9 September 2017
Dear organist colleagues,
I am a member of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) and have been since about the time my feet were able to reach the pedals. I have performed in Member Recitals. I have served on Program and Executive Committees. I am a Past Dean. I believe in the mission and the work of the AGO, even as our profession and our professional organization continue to evolve.
I also believe that religious organizations should fairly compensate organists for their work.
The AGO published a Salary Guide for Musicians Employed by Religious Institutions for many years. I understand that the AGO no longer publishes this document for legal reasons.
But copies of this document still exist. It was published in The American Organist and surely remains available in academic libraries that received the journal. The AGO also hosted a PDF copy of the Salary Guide on their website. The PDF files of these past Salary Guides remain freely available on archive.org, which is where I retrieved the 2015 Salary Guide and other documents in January of this year.
I am not presently in a leadership position in the AGO. I am a member, and I intend to remain one. The original content of the post you are reading has been removed. The AGO asked that the content of this post be removed. Upon receipt of this request, I took immediate action to remove the content.
But I do wonder if attempted total censorship of this old material is really warranted, or even possible. The Salary Guide and other documents are, at the very least, a part of Guild history. Destruction of this material in libraries and on the internet seems infeasible.
It is clear to me that AGO members have very practical employment concerns, and I know that many who visit Sinden.org will be frustrated by my decision to remove this material. I hope that AGO members, chapters, and regional and national leaders can find more ways to openly discuss employment and salary without running afoul of federal regulatory agencies.
All of the material I have removed today is scheduled re-publish on Sinden.org on Tuesday, May 26, 2037, the day the Federal Trade Commission order terminates.
David Sinden
Editor, Sinden.org
p.s. I hope you’ll check out my new podcast on Liturgy and Music from an Episcopal/Anglican perspective called All Things Rite and Musical. Listen at riteandmusical.org
Labels: AGO
When talking to a group of organists who had registered for an American Guild of Organists (AGO) regional convention, I borrowed some language from the mission of the AGO itself to explain why we should engage with social media: to share knowledge and inspire passion.
The mission of the American Guild of Organists is to foster a thriving community of musicians who share their knowledge and inspire passion for the organ.
One of the ways in which I think organists owe it to themselves to live out the mission of this organization is to not keep our knowledge a secret.
We all have unique interests and experiences, and one of the joys of getting together at conventions like this is sharing our stories with each other.
But while we might be able to attend a conference only a few days a year, the web affords us an opportunity to have these conversations year round.
Furthermore, we are all passionate about the organ. It does our organization and our profession no good to keep this passion under a bushel. We should unashamedly demonstrate our passion by letting our social media mirror the things we are excited about.
I always consider Halloween to be peak organ evangelism time. It's sort of like, Christmas and the church. Here, let me do one of those SAT analogy thingies:
Halloween : organ :: Christmas : Church
People who would never otherwise think about the organ are Googling words like Bach, organ, Toccata, D minor, and BWV 565. Some of them might even consider going to an organ recital for the first time.
And while interest in the instrument is always at a peak at this time of year, there is a certain level of curiosity about the organ year-round.
Organists would do well to help people find us and the organ online year-round because someone is always looking.
If your early fascination with the organ was anything like mine, you were just as fascinated with the instrument itself as with the music written for it (if not more so!).
So one of the things I think is of great value to share through social media is our instruments themselves. Photos of the console, the pipe chambers, the blowers. Videos of the stop action, the swell shades. Recordings of the individual stops themselves (in fact, one of my so far unrealized projects is an "interactive stop list" where you can click each stop name to hear a short sample of that rank of pipes).
There are so many things that are worth getting out, and so many people live more and more of their lives online.
If you're an organist who is not already on the web and social media, why aren't you? If you are already on social media, do you think you share enough about the organ?
My co-presenter Mary Stutz and I created a handout which you can still access at bit.ly/SocMedOrgan. It's a Google Doc so that it can be continuously accessed by you and updated by us.
