You make it look so easy!

I’m not sure the title of this post is anything to aspire to hear from audience members. If playing the organ were easy, an organist would get bored with it. And I’ve seen that happen to more than one organist. I want to be seen working my hiney off! I want to sweat, huff, puff, and pant in performance. Anything less and the audience isn’t getting its money’s worth.

Of course, some people can push notes down faster and more accurately than others. But without some soul, some work, some affection for the audience, and some unlimited respect for the composer, guess what it all begins to sound like – it sounds like notes being pushed down fast and accurately.

We should pay lots of attention to that man behind the curtain. The music may be jolly, but that organist had better be working for it. Once we allow complacency in, the assembly line approach starts to form around the notes, and trouble begins. I sometimes encounter a similar phenomenon with music I’m repeating many times during a season. But it’s not boredom. Rather, it’s a struggle to keep everything sounding fresh, which is what I want to do above all. But some music needs to rest, and too many repeats make it stale, despite my best efforts. However, a piece that is well-learned will resurrect later more quickly. When I return to a previously oft-played piece, a new freshness will appear, as will an easier time of playing the notes. But the sweat will remain, as it should.

The real test is in how it sounds, not how it looks. Looking easy can go hand in hand with sounding profound. And looking difficult can go hand in hand with sounding utterly scintillating. Every organist has his style, but great music requires our best efforts all the time. If only one could lose weight doing that.

Weddings! Part IV: The XIV Commandments

And it came to pass that the prophet Joby had had enough and did offer these fourteen commandments, thereby getting some things off his chest:

I. Thou shalt not marry a Bridezilla. Neither shalt thou marry a Groomzilla. Thou shalt not vicariously marry either parent of thy betrothed. For in the day that thou doest any of these things, thou and thy youthful spirit shall surely die.

II. When thou shalt say in public or post upon Facebook, “I got engaged!” thou art a liar, for thy fiancé(e) hath got engaged also, and shall be entitled to credit thereof. If thou be stuck in first person singular, then thy fiancé(e) shouldst take heed, for great will be his/her distress in married life.

III. When thou shalt say in public or post upon Facebook, “I’m marrying a doctor!” thou art a liar. Thou art not marrying a doctor. Neither art thou marrying a lawyer, stock broker, banker, musician, teacher, nor CEO. Thou art marrying a man or a woman, and no more, and thy names shall be ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ Thy names shall not be ‘Dr. and Mrs.’ or ‘Mr. and Dr.’ or ‘Dr. and Dr.’ Enough already, I beseech thee.

IV. If any one person among you shall proclaim him- or herself to be in charge without pay, then all others shall run away and never return.

V. Thou shalt allow twice as much time to arrive for the wedding rehearsal as thou thinkest thou shalt need. Many wedding rehearsals begin during Friday rush hour, and in the day that thou respectest not that fact, then thou shalt surely be late to the rehearsal. If thou art a bride or a groom, then thou shalt be at least one-half hour early for rehearsal. If thou art anyone else who hath arrived for the rehearsal on time and do not find there a bride and a groom, then thou shalt be free to go and do as thou please for the rest of the evening.

VI. If thou art a mother or grandmother, thou shalt dress in a manner befitting thy age and thy status as a person not getting married at this time.

VII. If thou art a mother or grandmother, thy seating shall not need to be rehearsed. Verily I say unto you, walking down an aisle and taking a seat, it is a no-brainer.

VIII. Verily I say unto you, it shall not be bad luck for bride and groom to see each other before the wedding ceremony shall commence. Thou shalt not observe such superstitious behavior for a church wedding, for such is an abomination unto the Lord. Verily.

IX. If thou art under the age of eight years, thou mayest be enlisted to carry something down the aisle. But I say unto you that a better way for thee to be involved would be to stay home with thy babysitter until the reception shall commence.

X. If thou art a groom or a groomsman, thou shalt dress like a man, not a frat boy nor cowboy nor prom date.

XI. If thou art a bride or a bridesmaid, thou shalt dress like a woman, not a flower girl nor whore nor prom date. If thy makeup render thee unrecognizable, then thou hast gone too far with it.

XII. If thou art a congregant, thou shalt dress appropriately as befits thy gender. Thou shalt also remain quiet during the prelude. Thou shalt also refrain from applauding and cheering during a church wedding. Thou shalt also leave thy children home with thine hired babysitter.

