You've managed to "survive" all of those knobs and buttons for several weeks now as a pianist trying to deal with an organ (and if you haven't, see my earlier series). Now what?
Now we explore combinations of stops that are often used together because organists have found them to be pleasing and useful. For instance, the old "principle chorus"
In the last series, we introduced the families of organ sound: foundations, flutes, strings, mixtures, reeds, and mutations. A principle chorus is basically a group of all the principle (or foundation) stops on a division (keyboard) of the organ. Usually what that means is you would draw the 8 foot, 4 foot, and 2 foot foundations, and, for good measure, you might add a mixture stop to the combination. This is a combination that is used most often for hymns. As I enjoy variety, and my congregation does, too, I would advise against deploying all of these stops all of the time for hymn playing. Depending on the size of the congregation, the building, and the intensity of the hymn's message, you may use only one or two of the stops for a quiet verse, or the 8, 4, and 2, without the mixture. What you probably do not want to do is use the upper stops without the ones below it. In other others, the 8 by itself, but none of the others alone, is OK. The 8 and the 4 alone, but not the 4 and the 2 alone (without the 8). Since stop jambs are often built vertically so that the larger numbers are toward the bottom (i.e., the 8 foot stops), you can imagine that it would not be possible for a column to hang suspended in the air without a connection to the ground. Thus, the higher stops cannot be used without using the ones below them, in order--8, then 4, then 2, then mixtures, cumulatively.
Sometimes this combination includes the 2 2/3 mutation stop as well. In which case, you will want to use all of the following foundations: 8, 4, 2 2/3, and 2.
The organ is an instrument which reinforces overtones. That acoustic phenomenon means that a sounding pitch includes not only the note we are playing (known as the fundamental) but also several higher frequencies, the first of which is the octave above. The second "partial" (overtone) is a fifth above that, and next the succeeding octave. If you include the fifth-sounding mutation stop in your mix, you reinforce that second overtone. The remaining octaves above the original sounding pitch (the 8foot stop) reinforce the first partial of the stop below that. The mixtures, comprised as they are of usually 3 to 5 pipes, sounding octaves and fifths above a single note, also reinforce overtones. The result is a full, rich sound. Remember, if you have a smallish organ, you can always borrow any missing stops by coupling the manuals together.
You might also want to try creating choruses of other stops. A flute chorus, for instance (8, 4, and 2) might sound very nice. You might do just as well with only the 8 and the 4. This is a nice, soft combination. You aren't as likely to be able to create a chorus of strings on any but a fairly large organ (Faith's only has 8 foot strings), though you could try using the super couplers (swell to great 4) in order to have that upper octave sounding on the great along with the great's 8 foot strings.
Mixtures and mutations are not good except in combination with other families, though as I discovered last year, combining the tierce and the nazard creates a very odd little sound known as a sesquialtera, which you could use to play a melody for a solo piece. You are also not likely to have enough reeds on a small organ to build a full chorus, but if you do, give it a try. If they are in tune, count that a miracle!
You could also try choruses in combination. What happens when you add a chorus of flute stops to a chorus of foundations? Probably not much. On a neo-Baroque organ such as the one at Faith, the flutes are so much softer than the foundations that it doesn't add much in the way of volume. However, if you have fairly abrasive foundation stops, the flutes might mellow them somewhat. Flute stops have wider mouths than foundation pipes, and are richer in overtones. Using 8 foot flutes and an 8 foot principle would mean you are combining different scales (basically widths) of pipe on the same pitch. Early manuals on organ registration consistently warn against doing this, but that was mostly because there was only so much air to go around, and dividing them up among weaker pipes was unnecessary waste for little effect. On a modern organ it won't make a difference.
Before we go let's talk about an exception to the idea of building consistently from the bottom. Suppose you employ the 8 foot and 2 foot foundation (or flute) stops without the 4 in between? That would create a gap in the overtones, and indeed, is known as a gapped registration. Many organists warned (and warn) against using gapped registrations, although I happen to like them. They give a somewhat quirky, intriguing sound. I wouldn't overuse them, however, and I wouldn't use them for hymn singing but only for solo pieces. Ever the experimenter, I noticed in listening to old recordings that there was a period a couple of years ago when I was experimenting with gapped registrations in the pedals. That got some really interesting results!
And that's just it. Once you have some general principles of how organ registration works, you can try a number of things yourself to get to know your particular, unique instrument. Even a 30 rank organ must have at least a thousand combinations!
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This week on pianonoise.com : we celebrate Samuel Wesley's 150 birthday (that's today!), a musical mystery deepens, I have my own Oscar speech ready, and we say goodbye to February (but not, I should note before we got another nice snowstorm! Stay safe, wherever you are!)
Showing posts with label beginning organists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beginning organists. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
organ registration survival tips part five
This is the last in a series of five articles discussing organ registration for beginning organists or pianists becoming organists. It is an introduction to the stops on an organ. The first four parts can be had here:
(part one) (part two) (part three) (part four)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's time to introduce you to some of my favorite stops. We've already discussed the basic ones--flutes, foundations, and strings--all of which "speak" at regular pitch level (8) or up an octave (4) or two (2). My point in starting with these is that you could get in less trouble by using them, but along the way we started to experiment with them, using them in different combinations, and found that there are a number of fascinating sound combinations that might result, some of which would be useful in hymn playing, and others for solo work. We'll flesh this out later, but we haven't finished learning about new types of stops yet.
More recently, we started with those "colorful" stops. These have something other than whole numbers below their name because the pipes aren't an even 8 or 4 or 2 feet tall (that is, the lowest pipe in each rank is 8 or 4 or 2 feet tall) and they don't speak at a regular pitch or at the octave.
First came the mixture stops, a compound stop consisting of at least two pipes sounding together for each note played--at pitch, and a fifth higher, and often adding the octave and the octave-and-a-fifth higher than that (if you have a four-rank mixture) to give the organ its majestic, full-throated sound, provided you don't try using it by itself but instead have a full compliment of foundation stops pulled as well. These are the stops with the roman numerals on them to indicate how many pipes are going to sound each time we play a note.
There are two families of stops left. One is the mutation stop--don't you just love the title? I'd like to see some organist horror movies sometime with titles like "The tierce from Tabago" and "Tales of the Nazard." How about "Night of the Sesquialtera" or "It came from Larigot?"
If you didn't find this at all funny, you are well on your way to becoming an organist. Organists, it is well known, do not have a sense of humor. If you have one, it will only get in the way. Have it removed as soon as possible (this is known as a humorectomy). I am trying to suppress mine, but it slips out every once in a while.
In any event, a mutation stop does something really interesting. Try playing middle C using only a flute stop. Now, remove that, and play the same note using only a mutation stop.
It isn't the same note!
That's because a mutation stop sounds the harmonic of the pitch but not the fundamental. I'm sure we'll get around to talking about this a lot later on, so if you don't know what I just said, don't worry about it. Basically, if your stop has a fraction under it, and you play a C, you will hear either a G or an E an octave above instead. Mutation stops are the ones you are least likely to use in general service playing, but, if you combine them with 8 foot flute stops, you can get a really nice sound for a solo line. If you have a piece of music (not for the congregation to sing) with a solo melody which you can play on one manual, and an accompaniment you can play on the other, you can use the mutation-flute combination for your solo line and a soft flute stop alone on the other and sound like you are really an organist. Here's an example:
Buxtehude: Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan jam
Doesn't that sound beautiful?
