Sunday Warmups, and Death of a Keyboard

Sunday Warmups

Playing accurately in the Sunday services has been a concern for me; on many occasions, I have been adequately prepared, but have made too many note errors when the time came to play in the service. I have mostly played better in my sporadic recitals, which causes me to think that the problem is with my Sunday routine. Circumstances are not ideal; I must do whatever practice there will be before Matins at 7:15, and the choral service (with organ) is not until 11:00. Try as I might, I find it difficult to arrive at the church before about 6:00 -- many weeks it is more like 6:15 or even 6:30, especially in the winter -- and there are other things which I must do before climbing on the organ bench. It falls to me to unlock the church, turn on the lights, open the Sacristry and Vestry, prepare the Chapel for Matins. Thus, I am usually left with forty minutes or less of practice time, and some of this belongs to the hymns and service music.

There is not enough time for a full Workout on the voluntaries. And a simple play-through at tempo has not proven adequate. Nor is it sufficient to do a slow play-through as I do to conclude my Workouts on a piece. I have tried a new method for my warmup these past two Sundays, as follows: (1) At slow tempo (perhaps half-tempo), play through a “period” -- that is, a musically logical section of about one or two pages, or roughly forty-five seconds or a minute in performance duration. (2) Play it again, using one of the modified rhythms that are basic to my practice technique, perhaps one-beat groupings (typically four sixteenth-notes). (3) Move on to the next period.

That’s it. It takes about three times the performance duration of the piece to get through it in this manner. Unfortunately, I ran out of time on both Sundays and had to skimp on the easier passages. With today's two settings of Komm, heiliger Geist, the fantasia which I played as postlude got the full treatment, which it definitely needed. The second setting, which I played as a prelude, has leisurely stretches of two-voice counterpoint in the manuals between phrases of the chorale; this is where I skimped. I gave the statements of the chorale and the exquisite (and tricky) coda the full treatment. Service settings and anthem accompaniments get the same treatment.

For the hymns, most of the preparation happens earlier in the week, especially on Saturday. On Sunday morning, I must play through my introduction, and start each stanza in order to work through the stop changes between stanzas and have them clear in my mind, also to remind myself what techniques I am applying to each stanza. I write all of this down on a slip of paper which is clipped to the hymnal, but it needs the Sunday morning “reminder.” If a stanza has a significant improvisatory content, I play through the entire stanza.


Death of a Keyboard

In 1995, I got the notion that as a Keyboard Musician, I ought to have an electronic keyboard. After considerable research and shopping, I purchased an Ensoniq EPS-16 Plus. It was the floor demonstrator at the music store, the model was being superseded by something newer, and I was able to buy it at half price, about $1,200. The EPS-16 loaded its operating system and sound files from floppy diskettes, which were the same as were used on the Apple II computer. [HERE is a description and photo of the machine. Note that it gets a five-star “Awesome” rating. I would agree, except for the repair and obsolescence issue – for which see below.]

I eventually built my own speakers (an enjoyable project, and they turned out very well) and used a home stereo amplifier from a pawn shop. It all worked well, and I used it professionally a few times, mostly for funerals in locations where there was not an instrument. But I never played it very much, especially after we sold our house and moved into an apartment with no space to leave it set up. For these last twelve years it has mostly languished in its black bag behind my rocking chair.

Last fall I got it out, set it up, and prepared to play. It did not work. I took it to the local music store, and the technician opened it up. He found that a resistor had fried on the motherboard. This ought to be a simple repair, but it turned out that there are no schematics or technical notes on the Ensoniq EPS anywhere, nor are any replacement motherboards available. When the company was bought out in 1998 and then dissolved a couple of years later, any technical information that might have existed disappeared. The technician consulted with colleagues and hunted around on the Internet: nothing. So, my keyboard was dead. “As useless as a broken pot,” as the Psalmist says.

At the technician’s advice, I looked around on eBay with the idea of getting an identical unit and seeing if I could keep one unit working by using the other for parts. I even bid on a couple of used units, but the price always got away from me.

Half a year has passed. I have come to realize that my wife was right: on the day that it died, she said “You never use it. Why do you keep it around?” But it has taken me this long to come to where I was ready to part with it. My attachment to it was that I put a lot of time into learning how to use it well. I sampled several ranks of organ pipes from the instrument I played at the time so that I could practice organ music at home -- something I never did after all that work.

Getting rid of it forces me to admit that I was probably wrong in buying it in the first place. But I suppose the experience has been instructive, in the same way that most of my interactions with computers have been – as soon as one gets properly comfortable with a computer, it is obsolete, along with all of the software one has learned to use.

I am tempted to swear off electronic musical instruments. Why own something that will only last twenty years or so and is unrepairable? A traditional acoustic piano or a mechanical action pipe organ will last a lifetime, more likely several lifetimes. And when they break down, they can be repaired. But I have kept the speakers, amplifier, stand, and other accessories that would be usable with another unit, in case I change my mind. If I do, I suspect I will not like it as well as my old EPS.

I still own one keyboard instrument: a Clavichord. It currently functions primarily as a table in my office, as there is no space for it in our apartment. It is no more obsolete now than it was thirty-plus years when I built it from a kit. It works fine, and if it doesn’t, I can repair it -- indeed, there is hardly anything that can go wrong with it other than an occasional broken string. For now, I rarely use it, not when I can conveniently play the organ or piano. But when I retire, it will likely be my primary instrument.

On Friday, I took the Ensoniq to the music store and gave it to the technician. He is going to keep it around for parts, many of which are interchangeable with other Ensoniq instruments.