XIII. If thou art a layman who hath been enlisted to read scripture, thou shouldst read audibly, slowly, and deliberately. Thou shalt not simply insert more pauses between rapid-fire words. And thou shalt say, “First Corinthians,” not “One Corinthians.”

XIV. If thou art a bride or groom, thou shalt recite thy vows confidently and audibly. Thou shalt not leave everyone wondering if thou believest that which thou saith.

Here endeth the lesson. Give thou unto me a break.

Going to Carolina in my mind

My aunt lived in Nashville. My sister lived in Nashville, Vicksburg, and now Dothan. I lived in Houston. My mother lived in Statesville (N.C.). But Mother would never mention those cities by name. She would refer to those destinations by state: “When are you coming back to North Carolina?” “We’re going to Alabama to visit Talana for Christmas.” “Aunt Sandy is going back to Tennessee tomorrow.” Mother would answer ‘North Carolina’ to the question, “Where are you from?” A rather broad-ranging yet endearing approach to geography!

A similar thing occurs, in the other direction, when American organists are referred to in printed materials abroad. For example, Stephen Tharp is represented as being from ‘New York, USA.’ James David Christie would be from ‘Boston, USA.’ I would be from ‘Houston, USA” or ‘Boone, USA.’ But we Americans do the same thing when referring to foreign cities: we talk about visiting ‘Leipzig, Germany’ or ‘Paris, France’ or ‘Toronto, Canada.’ But we skip the county or state that those locals often use. And if you say ‘Frankfurt, Germany’ or ‘Halle, Germany,’ which do you mean? There are two of each!

Well, I have just completed my first-ever visit to “Germany.” I suppose since I didn’t stay in a single city for more than two overnights, I can really say “Germany.” And what a trip! Frankfurt, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Naumburg, Merseburg, Berlin, Hamburg, Lübeck, Cologne, Aachen. I have always felt that the best way to tour a city for the first time is to visit its churches, not its museums. The church towers help you get your bearings, and they define so much of a city’s history. And let’s not forget the treasure trove of pipe organs that exists in most European churches. Look at my Facebook photo album “Germany & England 2012.” The photos are all of churches and organs! My first trip to New York City (“New York”) was for an AGO convention. That was perfect, because I got to visit the churches and hear the organs – the very things I would have wanted to hear in the first place but probably couldn’t on my own. Same thing for my first visit to Paris (“France”) – I was on an organized organ tour. That was even better, because not only did I get to hear the organs, but I got to play them, as well.

This trip to “Germany” is actually a trip to “Europe.” Two weeks in Germany, one night in Paris to catch the Chunnel train, and then a week in Sherborne (Dorset!) England, for recital duty. Today, “Germany.” Tomorrow, “Europe.” Next week, “the world!”

Living in the past

Memory Lane may work in the States, but a trip to Europe is a trip down Memory Superhighway. Every time I travel to Europe, I am overwhelmed by the architecture, the history, the ancient amid the new. That doesn’t lose its potency, time after time. And it shouldn’t.

Since my last post, I have visited Frankfurt, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Naumburg, Merseburg, and Berlin. Still to come: Hamburg, Lübeck, Cologne, Paris, Sherborne, and London. Whenever I visit a new city, I recognize that the current residents live in the present while honoring the past. But I have only the past as a point of reference. I walk into the Dreikönigskirche in Frankfurt and think about Helmut Walcha, who stopped performing in 1981 and died in 1991. I walk into the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and think about JS Bach. (A lot of water has passed under that bridge since Bach's time!) And imagine how reverently I sat in my seat on the train when it made a quick stop in Eisenach, and I read the sign “Eisenach, Geburtsstadt Johann Sebastian Bachs.” I walk past the Dresden Opera and think of Wagner being there, even though he died in 1883!

More recent history comes alive in more minds in such places as, say, the Frauenkirche in Dresden. Or all over the entire city of Berlin, which is simply electric with its WWII history. Finally, in 1999 the choir I was playing for in Houston visited the memorial to PanAm Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland. That crash occurred in 1988. By 1999 Lockerbie had moved on, but we first-time visitors were overwhelmed as if it had just happened.

The passage of time changes perspectives, depending on where you are or where you were. I will always wish I had been born a few years earlier, so that I could have heard, say, Dupré or Fox or Crozier or Horowitz perform in their primes. I would love to have met Rachmaninoff. I will always wish we could bring composers back to see how rightly famous they are now and to answer questions for us. I’d especially like to bring back those composers who died too young and let them compose some more and live more life: Schubert, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Distler.

