions played from the scores. I didn't want to bore my listeners and play too long. In order to keep track of the time, I brought a timer from home and put it next to me so that I could see when to end. Now, this particular timer has one peculiar feature - it beeps shortly when the time limit is getting close to the end (I think 5 minutes is the mark). More importantly, the timer beeps much longer when the set time interval has ended. Obviously, this is no good when someone plays a public recital. It would be quite a distraction both for the listeners and for me. So instead of setting the timer for one hour, I set it for two. This way it would be very simple - once I see the timer move to about 1 hour, it would mean I would need to prepare to end my improvisations. By the way, if you are wondering why couldn't I set the timer to go forward instead of backwards - here's why: it counts only up to 20 minutes and then starts from 1 again. That could be possible too by simply counting three rounds of 20 minutes to complete the recital on time in about one hour. But this seemed a little risky - I had previous experiences when I would start to wonder (during improvisations) is it close to the end of the 2nd or the 3rd round? Anyhow, at the beginning of the recital I set the timer to 2 hours and began to play. At first I played the chorale-tune harmonization and then began my improvisation with the prelude-like introduction (with imitated sections for more interest). About 5-8 minutes into the recital all went well until I noticed that the timer doesn't move - it shows 2:00 all the time (so much for keeping track of the time accurately that day). Luckily, I had my smartphone with me in my right pocket which I had to take out and put in the place I could see. As you can imagine, everything had to be done quite smoothly without disturbing the flow of the music which meant I had to play with my left hand and pedals only while working on getting the smartphone from the pocket with my right hand. Here is Lesson 1 which might be applicable to you as well: make sure you can play without one hand during the public performance. For the right-handed people, left hand is the secondary choice and it takes some practice to get used to do it. Such playing might be quite useful not only when you perform an improvised music but also when you play from the score - sometimes the pages might fall apart and you have to use one hand to sort them out and put them back on the music rack. Another reason to do it is when you have to turn the page with one hand and continue playing smoothly with the other. In case you are wondering how I felt or how it went for me, I have to say, it seemed a little funny, that's all. Deep down I knew it all be fine in the end. The reason the timer wasn't working was that I didn't push the Start button. When I thought about this after the recital was over, I felt so stupid - all I needed to do was to push that Start button the moment I found out that the timer wasn't working (but I didn't understand that on time). Oh well, that's part of the experience - adventures are always waiting for you just around the corner. I will have a few more useful lessons to share with you soon so stay tuned for the continuation of this series. To end this article, I want to point out that since some of my current Total Organist members didn't have a chance to update their subscriptions to the half-priced versions until Sunday night, I have to extend this special offer for a couple more days to anyone who wants to subscribe now (right now we have 33 active members). Also after subscribing, some people had technical problems loging in into the member area. This is all fixed now - it was my fault the way protected member area was set up but tech support at Sentrylogin kindly helped me with this. Imagine you sat down at the organ and where asked to improvise. A lot of people would freak out. They would freeze. It seams so scary. The idea that you should play something which is not written on the page might seem so frightening. You don't know what key to press, you don't know when to press it, you don't know when to release it, you don't know what's coming up next.
And yet... Some people seem to be perfectly at ease when improvising. This uncertainty doesn't seem to bother them at all. On the contrary, they seek out opportunities to improvise, they even start by playing a written piece and later expand it and finish it by improvising. So what can you learn from improvisers? Are there any things that can be applied to your performance even if you don't improvise, even if you only play music from the score. Here are some things that might be helpful. Focus on what you know. When you sit down to improvise and are given a theme for strict improvisation, you might be afraid of not being able to do it in the correct manner. Instead, you relax and play what you know. You might not know how to play in a contrapuntal style but the modal techniques might work for you. The same can be said about playing from the score. Out of several pieces you are working on right now there surely must be your favorite one. Over time the list of compositions you are comfortable with will become longer and longer, just like the techniques and tricks for improvisation. Enjoy the ride. So many people suffer from performance anxiety. The primary reason for this is where you put your focus during the performance. If you focus on yourself (inward), then it's really frightening because others are watching you and supposedly judging you. It might even be more true when you sit down to improvise. You might be thinking that your listeners will notice your shortcomings. Instead, you should focus your attention on the music (outward). Simply know that your listeners came with good intentions. They want to enjoy your performance. So should you. Every moment you spend on the organ bench, you bring great joy to some. This feeling always relaxes the pressure and helps treasure the moment. Tell stories. Improvisers always tell stories. The story might not be easily understood by the inexperienced listener because it might be a musical story. Just like creating a verbal story, we use words and language to communicate, so do improvisers who use sounds and musical language when they create music. You could use the same idea when you perform from the score. Figure out what kind of musical story can be created out of this piece. Analyse