The last type of stop to discuss is called a reed. Now up to this point every family of stop has had ones basic characteristic which was that it was a pipe which produces sound by having air blown through it, and the column of air made the sound. No moving parts--just a pipe. There are lots of variations--some pipes are made of wood, most of metal. Some are capped on the end, some have holes in the sides, some have little chimneys on top--all of these things affect the sound. But in the end, these pipes have nothing inside them. They are all known as flue pipes (that's not a typo, there is no T in flue--think chimney flue).
A reed pipe is a different matter. It has a reed inside that vibrates, just like in a clarinet or oboe. Unlike the mixture or mutation stops, reed stops speak at regular pitch or an octave above (8 or 4 foot). But they sound quite different. The obvious suspects are stops that are named after reed instruments of the orchestra. But your organ may well have a 'trumpet' stop--which is also a reed stop in an organ, though it is a brass instrument in a band. That's simply because of how the sound is produced--with a vibrating reed. It will still sound like a trumpet.
My favorite reed instruments are the posaune stops (in English, "trombone") on the pedals, which are wonderfully loud and either hugely majestic or terribly funny, depending on how they are used!
Now you know all the different types of organ stops. And you should be able to figure out which ones on your organ belong to which group. The real art of registration consists in combining these possibilities. There may be literally thousands of possible combinations on your organ.
At some point, we'll want to stop just trying to survive and start being creative. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, actually--creativity can really help a church organist survive. Being able to create music on the fly in whole or in part is a great way to make some of your deadlines. And the ability to quickly digest new materials leads not only to less of a panic when you have to play a lot of music every week, but a sense of discovery and curiosity and joy. This is also true of a topic like organ registration. It is true of anything, from hymn playing to choosing repertoire to accompanying the choir. All this means that this is the last post about organ registration with the word "survival" in it. (We'll see what that does to my blog numbers; the last four weeks every time I post one of these organ registration survival posts there is a spike in my readership). I want to spend the next couple of weeks on some basic principles of organ registration with a few hints for experimentation and creativity. We'll get back to the topic at a more advanced stage later in the year. I hope you've learned enough about the organ to feel comfortable with the various stops and at least some of the buttons.
-------
Don't forget to check the homepage of pianonoise.com each week. This week's featured recording holds a hint about the next topic: improvisation.
(part one) (part two) (part three) (part four)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's time to introduce you to some of my favorite stops. We've already discussed the basic ones--flutes, foundations, and strings--all of which "speak" at regular pitch level (8) or up an octave (4) or two (2). My point in starting with these is that you could get in less trouble by using them, but along the way we started to experiment with them, using them in different combinations, and found that there are a number of fascinating sound combinations that might result, some of which would be useful in hymn playing, and others for solo work. We'll flesh this out later, but we haven't finished learning about new types of stops yet.
More recently, we started with those "colorful" stops. These have something other than whole numbers below their name because the pipes aren't an even 8 or 4 or 2 feet tall (that is, the lowest pipe in each rank is 8 or 4 or 2 feet tall) and they don't speak at a regular pitch or at the octave.
First came the mixture stops, a compound stop consisting of at least two pipes sounding together for each note played--at pitch, and a fifth higher, and often adding the octave and the octave-and-a-fifth higher than that (if you have a four-rank mixture) to give the organ its majestic, full-throated sound, provided you don't try using it by itself but instead have a full compliment of foundation stops pulled as well. These are the stops with the roman numerals on them to indicate how many pipes are going to sound each time we play a note.
There are two families of stops left. One is the mutation stop--don't you just love the title? I'd like to see some organist horror movies sometime with titles like "The tierce from Tabago" and "Tales of the Nazard." How about "Night of the Sesquialtera" or "It came from Larigot?"
If you didn't find this at all funny, you are well on your way to becoming an organist. Organists, it is well known, do not have a sense of humor. If you have one, it will only get in the way. Have it removed as soon as possible (this is known as a humorectomy). I am trying to suppress mine, but it slips out every once in a while.
In any event, a mutation stop does something really interesting. Try playing middle C using only a flute stop. Now, remove that, and play the same note using only a mutation stop.
It isn't the same note!
That's because a mutation stop sounds the harmonic of the pitch but not the fundamental. I'm sure we'll get around to talking about this a lot later on, so if you don't know what I just said, don't worry about it. Basically, if your stop has a fraction under it, and you play a C, you will hear either a G or an E an octave above instead. Mutation stops are the ones you are least likely to use in general service playing, but, if you combine them with 8 foot flute stops, you can get a really nice sound for a solo line. If you have a piece of music (not for the congregation to sing) with a solo melody which you can play on one manual, and an accompaniment you can play on the other, you can use the mutation-flute combination for your solo line and a soft flute stop alone on the other and sound like you are really an organist. Here's an example:
Buxtehude: Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan jam
Doesn't that sound beautiful?
The last type of stop to discuss is called a reed. Now up to this point every family of stop has had ones basic characteristic which was that it was a pipe which produces sound by having air blown through it, and the column of air made the sound. No moving parts--just a pipe. There are lots of variations--some pipes are made of wood, most of metal. Some are capped on the end, some have holes in the sides, some have little chimneys on top--all of these things affect the sound. But in the end, these pipes have nothing inside them. They are all known as flue pipes (that's not a typo, there is no T in flue--think chimney flue).
A reed pipe is a different matter. It has a reed inside that vibrates, just like in a clarinet or oboe. Unlike the mixture or mutation stops, reed stops speak at regular pitch or an octave above (8 or 4 foot). But they sound quite different. The obvious suspects are stops that are named after reed instruments of the orchestra. But your organ may well have a 'trumpet' stop--which is also a reed stop in an organ, though it is a brass instrument in a band. That's simply because of how the sound is produced--with a vibrating reed. It will still sound like a trumpet.
My favorite reed instruments are the posaune stops (in English, "trombone") on the pedals, which are wonderfully loud and either hugely majestic or terribly funny, depending on how they are used!
Now you know all the different types of organ stops. And you should be able to figure out which ones on your organ belong to which group. The real art of registration consists in combining these possibilities. There may be literally thousands of possible combinations on your organ.
At some point, we'll want to stop just trying to survive and start being creative. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, actually--creativity can really help a church organist survive. Being able to create music on the fly in whole or in part is a great way to make some of your deadlines. And the ability to quickly digest new materials leads not only to less of a panic when you have to play a lot of music every week, but a sense of discovery and curiosity and joy. This is also true of a topic like organ registration. It is true of anything, from hymn playing to choosing repertoire to accompanying the choir. All this means that this is the last post about organ registration with the word "survival" in it. (We'll see what that does to my blog numbers; the last four weeks every time I post one of these organ registration survival posts there is a spike in my readership). I want to spend the next couple of weeks on some basic principles of organ registration with a few hints for experimentation and creativity. We'll get back to the topic at a more advanced stage later in the year. I hope you've learned enough about the organ to feel comfortable with the various stops and at least some of the buttons.
-------
Don't forget to check the homepage of pianonoise.com each week. This week's featured recording holds a hint about the next topic: improvisation.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
oops! (organ registration survival tips part four)
Before we get on with our primer on organ registration I thought I would make you feel better about any mistakes you may make by admitting a few I have made myself. These always make good stories for later, particularly if you tell them dramatically and with humor. Remember that when you are playing in front of people and something doesn't go as planned. Think of it as an investment in a funny future. It isn't fun now, but wait until later...
If you've been reading this series, you may recall that one of the first things I told beginner organists or pianists turned organists to get familiar with was the crescendo pedal. There is a good reason for that.
I was in my first position as an organist, still in high school. It was a little Methodist church in a suburb near my home. The preacher there asked me to play softly while he gave the pastoral prayer each week. At the time I thought it was for the atmosphere--I later found out that since the church was close to a four-lane highway it was to drown the traffic noises!