Sitting in Sunday service at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, I kept wondering, Would Bach have approved of that sermon? What would he have done on a typical Monday, after Sunday’s hectic schedule? What would he think of all the attention bestowed upon him now? In which of those upper galleries might he have placed musicians? Did that crucifix exist in his day? Was that paint that color? Was this pew original? And so on.

A trip to our (Western) musical past is nearly indescribably informative and meaningful, as witnessed by this rambling post. So stop taking my word for it, and get yourself to a part of Europe where music history would speak most to you. If in doubt, visit Germany, especially Leipzig.

Prophet in his own land

It finally happened. On the home turf.

Each academic college at my university conducts its own Commencement ceremonies. There are seven of them, spread across three days. All of them are held in the multi-purpose arena, except for the School of Music, which is held on its own stage in the music building. Our Commencement is intimate (though full), and it is a special event for our graduates to walk across their own stage to receive their diplomas. I play the organ for the processions, and we hear several student performances during the ceremony, as well. It is a wonderful time for us, and our musically-inclined [now former] Chancellor enjoys coming over for it. Back in 1990, I played for the very first commencement exercises held in the music building. It was my own graduation, and I have savored that memory all these years.

So yesterday, a mere twelve seconds into the prelude, an admin-type comes out on stage, tells me to play on but to bring it down, so that he can instruct the gathering audience to pretend this is church by moving into the center, fill in empty chairs, stop saving seats, and clear the aisles for the procession to come. When he passed back by me, I said, "Yes, that's just like church."

And I wasn't referring to moving into empty seats.

I was referring to the fact that those in charge always seem to find it appropriate to make announcements while live, professionally-prepared and performed music is being played. It happens in church all the time, but when it happens at the hand of a school-of-music admin at a well-respected and accredited school of music, it is a sad day, indeed.

I resumed and finished. Then I started the processional.

At which time all the above happened again.

Yes, a second time. Same person, new announcement of overflow in the Recital Hall next door.

I have no publicly-consumable language left to continue telling this story here. I will simply finish by saying that I was vindicated by a text I retrieved after Commencement from one of my sharper sacred music students: "How rude of Dr. X!"

We are not amused

Transitioning to one's very first corrective lenses at age 44 is hard on the psyche and hard on the eyes. But transitioning to progressive lenses at the same time is even worse. While I really like the frames I chose and what they do to soften my leonine head, I am not amused at having to look through a straw to see what I want to see. I am not amused that "cutting the eyes" one direction or another now gives them something fuzzy to look at. And I am certainly not amused that music on the rack fishbowls its way around as I turn my head, and that I can't see my hands at all.

This is not good, folks. I am a latecomer to corrective lenses, and I don't expect sympathy from people who have worn glasses since their pre-double-digit years. But I got recitals to play! Help!!

When one goes through a change like this, one notices more things around him. I had never noticed until the past week that a lot of people wear glasses. Apparently, there will always be a need for optometrists. In the wake of my mother's death on March 20 this year, I also know that there will always be a need for funeral directors. Might there always be a similar need for organists as the years go by?

Yesterday, I played the lovely Gabriel Kney organ at St. Luke's Church in Boone, NC. As I listened to the congregation singing with wonderful abandon, I returned to the same thoughts I have had for 20 years every time I play for church:

1. This is so cool. This is fun. They're singing well, and I'm good at this.

2. But I don't think I could ever stand the politics of full-time church work again.

3. I wonder if churches will stop needing organists one of these days? When will this get old to them?

4. I wonder if all those little churches who are finding themselves in the position of having to hire an organist, rather than depend on the sweet, elderly lady who is "retiring," ever be able to pull it off now? More than one church from my past has unplugged the console to make room for more digital and percussion instruments.

Honestly, I think there will always be a place for organists in our churches. If that is no longer true, what might be the last church standing? That is a fascinating question to ponder, but let's hope things never get that far.

Meanwhile, I'll keep subbing in church whenever I can (and as long as I can see music and hands and feet). We can be amused at that, in every good sense of the word.

Take time to smell the roses

So much music, so little time. Music’s only drawback is that you can’t hear it all at once. Each piece has to unfold over time.

