The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

“Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves....” (from the Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent, BCP p. 167)

I have a copy of the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” on my shelf. Here is a two-page summary:

There is much here that has been useful to me. I will list his seven “habits” with brief comments:

Be Proactive. I tend at times to sit around, whine about how much I have to do, and become paralyzed by the scope of the task at hand. This is not helpful. Instead, I should dig in and do what can be done (see “First Things First,” below). As I have said elsewhere, the work is not ours, it is the Lord's, and we hear the “irresistible call of God's own trumpet.”

Begin with the End in Mind. When I attended a Credo Conference several years ago, we were supposed to develop a “Credo Plan,” outlining the ways in which we would move ahead after the conference. We were supposed to develop a long-term goal, but I refused to be sucked into developing a personal long-term goal. Instead, I made a page to remind myself of the real End, the Great End of the Church, which I keep before me. I quoted Revelation 22:1-4, and the final stanza of “My Shepherd will Supply my Need,” ending with the lines “No more a stranger or a guest,/but like a child at home.” It helps me to think on these things as I begin a day, or any task that needs some context.

Put First Things First. Covey here presents his four Quadrants, as can be seen in the link. It is easy to get buried by Quadrant I items, living from one deadline and crisis to the next – and I am a bit too much in this mode right now, having neglected so many tasks in preparation for the recent recital. Or Quadrant III items, of which there is quite a bit around here. Covey says that we should strive to live in Quadrant II. For me, that means practicing (including the careful fingering and First Workouts that I have described – Quadrant I practicing is the frantic scramble to throw something together at the last minute for Sunday), and the planning of hymns, songs, and choral music for future Sundays and Feasts – which again can easily devolve into a Quadrant I activity, with much reduced quality of result.

Think Win-Win. I start to fall apart at this point in Covey's list, for interpersonal relations are by far my weakest point. But Covey's ideas here and in the next two items have helped me do a little better.

Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood.

Synergize. I will note here only that Choral Singing is a prime example of how the whole is much greater than its parts. Individually, most of us have many flaws in our singing. But when we sing together, we carry one another along, many of our individual flaws and errors are blended into a more beautiful whole, and the potential is there to serve as instruments of God's grace for one another and the community in which we sing.

Sharpen your Saw. There are many aspects of this, but the most important for me is my participation in the Daily Office. Physical exercise and eating healthy food are factors, too.

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Why did I quote the Collect from last Sunday at the beginning of this essay? It is a reminder of how futile are Covey's seven “habits,” the Credo conference, and all other self-help regimes. We are “miserable offenders,” and “there is no health in us,” as the Confession used to say.

Towards the end of Covey's book, he describes a day at the office for the Effective Person who implements his strategies. For the most part, the Effective Person spends his day using “Think Win-Win,” “Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood,” and “Synergize” to manipulate others into doing all the work, which frees him to be, well, more Effective. It helps considerably to be in a position of authority where one can more easily delegate the work to underlings.

But someone, somewhere, has to do the work, including the tedious tasks that the Effective Person studiously avoids because they are so un-productive. That person is a Servant. It is not for nothing that the one whom we call Lord is, likewise, a Servant.

In doing the work that has been committed to us, we ought to do it in the best manner possible. Covey's “seven habits” and the four areas covered in the Credo conference help in this. But without Charity (Agapé), it is all “as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (I Corinthians 13:1). We depend entirely upon God, for “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).

Yet, “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (Revelation 19:8).

Herzlich lieb

Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
I pray thee, ne'er from me depart;
With tender mercy cheer me.

Earth has no pleasure I would share
Yea, heav'n itself were void and bare
If thou, Lord, were not near me.

And should my heart for sorrow break,
My trust in thee can nothing shake.
Thou art the portion I have sought;
Thy precious blood my soul has bought.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My God and Lord, my God and Lord,
Forsake me not! I trust thy Word.

In a couple of weeks, our combined choirs will do a version of this chorale, which comes at the end of the St. John Passion of J. S. Bach. It will be for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, with the Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus.

The youngest boy in our Youth Choir, age eight, sings this chorale by heart as if it were the most important thing in the world. I could hardly get through our work on it in Wednesday's rehearsal, seeing him do so.

