Thinking warm thoughts

How many of you know Edith Bunker?

She's a character from a 1970s television sitcom called "All in the Family." Unlike her argumentative, bigoted husband Archie, Edith was the nicest person you could ever meet and everybody just loved her. But she was a little...odd, sometimes.

In one episode, the family is looking at old photographs, and she observes that she always wonders what happened to the people in the picture right after the picture was taken. One moment, there they are, still for the camera, the part we have on record, and then, they must have all started to move, but where? The camera didn't capture that part. The family just look at her like she's gone nuts.

I have a little bit of Edith in me. Sorry, did I type that out loud? Don't tell anybody.

A week ago today the folks from the heating and cooling service came to our church and inspected the furnace and basically switched everything over from air conditioning to heat. We are now, officially, in the cold and dark part of the year. And it got me thinking about organ music. For some reason, listening to some of the music I've played in past years seems to warm me up. Probably because it reminds me of precisely that time of the year when the world outside is cold and the sanctuary is (moderately) warm, and, especially at Christmas, there is musical cheer to be had as we survive and thrive our way through the season.

That's not really all that weird, is it? People tend often to have memories associated with pieces of music. I just happen to have a lot of other layers to put on top of them. But there are still pieces of music that I associate with certain seasons of the year, probably because that's when I first learned them. Some pieces remind me of autumn, some of spring, and many of winter. Such associations may or may not have anything to do with the music, or any kind of rationale. They might not even be conscious. I have occasionally found that if I have to put away a composition in progress because of other demands that I sometimes reflexively begin working on it again at the same time the following year.

As I said, that isn't all that rational. But then, human beings are not that rational, and living on this constantly warming and constantly cooling planet isn't that rational. If you live in the temperate zone north of the equator, this time of year the planet is cooling off pretty fast. This week, in fact, the morning low has been below freezing. And the sun won't stay out past 6:30 anymore, to say nothing of what will happen in a week when daylight saving time goes away.

That can be a bit of an inconvenience, and eventually it will probably be a psychological downer as well, but for our ancestors, too much darkness and coldness had consequences. It could inspire fear with good reason. You could really feel that chill in your bones and know what you were in for: the long siege that was winter. Time to go find a cave to keep warm. My cave just happens to be a church sanctuary. And while I'm in there, I like to make loud sounds by depressing plastic levers attached to great metal pipes with air blowing through. Makes sense, right?

That's not what keeps me warm, though. The heat keeps me warm. At a former church I used to wear a thick jacket when I practiced because the sanctuary was ice during the week. Odd, this organ music keeping me warm thing, isn't it?

21st century Americans have frequently gotten away from the elements and a sense of being part of the ecosystem. We need holidays to remind us. Our ancestors celebrated the harvest because being able to eat was kind of important. These days it's just an excuse to watch more football. And they celebrated--or at least marked--the transitions of the seasons. The air getting colder, darkness settling across the land, an excellent time to confront our fears: the big ones. Fear of death, fear of bodily harm, fear of the unknown. When the church came to town it learned that this was too big a holiday to simply wipe out, so, like Christmas, the church simply wrote over top of an existing holiday. It tried to introduce doctrinal reasons for why we celebrate them. The rational mind finds this very inviting. But the irrational part of us still celebrates the chill in the bones, the loss of the sun, the return of spring. It's an important part of us, doctrine or no doctrine.

And it's that way with music. You can learn it, you can study it, you can make erudite comments about it, but those gut level associations are still there, grinning at us, nonsensical as they are.

So if you need to stay warm this winter, there's a healthy supply of pipe organ music over at pianonoise.com. And to my friends in Australia, where things are just starting to heat up, if you need to keep cool the next few months, just listen to some of the piano music instead.

Don't ask.

Scenes from Adolescence

In November of 1984, 29 years ago next month, I played the organ in church for the first time. The regular organist for our little white church with a steeple was out having a baby. It was supposed to be a two week stint but turned into four after there were complications. I had achieved the grand old age of 13 and had a  bit of trouble reaching the pedals, but no matter.

