Eat your vegetables

Imagine the youngster who has the fingers for the Widor Toccata. Then imagine the logic that says, “All they have to do now is add some Pedal and a few pistons and the box, and they are on their way, wowing the family and the congregation and eventually an audience.” To that, I would reply, “So when will clean staccato, console technique, good rhythm, and the notated reality of 100 bpm be dealt with? And how long will we allow this kid to continue blasting through that piece at Widor’s expense, before a teacher steps in to clean it up?” If that kid makes her local reputation playing all the usual flashy finger flingers, then she will never be held down to re-learn them properly as a professional. And that would be a disservice to her.

Of all instruments I have seen training in up close, virtuosic organ pieces creep into the beginner’s repertoire the earliest. I know of NO violin teacher who would allow a beginner to tackle the Mendelssohn Concerto. I know of NO voice teacher who would allow anyone under the age of about 25 to begin tackling Wagner. During my very first organ lessons as a high schooler, I was assigned the Franck Prelude, Fugue and Variation, a couple movements of Couperin, and BWV 549. Good fingers or not, I just can’t imagine handing those to anyone who hasn’t studied the organ for at least a year or two. The notes are only the beginning. Technique needs to be the vegetables our young students have to eat in order to play well and to know what it takes to be called “well.”

Then there is the favorite "beginner's" piece, the Vierne Westminster Carillon, which is a nightmare to get just right, even for a professional (or at least for the professionals who are paying attention). But the granddaddy of them all is the Final from the Vierne First Symphony. Everyone adores that opening melody, so powerful in the pedal, with those cascading manual figurations. So impressive and thrilling, right?. But the informed decisions that have to be made regarding slurring and detaching in that piece are utterly staggering. And after that, the other ten pages have to be dealt with. But no one seems to care, so long as we get to that final pedal flourish and those last three chords. All at poor, dead Vierne’s expense. Meanwhile, the student is never given a clue about how to improve the piece -- it's used only to impress.

Snacks are not vegetables: Those five tired chords from “Phantom of the Opera” do not constitute a whole piece. The opening mordent in BWV 565 is not enough for the junior high schooler who can play it to be called “awesome” or “the coolest.” Youngsters need to eat their vegetables. If they can play the whole piece as well as they play the worn-out parts, THEN they’ll be awesome and the coolest. And the teacher who has insisted on that vegetarian diet will be the coolest of all.

Suppertime!