In my remarks I tried to get at something that concerns me about all this social media stuff: it doesn't last.
This is by design. Now there are even "stories" on several platforms that are only available for 24 hours, and then they disappear.
Social media is meant to be very much "in the moment", but this kind of brief shelf-life isn't entirely worth our valuable time, I would argue.
Besides, organists tend to like stuff that lasts. We play a lot of music from the eighteenth century, and some of us have had the good fortune to play organs that are older than that.
So here is my advice to organists (and others) for a digital life that has some longevity and lasting value.
- Have a basis in a website (possibly a blog)
Your footprint on the web should be permanent, and it should be as accessible as possible. If the goal is, in fact, to be social, you don't want a "login barrier" between you and your potential audience.
Content on Facebook and Twitter are not easily indexed by Google; public web pages are. If you want others to find your content, tomorrow, next week, next year, make sure that you post it to a blog (or another website) first. Then use your social media channels to point to that content.
You can always send out a new Facebook post pointing back to an essay that you wrote a year ago. Jonathan Aigner of the popular Ponder Anew blog is really good at this. His articles repeatedly spike in popularity as they make the rounds and go "viral" time and time again, sometimes years after the initial post.
Tangent: I couldn't help but notice that Aigner's latest post is about how the new anthem from First Baptist Church, Dallas, "Make America Great Again" is now licensed by CCLI, further proof that that organization is concerned with copyright but not Christianity. But I digress.
- Use social media, but make it visible on the web
Don't keep your social media presence a secret! If you use various social media channels, especially as an organization, make them visible on your website.
There's a famous English choir that does this well. King's College Cambridge embeds their Facebook page on their choir website, and their music list Twitter feed on their music list page (see links in the bit.ly/SocMedOrgan handout).
Two personal examples: 1) when I first signed up for Twitter in 2006, I thought that its key value would be embedding it on my website so that there would be something current (and timestamped) right there on my home page. Twitter and I have changed a lot in the interim, but I still keep Twitter embedded on this blog.
2) For the past two years or so I've been using SoundCloud to upload audio recordings from St. Peter's, St. Louis. I want to widen the audience beyond SoundCloud users, so we have embedded a SoundCloud widget on the church's music page along with our Twitter timeline.
How do you do this? Each particular social media service will provide you with a block of code that you can cut and paste into your website. It's that easy. For example, here's the info on how to embed a Twitter timeline.
- Automate and Integrate
My favorite social media service is Buffer. If you don't know about it, check it out. It's especially useful for managing multiple accounts.
Buffer allows you to distribute posts over specific times that you schedule. You can place general posts in your "buffer, " and each one can be sent out sequentially, or you can schedule specific posts to be sent at specific times. I think I probably use both features about equally.
If I find an interesting news story or blog post that I want to share on my own Facebook page and/or Twitter account, I'll put it in my buffer, and it will be sent out in the order that it was added.
I suggested that organists could even use the scheduling feature to "narrate" their organ playing during a service or recital on Twitter. In fact, I was tweeting about every five minutes during my presentation Tuesday morning through the magic of Buffer.
Another nifty service (which you just need to check out so I don't have to try to explain it) is IFTTT (If this, then that).
Finally, don't overlook basic integration features offered by various social media channels. If you upload a file to SoundCloud, for example, take advantage of the option to share that new upload automatically on Facebook and Twitter.
- Engage
I think that automation is probably the tool that a lot of organists need to get into social media a bit more. They might think "I don't have time to Tweet every day." That's fine, but if you work for a congregation, you're probably used to a particular weekly "product", so why not start with one tweet a week? And why not load all of those weekly Tweets into Buffer at one sitting and then forget about it for a while?
This is a great way to get started.
But a word of caution: if you only automate, and then utterly neglect your social media channels it's much more "media" than "social media". Check in occasionally and be friendly. Thank people for engaging with your content. Share other content that you find interesting.
Do you have to check your Twitter account every minute? No.
But is it nice to make new connections online? Yes.