There are those who say that children should have only age-appropriate materials to read, hear, and sing, and by “age-appropriate” they in practice generally mean “hyperactive attention-grabbing-but-meaningless video/sound bites” or worse: “thoroughly sanitized and dull.” They are wrong. Children should have the best, and it will usually include much that is over their heads. Often, they will recognize the best when they encounter it more easily than will adults. This young chorister surely does not understand all of the words and ideas, but he perceives from the strength of the chorale tune (and Bach's setting of it) that they matter. He will grow into them.

This is why I am not just an organist, but a choirmaster as well. I want these young people (the adults too) to have words and music such as this in their hearts.

Yea, Lord, 'twas thy rich bounty gave
My body, soul, and all I have
In this poor life of labor.

Lord, grant that I in ev'ry place
May glorify thy lavish grace
And serve and help my neighbor.

Let no false doctrine me beguile,
Let Satan not my soul defile.
Give strength and patience unto me
To bear my cross and follow thee.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My God and Lord, my God and Lord,
In death thy comfort still afford.

Here is a YouTube link to the end of a performance of the St. John Passion, of which this is part twelve of twelve:
Link

We are not able to do the recitative and chorus: only the final chorale, which begins about nine minutes into the video clip. But we are doing three stanzas of it, in alternation with another song with which it makes a dialogue:

Jesus loves me! this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.

Jesus loves me! He who died
Heaven's gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin,
Let His little child come in.

Jesus, take this heart of mine,
Make it pure and wholly Thine;
On the cross You died for me,
I will love and live for Thee.

The idea is not original with me; we did this at a conference of the Hymn Society a few years ago. As we did there, the young people will sing the first two stanzas of Herzlich lieb in the key of B flat, and the congregation will respond with “Jesus loves me,” softly and in harmony. We will modulate up a fourth to E flat major, and all -- congregation and choirs – will sing the final stanza in Bach's harmonization as it appears in the Passion setting.

Lord, let at last thine angels come,
To Abr'hams' bosom bear me home,
That I may die unfearing;

And in its narrow chamber keep
My body safe in peaceful sleep
Until thy reappearing.

And then from death awaken me,
That these mine eyes with joy may see,
O Son of God, thy glorious face,
My Saviour and my fount of grace.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise thee without end!

G.P.S. - Performance, and Epilogue

March 15: Tuesday (T minus 1)

Sunday night, I awoke several times with my fingers twitching, “playing” through parts of the piece. All day Monday, I was like a wound-up spring. It is a bringing-to-birth, an “incarnation.” I have mentioned Dorothy Sayers' book The Mind of the Maker. Her thesis is that our human creative work is one of the principal ways in which we are made in the image of God (c.f. Genesis 1:26-29). He creates, we likewise create on a limited scale, what Tolkien would call “subcreation.” Sayers does not explore this, but it occurs to me that the Satanic temptation “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” is perhaps in part a temptation to burst the bounds of our creative finitude, to create on god-like scale. We would make a Gesamtkunstwerk, an all-encompassing work of art, a Tower reaching to the heavens. Such enterprises do not end well (c.f. Genesis 11).

Sayers quotes from her own play, The Zeal of Thy House:

For every work [or act] of creation is threefold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly.

First [not in time, but merely in order of enumeration] there is the Creative Idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning: and this is the image of the Father.

Second, there is the Creative Energy [or Activity] begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to the end, with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word.

Third, there is the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul: and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit.

And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without other: and this is the image of the Trinity. (p. 37-38).

In the work of the performing musician, the Idea is the first conception of the program, the vision of the Music in its finished perfection. It is also the composition itself, the fruit of another's labors (or one's own; once the musician turns from composition to performance of what he has written, it is in no way different from the playing of another composer's work). The Energy is the process which I have sought to describe in these entries; the “sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word.”

