G.P.S. - an update

February 12

The Recital Dreams have begun.

I always have them. They always involve being unprepared, and rushing to get to the venue, usually in some hopeless manner, knowing that I will not make it. I will miss my own recital, and even were I to show up, I would be a laughing-stock for my complete lack of preparation. On the rare occasions when I make it as far as playing the programme, sometimes people are throwing rotten tomatoes at me; sometimes they are booing, or walking out as I play. More often, I wake up before that.

This time, I was practicing on the recital instrument – the spinet piano back in my old family home, but it had been pushed into the hallway against the wall. This is where the recital was to take place. And there was music that I had never seen, and could not play.

But I probably wouldn't get there anyway. Later in the dream, I was travelling to the venue. I was riding a sort of cargo-carrying skateboard down the West Virginia Turnpike, south of Flat Top Mountain. It is a steep downhill grade of several miles, with a wicked curve at the bottom. I was on my skateboard, organ shoes and music in hand, trying to steer it around the curves (and I don't even know how to ride a skateboard), going faster and faster, and knowing that I would not make that curve at the bottom.

February 7-14

The fingering is now complete: five hours of work, most of it done at home with the paper “keyboard.” I am ready for the First Workout. Or I would be, except there remain a number of things that stand ahead of it in line.

As noted previously, Real Life intrudes on an effort such as this. Even in the limited aspect of Real Life that is involved with playing the organ and piano, recital music must take second place behind the ongoing services of the church. Several musical items have kept me busy in recent weeks:

- the Anthem for Jan. 23, “How lovely are the messengers” (Mendelssohn)
- several items for Evensong on February 6: Stanford in A and the “Prelude, Fugue, and Variation” of Franck – another of the Six Pieces from which the G.P.S. is drawn.
- the Mozart “Laudate Dominum,” mentioned in these pages
- Bach Prelude and Fugue in C (BWV 545) for last Sunday's postlude
- an organ concerto of Handel for the March 6 Evensong

One might wonder whether I neglect our church's contemporary service by paying so much attention to my duties as Organist. The contemporary service is larger in attendance than the traditional service, and it deserves a large share of my efforts.

It is not that simple, for the rhythms of preparation for the contemporary and traditional services differ. The selection of music takes about the same amount of time for the two services. I spend much time with the adult choir (and most of the work cited above was with anthem and canticle accompaniments, not preludes and postludes) – but I spend an equal amount of time in preparation and rehearsals with the youth choir, which sings for the contemporary service more than it does for the traditional service. I spend time preparing voluntaries for the traditional services of the Eucharist and monthly Evensong, and working on the hymn accompaniments. With the contemporary service, I improvise postludes and occasional preludes, and I try to play the congregational songs with imagination, not just parroting what is on the page. Practice for this is more a matter of skill development than specific preparation for a given Sunday morning, so it is hard to compare with the work at the organ. And my work on music such as Bach, Mozart, and Handel helps develop the technical proficiency to play the piano for the contemporary service.

Even my preparations for the recital on March 16 contribute indirectly to my duties at both services. Music faculty are expected to present annual recitals. The reason is that serious engagement with the work of performance will make them better teachers. The same applies to me; I would quickly grow sloppy in my playing if I never played the sort of music that one finds in a Bach prelude and fugue – or the Grande Pièce Symphonique.

But I do wonder whether I should undertake something like this again. Part of being an Organist-Choirmaster is never having the time to do either part of the work satisfactorily. Perhaps it means that I should not attempt to play outside of my immediate service-playing duties, both contemporary and traditional, not until I am fulfilling all of the duties assigned to me – something that has never happened in my ten-plus years in this place, and never will; it is a bigger job than I can do with integrity. I have presented arguments for (and against) playing recitals, but does this carry a priority high enough to keep me from other duties?

At least I am tacking one-third of the hypothetical programme I drew up in the linked essay back in 2008. It is a start. And I still have no answer to this:

“The question of utility is one that I cannot answer, any more than Messiaen's apple tree; it makes apples, whether they are of any use to anyone or not. Perhaps God can put my music-making to some use; I hope so. But that part of it is up to Him."

--
Footnote: Those who follow the link to the essay from 2008 might notice my comments about the university organist. At that point, he had just been hired to begin work that fall. I had not met him, and knew of him only by hearsay from some then-current organ students. He has turned out to be a fine organist, and he has done much to re-establish the organ department under conditions made almost impossible by the Flood later that year. I think well of him, and repent of my previous comments.

Another Footnote: I mentioned in that same essay that I had not played a proper organ recital for over a decade. Since then I have: March 2009 as a way to raise money for the repair work on the organ and the LEED certification of the construction project. The programme featured the Brahms Eleven Chorale Preludes, plus a large and challenging piece by William Mathias. That experience will help me with the G.P.S., for I got that programme ready in less than a month, following my current practice methods -- which is what I have left for this one, and it is only a half-hour of music. I hope to get a solid start on it this weekend.