This is the fun part.
- Be yourself, and have fun!
Be authentic. Use your own voice.
And don't assume that the social media landscape is fixed.
New innovations to existing services are rolling out all the time. And live video, while not exactly new, has all kinds of potential for musicians.
New services will probably roll out immediately after you finish reading this. Try them! Sign up! Explore! Be creative. You might be the first to discover a really neat application for a new service.
I'd love to hear what you are doing with social media. You can comment on this blog post below (I'm using Blogger, by the way). Or if you got here from Facebook or Twitter, you can find me there too.
What did I miss? What other ways can organists be using social media to be awesome on the web?
Labels: AGO, organists, social media, web
Since writing this essay of initial reflections I have returned to the topic for Aquinas, Thomas - on electronic organs, part 1 and part 2.
All articles on this topic at the blog at Sinden.org can henceforth be found under the label: electronic organs.
I might be wrong.
(I think this might be the way to start a conversation about electronic organs.)
I'll say it again: I might be wrong. But the recent publication of an electronic organ on the cover of The American Organist (the journal of the American Guild of Organists) has me thinking about the electronic organ.
And before I go any further I want to address those who play electronic organs directly: this is not about you. And I don't question your character one way or the other. This is not about me, either. This conversation is bigger than all of us. It began before we were born, and it will continue after we're dead. This is about technological innovation, the economics of music and religion, wind, beauty, and integrity.
What I'm trying to do is zoom out for a moment to get the big picture. I want to figure out what led us to the point in May 2017 when our professional organization would seemingly validate a fully-electronic organ by allowing it on its cover of its journal.
The organ has been on the forefront of the technological advancement of humankind. And every step of the way surely there was someone crying "what are you doing!? organs aren't supposed to work that way!"
Surely objections were raised when
- in the mid-1400s, when someone figured out how to add "stops" to an organ so that the full blockwerk wouldn't all sound at once.
- the first reed stop was invented in…what, the 1500s?
- the first swell box was built in 1712.
- the first tubular-pneumatic action was built
- the first electro-pneumatic action was built.
Then in 1939 Jerome Markowitz, the founder of the Allen Organ Company, built the first fully electronic organ through the use of oscillator circuitry based on radio tubes. (thanks, Wikipedia!)
So, is the electronic organ (now really the "digital organ" or the "software organ") the way of the future? Is it simply the next technological advancement in a logical line of progress?
It's interesting to note the chasm between the academic study of organ performance and the practical realities organists will encounter in the real world. No reputable academic institution would suggest serious performance on an electronic substitute; they require lessons and recitals to be held on real instruments with pipes.
Churches, on the other hand, are often happy to acquire electronic substitutes for reasons of 1) low initial cost, 2) space limitations, and 3) and ease of maintenance.
Let's speak briefly to each of these reasons:
- 1) Cost: whether you get an electronic organ rather cheaply, or you throw a lot of money at a top of the line installation, nothing depreciates faster when you "drive it off the lot". The markup is rather high, and an electronic instrument doesn't retain its value the way a pipe organ does. Speakers wear out; pipes don't. (I know. I've played some from the 1400s.)
- 2) Space limitations: many organ builders are familiar with this challenge and know how to meet it.
- 3) Ease of maintenance: organs typically need to be tuned twice a year. Well-built organs I have known are virtually maintenance free outside of this. Others just need a capable technician when something goes wrong, just like your car does.
What is lost when a church decides to go the route of an electronic device rather than an instrument with pipes? Many things, including 1) wind, 2) beauty, and 3) integrity.
- 1) Wind: Why does should it matter if an organ works with pressurized air rather than electrical impulses? Because the Church uses the building blocks of creation in her worship: fire, water, stone, and the fruit of the earth itself. We don't use electric candles, we use real candles that we can light.
In terms of organ building, we take wood and metal, combine them just right, and get wind.
Wind is a particularly special part of the Christian Faith. Just pay close attention the next time you're at the Easter Vigil.