It was about seven weeks into my tenure and I was starting to feel confident--which is probably more dangerous than when you are still worried and focused. I selected a soft string stop to use by itself, with a soft flute in the pedals. Only two stops in the entire organ. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the crescendo pedal, which was still on from the end of the last piece. Remember, it will (on many organs) add stops up to and including the entire organ whether you've deployed them manually or not.
And so, our preacher closed his eyes and earnestly began, "Our heavenly father..."
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fortunately I found the offending pedal and disengaged it mighty fast. Three decades later I can report that the church did not spontaneously combust, no paramedics were called, and most of my hair has even grown back.
And that particular effect was a one-off. I haven't done it since. No way to improve upon something like that, you know.
Then there was the week I forgot the doxology.
I mentioned a while back that there is considerable merit in memorizing the doxology. It is the same every week, it is short, and if you don't need music you won't have to shuffle it up on the music rack after the offertory and then grab the closing hymn by the scruff of the hymnal and toss it up too, all in a few minutes. One less piece of music to worry about, you know...
But one week, also at my first church, I finished the offertory and....uh.....had a little problem.
Fortunately I was in the choir loft. I whispered to the choir director "how does the doxology start?"
She obliged. "Oh yes!" I said after she'd hummed the first couple of measures. And away I went.
It reminded me of the time Bartok was on tour with his own piano concerto, second movement of which begins with piano alone. After the first movement, Bartok was confused, and had to whisper to the conductor. "How does this go?"
He had already been playing this for weeks. And if he could have a brain fart over a piece that he wrote and had played over and over, why can't you?
on to part five (the last one!)
--------------------------
the first three installments in this mostly useful series can be found here:
Organ registration survival tips (part one) how not to make a scary noise in church
Organ registration survival tips (part two)
We'll start with what some of those knobs mean
Organ registration survival tips (part three)
fear not...I bring you tidings of hope and confidence!
--------------------------
also, don't forget to check out the homepage of pianonoise.com for the weekly recording and lots of other useful and quirky articles about music and musicians (updated every Tuesday)
If you've been reading this series, you may recall that one of the first things I told beginner organists or pianists turned organists to get familiar with was the crescendo pedal. There is a good reason for that.
I was in my first position as an organist, still in high school. It was a little Methodist church in a suburb near my home. The preacher there asked me to play softly while he gave the pastoral prayer each week. At the time I thought it was for the atmosphere--I later found out that since the church was close to a four-lane highway it was to drown the traffic noises!
It was about seven weeks into my tenure and I was starting to feel confident--which is probably more dangerous than when you are still worried and focused. I selected a soft string stop to use by itself, with a soft flute in the pedals. Only two stops in the entire organ. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the crescendo pedal, which was still on from the end of the last piece. Remember, it will (on many organs) add stops up to and including the entire organ whether you've deployed them manually or not.
And so, our preacher closed his eyes and earnestly began, "Our heavenly father..."
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fortunately I found the offending pedal and disengaged it mighty fast. Three decades later I can report that the church did not spontaneously combust, no paramedics were called, and most of my hair has even grown back.
And that particular effect was a one-off. I haven't done it since. No way to improve upon something like that, you know.
Then there was the week I forgot the doxology.
I mentioned a while back that there is considerable merit in memorizing the doxology. It is the same every week, it is short, and if you don't need music you won't have to shuffle it up on the music rack after the offertory and then grab the closing hymn by the scruff of the hymnal and toss it up too, all in a few minutes. One less piece of music to worry about, you know...
But one week, also at my first church, I finished the offertory and....uh.....had a little problem.
Fortunately I was in the choir loft. I whispered to the choir director "how does the doxology start?"
She obliged. "Oh yes!" I said after she'd hummed the first couple of measures. And away I went.
It reminded me of the time Bartok was on tour with his own piano concerto, second movement of which begins with piano alone. After the first movement, Bartok was confused, and had to whisper to the conductor. "How does this go?"
He had already been playing this for weeks. And if he could have a brain fart over a piece that he wrote and had played over and over, why can't you?
on to part five (the last one!)
--------------------------
the first three installments in this mostly useful series can be found here:
Organ registration survival tips (part one) how not to make a scary noise in church
Organ registration survival tips (part two)
We'll start with what some of those knobs mean
Organ registration survival tips (part three)
fear not...I bring you tidings of hope and confidence!
--------------------------
also, don't forget to check out the homepage of pianonoise.com for the weekly recording and lots of other useful and quirky articles about music and musicians (updated every Tuesday)
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Organ registration survival tips (part three)
I got a call to play at a funeral home a few weeks ago and found this waiting for me at the organ:
Do you see that some of the stop tabs have little blue stickers on them? I assume this is because whomever plays there regularly (or did) decided which stops they wanted to use and was afraid someone (like me) might come along and mess them up so they marked them.
This is a bit like marking the note names above the keys. It is useful at first but you'd better learn them as soon as possible. And it is the same with the stops.
I've been writing for pianists who are starting to play the organ in church who find that the organ has a lot of knobs and buttons and aren't really sure what to do with them all. If you have someone to teach you then all the better, but many don't. I got a quick tutorial from an organist as a teenager, but not much more, so I had to figure much of it out myself.
So will you. And in a way that is the best method for doing it--continuing to experiment with the various stop knobs to see which sound combinations please and which do not. But experimentation comes with bravery, and at first I will assume you aren't very confident about it. This is, however, why I've been insistent that while I limit you to the handful of stops that are "safe," and show you how to avoid calamity, that you don't simply leave the same grouping of stops on for an entire service, but change them regularly. Start to notice groupings that you like, but keep searching for others. And know what the basic types of organ stop are and what they sound like. Eventually you should be able to sit down at a strange organ having never even heard it before much less played it, and make a pretty good guess as to which stop combinations to use just based on your knowledge of how organs work.
In a week or two I will show you some basic principles behind organ registration--typical patterns organists use. This will assume that you know all the stops. At this point we've only covered the ones with whole numbers like 8 and 4 on them--the flute stops, the foundation (or principle) stops, and the string stops. We've also talked about the couplers, and the crescendo pedal.
On the stop jamb at Faith those stops are on the bottom half of each division (the great or the swell). The stops toward the top are the color stops--they make the organ sound more interesting, but these stops can also be unfit for typical hymn singing or some pieces or organ music. The general principle behind them is that they do not always do well by themselves--you should first have on at least an 8 foot stop or two (which is, remember, normal pitch) and then put one of them on in combination.
The stops at the top of Faith's stop jamb represent the three remaining families of organ stops: mixtures, reeds, and mutations. I'll leave the second two for later. Right now, let's talk about mixture stops.
Mixtures are compound stops. When you play one note, you are listening to air rushing through multiple pipes at once. How many? Look below the term "mixture" or "scharf" or whatever they're calling it. You'll see a roman numeral. That is how many different pipes are grouped together. The one on our Great says "IV" which means that four pipes are sounding each time a note is played.
Those multiple notes consist of the note you played, a fifth higher, and perhaps an octave higher and also an octave-and-a-fifth higher (if you've got a four-note mixture like we do).
On the swell, our organ has a three-note mixture, and so does our pedal division (which I haven't talked about much because I am assuming you aren't playing the pedals at the moment anyway).
Mixture stops sound pretty bizarre by themselves (try it!). But in the right combination they contribute to a really full, rich organ sound, such as you haven't had yet if you'd been following my method.
