Distler, teachers, Evensong, and Mozart

I thank the choir for a fine Evensong today. The Weelkes Magnificat was the best that we have sung it, and the anthem (“Cause us, O Lord,” by Ronald Nelson) was splendid. And J.'s sermon was outstanding, helping me make sense of a particularly thorny pair of lessons (Amos 6:1-14, II Thessalonians 1:5-12).

As mentioned a few weeks ago, I scheduled Hugo Distler's Partita on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland for today's Choral Evensong. It was the last of three major organ works which I have attempted since All Saints' Day. I did not get any work done on it until I had completed the Phillips and Bach pieces – so, I have had to learn it in a fortnight. I applied my standard practice routine to it, working out a complete fingering, then spending about six hours on the First Workout, and subsequently about three hours of every work day.

But it became clear that I was stuck. There was no way that I could bring it up to performance tempo, marked with Germanic precision by Distler in the score. And it is not that I was only a few metronome markings shy; on several of the movements, I was barely playing it at half tempo, and try as I might, I could go no faster. I considered dropping the piece, but what then would I play for Advent Evensong?

It was here that Distler became my teacher. Wednesday morning, I tried a different approach on the fourth variation, the one that was most troublesome for me. I began with my standard approach: slow play-through of a phrase, followed by rhythmic groupings. But then, an innovation: I played the phrase with the metronome at a comfortably slow tempo of quarter note at 72, moved the tempo up to 76 and played it again. Again at 80. And 84. Then 88, still just this one phrase. I continued working it up until I broke down, which was (that day) at 96. I immediately played the phrase slowly to avoid the spastic too-fast practicing that I tend to fall into when faced with such a situation (and which I hear sometimes from the students who rehearse in our building). I moved on to the next phrase, working it up in the same manner. Finally, I played the whole variation a couple of notches below my break-down tempo, and finished with my usual slow play-through. It was now thoroughly comfortable at 88, where an hour previous, I would have completely broken down at that tempo, despite (by then) a week and a half of work on the piece.

The problem is that this took me over an hour for two pages of music which take about one minute in performance. On Friday, I was able to work it up to 104 with another hour's work, and on Saturday to 112, which gave me my performance tempo for today of 108. I am still well short of Distler's indicated tempo of 132 (actually 66 to the half note, which is the same), but I can now see how I could attain it, given another couple of weeks. I believe that I got it to a musically acceptable tempo for tonight's Evensong. I applied the same technique to two other places in the Partita with similar success, most notably the end of the Chaconne.

Metronomic practice is nothing new. But normally, I hear people play long sections, entire movements, with the metronome. My innovation is to work on one phrase at a time, in combination with the rhythmic groupings approach I have described elsewhere. It is not so much the playing of this little Fourth Variation; it is the methodological breakthrough. It presented me with a problem that could not be solved with any approach that I knew to attempt, and forced me to find another way, a method that will be of value in other contexts.

It seems that such lessons come to me only when it is too late for me to fully apply them to the work at hand. Most of the Distler remained well short of his indicated tempi in tonight's Evensong. But I hope that my playing of it, faults and all, communicated the musical idea of the piece. And I have come away from it a better organist.

I revere my teachers: Vera Payne, who led me through John Thompson's “Teaching Little Fingers to Play” and encouraged my love of music, despite my late start with it (age twelve); Ron Fishbaugh, the best of the several piano teachers I encountered at college and after, and who told me after I played a recital that had included Franck and Bach that I ought to take up the organ (I did not act on that for another several years); Donald McDonald, who took this self-taught organist, corrected his faults (as best he could), and set him on the path toward becoming a better organist.

But there are other teachers who speak to us through the pages of their music, as Distler has done for me this fortnight. First among these is J. S. Bach. When I began to play the organ, I could not locate anyone to teach me, but I knew where to look: the Orgelbüchlein. It was my primary “teacher” in those days, as the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Suites had been under Mr. Fishbaugh.

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Clement of Alexandria. I believe that, in his love of learning, he would approve of these ideas, and see Jesus our Rabbi, our Teacher, in the background, for all learning ultimately comes from Him:

Master of eager youth,
Controlling, guiding,
Lifting our hearts to truth,
New power providing;
Shepherd of innocence,
Thou art our Confidence;
To thee, our sure Defense,
We bring our praises.

(number 362 in the Hymnal 1940. A version of this text is at 478 in the Hymnal 1982, omitting the stanza here quoted).

Tomorrow is also the spiritual birthday of W. A. Mozart, who departed this life on December 5, 1791. I enjoy all of his music, but I would say that he is at his best at the opera. Cosi fan tutti, the Marriage of Figaro, the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni... I love them all, largely for his lighthearted and sympathetic portrayal in music of the human condition.

While in graduate school, I had the opportunity of observing the girls' choir of Trinity Church, Princeton in rehearsal, directed in those days by James Litton. That January evening, they sight-read the treble line for the Introit and Kyrie of the Requiem, which they would be learning that spring with the ATBs of the choir. Watching and hearing them encounter this music is something I hope I always remember. They were my teachers that day, showing me why I should work with children's choirs. For reasons having to do mostly with scheduling, I will never direct a choir that can rehearse three times a week and learn to sing at that level, but within the possibilities of my time and place, I hope that I have helped young people (older people, too) encounter Real Music, and develop the skills to sing it as they have opportunity.

Here is a performance of the Introit and Kyrie, with Sir Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic, from 5 December 1991, the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death.