But I am impatient. I want to hear every wonderful piece at the same time. Likewise, I want to play every wonderful piece ever composed. I don’t want to pick and choose what gets played on a recital – I want to play everything, all the time! I don’t like living without Franck to work on Vierne. I don’t like to leave Widor in the filing cabinet while I work on Bach. I want them all, all the time! But my chosen profession involves tiny bites, and I learn to be patient. When I’m finally seated on the bench and playing for an audience, I like every note and am ready to linger among the roses. Therefore, I tend to play a little slower sometimes – I love the notes too much to plow through them without some tender caressing along the way.

Another way in which I’m smelling the roses these days is in recycling pieces on programs. Each year over the past eight years or so, I have been learning at least two full programs of previously unlearned or un-memorized music. I have enjoyed it so much, but there is a great deal of music out there, and I haven’t gotten to re-visit any of the great stuff I have already played. So I’m beginning to go back and resurrect pieces that I had a wonderful season with a few years ago. Don’t worry – I won’t be recycling things in your area that you’ve already heard. I keep detailed records on that sort of stuff, and I follow my own rules, explained in another post.

This post is short. I have to go practice some more wonderful music I can’t wait to get learned.

Smile!

There is a new movement afoot. It is poised to take over the organ world and change everything about how we currently “look at” some things. I’m talking about promotional photography for organists.

Look through The American Organist magazine from various years to see what I’m talking about. In the old days, virtually no one took out promo ads for themselves. Promo photos appeared in management rosters, nearly for the sole purpose of a host being able to recognize a performer when picking him/her up at the airport! They were all the same: headshots facing or profile, dark clothes, light background. (As time went on and the subjects aged, some of those photos didn’t get updated, a constant source of discussion among those of us who were looking at them every month.)

Fast-forward to today, where organists are shown hanging off of consoles, standing near famous sculptures, holding organ pipes in precarious positions, holding hands in the worst possible technical positions, and sitting spread-eagle on the bench facing the camera. One of my more successful photos has been of me leaning cross-armed against a Casavant console.

This new movement currently co-exists with the old one. There are still the traditionalists, who pose in coat and tie for headshots and in tux for staged action shots. In all these, the background is the usual gray for the headshot or the usual console for the action shot. The clothes are the usual simple, so as not to cause visual problems when printed on local newsprint.

When I first started posing for promo photos, I kept a certain necktie in my closet, which I did not choose to wear in public anymore, but which would be perfect for the next photo session. In those days, however, the most successful photo I had was one a bit off the beaten path. I was in my suit and simple tie, but I was staring directly at the camera, daring it to challenge me. That kind of pose sent a completely different message, and I liked it! I looked confident, even if I wasn’t.

I am no photography expert, and I hear constantly from experts whose opinions on all this are in diametric opposition to each other, thus leaving me in the middle and having to make all the decisions (which is the plan in the first place, I suppose). But I am learning to lean toward those photos that look like ME, rather than that fit a textbook composition formula.

Advice: always have someone who knows you well help choose photos. They know what you look like, and they can see You in certain photos and not in others. The one of me leaning against the Casavant has been criticized as conveying a sense of having something to hide in those crossed arms. But I concur with the other experts, who said, “That looks like YOU. That’s what people will be getting when you come play.” I’ll take that. And with digital photography, hopefully anything really transgressive can be tweaked.

So I have gone to the other side, and I’ll probably be dragging some others with me over the years. I will take the photos that look like ME and not like the photographer’s composition ideals. However, I don’t think I will ever go so far as to be photographed having tea in an organ chamber or throwing my head back and my arms out at a console, as if a loose wire had found its way to the bench.

Real life: the organist’s laboratory

I keep discovering that real life informs all my teaching and mentoring. The training years cannot be conducted in a vacuum – students need to see how real life works so that they can discuss it thoroughly in the safe haven of school, then go out and set or extinguish fires where they need to.

Classes are nice, but we end up learning an awful lot on the job. The theoretical of class still needs the practical to finish the job of teaching. Conducting fellow students for a grade is probably not as eye-opening as conducting an adult choir set in its ways. Being prepared to direct a church music program is nice, but being required to do it with a week’s notice when the boss gets deathly ill is different. And although I wouldn’t change this, I notice that my sacred music majors must perform a classical degree recital, not a liturgical one. Meanwhile, for an instrument whose printed music dates back to 1325, I get ONE semester to teach the history of its literature. I also get ONE semester to teach service playing to all keyboard sacred music majors. That’s not much time to get many points across.