Try this: start with the 8 foot principle, the 4 foot principle (probably called "octave") and any 2 foot stops (ours is the "super octave"--apparently it has special powers or something). THEN add your mixture stop to that. You have just built your first "principle chorus" from bottom to top and added a mixture to that. This will give you a nice majestic sound for playing the doxology, or any loud verses of a hymn. I would recommend, however, that in playing that hymn that you take the mixture stop off for some of the verses. It can get monotonous if you keep it on all the time. Just as capital letters can be GREAT for occasional emphasis, BUT REALLY IRRITATING IF YOU USE THEM ALL THE TIME!
Just saying...
on to part four
Do you see that some of the stop tabs have little blue stickers on them? I assume this is because whomever plays there regularly (or did) decided which stops they wanted to use and was afraid someone (like me) might come along and mess them up so they marked them.
This is a bit like marking the note names above the keys. It is useful at first but you'd better learn them as soon as possible. And it is the same with the stops.
I've been writing for pianists who are starting to play the organ in church who find that the organ has a lot of knobs and buttons and aren't really sure what to do with them all. If you have someone to teach you then all the better, but many don't. I got a quick tutorial from an organist as a teenager, but not much more, so I had to figure much of it out myself.
So will you. And in a way that is the best method for doing it--continuing to experiment with the various stop knobs to see which sound combinations please and which do not. But experimentation comes with bravery, and at first I will assume you aren't very confident about it. This is, however, why I've been insistent that while I limit you to the handful of stops that are "safe," and show you how to avoid calamity, that you don't simply leave the same grouping of stops on for an entire service, but change them regularly. Start to notice groupings that you like, but keep searching for others. And know what the basic types of organ stop are and what they sound like. Eventually you should be able to sit down at a strange organ having never even heard it before much less played it, and make a pretty good guess as to which stop combinations to use just based on your knowledge of how organs work.
In a week or two I will show you some basic principles behind organ registration--typical patterns organists use. This will assume that you know all the stops. At this point we've only covered the ones with whole numbers like 8 and 4 on them--the flute stops, the foundation (or principle) stops, and the string stops. We've also talked about the couplers, and the crescendo pedal.
On the stop jamb at Faith those stops are on the bottom half of each division (the great or the swell). The stops toward the top are the color stops--they make the organ sound more interesting, but these stops can also be unfit for typical hymn singing or some pieces or organ music. The general principle behind them is that they do not always do well by themselves--you should first have on at least an 8 foot stop or two (which is, remember, normal pitch) and then put one of them on in combination.
The stops at the top of Faith's stop jamb represent the three remaining families of organ stops: mixtures, reeds, and mutations. I'll leave the second two for later. Right now, let's talk about mixture stops.
Mixtures are compound stops. When you play one note, you are listening to air rushing through multiple pipes at once. How many? Look below the term "mixture" or "scharf" or whatever they're calling it. You'll see a roman numeral. That is how many different pipes are grouped together. The one on our Great says "IV" which means that four pipes are sounding each time a note is played.
Those multiple notes consist of the note you played, a fifth higher, and perhaps an octave higher and also an octave-and-a-fifth higher (if you've got a four-note mixture like we do).
On the swell, our organ has a three-note mixture, and so does our pedal division (which I haven't talked about much because I am assuming you aren't playing the pedals at the moment anyway).
Mixture stops sound pretty bizarre by themselves (try it!). But in the right combination they contribute to a really full, rich organ sound, such as you haven't had yet if you'd been following my method.
Try this: start with the 8 foot principle, the 4 foot principle (probably called "octave") and any 2 foot stops (ours is the "super octave"--apparently it has special powers or something). THEN add your mixture stop to that. You have just built your first "principle chorus" from bottom to top and added a mixture to that. This will give you a nice majestic sound for playing the doxology, or any loud verses of a hymn. I would recommend, however, that in playing that hymn that you take the mixture stop off for some of the verses. It can get monotonous if you keep it on all the time. Just as capital letters can be GREAT for occasional emphasis, BUT REALLY IRRITATING IF YOU USE THEM ALL THE TIME!
Just saying...
on to part four
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Organ registration survival tips (part two)
Part one here.
I'm going to introduce you to the string stops, now. They are the only kind of stops left with 8s and 4s on them. Eights and fours are important, remember, because you will be playing the notes you've asked for (the 8s) and an octave higher (the 4s). The remaining stops have things like fractions and roman numerals on them, and for now I've chosen to avoid these. If you'd rather be safe than sorry, you'll find you can't get into very much trouble as long as you don't use these at first. But in a couple of installments, we'll learn about these, too, because these are your more colorful and interesting stops.
There are also some whole numbers that we've left out--16 and 2. These are the lowest octave, and the highest octave. We'll leave these aside for the moment, too.
String stops are among your softest stops, and they sound vaguely like stringed instruments. They have names that often contain the word "viol" in them, which is your giveaway, or, interestingly, the word "celeste," which in the orchestra is a bell-sounding keyboard instrument that Tchaikovsky likes to use every December to dance in the sugar plum fairies. On the organ it is a sweet-sounding string stop. Dulciana (from dulce, or sweet) is also a string stop. So is unda maris. Since there is a little more variety among string stop names you may just have to try them to find out which ones on your organ are string stops. They will have whole numbers on the stop tabs, and they won't be flutes (ie., with names like "somethingflote" or foundations--"principle" or "octave"), so by process of elimination you can make a pretty good guess already. At Faith, our very symmetrically designed organ has two of these on each manual as well.
Our very symmetrically designed organ is also configured so that the "friendly" stops I've introduced so far are all at the bottom of the stop jamb. The more adventurous ones are all at the top. If you use any of the bottom six in combination you can't get into too much trouble. I'll explain why later on.
We've been treating each "division" of the organ separately, but now I want to introduce you to a way to combine them. This is the first thing that could invite trouble, but I am doing it so that you can prevent having an accident it by knowing how it works.
A coupler is a way to combine sounds from one keyboard (manual) with sounds from another. On our organ (and on most organs) the upper manual is called the "swell" and the lower is called the "great" (the Germans, and the French, have different names for them). If you happen to have a third it will probably be called the "choir." In any case, there are tabs, usually in the middle of the console, that say things like "swell to great" and "choir to great" on them. These, when used, will put all of the stops you are using on the first manual and add them to the second manual. So....
Let's start with that general cancel button I taught you to love.
Now deploy a flute stop on the upper manual. Press the "swell to great 8" tab. Now play something on the upper manual. Play it again on the lower manual. The sound should be identical.
Now add a stop to the lower manual. Let's make it a string stop. Play something. You should now be listening to both the string stop on the lower manual, and the flute stop from the upper manual together. Pretty cool, no?
You can now review everything from our first installment--using the flute stops, the principle stops, and now the string stops, separately and in combination--but this time you aren't limited to the stops on a single manual. You could, say, use the two stops available on the lower manual (assuming your organ has the same number as ours) but this time you can combine them with both of the flute stops on the upper manual, by using the "swell to great" coupler, which adds the two flute stops you've deployed on the upper manual (the swell) to the lower manual (the great). Now by playing the lower manual you are hearing all four flute stops at once. The sound may be richer, fuller--and possibly more out-of-tune (one of the hazards of pipe organs and weather changes)!
Now that you know something about the couplers we can create a routine for the start of every organ piece. There is nothing worse than starting to play and getting an entirely different sound out of the organ than one you expected (especially if it is five times as loud). Much the same way as you check your mirrors before pulling your car out of the driveway, I want you to scan the console before you start to play each time. It will take some time at first but soon you will be able to do it in under five seconds.
First check for the blue lights that indicate the crescendo pedal might be on. No blue lights? Good. We won't be using this feature for a while.
Then check the couplers. Are they off unless you intend them to be on?
