Have you heard the organ at King's College, Cambridge since its recent restoration? Well, now you can.

Listen to their webcast of Evensong from Saturday, September 24, 2016.

Labels: King's College (Cambridge), organ

Use your full organ rarely and never long at a time; the pedals also should be held in reserve for great effects; do not keep the manuals constantly coupled. Many players couple the Swell organ with reeds to the Great at once, and never allow the diapasons–the glory of the organ–to be heard alone. It must be constantly remembered that organ tone, from its sustained character, is fatiguing to listen to and requires perpetual, but not restless, change and variety. Keep your pedals near your hands, and do not play too much on the lower octave. Use the swell-pedal with discretion, not with jerks, and not too often. Above all remember that rhythm is, perhaps, the most attractive constituent of music, and that it is not at all easy to mark accent and phrasing upon the organ. The old habit of tying all notes common to successive chords is now fast vanishing, to the great benefit organ playing. Do not play your Bach too fast, and remember that the large pipes have columns of air which are not set in motion very quickly. Be sparing in full chords; few organists can resist any chance of playing five notes with each hand if possible.

"Mr. Parratt on the Organ". Musical Herald. 1 February 1892.

Labels: Bach, organ, Parratt

I was really pleased with the turnout and enthusiasm parishioners had for a series of "Organ Open Houses" that I hosted after the principal Sunday service for the last three weeks. This was such good "organ evangelism", in my opinion, that I want to share some thoughts on what I did so that others might take up the cause.

I conceived of a series of three short (20 minute) sessions over three weeks, but you might just do one or two. Really you should adapt everything here to your instrument and your situation. Your mileage may vary.

How to host an "Organ Open House"

Session 1: Organ Pedals

The organist plays with his or her feet, which is actually a really big deal. No other musician makes music this way. (Demonstrate with a short piece of music written for pedals alone, and/or a pedal solo excerpt from Bach or Buxtehude).

Let others try their feet (ask them to take their shoes of if you must) at the pedals.

Let folks peer inside the organ, or walk around if they can safely do so one or two at a time.

Session 2: Stops

Meet the pipes: all [however many you have] of them

Break down by families:

• Principals, the principal sound of the organ
• Add mixtures
• flutes
• strings, celestes
• Reeds

Demonstrate and pass around model pipes if you can find them (check with your local organ builder).

Explain different octaves of organ stops 8' (describe as "piano" pitch), 16', 32', 4', 2'

Finally, mutations and the cornet "recipe". I liken a compound stop to a "pizza seasoning" that contains all the necessary ingredients to make the cornet happen.

Let folks play around with the stops and devise their own "secret sauce" at the organ.

Let folks peer inside the organ, or walk around if they can safely do so one or two at a time.

Session 3: Bells and whistles

Time to nerd out.

• You could start with basic stuff. How do you see? TV monitor or mirror?
• Signal lights? Intercom?
• Explain combination action, and demonstrate a few of your recently set pistons.
  • Don't forget General Cancel (the organist's best friend).
  • The set button
  • Have a sequencer? MIDI?
  • How many toe studs do you have and what do they do?
• Turn on the case lights and operate the swell box so people can see.
• Operate the crescendo pedal, and if you can, turn on the "blind check" feature so people can see how it works.
• Tutti buttons! (Red light = "danger, Will Robinson!")
• Zimbelstern (if you're lucky)
• Rossignol (if you're really lucky)
• Any final idiosyncrasies?

Let folks play around with the pistons and other features you've just shown them.

Let folks peer inside the organ, or walk around if they can safely do so one or two at a time.

In conclusion

These are just simple ideas, and everything I did was very easy, but organ evangelism is important! So, get out there and encourage people to get up close to the organ they hear every week. If your experience is anything like mine, you'll be very pleasantly surprised with the success of your first "organ open house".

Labels: organ, organ pipes

It occurs to me that perhaps I might offer a window on what it is to be a church musician in Holy Week. And perhaps a few other thoughts too.

This evening at the parish where I serve, we offered "Poetry and Music: Meditations for Holy Week." The Reverend the Rector chose several poems, and I set them to music, mostly at the spur of the moment. This is the third year we have done this.

As I entered this service/poetry reading/concert (what is this thing that we do, exactly?) I had several things in mind. First, something the pianist Jeremy Denk said about the last Beethoven piano sonata, Op. 111 when he performed it here on Saturday evening. He talked about how the second movement is a variation set, but that the theme eventually disappears, and that eventually "the answers overwhelm the question."

That phrase looms large in my consciousness this week. What is this thing that we do, Holy Week? There's darkness, a few candles, there's foot washing, altar stripping, moaning and groaning, more candles, more darkness, washing people in water, and suddenly it's Easter.

There was a question in here somewhere. Maybe it was "what is truth" or something like that. But the question we ask in Holy Week – if we let it – can and should be overwhelmed by the answers.

I was grateful tonight that the Rector broke the "rubric" if we can be said to have such a thing for tonight's little happening, and included the following prose by Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

What wonderful reassurance for improvisation and for this life. "I have no idea where I am going."

But the answers come nonetheless.

