Having noted some time ago that a careful and thorough fingering and First Workout is crucial for anything that I play at the organ, I have observed this spring that the Second Workout is almost as important. If I have a lot of music to cover, it seems better to give a piece the Second Workout on the day after the first (or as soon as possible) rather than going ahead and doing First Workouts on other music, then the Second Workouts once everything has been properly started.
The Second Workout is the time for alterations to the fingerings. I have slept on the first day's work, and on the second day, the hands seem to want to play some of the passages differently. The part of my brain that deals with such details is making suggestions in the only way that it can. This spring I have made a point of paying attention. When such a place comes up, I try it in the way I had written down and practiced, and in the new way, and seek judge which is superior. More often than not, the "hands" (and the subconscious mind guiding them) are right; the exceptions are generally passages where the larger context supports one fingering even though the immediate context does not (for example, a parallellism with another passage elsewhere in the piece). The "hands" seem incapable of seeing such connections, and in this benefit from the conscious mind's guidance. This work of revision does not happen as readily if other music has intervened between the First and Second Workout; it is as if the "hands" are distracted, and forget the ideas they had developed.
In my normal schedule, I have done well this spring by preparing Sunday voluntaries and accompaniments in this manner. Most of what I play is thoroughly prepared after its Second Workout, needing only a final workout on Saturday and a brief warmup on Sunday morning.
I decided to try an experiment: for the music at the end of the cycle, the Second Sunday of Easter, I did the two workouts on everything that would be played other than the hymnody -- prelude and postlude for the Eucharist, prelude for Evensong, choral accompaniments for Evensong (the Eucharistic anthem was unaccompanied). All of this work took place before I delved into the music for Holy Week and Easter Day, or into the more intensive preparations for the Widor recital. After First and Second Workouts on all of it, I laid the Second Sunday music aside early in the Fifth Week of Lent -- almost three weeks before I would be playing it for church. I did not touch it again until Friday of Easter Week.
Then I turned my attention to Palm Sunday, Holy Week, the Great Vigil, Easter Day, and the Widor recital. I systematically gave each organ piece First and Second Workouts, laid it aside, moved on to the next item. The church music was done by Tuesday of Holy Week, allowing me to concentrate on the Widor over the weekend. On Holy Saturday, I spent about six hours on the Widor before starting a final practice session on the music for that night and the next day -- the first time I had played some of this music in about a week, and the only work it was to get before the liturgies.
After Easter Day's liturgies, I gave full concentration to the Widor, which was played on Wednesday. Some of my practice did not go as planned, as I mentioned in a previous essay, but I worked on it the best I could, whether at our parish or on the instrument where it was to be played.
Then, a Sabbath: Thursday of Easter Week.
Finally, on Friday of Easter Week, it was time for a return visit to the music for the coming Sunday. It took all of my practice time on Friday and Saturday to get one final workout on everything, plus the hymnody and service music.
Results: On the whole, I played cleanly, better than I have in most years. In particular, the music for the Great Vigil, by far the hardest of the organ music on my list for the weekend, was clean: "Ye choirs of New Jerusalem," and a postlude by Messiaen from the Livre du Saint Sacrement, which was the best that I have ever played it ("Ye Choirs" had one howler of a mistake on full organ, but was otherwise energetic and well-played).
The problem was with the Second Sunday of Easter. The most difficult piece for the day was clean: Christ ist erstanden, from the Orgelbüchlein, as were all of the choral accompaniments and the hymnody. But the other two voluntaries were sloppy, not at all acceptable. They both needed more work.
I believe that I am on the right track in giving high importance to careful fingering, and First and Second Workouts. But in a situation such as this, I must find a way to visit the pieces at the end of the cycle along the way rather than entrusting them to Friday and Saturday. I do not know when I could have done so. Might I have gotten the Widor prepared in January, as I had hoped, and kept it on maintenance practice through February and March? That would have allowed more time for the Second Sunday of Easter music during Holy Week. But I had other things to prepare in January and February.
It seems clear that I attempted more than I could do. This is another reason to not play in the Congregational Church recital series next year. And I must keep this in mind as I schedule voluntaries for the coming season. Do less, but with better quality.
For now, I am cancelling the big piece which was to be my next project: the Messiaen Transports de joie from the Ascenscion Suite. I spent quite a bit of time in January and February working out a careful fingering for this. It seems a shame to do that -- at the expense of practice on Widor, for example -- and then lay it aside. But I believe that it is what I should do. I will pencil it in for next year. I have had it pencilled in for Ascension Sunday for about four years now, and have never gotten around to learning it. Maybe next year, with the fingering in place and no recital during Easter Week, I can do it.
I wrote several weeks ago that playing the Widor on Wednesday of Easter Week would be interesting. It was, and instructive as well. As I wrote earlier, I am glad that I did it, and glad that it was helpful to people. The cost was high; one of the lessons of the past month is that the personal cost of playing the organ well is higher than I had thought, even after all these years of attempting it.
Shall I be carried to the skies
on flow'ry beds of ease,
while others fought to win the prize
and sailed on bloody seas? (Isaac Watts)
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