Now just like we learned to cross the street (in America, anyway) look left to right. The knobs on the far left are usually the pedal. I haven't talked about that yet because I am assuming you aren't using them. Make sure none of those stops are on. Then check your SWELL--the upper keyboard is generally on your left also. Make sure you've got the stops on that you want. Then look to the right and check the stops on the GREAT. Are we good to go? Then go!
Remember: Crescendo, couplers, pedal, swell, great. Then play.
It may take you some time to master this, but, I urge to you keep at it. If you do this every time you play something--scan the entire console--and if you choose your registration deliberately before the start of each piece--you'll get a lot of practice in a short time and not only will you know what you are doing, your fear of the organ console will go away!
Now you know enough about the organ to sound like a competent organist. Your playing will still be bland--we've still got about half the organ to discuss! But already you know about all the basic features.
And though I've tried to limit the information, any amount of information at first may seem like too much, but you can certainly go back and read these two blogs again (and again) and expect that, if you are playing regular church services, it will probably take a few weeks to gain comfort over all the stuff on that console. But keep at it! It is certainly worth the time to learn, and with knowledge will come an increase in confidence. And you are already setting the seeds to sound like a "real organist" in a relatively short time rather than a pianist who sets some inoffensive stops and leaves them on the whole service. There is nothing that more obviously says "I'm not a real organist" than somebody who uses the same organ sound the entire time. Learning to use the pedals will take longer, but using creative organ registration can come more quickly. And it will make you sound like an organist! And feel like one, too.
on to part three
I'm going to introduce you to the string stops, now. They are the only kind of stops left with 8s and 4s on them. Eights and fours are important, remember, because you will be playing the notes you've asked for (the 8s) and an octave higher (the 4s). The remaining stops have things like fractions and roman numerals on them, and for now I've chosen to avoid these. If you'd rather be safe than sorry, you'll find you can't get into very much trouble as long as you don't use these at first. But in a couple of installments, we'll learn about these, too, because these are your more colorful and interesting stops.
There are also some whole numbers that we've left out--16 and 2. These are the lowest octave, and the highest octave. We'll leave these aside for the moment, too.
String stops are among your softest stops, and they sound vaguely like stringed instruments. They have names that often contain the word "viol" in them, which is your giveaway, or, interestingly, the word "celeste," which in the orchestra is a bell-sounding keyboard instrument that Tchaikovsky likes to use every December to dance in the sugar plum fairies. On the organ it is a sweet-sounding string stop. Dulciana (from dulce, or sweet) is also a string stop. So is unda maris. Since there is a little more variety among string stop names you may just have to try them to find out which ones on your organ are string stops. They will have whole numbers on the stop tabs, and they won't be flutes (ie., with names like "somethingflote" or foundations--"principle" or "octave"), so by process of elimination you can make a pretty good guess already. At Faith, our very symmetrically designed organ has two of these on each manual as well.
Our very symmetrically designed organ is also configured so that the "friendly" stops I've introduced so far are all at the bottom of the stop jamb. The more adventurous ones are all at the top. If you use any of the bottom six in combination you can't get into too much trouble. I'll explain why later on.
the "safe zone"
We've been treating each "division" of the organ separately, but now I want to introduce you to a way to combine them. This is the first thing that could invite trouble, but I am doing it so that you can prevent having an accident it by knowing how it works.
A coupler is a way to combine sounds from one keyboard (manual) with sounds from another. On our organ (and on most organs) the upper manual is called the "swell" and the lower is called the "great" (the Germans, and the French, have different names for them). If you happen to have a third it will probably be called the "choir." In any case, there are tabs, usually in the middle of the console, that say things like "swell to great" and "choir to great" on them. These, when used, will put all of the stops you are using on the first manual and add them to the second manual. So....
Let's start with that general cancel button I taught you to love.
Now deploy a flute stop on the upper manual. Press the "swell to great 8" tab. Now play something on the upper manual. Play it again on the lower manual. The sound should be identical.
Now add a stop to the lower manual. Let's make it a string stop. Play something. You should now be listening to both the string stop on the lower manual, and the flute stop from the upper manual together. Pretty cool, no?
You can now review everything from our first installment--using the flute stops, the principle stops, and now the string stops, separately and in combination--but this time you aren't limited to the stops on a single manual. You could, say, use the two stops available on the lower manual (assuming your organ has the same number as ours) but this time you can combine them with both of the flute stops on the upper manual, by using the "swell to great" coupler, which adds the two flute stops you've deployed on the upper manual (the swell) to the lower manual (the great). Now by playing the lower manual you are hearing all four flute stops at once. The sound may be richer, fuller--and possibly more out-of-tune (one of the hazards of pipe organs and weather changes)!
Now that you know something about the couplers we can create a routine for the start of every organ piece. There is nothing worse than starting to play and getting an entirely different sound out of the organ than one you expected (especially if it is five times as loud). Much the same way as you check your mirrors before pulling your car out of the driveway, I want you to scan the console before you start to play each time. It will take some time at first but soon you will be able to do it in under five seconds.
First check for the blue lights that indicate the crescendo pedal might be on. No blue lights? Good. We won't be using this feature for a while.
Then check the couplers. Are they off unless you intend them to be on?
Now just like we learned to cross the street (in America, anyway) look left to right. The knobs on the far left are usually the pedal. I haven't talked about that yet because I am assuming you aren't using them. Make sure none of those stops are on. Then check your SWELL--the upper keyboard is generally on your left also. Make sure you've got the stops on that you want. Then look to the right and check the stops on the GREAT. Are we good to go? Then go!
Remember: Crescendo, couplers, pedal, swell, great. Then play.
It may take you some time to master this, but, I urge to you keep at it. If you do this every time you play something--scan the entire console--and if you choose your registration deliberately before the start of each piece--you'll get a lot of practice in a short time and not only will you know what you are doing, your fear of the organ console will go away!
Now you know enough about the organ to sound like a competent organist. Your playing will still be bland--we've still got about half the organ to discuss! But already you know about all the basic features.
And though I've tried to limit the information, any amount of information at first may seem like too much, but you can certainly go back and read these two blogs again (and again) and expect that, if you are playing regular church services, it will probably take a few weeks to gain comfort over all the stuff on that console. But keep at it! It is certainly worth the time to learn, and with knowledge will come an increase in confidence. And you are already setting the seeds to sound like a "real organist" in a relatively short time rather than a pianist who sets some inoffensive stops and leaves them on the whole service. There is nothing that more obviously says "I'm not a real organist" than somebody who uses the same organ sound the entire time. Learning to use the pedals will take longer, but using creative organ registration can come more quickly. And it will make you sound like an organist! And feel like one, too.
on to part three
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Organ registration survival tips (part one)
It's perfectly natural for a pianist asked to play the organ in church to be afraid of the instrument. I remember the look on the face of a piano student of mine when she first sat on the organ bench (at my prodding). A year later she was subbing for me in church, looking confident and in command. At first, however, when presented with such a plethora of knobs and buttons it is no wonder she was worried.
A couple of weeks ago I presented a real life example of an adventure I had with organ registration that I hope showed what an amazing and flexible instrument an organ is and what a wide range of sonic possibilities it has. That is all well and good, but of course if you are new to the organ the first thing you are worried about is not whether or not you are going to sound creative and interesting at the organ bench but whether you are going to do something really stupid and make a horrible sound that the whole congregation will hear!
Fear not. Let's back up the truck and start with a few things that are perfectly safe and will keep your playing from exploding unawares all over the church (don't I make this sound like fun!)
Let's make friends with the general cancel button right away. If you are sitting at an organ we want to make sure you are starting with a blank slate. There is usually a button that will immediately cancel everything that another organist has left on so that you won't be inheriting any extra sounds you didn't ask for. It's often located right here and looks like this:
Give it a push. If it causes a lot of stop knobs to dive back into their rest positions, and makes a loud noise, than it is a good thing we did it. Besides, it is a short bit of racket, and even on Sunday morning people won't be that perturbed if you do it once in a while.