Sayers speaks primarily of her own craft, that of Writer, but it applies to Music and the other arts. Later she writes:

The resistance to creation which the writer encounters in his creature [in my case, the Franck] is sufficiently evident, both to himself and to others – particularly to those others who have the misfortune to live with him during the period when his Energy is engaged on a job of work. The human maker is, indeed, almost excessively vocal about the perplexities and agonies of creation and the intractability of his material. Almost equally evident, however, though perhaps less readily explained, is the creature's violent urge to be created.... [T]hat a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying.... whenever the creature's desire for existence is dominant, everything else will have to give way to it; the writer will push all other calls aside and get down to his task in a spirit of mingled delight and exasperation. (p. 140-1)

There are always some passages that weigh on the mind. In this case, there are two: the final page of the scherzo, and an eight-measure section of the pedal line in the finale, a passage which is notorious in the organ literature. These spots receive more than their share of careful practice, for they are evidences of “the intractability of [the] material.” But if one neglects the easier parts, they can come unglued in performance, too. Every note, every phrase must have its due share of attention.

One of the goals of the slow playing with rhythmic practice that I have described is to develop in a good way what is sometimes called “ballistic motion.” When one performs a physically complex action such as a basketball jump shot – or playing the Grande Pièce Symphonique – the larger action is comprised of many small steps. At first, one must consciously think about each step, but the action must soon become automatic. Thus, I begin slowly, working in “bite-sized” chunks of four measures – an amount of material which can be grasped by the mind as one unit – and build speed at first with little two-note groupings. Ballistic motion will develop whether one does it purposefully or not, but if left to chance, it is not likely to develop in an efficient way. Extraneous motions will be part of it, and wherever they exist, mistakes are likely to follow as the piece is brought to performance tempo.

In these final stages, I am no longer working primarily in four-measure phrases. Instead, the basic units are much larger, from one point of relative repose to the next. I continue to play the section slowly, then with the rhythms long-short, and short-long. From there, it varies: more difficult passages get the full treatment, while with easier passages I can go directly to playing in one-measure groups, and then to the full passage at tempo. My goal is for this entire passage, perhaps one or two pages or even more, to be one seamless unit, a ballistic motion as smooth as a perfect jump shot. There is a part of the brain that knows exactly what to do in every detail in order to play the passage, without conscious attention.

One sometimes hears young students play their recital pieces with “finger memory.” The ballistic motion is in place – the piece is “in the hands” -- but not necessarily in the conscious mind. If the ballistic motion is de-railed, it cannot continue without assistance from the consciousness which knows in what direction the music needs to go, and can put things back on track. Thus, I build in “starting places” where a new ballistic motion may begin. The first note of every measure is the most important of these – thus, the need to always practice in one-measure groups. Ideally, every note would be a new “starting place,” learned from the hours of practice in the two-note groupings.

My work today on Franck is limited to a three-hour session at the recital instrument, just enough for one final workout, beginning to end, the sixth and last. It goes well. At last, I am ready to play, and just in time.

March 16: Wednesday

In the university town where I work, there are over a thousand recitals and concerts annually. Each of them represents an undertaking that, for a time, has been all-consuming for the musicians involved.

So does the writing of a book, the production of a play, the making of a visual work of art, or a quilt, or a violin, or a barn. The effort and commitment are the same in kind for craft, folk art, and “high” art. This last differs perhaps in the path being less clearly charted, but even here, there are traditions that provide a place to begin.

Here at the end, it is important to me, as it was initially, that this is a “Lenten Meditation,” not a “Noontime Recital.” The Grande Pièce Symphonique is music of a spirit suitable for Lent. Perhaps it may direct the hearts of some of its listeners toward thoughts of a serious nature. It is not enough to play for oneself; the music must be shared, even if only with one or two others. The musician hopes that in some way it makes a difference.

Sayers describes this aspect of the work in chapter eight of The Mind of the Maker: “Pentecost.”

... a book has no influence until somebody can read it.

Before the Energy [which is incarnate in the book, or essay, or other writing] was revealed or incarnate it was, as we have seen, already present in Power within the creator's mind, but now that Power is released for communication to other men.... It dwells in them and works upon them with creative energy, producing in them fresh manifestations of Power.

This is the Power of the Word, and it is dangerous. Every word—even every idle word—will be accounted for at the day of judgment. (p. 111)

For the writer, this aspect, the “third person” of the creative trinity, is when the writing is published, read by others, and takes its own life in the world of ideas in small or large ways. For the musician, it is the performance. Music does not exist until it is performed—and heard—and ceases its audible existence as soon as the last notes die away. But the Idea expressed in the composition may take root and bear fruit in surprising ways, perhaps generations later. When a performer takes up a piece of Old Music such as the Franck, the Idea embodied in it, now almost a century and a half old, is brought to light anew.