It was the wind that moved over creation in the beginning. It was wind that passed over the earth when God remembered Noah in the ark. It was wind that divided the Red Sea so that the Israelites could pass through. When Ezekiel prophesies to the dry bones he says, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." In Zephaniah God exults with loud singing (what kind of breath would that take?!). The death of Jesus, his very last breath, is reported by the Synoptic Gospels as a loud cry. And finally, there is the rushing, violent wind of the Day of Pentecost, the birth of the church itself.
- 2) Beauty: real organs are built by skilled craftsmen who have different areas of specialty and spend decades learning and perfecting their craft. A working organ shop is a thing to behold. This is the kind of beauty that we seek to bring into our worship in everything we do: architecture, vestments, liturgy, ceremonial, words, music, preaching. We strive to bring our best to everything in our worship.
Electronic organs can only emulate and imitate. They have nothing of their own to contribute and are not truly beautiful.
And lighted stop knobs are hideously tacky.
- 3) Integrity: this almost goes without saying, but electronic organs aren't real. They're simply attempting to copy the sounds that a real organ would make.
And don't get me wrong, the technology has come a long way since 1939. The results are more and more impressive, but no matter how good they get they will never actually be real.
And unlike Pinocchio, there is no magical transformation that awaits them.
What is it that prevents electronic organs from being real?
The first time I came home from college I noticed the electronic instrument I knew in high school sounded completely different to me: it was flat, fake. But the tone quality these machines produce is better and better all the time. The systems are programmed to simulate a certain "out of tune-ness" and subtle variations in pipe speech that real organs have. They try to emulate the huff and puff of the whole winding system of a real organ. (Cameron Carpenter is so impressed with all of this he has jumped in with both feet.) Surely the ability to generate and replicate pipe sounds electronically will continue to improve even more.
So what is it that keeps them from being real?
Well, it has to be what's moving the air that makes the sound. In the case of the Pipe Organ, the sounds that seem to be coming from pipes are made by pipes. In the case of the Electronic Organ Simulator, the sounds that seem to be coming from pipes are made by speakers.
There's just something fundamentally dishonest about this. Even if you had a big enough budget to get a really obscene number of speakers for this installation (let's say you go so far as to have one speaker for every "pipe" in the organ simulator), you still have the fundamental problem of integrity. You are trying to make something sound like pipes that are not pipes.
Do Electronic Organ Simulators have their place? Sure! How about your spare bedroom, or your basement! It's great fun to have one of these things and to simulate the sounds from lots of different organs around the world. But let's call it what it is, a simulator, and not hold it up as a paragon of excellence.
Kerala Snyder has a marvelous book about the development of the North European organ called The Organ as a Mirror of Our Time.
Can we look at the instrument on the cover of The American Organist as a mirror of our time? What would it tell us if we did?
The first Allen Organ was made in the Industrial Age; the latest Allen Organ to roll off the assembly line is a product of the Information Age.
Our knowledge-obsessed society prizes high-tech achievements over craftsmanship.
No longer concerned with wind, beauty, or integrity, or even with how well-built an organ is, many are content to gaze upon the latest technological achievements in the Organ Simulator and admire how impressively it manages so much Information.
But the Information Age is still brand new. We are still discovering what it means to live in such a time as this. The new Information Economy can give rise to the promise of the Information Superhighway one day and the Junkyard of Fake News the next.
When we hold up this organ as a mirror of our own time we first notice it's not even a pipe organ at all. It's a pale imitation of the real pipe organ at best. But many are content to pretend that it's just as good as the real thing. And if you repeat this lie long enough, doesn't it start to seem true?
The electronic organ is fake news.
“The organ is like a mad idea…like an island in itself. And you have to live inside of this island, to make IT live also.” –Jean Guillou
The organ truly is a mad idea. An audacious one. Mozart famously dubbed it "the King of Instruments." And occupying the instrument to make it live is a shared desire among organists that I know.