After that I served as a substitute organist to a lot of different churches of various denominations. In the Catholic church I had to sing and figure out which prayer the priest was using. For the Baptists it was enough to raise the roof with an enthusiastic pianistic shout. The Lutherans had their own set of doxologies and prayer responses. And of course the Methodists had more potluck dinners.

Back then there weren't a lot of musical resources available to me. I think I owned maybe two books of organ music, one of which purported to be the music of J. S. Bach, whom everybody's heard of whether they want to, or are able to, play his music or not. I wonder now where that book has gotten to.

Our local music store had things like Mel Bay's Big Note Guitar Method and possibly Mozart's Greatest Hits, but not a lot of organ music. Eventually my mother and I would go up to a large music store an hour away in the city.

But for now it was that little, very edited, book, which contained Eight Little Preludes and Fugues, topped off, I think, with the Little G Minor Fugue. I was pretty lazy, so I didn't bother learning the Fugues, which were harder, and besides, as I mentioned, I couldn't reach the pedals very well anyhow. So I played the things that were easy and required less coordination.

Boy was that a different era.

The little town where I grew up has become a sprawling endless burb and vast resources are available on that newfangled internet thing to anybody regardless of how small their community and I am now completely on the other side of college where I learned to discipline my mind and gained a pretty serious technical command of the instrument--the piano, anyhow, and later on, the organ. It was a long time ago, in a village far, far away.

And yet, here I am again. This week I made a recording of two of those little pieces that might well have been the first things I played on the organ as barely a teenager. I learned the fugues this time, too. I'm quite sure I played them significantly better than I did then, also. I certainly practiced them with more focus. The Fugues are a bit trickier than I would have thought but I still could get them licked in an hour or less.

I wasn't really planning on visiting the past like this. I assumed that past era and its repertoire was gone. I wasn't sure an organist who takes on large works of Widor and Vierne should even be playing these "little" preludes and fugues. But this week is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Johann Ludwig Krebs and I decided to go on another of my musical investigations into a composer I didn't know and it turns out that those 8 Little Preludes and Fugues by J. S. Bach might not be by J. S. Bach after all. Some scholars think, or thought, that they might have been written by Krebs. At the moment, I'm inclined to that opinion myself. I'll explain why in another post.

For now, I'll offer up a bit of the distant past as I experienced it. Pieces that are often among the first for young organists to tackle. It is kind of nice to get around to playing those fugues finally! And I do plan to play all eight of them this time. It's as though I'm finally injecting discipline and method that nobody grounded me in when I was growing up in that little village, playing on old uprights and small electronic organs. I'm finally finishing something I started a long time ago. It's been interesting visiting the past that way. Remembering the circumstances of life at the time, and rediscovering, or just discovering, the music. My entire orientation toward music and everything else has changed in the meantime.

I don't think these are masterpieces, but some of them are not too bad. There are awkward things in them, but they have some nice moments as well. I like them less now than I did then, but I've also found more to appreciate about them because I have a richer understanding of music in general. So I'll save my detailed appraisal of the pieces for another time. Besides, I don't want to be unkind toward Mr. Krebs on his birthday.

I like the fugues the best now. Is there any hope for me?


Prelude and Fugue in F

Prelude and Fugue in G Minor

The year in Review

While the church year stretches from December through November, the active year runs September through May. For a large portion of my life I have been experiencing this rhythm as one enormous breath, in and out, relax a bit in the summer months, and head back for another intense academic year, beginning with the opening ceremonies of September, punctuated by Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and finishing, exhausted, in June. Now that another such spasm of activity is in the rear view mirror, I need to process it--and, eventually, get a little rest.

Much of the year has gone by in the rush. The hymns, the anthems, the service music, perhaps remembered, perhaps not--we may visit some of it again next year as we plan. But the music I played on the organ for the services has been preserved because I recorded it myself--we don't record our services--which has the happy effect of reminding me, well after the fact, what some of that rush was about. For many congregants, what the organist plays is of no significance in a service, but to me, those musical offerings are an opportunity to offer to the community some of the best musical thinking of the past several centuries, from various parts of our great tradition, as well as the here and now. Fortunately, some in my congregation think so, too. More on that another time. For now, I pause on the landing to offer again some of the music I played this year. It is out of context this time, but it can live again in a new skin.