This raises the question of whether or not the Classics in music, literature, and art have any lasting value. It is obvious to me that they do, but many would disagree. A local choral director whom I respect, active in music education circles, takes the view that Classical Music is simply a collection of “museum pieces,” and she rarely uses any of it in her work (implying as well that “museums” are places that are irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people). It is more important, in her view, that the music sung by her choirs be fresh and immediate, enjoyable to the singers, and constructive of community in the choir. She does not think that Classical Music can do these things in the twenty-first century.

Today, I made my small contribution to this interchange of artistic Ideas, giving the Grande Pièce Symphonique a fresh opportunity to do its work in the world. At best, it is likely to be a very small bit of work: my little half-hour “Lenten Meditation,” one of thousands of concerts in this town, heard by perhaps twenty or thirty persons, is not going to change the world in any large way. But small as it is, today's music will not be entirely without consequence, for a Song is every bit as dangerous as a Word, and every Song, along with every Word, “will be accounted for at the day of judgment.” One of my teachers used to say “Never play a note unless you mean it.”

The first and overwhelming impression when one finally gets around to performing the music which has taken so many hours to prepare is always how quickly it is over. As I began the last movement I thought “Am I here already? How can this be?”

The second impression is always that one has played horribly, made wreckage of this beautiful music. This is not a small thing, for every imperfection in performance weakens the power of the Idea and reduces its potential to achieve its work.

Upon a day of reflection (I write this on Thursday, the day after the concert), there were too many mistakes, but some aspects of the playing were good. I believe that I gave shape to the music as well as I am able to do in terms of phrasing, tempos, articulation of the form, and registrations. Wrong notes can distort this, but not entirely eradicate it.

But what about the wrong notes? I have tried for years to figure out how to play more accurately, and I believe that I have made some progress, most of all in adopting the practice regime outlined in this series. Of the two passages which most concerned me, one went smoothly; the other was a bit shaky, but I do not think that I actually missed any of the notes. All of the note errors were in other places, “easy” places, including one a mere thirteen measures into the piece and another at the final cadence of the (slow) fourth movement, both of them marring especially beautiful moments.

It would have been better to have the piece ready a month ago, using the final weeks for maintenance practice. My preparations, reaching a state of readiness only on the day before the recital, were more on the order of cramming for a final exam. But I believe that I did all that I could do without neglecting my other duties. The things which kept me from working more in December and January on the Franck were primarily:

- the Christmas services
- “Some Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch” played at the January evensong – and played rather well, as I recall.
- Stanford in A for the February Evensong
- the Mozart Laudate Dominum

All of this was worthy of the time committed to it. And, since the difficult parts of the Franck went well, I am not sure that additional preparation would have improved the results.

This brings me again to the Satanic temptation: I cannot make my musical work larger or better than what I can do in the time and energy allotted to me in this life. I must, instead, adjust my expectations and not try to do so much that I do it badly. At the same time, I must avoid the opposite extreme of “playing it safe,” never taking the risks that are inherent in any music worthy of the name. Our Lord warned against this in St. Matthew 25:14-30, calling the one who buried his talent a “wicked and slothful servant,” casting him into outer darkness. “[T]here shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

I ate a leisurely lunch at an Indian restaurant, drank a cup of tea in my office, and turned my attention to the wedding music, the Messiaen for Sunday, and the evening's choir rehearsal.

Epilogue: Friday morning, March 18

This morning, my mailbox at the church contained a CD, a recording of the Franck. C.H., the organbuilder who was unable to attend the performance, arranged to have it recorded. I am glad for his sake that he did, because the Franck fits his instrument splendidly and shows its expressive possibilities in a way that may not often be heard.