So where is everyone supposed to finish learning it all? They’re going to learn it on the job, simply by doing it. This is where I try to infuse classes with real-life problems to be solved. I was baptized by fire into leadership at a church where the Organist/Choirmaster got sick and died. At another church, pastoral scandal and mismanagement threatened our jobs and our sense of beauty in worship. But after those experiences, I discovered that I was ready for anything. Church politics no longer surprise me, and it seems important to me to warn students that politics are coming their way in this business.

There is another way in which we organists can be ready for anything. I have accompanied some of the worst wedding singers ever hatched. I have played the Lord’s Prayer in all keys and in all tempos, sometimes all in the same performance. I have vamped while soloists dropped music and started making up words. I have followed the worst conductors down the primrose path and back again. I believe that I could see a conductor through a brick wall, if I had to. Students need ways to practice these things, as well, and I’m committed to inventing more ways of making their lives a fake hell until they get a job and discover real hell.

Now, let’s move on to performance anxiety. Outside of the worst cases, I believe it takes frequent visits to a nervous environment to get over nerves. How can we create a performance-anxiety environment? Get the students performing! No, not on stage but in studio class. Having an audience present, no matter how small, creates a nervous environment that doesn’t exist in the lesson. Just as the students gets used to me in lessons, so can they get used to other people being present. And not just in studio class – students are encouraged to drag people in from the hallways to listen to a run-through of something. Perform, perform, perform. Even performing for a recording device changes your approach. And let’s not forget that Sunday mornings are a weekly performance of sorts. Simple math: perform enough, and you stop being nervous about performing. Control your urges to rush under nerves enough times, and staying under control becomes second nature. Nerve management is about the only training you can accelerate in classes, and it’s not all that difficult. It’s even free.

Learning how to dress and how to behave in public are also important, best taught by example. It’s also important to learn how to learn music, not just how to play an assigned piece. That’s a Pandora’s box I will open here some other time.

Finally, I get asked a lot about sight reading. You learn to sight read by sight reading, not by reading about it. (You learn to waterski by waterskiing, not by talking about it in the car on the way to the lake.) I recommend playing through an entire hymnal to accelerate sight reading. The harmonies are basic and predictable, and the voice leading is 95% pure. It’s a great way to improve sight accuracy and get familiar with intermediate harmonies. Meaningful improvisation quickly follows!

Go ye therefore and play. Just play.

Another moment of clarity

Here's another of those moments when I was able to come up with what looked like a helpful response to something I had not thought about before. (Click here for another similar moment of clarity.) A high school kid asked what sort of salary he should negotiate at a church where he was interviewing to be the organist. Here is my response, more or less verbatim:

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Several things will send the salary up and down:

1) your age and experience will keep it low;

2) time spent driving back and forth will send it up;

3) gas money might be added to the salary as an allowance, or it might just be rolled into a larger salary. And a local person wouldn't need gas money at all. I would definitely negotiate some gas money, since you'll be driving there more times per week for Christmas and Easter and special events.

4) based on some of the photos I saw on the church's website, I'd say that the church is full of older members and is shrinking, so they probably don't have a lot of money, which will drive the salary lower;

5) the depth of the music program will also help decide the salary. If you have to practice a bunch of hard anthems, that will drive the salary up. If it's a really easy job, though, then it won't need to be paid as much. [On the other hand, if you’re one of those people who has already played everything and doesn’t have to practice, maybe the church should pay more for that privilege, as well.]

6) Do you think you'd play there throughout college? It might be nice for the salary to rise a bit during those years, as you build experience and training.

I recommend a salary AND a gas allowance. But perhaps rather than try to calculate what gas would be, just raise the salary a bit and leave it at that. I'd say that based on the above list, perhaps $500 or so per month might be a nice, round figure, give or take. No benefits (can't get benefits unless you're at least 1/2 time). Service for service, $500 per month would be about $150 per week, which would include service, rehearsal, gas, and practice time. Perhaps you'd like to quote them about $550-700 per month just to start, and then let them negotiate. Surely they have a salary in mind, or they don't know where to start, either, since the retiring lady played out of goodness of her heart. [Many churches are discovering that music is no longer a volunteer effort after the elderly incumbent retires.]

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Tricky business. This is a wheel that may have to be reinvented church by church, case by case.