the tonal plan, thematic development, melodies, rhythms, harmonies, texture, and form and be conscious about at least some of these musical elements when you perform in public. Don't just play the notes. Put some meaning into them. Make mistakes. This one might be the hardest to accept but it's vital, I think. Improvisers always make mistakes. People just don't notice them. Sometimes when the mistakes are noticeable, improvisers incorporate them into a piece. Improvisers train themselves to use whatever is at hand, including the mistake because it might and it will lead you to some interesting musical adventures. Are you afraid of making mistakes when playing from the score? You shouldn't be. The thing is, if you are not making mistakes, you are not doing anything that matters, you are not creating value, you are not reaching your full potential. And the twist is (because there's always a twist) that when you allow yourself to make a mistake, when it's OK to fail, you suddenly notice that mistakes disappear. Isn't this the case when you play alone so relaxed and nobody is watching you? When failure is an option, so is the success. Keep these things in mind when you perform in public. I know, it takes completely different mindset to be relaxed and assume improvisational stance but it makes all the difference. Just remember that the vast majority of organ music composed up to 1800's was created with the idea that it might serve as model, as an example for improvisations. It actually is fun to create musical conversations (whether written down or not) when somebody is watching you. Isn't it the same of how we feel when we act in front of others? Humans need audience. The voices in the piece become living characters that can interact, mimic, scream, weep, cheat, fight and do the things that people normally do. Then stage fright becomes a distant memory in the back of your mind which will not bother you during performance. Ever wondered how to take a hymn tune, place it in the right hand part, and at the same time to be able to play the improvised bass line which would go smoothly with it? This skill would allow you to create perfect simple biciniums and in fact would help you in your hymn playing (especially if you are a poor sight-reader). Why is it so and how to do it? Watch this video to find out this trick.
Are you bored with your hymn improvisations on the organ? Do they sound the same all the time? Today I'm going to tell you about the special trick which will allow you to make your hymn improvisations much more colorful. Watch this video to find out.
Lately I've been working on transcribing into Sibelius notation from my not-so-legible handwriting my Op. 2 composition - A Theme and 4 Easy Variations on Meinen Jesum lass' ich nicht (2007). Here's the video, if you're curious how it sounds. My work is almost done - I'll post the score for anybody who's interested to learn and share it very soon.
So today I thought I would give you an exercise in counterpoint on this lovely tune. You will need to play note-against-note two-part counterpoint with the intervals of thirds and sixths in alternation and vice versa. It's best to start and end with an octave. By the way, this is the easiest way to start to improvise on any hymn tune. It seems simple but to do it fluently will take a bit of practice. But don't worry - even if you haven't improvised anything before, with a few minutes of practice you'll do just fine. Improvisation can be as complex as you want but this is the first step. I hope you'll enjoy it. Play this counterpoint exercise of hymn tune Meinen Jesum lass' ich nicht. Here is the PDF score for printing. Repeat it until you can do it 3 times in a row slowly but fluently. When you're done practicing, post your time to comments. On the first day of Easter I was invited at the Vilnius university St. John's church to play during the mass where I performed a few improvisations. One of them - for the offertory - I would like to introduce to you today, because it demonstrates an interesting situation when the improvisation has to be adjusted to the changing liturgical situation.
Because I was preparing for the improvisation recital on the most famous Easter hymns which will be tomorrow, that day I planned to improvise the piece in the form of a modulating rondo based on the three Easter hymns: Wer nun den lieben Gott (A), Gelobt sei Gott (B), and Alelluia by Palestrina (C). The main refrain which should occur 4 times was supposed to be Wer nun den lieben Gott, and the entire rondo structure would look like this: A (G minor), B (G minor), A (D minor), C (Bb major), A (C minor), B (C minor), C (G minor), and A (G minor). This plan, if executed fluently would sound quite nicely, because Bach used it in one of his most famous preludes for organ (Eb major, BWV 552). But what to do, if the improvisation has to be shortened unexpectedly, when for example, a certain part of the liturgy lasts shorter than usual? That's exactly what happened to me - in this video you will hear how the improvisation has to be completed before I finish this plan - as I was playing the ending of the second B part (the third episode from the end), I saw in the organ mirror that the priest is ready to start his prayer for the Offertory part of the mass. Because I wasn't ready to return to the original key of G minor, I had to do it very quickly, if the piece should be ended on time. Therefore after starting the new episode C, even at the end of the first sentence I created a final cadence in G minor and finished the improvisation. At the end of this video you can hear that it was done just in time, because the priest started to read his prayer for the Offertory right away. In my case, the final version of this improvisation could have been more complete (if there was more time to do it), but at least I ended after the end of the musical idea. So if you are ever in a situation like I'm here describing, I think it's not really important on which part of the improvisation you are on, because the best way is simply to return to the main key as quickly as possible and create a final cadence. But try not to end the improvisation or a written down composition abruptly and without warning, as sometimes might happen to some organists. |
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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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