Upon review, I find that I played both better and worse than I had thought. There were the four major note errors that I knew were there. With two of them, I was able to modify the voice leading so that to someone unfamiliar with the piece, they would be musically plausible (though inferior to what Franck wrote). The other two were simply wrong, both of them in a pedal statement of the theme in the latter part of the first movement. But both of these went by so quickly that they were not “train-wrecks,” the complete de-railing of the music which can all too easily happen. In short, the note errors which glared at me in my memory of the performance were not so bad as I had thought.

What was worse were some faults in interpretation. I was not smooth in my use of the Swell pedal at a couple of places; the amount of “breathing space” between several of the phrases was wrong, mostly too short; at the cadence ending the second movement, I made the rallantando too big; I rushed the tempo in part of the scherzo and had to pull it back in line; I failed to push the tempo slightly in the finale from the beginning of the fugue onwards. But there were many other interpretative outcomes through the course of the work which went very well indeed, or at least the way that I think they should.

All of the errors weakened the Idea, as I described earlier. “[N]ow we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to face ....” The Satanic temptation would say “You must be perfect.” The Gospel grace answers “You will be perfect.”

But not yet.

In retrospect, I am struck with what a vast and important Idea this piece embodies. The Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Clothilde was hardly four years old in 1863 when Franck wrote this piece, which would have been impossible without this new type of instrument, an instrument whose potential Franck unveiled. Neither he nor anyone else in France had written anything remotely like this for the organ, and it must have been astonishing to its first hearers. We have the organ symphonies of Widor and Vierne and much other music of similar nature from the French symphonic organ tradition that began with Franck – indeed, with this piece – so it is less overwhelming to us. But the Grande Pièce Symphonique remains, I think, an Idea which continues to do its work in the world. I am honored to have helped that work along a little bit this week.

GPS - the final week

March 7: Perpetua and her Companions (T minus 9)

Mondays and Thursdays are my days off. I try to observe Thursday as a Sabbath; Monday is a working day at home, for grocering, errands, personal and household tasks. With a late night Sunday, I am late in arising on Monday, and early to bed at the end of the day.

March 8: Shrove Tuesday (T minus 8)

I begin with Sunday's postlude, a Stanley Voluntary, fingering it and giving it a First Workout. I am left with about two hours for Franck, enough to work through the first two movements and half of the third. I consider staying another hour after the church pancake supper to go further; that would leave me only five hours for sleep. I choose the sixth hour of sleep, and take the bus home.

March 9: Ash Wednesday (T minus 7)

Each year, this day reminds me how much time and energy I devote to Food – grocery shopping, cooking, dishwashing, and most of all, eating. Freed from all of it for a day, I have lots of extra time. I need it; this is the day in which I must get the Franck well settled and secure on the concert instrument. I work from 8:30 until 2:00 at the Congregational Church, beginning where I had left off in the scherzo, on to the end, back to the beginning of the piece, through the middle movements and up to the transition to F sharp Major in the finale.

My long preparations of fingering and First Workout are bearing fruit; by the end of the session, the piece is shaping up. It is only my third time through it, and only a week remains. But, Lord willing, it may be enough.

It is a luxury to have so much time on the performance instrument, and I am grateful for all of it. The pedal geometry differs from the Pilcher enough to make large intervals chancy; the pedal action is stiffer, so that for the first hour I am sometimes not playing the notes firmly enough for them to sound; stop changes require practice, for I am unfamiliar with the locations of the stop tabs.

March 10: Thursday (T minus 6)

A day of rest.

March 11: Friday (T minus 5)

I had hopes for a solid day of practice, but administrative work keeps me at my desk for most of the day. As the news from Japan trickles in, I grow increasingly distracted.

At Youth Choir this week, we began the Kyrie Orbis Factor, S-84 in the Hymnal 1982. It is a full page, a ninefold Kyrie. I was waiting for a chorister to ask “Why so much?” No one asked, and it is just as well, for I did not have the answer until today.

It is a song for a day such as this, when words fail and all we can do is to cry for mercy.

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

The Franck gets a mere ninety minutes today, completing the finale that I had left unfinished on Wednesday. But I spend an hour or two working through the Pièce d'Orgue for the wedding; it is in good condition, and I will lay it aside now until next Wednesday afternoon – after the recital.

