Toccata in F: a beginning

Friday, November 14

Last weekend after the problem with the pedal couplers on All Saints' Day, I told Jean that I would have to cancel the F Major Toccata (BWV 540) that was on my schedule for the Sunday of Christ the King, November 23. I had wanted to play it for the reasons I described three years ago:

The Bach Toccata in F, with its Fugue, is the best response to [the Lessons for the Day] that I can make with the music available to me. The Toccata is boundless joy, the serious and all-consuming joy that is characteristic of the praise of God, the working out of one of the grandest ideas in all of Bach's music. The Fugue is more solemn. In the context of this service, I hope that it can be an expression (insofar as humanly possible) of the majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, sitting as righteous Judge of all the earth. When the two subjects combine in the final pages of the fugue, it is inexpressibly majestic, and causes me to consider the completion of the purposes of God, determined before the foundation of the earth.

These words are but a stammering and inadequate attempt to say what cannot be said. Yet, dust and ashes that we are, we must say something. No: we must sing something, and in this case, instrumental music has the advantage that it sings without words. And we cannot, for this occasion, play it safe; we must “sing... with all [our] skill.” This piece is right on the edge of my capabilities; that makes it just about right.

But without that top F in the pedal, the piece is impossible. Or so I thought.

This afternoon after working on this Sunday's voluntaries and hymns, I took another look. I had been thinking of the place in the second pedal solo where the top F is critical: two notes in measure 155, in the second pedal solo. But I had thought there were more places. No: that measure is the only time in the piece that the note appears. And my hands are free, more or less (I am hanging on to the cheekblocks as one does with pedal solos, to help pivot across the pedalboard). I tried it: Yes, I can free my left hand for those two notes and play them on the manual at the same time they are played in the pedal. Further, the two broken Great-to-Pedal stickers in the middle of the range do not irredeemably disfigure the fugue; I was worried about that, too.

So, to work!

One thing I have learned is that it is well to start with the hardest part of the piece. For me, that is measure 270 to 287 and 331 to 349, both passages in the Toccata. Having only about two hours left in the day, I did a First Workout on this section: measures 270 through 349. (The Toccata runs to 438 measures, about ten minutes of duration). It was hard, slow work, even with the rhythmic practice that I love. But it was a start.

Saturday, November 15

Even with Sunday in the wings, I start the day's practicing with the Toccata. Another lesson I have learned is that I should do the Second Workout on the previous day's work before moving on to other parts of the piece, so I did: just one hour this time, instead of yesterday's two.

Then I built around the bit that was now starting to be secure: I added new phrases at the end (starting with measure 350), and after each new section, I played the whole bit (measures 270 to where I had gotten). Then I added some more, finishing that section's work with another full playthrough.

Once I reached the end, I started adding sections in front of the part I had learned, still finishing each new section with a playthrough, now from the new section to the end of the toccata.

About five hours later, I made it to the beginning: the First Workout is done (with a second workout on the hardest part).

With this type of extended work, I must get off the bench every hour. I have a stretching routine that I use which takes three or four minutes, and that gets me ready for another hour. So long as I do this, I can play all day. If I don't, I collapse after three hours or so and earn a sore back, sore wrists and forearms, and have to be extra careful the next day.

I still had Sunday's preparations to complete, so that was enough of Bach. This was a night when I was staying at the church because of weather, so I was free to work on into the evening – indeed, I was glad to be at the bench, because a jazz drummer was practicing in the choir room, loudly.

Sunday, November 16

I made it back to the bench about 3:00: time for the Second Workout on the bulk of the Toccata. Because Saturday's work had mostly been backwards (adding on from the end, back to the front of the piece), today I started at the beginning. I worked in my usual manner: one phrase slowly, then in the rhythms, then in tempo: the next phrase in the same way: the two phrases together in tempo, and so on.

On the second and subsequent workout of a piece this long, it does not work to keep starting clear back at the beginning after adding each new phrase. The Toccata can be thought of as two smaller pieces: the initial two-voice counterpoint over pedal points with the two long pedal solos, up through measure 175 (where I make a manual change, going from Swell to Great), and the rest of the piece. So once I had worked the first “piece,” I considered measure 176 a fresh start and no longer returned to measure one.

Shortly after I began, a woman entered the church and sat in the back row, in the shadows, her head down, obviously praying or thinking. I kept playing. She stayed, sometimes sobbing loudly. Should I stop? Here she was, pouring her heart out to God, and she couldn't even have a quiet church to pray. And she wasn't even having good music – I was by the time she arrived deep into the first pedal solo, working it slowly, then with the rhythms, then longer chunks of it. But I had to do this work; the way the week is looking, I doubt that I will be on the bench at all until Wednesday, if then, and the Toccata had to have its second workout done so it wouldn't slip away from me.

As I played, I sought guidance from the Spirit, and the best I could tell, the word was “Play on.”

I prayed that the beautiful sane purity of the Bach, even as it lay before this woman in the workshop with the hood up and parts all over the place, might be a channel for grace. At the least I could join my music-as-prayer with hers: “Thy kingdom come,” the day when our Friend and Father wipes away every tear.

She stayed for more than two hours, and slipped out somewhere around measure 380. I made it to the end by about 6:30, but one step remained: the final play-through at half tempo. “Do I have to?” I whined. “That will take twenty minutes!” And it did. But as soon as I started the opening measures, I knew that this was right: I needed this play-through to settle the day's work, the weekend's work, into place.

The slow play-through is a lesson from Virgil Fox, who insisted on it with any piece that was technically challenging or fast. He was right, as usual. After hours of work on a piece like this, the nerves are jangly, the adrenaline is flowing. The slow playing settles the mind and body, a cooling-off time like walking around after running. As I play, I seek to focus on each note, seeking to fix it in my memory.

The Toccata feels solid. If I can get even one more solid workout on it next Saturday, I think it will be fine. Two workouts this week would be better. But there is still the Fugue.

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This was a day when the Youth Choir and Adult Choir combined, singing a setting of Psalm 124 written for our parish by the noted composer Samuel Adler – and Dr. Adler was here. He listened to our rehearsal and spoke briefly to the choir, especially the young choristers. We did not work much on the piece (today, that is: we started it in August for the Youth Choir!), because we spent most of our half-hour on the plainsong gradual, Psalm 90. It needed the work, and did not go well in the service – a few of the choristers did not watch me for the break at the asterisk, not even after they had missed the first one, coming in for the second half ahead of the choir. But overall, it was a good morning.

I leave you with another piano improvisation, the prelude for the middle service. Our opening hymn was the first one in the “green book,” the “Wonder, Love and Praise” supplement. I consider the text to be weak, but it fit the day and season. And the tune is anything but weak: it is the magnificent Welsh tune Ton-y-botel. In this context, it needed a quiet and dark setting, so I tried to provide it. The form is a set of variations, one or two of them straying rather far from the tune, and a bridge taking it into the dominant key for a couple of the variations.