When we disagree about the philosophy behind instruments it's due to this: our differing ideas about how to "live inside" the instrument and to make the organ and it's repertoire come alive.
So where would you rather live? To borrow the terminology of a great science fiction movie of the Information Age: would you rather live inside the matrix (a simulated reality) or live in the real world?
"What is truth?" asks Pilate.
Will we take the red pill or the blue pill?
I'm going to reach for the red.
But I might be wrong.
Labels: AGO, electronic organs, organs, TAO
9 September 2017
Dear organist colleagues,
I am a member of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) and have been since about the time my feet were able to reach the pedals. I have performed in Member Recitals. I have served on Program and Executive Committees. I am a Past Dean. I believe in the mission and the work of the AGO, even as our profession and our professional organization continue to evolve.
I also believe that religious organizations should fairly compensate organists for their work.
The AGO published a Salary Guide for Musicians Employed by Religious Institutions for many years. I understand that the AGO no longer publishes this document for legal reasons.
But copies of this document still exist. It was published in The American Organist and surely remains available in academic libraries that received the journal. The AGO also hosted a PDF copy of the Salary Guide on their website. The PDF files of these past Salary Guides remain freely available on archive.org, which is where I retrieved the 2015 Salary Guide and other documents in January of this year.
I am not presently in a leadership position in the AGO. I am a member, and I intend to remain one. The original content of the post you are reading has been removed. The AGO asked that the content of this post be removed. Upon receipt of this request, I took immediate action to remove the content.
But I do wonder if attempted total censorship of this old material is really warranted, or even possible. The Salary Guide and other documents are, at the very least, a part of Guild history. Destruction of this material in libraries and on the internet seems infeasible.
It is clear to me that AGO members have very practical employment concerns, and I know that many who visit Sinden.org will be frustrated by my decision to remove this material. I hope that AGO members, chapters, and regional and national leaders can find more ways to openly discuss employment and salary without running afoul of federal regulatory agencies.
All of the material I have removed today is scheduled re-publish on Sinden.org on Tuesday, May 26, 2037, the day the Federal Trade Commission order terminates.
David Sinden
Editor, Sinden.org
p.s. I hope you’ll check out my new podcast on Liturgy and Music from an Episcopal/Anglican perspective called All Things Rite and Musical. Listen at riteandmusical.org
Labels: AGO
Dear The American Organist, periodical journal of the American Guild of Organists,
You and I have had our issues about graphic design before, but this time you've really crossed the line.
Upon retrieving my latest issue (April, 2011) from the mailbox, I was surprised to see this offensive image:
The cover of your periodical would be rather lovely this month if not for the fact that the image of the face of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is fully obscured by the logo.
Congratulations on decapitating Jesus.
Given that the name of the church is Church of the Ascension, did you realize that the subject of the John La Farge painting you obscure is, in fact, Jesus Christ himself in the act of ascending into heaven?
How can you expect your readers to maintain artistic integrity in their fields, if your logo obscures the subject of one of the greatest murals in America?
It's clear what you want the subject of this photo to be: the organ -- but not even the organ case is fully pictured on this cover.
I just don't get it!
And, are you aware that many Christians are celebrating the Feast of the Resurrection (also known as "Easter") this month (24 April), a celebration that centers on the figure of Jesus Christ?
Interestingly, many Americans are Christian (about 78.4% last I checked), and many American Organists (presumably the ones your publication is named for) work at Christian Churches. Just to bring it full circle for you, these same churches are celebrating Easter.
Could you be any more insensitive?
I mean, really, how are we supposed to take the stuff you say about clergy-organist relations seriously when you behead the Savior on the cover of your journal?
I really do look forward to reading why you did this in a future issue of your magazine.
Sincerely (with much more sincerity about the graphic design than any religious issues),
David Sinden
Proprietor, Sinden.org
The Jean Julius Christian Sibelius Chair of Musicology and Christian Polemics (Emeritus), University of Blogaria
Labels: AGO, Ascension, Church of the Ascension (New York), organs, TAO
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