Practice the above Variation 2 from "Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darein" by J. P. Sweelinck this way:
1. Voice 1 2. Voice 2 3. Voice 3 4. Voices 1 and 2 5. Voices 1 and 3 6. Voices 2 and 3 7. Voices 1, 2, and 3 Take a slow tempo, aim for detached articulate legato touch and 3 correct repetitions in a row in each step. Post time and the number of repetitions to comments.
Comments
Practice the above excerpt from the piece "Der Winter" from Buxheimer Orgelbuch this way:
1. Upper stave with the right hand 2. Middle stave with the left hand 3. Lower stave with the left hand 4. Upper and middle staves with both hands 5. Upper and lower staves with both hands 6. Middle and lower staves with the left hand 7. All staves combined with both hands Take a slow tempo, aim for articulate legato touch and 3 correct repetitions in a row in each step. Post time and the number of repetitions to comments. A few days ago I created a piece for organ based with two manuals and pedals on the melody of Gregorian chant for the communion of the Baptism of Christ - "Omnes qui in Christo", Op. 37. The Latin text is taken from the Galatians 3:27:
"Omnes qui in Christo baptizati estis, Christum induistis, Alleluia." (For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, Alleluia). While I was composing, I recorded this process with my explanations so that you could follow my footsteps. Here's the end result. It is no secret that today organ music is not very popular among many people. Even classical music lovers prefer to listen to the piano, violin, symphonic, choral, and vocal music, rather than the organ. The reason is that a considerable part of people's minds is heavily rooted in certain myths about organ and its music. Here I would like to bust some of those myths.
1. Organ music is always sad and serious. As with any other instrument, so the organ repertoire has the works of the most varied moods and characters. Incidentally, even the sad pieces have the delicate balance between minor and major tonalities which create those moods. Organists usually try to maintain this balance in recitals. Listen to The Gigue Fugue of J.S. Bach. There is no doubt that this fugue is really extremely fun piece both to play and to listen to. Pay attention to reaction of the audience. 2. Organ music can only be sacred. Perhaps today it seems strange, but the organ's origins were of secular nature in Ancient Greece. Only in the medieval times the Church adopted this pagan instrument in its liturgy. However, even later organ music, a large part of organ music is secular, like this Finale from the Symphony No. 1 by Louis Vierne. 3. Sacred organ music is always sad. Although the music, like the liturgy of the church often has a serious mood, it would be wrong to assume that it is necessarily sad. Even the works written in minor keys often express other feelings and characters. Very often it depends on the text. For example, it can be pieces of solemn and even dramatic character. In fact, choral prelude In Dir ist Freude by Bach is probably one of the most joyful of his choral preludes. 4. Organ music is always difficult to understand. Such very advanced music exists, there is no doubt about it. But this is only one side of the vast organ repertoire spanning 7 centuries. A number of works written in the 20th and 21st century are like that. However, even this kind of music can be properly understood and appreciated if the listener found out a bit more about the composer, his style, the structure of the piece and so on. In this case, the saying "appetite arises with eating" fits perfectly well. I think that you can befriend advanced music gradually. 5. Organ music is not suitable for young people to listen to. It probably depends on the particular piece of organ music. For example, the piece "Penguins Playtime" by the English composer Nigel Ogden sounds like an excerpt from the movie. Here you will surely find a lot of influence of pop music, which is liked by a lot of young people. On the other hand, not all of young people like pop music either, some of them are heavily into classical and art music. 6. Organ music is played only at funerals. This impression may occur to some people due to the fact that these people associate the church only with funerals (apparently they come to the church only on this occasion). While at the funeral organ music is indeed very prominent, none of the above examples are designed for this occasion. It's not clear to me why organ is not necessarily associated with joyful and sweet weddings because that's surely another side of the instrument that general public is aware of (perhaps because nowadays a lot of other instruments can play at weddings - not so much during funerals). Proper understanding of these myths will clarify some people's reaction to the organ. Hopefully you will be able to explain in some way what organ music is all about. Perhaps then some people will no longer find it scary, sad, boring, or depressing. Most of all, organ music is the food for your brain (besides your soul). And this is a good thing, isn't it? Happy Thanksgiving!