March 12: Gregory the Great (T minus 4)

Today is even shorter as a work day than usual; it is Time Change Saturday. Many years ago, I committed to Ben Franklin's adage “Early to bed, early to rise.” I expect neither health, wealth, nor wisdom from this habit, but I do expect that I be at my best at the hour of 8:45 on Sunday mornings. I must adjust the rest of my life, especially Saturdays, accordingly.

I work for two hours on Franck, covering the first two movements.

March 13: The First Sunday in Lent (T minus 3)

This is my final opportunity for extensive work on the Franck, but there is much else to do. I spend about an hour and a half preparing a songsheet for next Sunday's bulletin with LilyPond – this is much less time than it sometimes takes, but time I can hardly afford today. And I do the First Workout on next Sunday's voluntaries, two movements from Messiaen's Livre du Saint-Sacrement. One goes smoothly; one does not.

Bookended around this is work on the Franck. I work through the final three movements in the mid-afternoon, do my other work, practice the Messiaen, and start again at the beginning of the Franck, working all the way through to the end. It is hard work, for the piece is playing mind-games on me now. I sometimes quote an old football saying to the choirs: "Drill for skill, because under stress we regress." I am making mistakes today that I have never made, stupid and frustrating mistakes, and I know that they come from stress, the stress of knowing that the recital is at hand. I feel as if I cannot possibly play the piece, ever, and most certainly not three days from now. The slow play-throughs as I complete my work on each movement help -- but there are mistakes even in these. I make it to the end of the piece shortly before midnight.

There will be no more updates until after the recital. On Tuesday, I have three hours in the afternoon at the Congregational Church, and then what work I wish to do on it Wednesday morning – probably some work on two or three spots that remain troublesome, finishing with a slow play-through.

Friday, March 11

My recital preparations and other work proceed in good order, and I will continue my updates. But all of that takes a back seat for now.

O merciful Father, who hast taught us in thy holy Word that thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men: Look with pity upon the sorrows of thy servants the people of Japan, for whom our prayers are offered. Remember them, O Lord, in mercy. Give mercy and grace to the living, pardon and rest to the dead, and to us sinners everlasting life and glory.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night. . . .

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

G.P.S - the end, at last

March 5: Saturday (T minus 11)

Saturday is usually devoted almost entirely to Sunday preparations, and today is no exception. I have about thirty minutes at the end of the day before catching the bus, and use it to do a slow play-through of the third movement, and parts of the first movement.

March 6: The Last Sunday after the Epiphany (T minus 10)

This was an intense day. The youth choir sang at the contemporary service (with string trio; an arrangement of a Bach cantata movement); the adult choir sang at the traditional service (the Mozart Laudate Dominum, with soprano); there was Choral Evensong later in the day. All of the music went well. Besides the choral pieces at all three services, I was especially pleased with the closing hymn and postlude thereon at the contemporary service (“Ye watchers and ye holy ones”), and pleased that the postlude for the traditional service went well.

The choir was especially good with the Evensong psalmody; it was “in the pocket” as one of the basses described it.

It is about 7:00 pm before I start the evening's practicing. With a dinner break about 9:00, wherein I finish my parts of next Sunday's bulletins, I work until almost 1 am, and complete the finale.

It has been a long day.

G.P.S., and Cats

March 3: Charles and John Wesley (T minus 13)

I slept until 10:00, took an afternoon nap, cooked pinto beans, sauerkraut, corn, and rice for dinner, and finished the day with Evening Prayer, assisted by two cats.

Back in January, we decided that we had grieved long enough for our beloved Bernie, who died the same week as my Mother. For the next few weeks, we visited the veterinary office which houses cats for the county Humane Society, making the hard decision as to which cats to adopt. Mrs. C. immediately linked up with Angel, a chubby little grey-and-white cat whose curiosity, I suspect, had gotten her lost from a previous family. She appeared on a farm out in the county with a gunshot wound in her shoulder, and ended up with the Humane Society. We are fairly confident that she had a previous home, because she is far too cuddly and sociable to be a true feral cat.

My heart went out to Tinkerbelle, a large grey tiger-striped older cat who had outlived her human. She had been in the shelter for over a year, and when we visited, she would sit on a table and stare out the window into the hallway, and hiss at any other cat that came near – especially the playful little Angel. We wondered whether the two cats could co-exist.