Now the other thing I would watch out for is the crescendo pedal. You'll know your organ has one of these (some don't) if the large "gas pedal" on the right says "crescendo" above or below it, and it, when you start to push it down ("accelerate") blue lights start to come on, like this:
Some organs might have a bar that lights up or something. In any case, what the crescendo pedal is doing is gradually turning on stops, usually without making that obvious by physically pushing the knobs out as you would do when you are selecting them, and if it is still on, even though you haven't pulled any stops out the organ will still play--maybe even loudly. I recommend always scanning the organ console before you start to play and making sure those blue lights (or whatever they are) are not on. In American organs the crescendo pedal will override any stops you have or have not set yourself. (In some organs it will not)
Good! Now, when you depress keys or pedal notes you should get no sound at all. If you are still getting sound, call our tech support hotline at---just kidding, we don't have a tech support hotline. Although you could send a picture of the console and I could try to figure it out.
Now I'm going to introduce you to just two types of organ sound. The first are the flute stops. They are easy to find because they all have names with the word flute (or the german flote) in them. like spitzflote, rohrflote, chimney flute (which is the same thing as a rohr flote) or koppelflote (my favorite). The nice thing about these is that they aren't very loud and they have a pleasing sound. Your organ may have several. Play a piece of music using just one of them. Perhaps a verse of a hymn or a short section of something you are working on. Then push that one back in and try another. The idea is to try them one at a time and notice the subtle differences between them. Then try them together. There are two on each of the two keyboards on the organ at Faith. One of the them is called a Bourdon, which does not have the word flute in it anywhere, and is currently the only exception I can think of to what I just said. It means "covered" because the pipes are capped at the top and it makes a dark, mellow flute sound.
Flute stops will have whole numbers beneath their names like 8 and 4. Eight is your basic pitch--play a middle C, get a middle C. Four will give you an octave higher. If you put them together you have a nice blend. If you use a 4 by itself it may start to sound like a choir of chipmunks, but pleasant nonetheless.
The only problem with flute stops is that they are not likely to be loud enough for congregational singing. So if you have hymns to play you need to acquaint yourself with the foundation stops. These sound a lot like the flute stops but they are usually quite a bit louder. Foundation stops form the basic, fundamental sound of the organ. They are also marked with whole numbers like 8 and 4 and in most organs they are known as principles. Your organ probably has a stop marked principle 8. Try it out. It is likely to pair well with an "octave 4" with is also a foundation stop.
This would be a good way to start with hymn accompanying. It will be a bit bland, but it will be safe.
Do me a favor, though. Don't just pick one group of stops and leave that on the entire service. If this is your first week and you are trying to get through an entire church service, I understand that you aren't very comfortable with a lob of knobs. But at least do this: for preludes, offertories, and anything the congregation is not singing, use some combination of flute stops. When the congregation is singing, use the principle stops. That means you will have to pull out (to turn on) or push in (to turn off) a couple of stops before each piece you play. I want you to get used to doing that--be aware of those stop combinations--don't just set them to something safe and leave them that way forever.
Besides, as long as you are using stops with 8s and 4s on them, you won't be able to make any really unpleasant sound anyway.
on to the second article in this (5-part) series
A couple of weeks ago I presented a real life example of an adventure I had with organ registration that I hope showed what an amazing and flexible instrument an organ is and what a wide range of sonic possibilities it has. That is all well and good, but of course if you are new to the organ the first thing you are worried about is not whether or not you are going to sound creative and interesting at the organ bench but whether you are going to do something really stupid and make a horrible sound that the whole congregation will hear!
Fear not. Let's back up the truck and start with a few things that are perfectly safe and will keep your playing from exploding unawares all over the church (don't I make this sound like fun!)
Let's make friends with the general cancel button right away. If you are sitting at an organ we want to make sure you are starting with a blank slate. There is usually a button that will immediately cancel everything that another organist has left on so that you won't be inheriting any extra sounds you didn't ask for. It's often located right here and looks like this:
Give it a push. If it causes a lot of stop knobs to dive back into their rest positions, and makes a loud noise, than it is a good thing we did it. Besides, it is a short bit of racket, and even on Sunday morning people won't be that perturbed if you do it once in a while.
Now the other thing I would watch out for is the crescendo pedal. You'll know your organ has one of these (some don't) if the large "gas pedal" on the right says "crescendo" above or below it, and it, when you start to push it down ("accelerate") blue lights start to come on, like this:
Some organs might have a bar that lights up or something. In any case, what the crescendo pedal is doing is gradually turning on stops, usually without making that obvious by physically pushing the knobs out as you would do when you are selecting them, and if it is still on, even though you haven't pulled any stops out the organ will still play--maybe even loudly. I recommend always scanning the organ console before you start to play and making sure those blue lights (or whatever they are) are not on. In American organs the crescendo pedal will override any stops you have or have not set yourself. (In some organs it will not)
Good! Now, when you depress keys or pedal notes you should get no sound at all. If you are still getting sound, call our tech support hotline at---just kidding, we don't have a tech support hotline. Although you could send a picture of the console and I could try to figure it out.
Now I'm going to introduce you to just two types of organ sound. The first are the flute stops. They are easy to find because they all have names with the word flute (or the german flote) in them. like spitzflote, rohrflote, chimney flute (which is the same thing as a rohr flote) or koppelflote (my favorite). The nice thing about these is that they aren't very loud and they have a pleasing sound. Your organ may have several. Play a piece of music using just one of them. Perhaps a verse of a hymn or a short section of something you are working on. Then push that one back in and try another. The idea is to try them one at a time and notice the subtle differences between them. Then try them together. There are two on each of the two keyboards on the organ at Faith. One of the them is called a Bourdon, which does not have the word flute in it anywhere, and is currently the only exception I can think of to what I just said. It means "covered" because the pipes are capped at the top and it makes a dark, mellow flute sound.
Flute stops will have whole numbers beneath their names like 8 and 4. Eight is your basic pitch--play a middle C, get a middle C. Four will give you an octave higher. If you put them together you have a nice blend. If you use a 4 by itself it may start to sound like a choir of chipmunks, but pleasant nonetheless.
The only problem with flute stops is that they are not likely to be loud enough for congregational singing. So if you have hymns to play you need to acquaint yourself with the foundation stops. These sound a lot like the flute stops but they are usually quite a bit louder. Foundation stops form the basic, fundamental sound of the organ. They are also marked with whole numbers like 8 and 4 and in most organs they are known as principles. Your organ probably has a stop marked principle 8. Try it out. It is likely to pair well with an "octave 4" with is also a foundation stop.
This would be a good way to start with hymn accompanying. It will be a bit bland, but it will be safe.
Do me a favor, though. Don't just pick one group of stops and leave that on the entire service. If this is your first week and you are trying to get through an entire church service, I understand that you aren't very comfortable with a lob of knobs. But at least do this: for preludes, offertories, and anything the congregation is not singing, use some combination of flute stops. When the congregation is singing, use the principle stops. That means you will have to pull out (to turn on) or push in (to turn off) a couple of stops before each piece you play. I want you to get used to doing that--be aware of those stop combinations--don't just set them to something safe and leave them that way forever.
Besides, as long as you are using stops with 8s and 4s on them, you won't be able to make any really unpleasant sound anyway.
on to the second article in this (5-part) series
Monday, October 26, 2015
It was there all along
Yesterday in church I played a unique little organ piece by Johann Sebastian Bach. Unique because it asked me to use the sequialtera.