Labels: Beethoven, church music, Holy Week, improvisation, Jeremy Denk, music, organ, poetry, Thomas Merton

Christmas in Chelsea Square, the new Episcopal Church Christmas special aired on CBS this year, is . . . interesting.

But it does provide us with an unusual opportunity to see a composer accompanying his own hymn, with recorders no less!

David Hurd's "Ye who claim the faith of Jesus" begins 25 minutes and 35 seconds into this video.

Labels: Episcopal Church, Hurd, organ, recorder, television

Let's face it. All children's sermons should be like this, really.

Labels: organ

I recently watched the pilot of The Cape, a new television programme from the National Broadcasting Company.

Yes, okay, judge me all you want. I'll tell you one thing though: it's no Knight Rider.

But this website wouldn't be what it is unless I pointed you to this gratuitous use of the organ to make someone seem creepy.

Also, who builds organs set up to play diminished chords with one key?

Labels: organ, television

This 1939 Time magazine cover depicts Adolph Hitler as an organist. The cover inscription reads "From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate."

What part does this cartoonish depiction of the dictator playing creepy organ music have in the reputation of organs as instruments of horror played by outsiders and freaks?

Hitler as far, as I can tell, did not actually play the organ. But he did once donate to an organ fund, sort of:

Zalampas, Sherree Owens. Adolf Hitler: a psychological interpretation of his views on architecture, art, and music. Popular Press, 1990.

Labels: organ

Rumors of this weblog's death have been greatly exaggerated.

That said, I have been thoroughly enmeshed in the music of J. S. Bach as I prepare for an adequate musical celebration of his 325^th birthday.

One of the pieces I've enlisted in this process is the "Little" Fugue in G minor, BWV 578.

"Little"? Are the quotes appropriate here? The Wikipedia article has none -- and ever since I've left graduate school I've found Wikipedia and YouTube to be my primary sources of musicological research (not having access to Grove's, JSTOR, etc.)

It occurs to me that the Fugue is rather nice at 4' pitch, and I am planning to register the piece this way to provide some much needed sonic levity on my recital program.

Labels: Bach, BWV 578, organ

For all of you working on the Sunday crossword in the New York Times, 42 down is "organ".

Yet another example of our instrument's cultural relevance.

Take that, harpsichord!

Labels: NYT, organ, randomness

Labels: Jimmy Smith, organ

I joyfully (and dulcily) present the following:

download [3.9 MB]

Labels: improvisation, organ

This weekend, I performed a noon-time half-hour organ recital. There were many people downtown, mostly families with children, seeing the sights, and preparing for the lighting of the city that evening.

I went outside to get a bit of fresh air a few minutes before showtime. The day had warmed up nicely. It might have been 40 or 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

I was standing next to a sidewalk sign advertising the recital. A young family rounded the bend and a girl, maybe 11 or 12 years old, sees the sign.

She laughs incredulously, "organ!"

Slightly offended, and not knowing what else to do I said, "yes, I'm playing a recital in a few minutes if you want to come by."

"Okay," she says, looking down at the sidewalk.

I went back inside and started the recital. She never showed up.

Labels: organ

THE ORGAN-BLOWER
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.

O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of thine
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's skill,
Those thousand throats were dumb and still:
Another's art may shape the tone,
The breath that fills it is thine own.

Six days the silent Memnon waits
Behind his temple's folded gates;
But when the seventh day's sunshine falls
Through rainbowed windows on the walls,
He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills
The quivering air with rapturous thrills;
The roof resounds, the pillars shake,
And all the slumbering echoes wake!

The Preacher from the Bible-text
With weary words my soul has vexed
(Some stranger, fumbling far astray
To find the lesson for the day);
He tells us truths too plainly true,
And reads the service all askew,--
Why, why the--mischief--can't he look
Beforehand in the service-book?

But thou, with decent mien and face,
Art always ready in thy place;
Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.

Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but all thy might,
Where honest labor does its best,
And leaves the player all the rest.

This many-diapasoned maze,
Through which the breath of being strays,
Whose music makes our earth divine,
Has work for mortal hands like mine.
My duty lies before me. Lo,
The lever there! Take hold and blow
And He whose hand is on the keys
Will play the tune as He shall please.

1812.

Labels: literature, organ

A great headline: "Toccata and feud erupts over historic French church organ" (The Observer)

Interesting conflict surrounding the appointment of an organist in Cintegabelle. I've played the organ there. It's fantastic; "one of the four finest in France", the church claims.

And one of the worst headlines I've ever seen: Manual pipe organ recital (Brisbane Times)

Yes, it is a "magnificent 4 manual pipe organ", but what the heck is a "manual pipe organ recital"?!

Labels: journalism, organ

The Organmaster Shoes store isn't just for shoes.

I'm not talking about shoe accessories, like the organ shoe brush.

I'm talking about the Prelude on Morning has Broken by A. Royce Eckhardt. This is the only item in the "Music and Books" category, for now.

You can hear a recording of this prelude [mp3, 3.3 MB] piece performed on the Galanti Organs site.

Labels: organ

Word out of Oberlin, Ohio is that there's an Organ Pump on Friday.