When we got them home, Tinkerbelle disappeared under the bed for three days. Angel, meanwhile, had visited every room in the apartment within the first five minutes, and explored every corner, tabletop, windowsill, and chair within an hour.

But now that they are in a quiet home, they get along pretty well; they even play together and chase each other around the apartment sometimes. Angel is anyone's friend, especially if there is a lap available. Tinker is reserved, and a good kitchen cat. She loves to sit on the kitchen table and watch me cook and wash dishes. She stays out of the way and is not interested in nabbing little dainties; she just wants to be companionable. When she is not in the kitchen, she is most often in what used to be my rocking chair. It is now hers, but she will let me sit in it if she can curl up at my feet.

So, evening prayer at home is often with one cap in my lap, and the other at my feet. In iconography, St. Julian of Norwich is usually depicted with a cat; I suspect that she had similar assistance with her prayers.

March 4: Symeon the New Theologian (T minus 12)

I begin with three hours' work on music for this Sunday; two morning services and Choral Evensong. It is all in pretty good shape, thankfully.

This is followed by the First Workout on the second movement of Franck, an Andante. Compared to the many hours it took me to work through the first movement, this was straightforward; I worked through it in less than an hour. It is clear that having a well-defined fingering (which took a long time for this movement, with lots of finger substitutions on the chords, much longer than it took to give it the First Workout at the organ) will be of great benefit. With one more workout, this movement will probably be ready for performance.

Over lunch in my office, I receive a phone call from C.H., a notable friend of the organ, the organ-builder responsible for the instrument which I will be playing. He has heard that I am playing the Grand Pièce Symphonique, one of his “all-time favorites.” He will be out of town on March 16, and wondered whether he could come by the Congregational church when I am practicing there to hear it. The only possible time before his trip is Ash Wednesday. I warned him to come “not too early,” because it is not going to be in very good shape early in the day. I didn't warn him that it would be my second work-through of the piece. Or perhaps third – I am guardedly optimistic that I might finish the First Workout and at least part of a second by Wednesday.

It is an immense joy to finally be working on the piece. Once this Sunday's services are past, the Franck and music for a March 19 wedding will be my primary tasks at the organ. The wedding involves two young people who read these pages; A. and S., I send you my greetings. They made splendidly intelligent musical selections, and working on these things will be a good counterpoise to the Franck. In terms of work, the recessional/postlude, Bach's Pièce d'Orgue (BWV 572) is the greatest challenge. It will be a glorious sendoff to the newly married couple, if I can play it adequately. I have it just ahead of the Franck on my work list – it has been given its First Workout, and will get its second before I start through a second time on Franck.

If I could combine the Franck, the Pièce d'Orgue, and “Master Tallis's Testament” from the Six Pieces by Herbert Howells (this Sunday's Evensong prelude), I would be well on my way to playing a full recital. We shall see how it all goes.

After lunch, I dig in on the third movement scherzo: Allegro, tres lié. It is pianissimo throughout and must fly like the wind. I have worried about this movement, and will continue to do so, but not as much now that it has had its First Workout. This takes two hours. About forty minutes of that is on a four-measure passage near the end. I am stuck; it simply is not working. Finally, I change one fingering – one sixteenth note, from a 2 to a 1. That makes all the difference, and the passage now flows like silk, as it ought. These final forty minutes push me right through the time I had allotted for Evensong, which will have to wait until after this evening's choir dinner and rehearsal.

The final play-through at half tempo is especially important with music of this nature, and all the more so when some of the work has not gone easily; with the final play-through, one's final memory of the piece for the day is relaxed, confident, and (almost) error-free.

G.P.S. - finally, to work

February 27: Sunday night (T minus 17 days)

I have not touched the Franck since completing the fingering a fortnight ago. Other music had higher priority, including a couple of tricky voluntaries this morning: Distler's Mit Freuden zart and Reger's Lobet den Herren. This last went badly, despite the best preparation that I could give it in limited time. It is cautionary; I believe that my practice methods are effective, but there are no short-cuts, and no guarantees.

At nine o'clock on Sunday evening, with next Sunday's voluntaries for Eucharist and Evensong properly started, the Franck is finally at the top of the list for its First Workout.