The sesquialwhat? You might be asking. Our associate pastor wondered that very thing.
Sesquialtera literally means "relating to or denoting the ratio of 3:2, as in the interval of a fifth." (I know this because I looked it up.) Basically if you played a C, you would hear a G instead. It's an odd sounding stop, indeed, but that really isn't the point of this installment.
What made Bach's piece odd was that he specifically asked for the organist to use one at the beginning of his setting of "Ein feste Burg" aka "A Mighty Fortress [is our God]" and there are in fact two reason this is unusual.
The first is that Bach almost never indicated which stops he wanted the organist to use, beyond occasionally asking for "full organ" (organo pleno). The second is that this a really weird stop to be asking for by itself, and the lower voice should be supplied by a bassoon stop, which is also quite colorful. It is a very interesting combination.
We are told, however, that Bach's choice of stops often surprised his contemporaries, who thought they wouldn't sound very agreeably, and were astonished to find how well Bach knew how to find pleasing and interesting combinations.
It is also theorized that Bach wrote the piece to show off the newly improved church organ at his second church, which happened to have added these stops, and he wanted to take advantage of this rather interesting and recently acquired sound.
The reason I am mentioning all this, however, is because this fall I am writing several blogs to help persons who are either young or beginning organists, or people who are basically pianists playing the organ and are not familiar and/or comfortable with the instrument. Specifically, this group of blogs has to do with the topic of organ registration, namely, what to do with all of those knobs!
For those of you entrusted with an organ, and feeling somewhat intimidated by it, let me suggest that while that is perfectly understandable, I hope you'll also realize what an opportunity you have to explore all of those knobs. So many possibilities exist in this instrument!
Including some right under your nose. Let me make a clean breast of something. In 2004, when I was still a piano major in graduate school, I was just beginning to take an interest in the pipe organ. I played Bach's piece for the first time at my church in Baltimore. A year later, I moved to Illinois, and was chagrined to discover that the organ there had no sesquialtera. I had grown rather fond of that queer sounding stop; I didn't use it a whole lot, but it was awfully flavorful when I did.
It was about 10 years later, during which I gradually took more and more of an interest in the music of the organ, and began reading books about organ registration, going to online resources, basically anything I could find, that I found something curious, which also made me feel foolish. That stop I had been missing for years was actually there!
A sesquilatera is something known as a "compound stop." The one at my former church was marked "sesquilatera II." The roman number "two" means that two different ranks of pipes are joined together to make up this stop, and that you can access both of them joined together by pulling this single stop knob.
On the other hand, it turns out you can make your own sesquialtera by drawing two other stops, known as the Tierce, and the Nazard. Pulling these stops both out will give the same result. Too bad it took so many years to find that out!
In other words, some stops can actually be created by building them from the right combinations of other stops. This is what is so fascinating, and, for better or worse, sometimes takes a while to find out.
I'll back the truck up for a few weeks and talk about more basic ideas for organ registration to help anyone who is getting started, but I hope you find this sufficiently interesting to start experimenting with the stops on your organ, which, granted, can be dangerous if you do it on Sunday morning without checking the results during practice, but can lead to some pretty interesting results.
As for the old sesquialtera, I happen to have a recording of it from my old church. It is part of a series of articles I did about the organ back in 2004, and which included recordings of every stop available on that organ. Here it is: [listen]
I tried to have a little fun with the various stops, so if you think you might be going a little crazy, let me assure you, that really IS the opening of "smoke on the water" on the sesquialtera.
Is that enough to make you want a sesquialtera of your own? It helps if your stop knobs have fractions on them; we'll discuss that in a few weeks.
In the meantime, here is a recent recording from the organ in Illinois, of J. S. Bach's Ein feste Burg, complete with the opening combination of sesquialtera and bassoon:
[listen]
The sesquialwhat? You might be asking. Our associate pastor wondered that very thing.
Sesquialtera literally means "relating to or denoting the ratio of 3:2, as in the interval of a fifth." (I know this because I looked it up.) Basically if you played a C, you would hear a G instead. It's an odd sounding stop, indeed, but that really isn't the point of this installment.
What made Bach's piece odd was that he specifically asked for the organist to use one at the beginning of his setting of "Ein feste Burg" aka "A Mighty Fortress [is our God]" and there are in fact two reason this is unusual.
The first is that Bach almost never indicated which stops he wanted the organist to use, beyond occasionally asking for "full organ" (organo pleno). The second is that this a really weird stop to be asking for by itself, and the lower voice should be supplied by a bassoon stop, which is also quite colorful. It is a very interesting combination.
We are told, however, that Bach's choice of stops often surprised his contemporaries, who thought they wouldn't sound very agreeably, and were astonished to find how well Bach knew how to find pleasing and interesting combinations.
It is also theorized that Bach wrote the piece to show off the newly improved church organ at his second church, which happened to have added these stops, and he wanted to take advantage of this rather interesting and recently acquired sound.
The reason I am mentioning all this, however, is because this fall I am writing several blogs to help persons who are either young or beginning organists, or people who are basically pianists playing the organ and are not familiar and/or comfortable with the instrument. Specifically, this group of blogs has to do with the topic of organ registration, namely, what to do with all of those knobs!
For those of you entrusted with an organ, and feeling somewhat intimidated by it, let me suggest that while that is perfectly understandable, I hope you'll also realize what an opportunity you have to explore all of those knobs. So many possibilities exist in this instrument!
Including some right under your nose. Let me make a clean breast of something. In 2004, when I was still a piano major in graduate school, I was just beginning to take an interest in the pipe organ. I played Bach's piece for the first time at my church in Baltimore. A year later, I moved to Illinois, and was chagrined to discover that the organ there had no sesquialtera. I had grown rather fond of that queer sounding stop; I didn't use it a whole lot, but it was awfully flavorful when I did.
It was about 10 years later, during which I gradually took more and more of an interest in the music of the organ, and began reading books about organ registration, going to online resources, basically anything I could find, that I found something curious, which also made me feel foolish. That stop I had been missing for years was actually there!
A sesquilatera is something known as a "compound stop." The one at my former church was marked "sesquilatera II." The roman number "two" means that two different ranks of pipes are joined together to make up this stop, and that you can access both of them joined together by pulling this single stop knob.
On the other hand, it turns out you can make your own sesquialtera by drawing two other stops, known as the Tierce, and the Nazard. Pulling these stops both out will give the same result. Too bad it took so many years to find that out!
In other words, some stops can actually be created by building them from the right combinations of other stops. This is what is so fascinating, and, for better or worse, sometimes takes a while to find out.
I'll back the truck up for a few weeks and talk about more basic ideas for organ registration to help anyone who is getting started, but I hope you find this sufficiently interesting to start experimenting with the stops on your organ, which, granted, can be dangerous if you do it on Sunday morning without checking the results during practice, but can lead to some pretty interesting results.
As for the old sesquialtera, I happen to have a recording of it from my old church. It is part of a series of articles I did about the organ back in 2004, and which included recordings of every stop available on that organ. Here it is: [listen]
I tried to have a little fun with the various stops, so if you think you might be going a little crazy, let me assure you, that really IS the opening of "smoke on the water" on the sesquialtera.
Is that enough to make you want a sesquialtera of your own? It helps if your stop knobs have fractions on them; we'll discuss that in a few weeks.
In the meantime, here is a recent recording from the organ in Illinois, of J. S. Bach's Ein feste Burg, complete with the opening combination of sesquialtera and bassoon:
[listen]
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Not too loud, now!
About a month ago, I was visiting another church. After the service, I went up to introduce myself to the organist. I had to get in line behind a lady who was complaining that the hymns were too loud. Specifically the first line of the hymn introduction, which she said, seemed like a jolt.