Labels: organ

The compline hymn Christe Qui Lux es et Dies in a setting by John Redford might be performed in alternatim, with the organ "singing" stanzas one, three, five and seven.

O Christ, who art the Light and Day,
Thou drivest darksome night away!
We know Thee as the Light of light
Illuminating mortal sight.

All holy Lord, we pray to Thee,
Keep us tonight from danger free;
Grant us, dear Lord, in Thee to rest,
So be our sleep in quiet blest.

Let not the tempter round us creep
With thoughts of evil while we sleep,
Nor with his wiles the flesh allure
And make us in Thy sight impure.

And while the eyes soft slumber take,
Still be the heart to Thee awake,
Be Thy right hand upheld above
Thy servants resting in Thy love.

Yea, our Defender, be Thou nigh,
To bid the powers of darkness fly;
Keep us from sin, and guide for good
Thy servants purchased by Thy blood.

Remember us, dear Lord, we pray,
While in this mortal flesh we stay:
’Tis Thou Who dost the soul defend—
Be present with us to the end.

Blest Thee in One and One in Three,
Almighty God, we pray to Thee,
That Thou wouldst now vouchsafe to bless
Our fast with fruits of righteousness.

1981 Brombaugh
Fairchild Chapel, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
David Sinden, organ

Labels: church music, organ, sounds

Most organs are equipped with pistons, buttons that store combinations of stops, or registrations, set by the organist. General pistons affect the entire organ; there are also divisional pistons which affect only a division of the organ. (Good Anglican organists rely heavily on the divisional pistons of the swell.)

I've played Holtkamps that have only six general pistons. I have played others that have 14 or 16. I'm sure there are organs that have more.

But here's what I've noticed about my playing on these different organis:

On the six-piston Holtkamp, I feel limited in registering pieces, but I make it work. On the plentiful-piston organ, I don't feel the pressure to conserve piston changes. But in registering my pieces I pace myself -- subconsciously, I believe -- so that I use all the general pistons available.

Now let me set some parameters. I'm not talking about a Bach Prelude and Fugue here. I don't become the reincarnation of Virgil Fox when confronted with an empty memory level and a piece of the Fifth Gospel. Nor am I talking about a full-fledged organ symphony with multiple movements and a host of possibilities for registration. And I'm not talking about pistons on different levels either. I'm talking about those pistons one would reasonably expect to be able to use in the performance of a single piece.

My thesis would be something like this: the architecture of the organ's memory aids affects my registrational response to a sizable romantic or contemporary piece organ music.

With six pistons, I fight the architecture; but with a dozen or more, I feel compelled to put furniture (IV rank?) in every room.

Here's where things start to get interesting. Where do I, as a registrator (it's a word; think "orchestrator") draw the line when it comes to the number of pistons I set? Where's the ceiling?

If there were 20 pistons, would I expand my scheme to fill them? 40 pistons? 80?

ergonomics: Here's where we start to get into space considerations on the organ console itself. There's only so much room under the keyboards for buttons, so many larger instruments have "phantom pistons" that are programmable but not immediately accessible by a designated button.

Or what about 400? or 4000? There's no reason that those who design organ memory systems need to be so stingy with computer memory which is much cheaper, faster and more portable than they would like to admit (this is a different rant). There comes a point in memory design where the number of pistons available would be excessive rather than ample.

If the music influences the design of organ consoles, do the consoles then in turn influence the music? If organ designers added the "excessive" memory to their instruments (like those extra keys on Bosendorfers), would composers utilize the capability?

Speaking from hands on experience here, the only piece I can think of that could have made a dent in a bank of 400 pistons would have been Giles Swayne's Riff-Raff. The opening pages called for a shifting shimmer of similar sounds. In my performance on a conventional ten-piston organ, I was not able to achieve the variety of similarity that I think Swayne was after.

auralnomics: But this is as far as this kind of approach can take us. After a point, we enter the realm of intellectual exercise. When one piston is set with plenum and another piston later in the piece is set with the same plenum with an alternate 4-foot principal, we enter the realm of "variety" that can be programmed into an organ for no apparent reason. Ergo, I can't see a reason for the proverbial floodgates to be opened. The organ is an impressively complex device, and we can rattle off all kinds of combinatorics with even a modest 20-stop instrument, but the reality is that most of these combinations are effectively the same. The 400-piston organ would serve no purpose.

But, since I know you want to, here's How to simulate a 400 piston organ: Get a 16-piston organ with a "piston +" switch that advances from the last piston to the next memory level. You'll need to use exactly 25 memory levels.

And so, these two principles hold each other in tension:

When organists set up a big piece, they will mystically fill all the pistons available (Organist Law of Piston Expansion).

When builders design a big organ, ergonomics and auralnomics suggest the number of pistons should be somewhere between 6 and 20.

Labels: Giles Swayne, organ

I've had a good run on the organ bench.

I've played the organ at an Episcopal cathedral or chapel every Sunday for the last 59 Sundays.

If you dig a little deeper, my general organ bench streak goes back quite a bit longer than that.

Next week, both streaks ends immediately prior to my wedding.

It will be nice to have a break.

Labels: organ