Yesterday morning I was thinking what special piece I could recommend to you on this occasion and quite unexpectedly I found myself pondering upon the idea of creating a composition based on the famous Thanksgiving hymn - Now Thank We All Our God. Some 10 hours later, a Processional for organ on the same tune was born in which I also used two other well-known Thanksgiving hymn tunes (which I will let you discover for yourself). Here's the score and a MIDI file for listening to the sound. This is my way of saying thanks to you, my loyal readers. Next: How to adjust to mechanical organ with heavy action Sight-reading: Marche Religieuse (p. 12) from 12 Pièces, Op.16 by Leon Boellmann (1862-1897), French Romantic composer and organist. Hymn playing: Now Thank We All Our God Sam writes that his goal is to become a church organist, and perform all organist functions from accompanying the congregation and choirs, to playing the liturgy (Lutheran and Catholic), and also be able to improvise.
The three things that are stopping him from doing this are lack of strong foundation, repertoire that will make him progress, and good practice techniques. Sam is right about the importance of having a strong foundation to your success in organ playing. But actually overcoming his other challenges (finding graded repertoire and applying good practice techniques) will most likely build his foundation for him. So what you need to do, if you face similar obstacles to Sam's is always remember how you can find a suitable repertoire. This is done by the following way: A good repertoire should be a quality music and it should make you stretch (but not too much). It shouldn't be a piece which you can sight-read without any difficulty. On the other hand, you should pick a piece which you can imagine performing in the next few months (not years). So what are the basic guidelines in determining whether or not your piece is suitable for you to learn? It's actually very simple: If you can sight-read separate voices of this piece at a tempo which is 50 % slower than a concert speed with 5 mistakes per page or less, then you can do it. Anything less than that will be a long shot for now. Sight-reading: Menuet-gothique (p. 4) from Suite Gothique, op. 25 by Leon Boellmann, French Romantic composer and organist. Hymn playing: He Was Not Willing John writes that his dream in organ playing is to advance sufficiently to be able to perform well J.S. Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582, and to develop his improvisation skills in the Baroque style. However, obstacles such as maximizing the efficiency of the practice time, finding an organ that's available to practice on, and the difficulty in improvising polyphonic music stops him from reaching his full potential.
What a wonderful dream John has! It's not an ordinary simple dream. A person who wants to learn to improvise in the ancient styles clearly has a vision of becoming a complete musician. Obviously this involves not only creating your own music on the instrument but also in writing, too (much like Bach and other old masters did). I'm sure quite a few of my subscribers would love to be able to improvise like Bach, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Bohm, Scheidt, Sweelinck and others. And that's the problem. I can feel your pain when you try to improvise polyphonic and contrapuntal music and fail. Perhaps you try to improvise chorale variations with imitations, or an ornamented chorale with fugal entrances before the chorale tune enters in the soprano. Or maybe you try your hand at creating 3 or 4 part fugues (with answer, countersubject, episodes, subject entries in other keys, and even strettos at the end). You stop and try again and again. You know what you want to do, but your technical, practical, or theoretical limitations won't let you do it. It's very frustrating to take a hymn tune or a polyphonic subject, figure out a key, a meter, tonal plan, form, and attempt to improvise only to discover that your mind is not moving fast enough. Your fingers might be able to play what you want but you can't seem to give the orders to them fast enough. The result of this is stumbling, irregular pulse, stalling musical ideas, and general feeling of disappointment. If your failures and frustrations continue and you can't feel any progress, you might even think that you are not creative enough, that you are not disciplined enough, and that this is not for you although deep inside you always felt for many years the fascination with and the desire to learn the ancient and mysterious craft of polyphonic improvisation. The first step is to start looking at the music of old Baroque masters with new eyes. What I mean by that is that the majority of written down pieces that survived the passage of time was created and published or copied with the intent that they would serve as models for composition and improvisation of the students of the composer and perhaps even for the future generations of organists as well. So what you do in order to start learning the craft of improvisation in the polyphonic Baroque style is to take a piece of music that you love, that you want to imitate and begin to take it apart. Try to understand it's form, tonal plan, imitative