My methods center on Slow Practice, but that alone is insufficient. One must eventually play quickly, if the music demands it. But one must do so in tiny steps, building in plenty of “anchors” where one feels a sense of repose, even if only for the smallest of moments. So, in the early stages, I play in two-note figures, and gradually build to larger units.

I begin by playing a short passage – typically four measures, or a phrase – very slowly, with care to get every fingering right. Then, I play it again. And again: three times, all very slowly and carefully. Then, I work through the phrase with modified rhythms. Assuming a passage in 2/2 time with running eighth-notes, I would play them as dotted quarter-eighth. Then, I reverse the rhythms: eighth-dotted quarter. Then, groups of four (making a half-note “beat”), pausing on the first note of each new group and playing at performance tempo (or as close as I can manage with accuracy). Then, groups of four again, but pausing on the third note of the group in the middle of the half-note beat. Then, in full measures with a pause on the first note of the bar. And again, this time pausing in the middle of the bar. Finally, the entire four-measure phrase at performance tempo. (For other meters, and other types of rhythmic motion, adjust accordingly.)
Then, on to the next phrase.

As a final step, I review the entire piece (or movement, or large section) slowly, at about half performance tempo. To keep from rushing ahead, I do this last play-through with metronome. I seek to remain focused and relaxed, and I find that this last play-through helps settle and confirm the work that I have done. The idea is not mine: Virgil Fox used to do this.

Indeed, none of these ideas are mine. Much of it comes from a book by John Bertalot, and much else from bits and pieces of advice and teaching over the years, plus a healthy dose of trial and error. [Edited in January 2017 to add: Most of this can be found in the book "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle, along with much other good advice and some neurological reasons why the method works.]

For subsequent workouts, I follow the same procedure, except that there is only one slow play-through of the phrase, not three. Gradually, I will work in larger units – eight bars, or a musical period, or whatever fits the specific piece. On many pieces, it is good to work through in two-measure groups: Play measures 1 and 2, then 2 and 3, then 3 and 4, etc.

Eventually – as soon as the second or third workout, if the piece is not very hard – I can content myself with just three times through – take each phrase or passage slowly, repeat at tempo, and then give it the final complete play-through with metronome. If there are isolated passages of greater difficulty, they get the fuller treatment as I work through the piece. Ideally, I would love to have everything I play reach this state of preparation well in advance of its performance. It rarely happens that way. Less than three weeks out from performance, I wish I were at this stage with the Franck, instead of being still engaged in the First Workout.

With most of the music I play, even some of considerable difficulty, four or five workouts suffice to prepare the piece for performance. Looking at my recent practice records, Stanford in A got six workouts, “How lovely are the messengers” got five, the Franck “Prelude Fugue and Variation” got five, the Bach Prelude and Fugue in C (BWV 545) got by with three, the Distler from last Sunday got three. But the Reger had six, and still fell apart.

I work until about 11:30, covering about half of the first movement.

March 2: St. Chad (T minus 14 days)

I complete the first movement this morning. I am not as discouraged as I was after the failure of Sunday's postlude: the postlude for March 6 (a setting of Lasst uns erfreuen by R. Busch), which was problematic in its first workout early Sunday evening and second workout yesterday, shows signs in its third workout this morning of being ready by Sunday. Today's work on the latter part of the first movement of Franck, a very tricky few pages of music, was encouraging. Patience!

Over lunch, I contact the secretary at the Congregational church, and schedule practice times: next week – Ash Wednesday – and the day before the recital.

Perhaps if I can complete the First Workout on the other movements by Ash Wednesday, and do a complete second workout that day at the recital instrument, I will get through this. I have a lot of ground to cover between now and then, but only two passages remain that are likely to be as challenging as what I did today – the third movement scherzo, and about four pages in the finale. There are long stretches of music in this piece that should be ready after one or two more workouts. But some others will need a lot of work.

The Mozart for this Sunday has been a better example of the way I would prefer to work; I started on it a month ago, and today's workout was its seventh. It is finally, after some anxious hours in mid-February, starting to be comfortable. I spent only a half-hour on it this morning, and with similar workouts on Friday and Saturday, it should be ready for Sunday.