In September we kicked off in a celebratory mood--often the week the choir returns is an occasion for high church. I discovered a fun little French Toccata by Dubois over the summer. I have since discovered a handful of these flashy Toccatas, which are not hard to play and sound so very festive. The next week it was a piece by Michael Praetorius called (in English) "Praise the Lord, O My Soul." Notice that the first week was French, from the 19th century, the second week German, from the dawn of the 17th. We'll be keeping score. I don't like to linger in one era or national for too long, though the transitions aren't always quite so quick. One thing I like to note about the Praetorius is that, as a trained pianist (with an advanced degree) but an untrained organist, I really discovered a lot of new organ literature this year--most of what I played was new to me. And I learned a good bit about how to make the organ sound differently (registration). I had a little help--I read a couple of books and asked a few questions, though mostly it was through experimentation. I happen to like the interesting combination in the second part of this piece, achieved by double the flutes above and below (There is a button or knob for just about anything you can think up on an organ, the trick is to think to use it, and to use it wisely.).

One of the difficulties with this year is that I got sick four times (a new record?), twice in the fall, a month apart. Thus the middle of the semester consisted of piece less ambitious than originally planned. But at least I had a plan B and muddled through. I should mention that on World Communion Sunday I played from a another set I discovered over the summer of 10 communion meditations by a living Scottish organist, Evelyn Stell. I particularly enjoy the pieces because while they are very easy the music is also good (I can't say that about many another simple piece of music) and so I get a week to relax (and practice ahead) and not feel the least embarrassment about not playing anything more complicated. When it is well said it does not need to be hard.

Thanksgiving rushed on past, and I played a few weeks of music on the piano--I think this is a new low. There was no piano whatsoever in the spring semester. A piece by my french cousin Marteau based on the hymn "Now Thank We All Our God," came the week before one of my unusual selections: the first movement from the Sibelius piano sonata--rare, not liturgical, and beautiful. I forget now what was the point in playing it, but I know it was meant for a particular week and for a particular reason.

Then Christmas. This year, some short, delightful Noels by the 18th century Frenchman Claude-Louis Daquin. Here's one, it's his number VII.

I mentioned the need for variety, particularly as it reminds us that we are a part of something much larger than ourselves, but I think this year may have been dominated by Frenchmen. We'll see in a moment when I do the final tally.

The spring semester was certainly very french. I did something rather odd for Transfiguration Sunday and played an offertoire based on an Easter hymn (by Guilman), then spent Lent working my way through something English (20th century), Italian (18th) and the biggest project of the year, to play two of Cesar Franck's monumental organ Chorales in back to back weeks during Lent.

After that all I have the heart to include are the pieces I played on Pentecost, by living Lithuanian composer Vidas Pinkevicius (Veni Creator Spiritus), and the final "hymn to exhaustion" (my title, not his), a piece celebration summer and renewal (in every sense) by Brahms, (It gives my heart joy....)

This is the first year I managed to record absolutely every week's selection--last year I came close but missed a few in the rush. (It is also the first year I managed to make time to write up a year in review!) The complete rundown is available as an archived page at pianonoise.com here.

Now the count, because I am curious. By era: I played the following number of works from each century:

17th--7, 18th--10, 19th--8, 20th--9, 21st--6

That strikes me as very well balanced, particularly as I didn't think too much about it as the time.

Now as to nationality:

American--4, Austrian--1,Dutch--2, Finnish--1, French--7, German--8, Italian--3, Scottish--4

It turns out the Germans have a slight edge. This is by number of works played, not by number of composers represented.

If you are wondering about the low numbers, I am counting only the works I recorded (which means I left out two 20th centuries works for which I have not obtained copyright permission to post), and, although there are three slots in theory for each services, I always improvise the postlude, which no one listens to anyway, and is particularly short at the first service (I also need to rush across the hall to start the next one). Often someone sings the offertory as well, which means I can concentrate on one quality selection each week. Some weeks there are two.

If you couldn't care less about any of this, I'll be back next week with something you'll find more relevant. I just had to put this year to bed though for my own records, and also so I can check on how thoroughly I am applying certain principles in choosing music--principles which I think are pretty important after all.