techniques etc. In other words, try to look at it as the old master who created it three or more hundred years ago. Then take a pencil and a sheet of music paper and begin to compose a similar piece or an exercise of your own based on its techniques. You can use different themes, different chorale or hymn tunes but try to keep the same form, tonal plan, the same order of thematic entrances, ornamentation procedure, and similar rhythms and intervals in the counterpoint. The key here is writing what you want to play. That's how old master's did. They also took apart their models and wrote down similar compositions and exercises of their own. Don't stop with just one or a few pieces you create on the same model. It's best if you insist upon just one model for a while and create tenths and even hundreds of its imitations. Then you start to feel that this technique becomes your own and you can use it in any key and in any situation. Basically, you will become a master of this technique. At first you will write very slowly and make many mistakes but later the process will be faster and faster. At the end you will almost write as fast as you think of those ideas, without any hesitations. I know that all of this might sound overwhelming and it is. Baroque style is vast and implies many different genres and techniques that masters used in the old times. For starters become a master of just one or a few techniques. Persist until you achieve certain fluency with them. Assimilate them to the degree that you can write them in any key you want, major or minor. At the same time you will start to feel the urge to apply them in playing spontaneously on the instrument. And this will no longer feel like the old intimidating task because by now you will have fully mastered it and your brain will function fast enough to give the orders to your fingers before they depress the keys. Most of all, feel that the result is not the goal. Process is the goal. It will keep you motivated to stay focused. Sight-reading: Part I: Allegro moderato e serioso from Organ Sonata No. 1, in F minor, Op. 65 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) who was a German composer, pianist, organist, and conductor of the early Romantic Period. Hymn playing: By Grace I’m Saved If you are preparing to play some organ pieces for a funeral, it's worth taking the time to consider these 4 qualities that this music ought to have:
1. Easy. Unlike for the weddings, usually we don't have much time to prepare the music to play for a funeral. We may get a call only a day in advance. Don't play anything that you can't play fluently after practicing for an hour or so. 2. Slow. On such occasion, you don't want to draw the attention of the people in attendance to yourself as being a virtuoso. Remember, your audience is deep in thoughts and prayers today. 3. Soft. Similarly to the previous point, if the organ plays too loud, then people will start to get an impression of the organ as being a central reason of their gathering. Today is not this day. Help their prayers and don't disturb them. 4. Hopeful. I personally found funeral marches of the 19th century composers, like Guilmant, Lefebure-Wely and others too depressing for the present times. I have played them, just as an experiment, but I believe people of today don't want to hear the music that is too sad - it just makes their state harder than it already is. Having the above points in mind, here are some pieces to get you started: Bach's chorale harmonizations, some of Pachelbel's chorale preludes and some of the slower fugues and ricercares as well as some of the ornamented chorale preludes by Buxtehude. Not all of the pieces in these collections will work for funerals so choose carefully. A few days ago I have shared with you my video of Canon in Ab major for organ by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911). Ciurlionis was a genius Lithuanian artist and composer who died at the young age of 35 being a visionary who continue to inspire people for generations to come.
Some people have asked me about the score of this piece. Although I'm playing this Canon as well as his other works for organ from the special organ edition which was published just a few years ago, I found this score of Canon in Ab Major in the original piano notation prepared by Stepas Bidva. If you want to play it on the organ, simply assign the lowest voice (dotted half notes for the most part) to the pedals (soft 16' and 8' stops). The right hand part with the canon sounds best if played with the solo registration on the separate manual (8' and 4' flutes). For the left hand part choose one or two soft 8' stops. Today in Lithuania we celebrate the birthday of the most significant and the most internationally reknown Lithuanian painter and composer, Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911). On this occasion, I invite you to solve this puzzle and listen to his Fugue in C# minor and Canon in Ab major for organ. This is the excerpt of the recital of the Lithuanian organ music I played on August 23, 2014 in Vilnius University St. John's church.
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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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