When I got a chance I commiserated with the organist, who was quick to point out that she was really a pianist playing the organ. That's ok, I said. I got my start that way, too. I now consider myself an organist as well, but that's only been in the last few years. There are really two main differences between an organist and a pianist pretending to be an organist, and one is pretty obvious. It is familiarity with the pedal board. Most pianist-organists don't use their feet very often. Very well, there is a lot of literature that doesn't make use of the pedals much or at all--we'll explore that sometime. The other difference is in the handling of the organ stops, the registration. That comes with experience as well. Over the next several weeks we'll talk about that so that you who are pianists pretending to be organists will feel more confident handling the instrument. It really is a pretty terrific beast, and allows for a number of sonic possibilities.
The immediate problem, however, the one that the woman complained of, is pretty easily taken care of. There are two main approaches.
One is to recognize that most hymns in hymnbooks are written in 4-part harmony all the way through. They are not really intended as keyboard accompaniments. Sometimes they are rather awkward to play on pianos and organs. But it is not necessary to play all the notes all the time.
In fact, if you need to ease into a hymn, rather than jolting your congregation at the outset, here are a few things I do virtually every time I play a hymn.
I almost NEVER play a pickup note with full harmony. In the hymnal, the first note of the melody will be accompanied by a full chord. Leave it out. Save it for the downbeat of the first measure, at least.
Fairly often, particularly if it is a meditative type of hymn, I'll play the entire first line of the hymn with the melody alone. That's right, one note. Leave out the alto, tenor and bass.
When you get to the second line, you might add the bass, and just play the top and bottom voices. This way, there is a gradual crescendo of texture, throughout the hymn introduction. You can then save the full 4-part treatment for the last phrase of the hymn.
I've been assuming, of course, that you are playing the entire hymn through once as an introduction. There are other ways to do this. You might only play the last two phrases of a hymn. In any case, find ways not to do everything on full throttle, by leaving out some of the voices at the beginning.
Another way to provide tonal relief has to do with the choice of organ stops. I suggested to my organist colleague that she consider using less full registrations. Pianists who are not comfortable with the different stops tend to pull them all out a lot of the time. But the organ allows a great degree of dynamic control, and when I play a hymn, I rarely use the same stop combination for more than one verse. And I never use a full, robust organ sound except in the climactic verse of a hymn (which isn't always the last one, by the way).
I encouraged my colleague to experiment with different combinations of stops. Getting to know them well takes time, but over the next few weeks we'll explore this topic in detail. I find it quite interesting.
When I came to my current church, just over ten years ago, I remember introducing myself to members of the 8 am congregation. I went into the pews before the service and said, " Hi, I'm Michael Hammer, your new organist." And they would say things like, "Hi, I'm Bill don't play the organ too loud." "Hi, I'm Geraldine don't play the organ too loud." I noticed there seemed to be an awful lot of people with the same last name!
Fortunately, I've never gotten that complaint since I started. It may be partly owing to the practices I've outlined above. Also, the woman I replaced was a pianist, and may not have varied the organ registrations for the verses of a hymn. It is interesting: in my travels over the past couple of years I have noticed that I seem to be the only one who changes registration between verses (for which many members of my congregation have thanked me, actually!) and, despite what appears to be the prevailing wisdom, have not felt the need to provide a full organ sound for every verse of the hymn (and if the choir is in really good form that day, I've been known to drop out altogether and let the choir and congregation sing a verse without me!). It may not be that I play the organ any less loud than my predecessor, but that I don't play that loudly all the time.
If you are a pianist in an organist position, the good news is that it really won't take you that long to get comfortable with organ registration; you may even enjoy it! And it will help you sound like a "real organist!" So don't be discouraged. Take advantage of your weekly position to learn a little bit at a time, and be a little bit better every week. That's been my motto. It's taken me pretty far, so far.
When I got a chance I commiserated with the organist, who was quick to point out that she was really a pianist playing the organ. That's ok, I said. I got my start that way, too. I now consider myself an organist as well, but that's only been in the last few years. There are really two main differences between an organist and a pianist pretending to be an organist, and one is pretty obvious. It is familiarity with the pedal board. Most pianist-organists don't use their feet very often. Very well, there is a lot of literature that doesn't make use of the pedals much or at all--we'll explore that sometime. The other difference is in the handling of the organ stops, the registration. That comes with experience as well. Over the next several weeks we'll talk about that so that you who are pianists pretending to be organists will feel more confident handling the instrument. It really is a pretty terrific beast, and allows for a number of sonic possibilities.
The immediate problem, however, the one that the woman complained of, is pretty easily taken care of. There are two main approaches.
One is to recognize that most hymns in hymnbooks are written in 4-part harmony all the way through. They are not really intended as keyboard accompaniments. Sometimes they are rather awkward to play on pianos and organs. But it is not necessary to play all the notes all the time.
In fact, if you need to ease into a hymn, rather than jolting your congregation at the outset, here are a few things I do virtually every time I play a hymn.
I almost NEVER play a pickup note with full harmony. In the hymnal, the first note of the melody will be accompanied by a full chord. Leave it out. Save it for the downbeat of the first measure, at least.
Fairly often, particularly if it is a meditative type of hymn, I'll play the entire first line of the hymn with the melody alone. That's right, one note. Leave out the alto, tenor and bass.
When you get to the second line, you might add the bass, and just play the top and bottom voices. This way, there is a gradual crescendo of texture, throughout the hymn introduction. You can then save the full 4-part treatment for the last phrase of the hymn.
I've been assuming, of course, that you are playing the entire hymn through once as an introduction. There are other ways to do this. You might only play the last two phrases of a hymn. In any case, find ways not to do everything on full throttle, by leaving out some of the voices at the beginning.
Another way to provide tonal relief has to do with the choice of organ stops. I suggested to my organist colleague that she consider using less full registrations. Pianists who are not comfortable with the different stops tend to pull them all out a lot of the time. But the organ allows a great degree of dynamic control, and when I play a hymn, I rarely use the same stop combination for more than one verse. And I never use a full, robust organ sound except in the climactic verse of a hymn (which isn't always the last one, by the way).
I encouraged my colleague to experiment with different combinations of stops. Getting to know them well takes time, but over the next few weeks we'll explore this topic in detail. I find it quite interesting.
When I came to my current church, just over ten years ago, I remember introducing myself to members of the 8 am congregation. I went into the pews before the service and said, " Hi, I'm Michael Hammer, your new organist." And they would say things like, "Hi, I'm Bill don't play the organ too loud." "Hi, I'm Geraldine don't play the organ too loud." I noticed there seemed to be an awful lot of people with the same last name!
Fortunately, I've never gotten that complaint since I started. It may be partly owing to the practices I've outlined above. Also, the woman I replaced was a pianist, and may not have varied the organ registrations for the verses of a hymn. It is interesting: in my travels over the past couple of years I have noticed that I seem to be the only one who changes registration between verses (for which many members of my congregation have thanked me, actually!) and, despite what appears to be the prevailing wisdom, have not felt the need to provide a full organ sound for every verse of the hymn (and if the choir is in really good form that day, I've been known to drop out altogether and let the choir and congregation sing a verse without me!). It may not be that I play the organ any less loud than my predecessor, but that I don't play that loudly all the time.
If you are a pianist in an organist position, the good news is that it really won't take you that long to get comfortable with organ registration; you may even enjoy it! And it will help you sound like a "real organist!" So don't be discouraged. Take advantage of your weekly position to learn a little bit at a time, and be a little bit better every week. That's been my motto. It's taken me pretty far, so far.
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