A fortnight of Bach

Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity: For the three Sundays in this period, I must play either Bach or Messiaen; nothing less will suffice. Last year I played three of the movements from Messiaen’s Ascension Suite, as Evensong fell on the Sunday after Ascension Day. This year, with Evensong on Trinity Sunday, the choice falls with Bach.

Having thus committed myself to a fortnight of Bach, I decided to further immerse myself by reading a biography: “Bach,” by Malcolm Boyd (Vintage Books: 1987). It is a delightful little volume (290 pages), intended primarily for the general reader.

“I must be about my Father’s business.” That would be a suitable epigraph for Bach; from his childhood, he worked diligently at the craft of Music. One sees this in an appendix of this biography: a list of Bach’s works by BWV number -- over a thousand of them. Many of these works are small of stature, but not all -- e.g.: the B Minor Mass (BWV 232), the St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244), the Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Much, also, has been lost, especially in the church music: we have only two of the five Passion settings and slightly over half of the Cantatas.

Looking at this list, I am reminded of a project I would like to undertake before I die: a performance of all four books of the Clavierübung. I have played much of it over the years, but most of it would need a lot of work to prepare for a performance, especially all in one season. Crucially, almost none of it would have even a tangential relationship to my church duties.

Part I: Six Partitas for Clavier. I have played only one of these, back when I was an undergraduate student. They are thoroughly delightful, the equal in stature of the more famous Partitas for Solo Violin and Solo Violoncello. Quite aside from any larger project, it would benefit me to learn these.

Part II: Overture, and Italian Concerto. I have played the latter, when I was in my twenties, but not the former.

Part III (the only part for Organ): “St. Anne” Prelude and Fugue, which I have played often (and which is coming up for this Trinity Sunday); nine settings of the Lutheran Kyrie and Gloria (three of these will be the prelude for Trinity Sunday Evensong: Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit; Christe, alle Welt Trost; Kyrie Gott Heiliger Geist); six “catechism” chorales, each in a large setting plus a small manuals-only setting, corresponding (perhaps) to Luther’s Greater and Lesser Catechisms (Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism, penitence, Communion); four enigmatic (and rarely-played) Duets. At one time or another, I have played almost all of this, lacking only a couple of the chorale settings and one of the Duets. Some of them are quite challenging.

Part IV: the “Goldberg” Variations. Some twenty years ago, there was a year when the church I served was getting a new pipe organ. In those days, I played an annual recital, and with no organ at hand, I decided to play the Variations, and did so in concert at a nearby college chapel. They are a thoroughgoing delight to study and play. But they are not properly fingered, and I am not sure that I have the keyboard facility to play them nowadays. I will add that I played them on the pianoforte, and much prefer this instrument for them because of its expressive possibilities.

It would be magnificent to program this over a series of recitals. But I have become less ambitious about undertaking such a project as the years have passed; it would be a lot of work, perhaps more than I can do while performing my appointed duties. I often feel that I cannot even perform those at a reasonable standard, much less attempt something beyond them.

Yet it was precisely when he was my age, in his late fifties, that Bach undertook some of his most extensive projects: Parts Three and Four of the Clavierübung date from this period; the Musical Offering, the B Minor Mass, and the Art of Fugue lay ahead. And he did this work in the midst of numerous duties, all of which he discharged faithfully, and a household full of young children -- the last of them, Regina Susanna Bach, was born only in 1742, when Bach was fifty-seven, and at that point there were three other children under the age of ten still at home, plus two teenagers, one of them “feeble-minded” and needing significant care. [Anna Magdalena bore him thirteen children between 1723 and 1742, but seven of them had died in infancy or childhood. This is besides the seven children of Maria Barbara Bach, three of them still living by 1742.]

Throughout his life, Bach always did much more than was required or expected, in quantity but most especially in quality. Moreover, he continued to develop as a composer over his lifetime. If one compares some of his early preludes and fugues for the organ with the great contrapuntal works of his final years, one sees this clearly.

This Sunday, I must play the Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 547, “which, if not the finest of all Bach’s organ works, is certainly one of the most original.... Even among Bach’s organ fugues, it is difficult to find one that surpasses this [fugue] in contrapuntal resource, or one that is better ‘orchestrated’ for the instrument.” (Boyd, p. 61)

Next Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, I am to play the two settings of the chorale Komm, heiliger Geist (BWV 651-2) with which Bach began his final collection, generally called the “Eighteen Chorales.” Most of these were substantial expansions of works he had composed years ago at Weimar, and represent “[Bach] as a master of chorale settings on the grandest scale” (Boyd, p. 55).

This collection, like the Clavierübung, would make a magnificent organ programme, or (more likely) two or three programmes on successive evenings. One would begin with the exuberant organo pleno Fantasy on Komm, heiliger Geist, and the quiet and expansive second setting of the same tune, and finish at last with Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich (BWV 668). This would be a more manageable project than the Clavierübung, but still perhaps beyond my capacity.

Finally, Trinity Sunday brings the Prelude and Fugue in E flat from the Clavierübung, as mentioned above. Both the Prelude and the Fugue are thoroughly Trinitarian in their symbolism -- in a key signature of three flats, with three thematic groups, and many less obvious connections. If pressed to describe the doctrine of the Trinity, I would play this Fugue, perhaps with some explanatory comments.

And, as mentioned, I will play the three large settings of the Kyrie for the Evensong prelude.

Often, Bach wrote the superscription “J.J.” over the first page of his manuscripts -- “Jesu, juva.” It was a prayer not just for himself, I think, but for those of us who attempt to play his music. It cannot be done without the help of our Lord, and when one makes it to the end, the only response is his, likewise written into most of his scores: “S.D.G.” -- Soli Deo Gloria. These are my prayers as I undertake this work over the next few weeks.