Keep it together

My longtime choir director and friend from Illinois retired a couple of weeks ago. I was looking at some pictures on Facebook which reminded me of the trip I made in April and how I substituted at my old church. For the prelude I played one of her favorite organ pieces, Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Prelude on 'Rhosymedre.'" Afterwards, I looked up and saw her wiping her eyes in the choir loft. I note this was at the conclusion of the piece because the whole time I was playing I was keeping my head down, focusing on the music, and trying not to think about how she was probably crying in the choir loft. Performances can be challenging on their own merits, but when there is an emotionally charged situation it is particularly important to keep those emotions from getting in the way of what you have to do.

I recall other performances in such circumstances--playing at my brother's wedding. Or my grandmother's funeral. My grandmother had left cookies in her freezer which someone thawed so we could have grandma cookies at her own funeral. I didn't know that at the time. I just thought it was interesting that someone had made cookies that tasted remarkably like grandma's. I suppose it might have been nice to know that at the time. You can get emotional when you are eating a cookie. A performance is a different story.

Funerals can be a challenge. Usually you don't know the deceased that well, if at all, but once I recall playing the Widor Toccata for a fellow I was really going to miss. While some organists make enormous towers of music out of pieces like this so they can get all of it on the music rack and not have to turn a page (which you can't do because you never have a hand free), I generally play all but the first and last pages from memory. On that occasion I blinked and asked my wife to turn pages because I was afraid I'd have brain failure. It was one of the toughest times getting through the Toccata.

Another challenging Toccata was the service on Easter of 2016 when, unbeknownst to the congregation, a large tumor had been found in my chest and I was having trouble even breathing. I had spent the last few weeks still waiting for a diagnosis and imagining this might be my last Easter. It had even occurred to me to hit the record button on the console so the piece could be played at my own funeral, which might strike you as macabre, but I was hoping would be one last gift to the congregation. After Easter it turned out I had a "friendly" and "curable" kind of cancer, and while the aggressive chemo that followed was far from fun, I eventually played the Toccata again, two years later, in another city at another church. This time it was pretty easy, despite the euphoria of officially being resurrected.

Memories can accumulate and fellowship with one another: another memory of the choir loft at Illinois involves looking over during the second verse of "How Great Thou Art" after I had just added some birdsong to the line "and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees" and seeing a soprano laughing. I kept right on playing, with a smile on my face.

Because there is a time to mourn, and a time to...dance!

And to be a little goofy.

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don't forget to take time to read the homepage at pianonoise.com. And don't let that friendly beast atop the page this month scare you away. He's just a friend we met in Florida in March. He didn't move and we kept on paddling!