Speak the Language (Part Two)

Last week I wrote about harmony, counterpoint, and listening to the Tradition. This week it is time to be more practical.

The manner in which Music Theory is taught is not immediately useful to the improviser. Most of the work is done with pencil and paper. How can the musician transfer this to the instrument?

One place to start: Harmonize a Scale. The book by Marcel Dupré (“Complete Course in Organ Improvisation”) begins here, and this is where I started. In his method, the student works out a solid four-part harmonization of a major scale with good voice leading, and plays it. Slowly. Over and over. Then in different keys. Then, the minor scales. Then with the scale in other voices: bass line (in the left hand, and also in the pedals), alto/tenor. By the time I had spent about a month doing this, it started to become easier. Dupré does not say so, but I would add the Modes (Dorian, Phrygian, etc.).

What made this skill come to life for me was accompanying the choir as they sing scales in warmups. In that setting, I cannot think much about the scale, for I am listening to the choir and thinking about them, so the scale and its harmony become automatic – eventually.

Gerre Hancock's book (“Improvising: How to Master the Art”) likewise begins with scales, but he suggests a less rigid approach – accompany the scale with a second voice, then three voices, then four, in various styles, various tempos, with rhythmic modifications. These are steps that the student must eventually take, even if she begins with Dupré's strict approach.

When you can play a scale and harmonize it, you can also play any stepwise passage. That is the next step: melodies that are mostly stepwise.

In a sense, this is the “top-down” approach. One can also work from the “bottom-up,” and that would be Figured Bass. I wrote of it here and here.

As an entrance into improvisation, Figured Bass provides a harmonic framework and a bass line, and the player must create the rest. There is no better training than this for practical keyboard harmony.

Yet another approach is by way of Counterpoint. For this, I recommend a little book by Jan Bender: “Organ Improvisation for Beginners” (Concordia Publishing House, 1975). He teaches the student to improvise two-part textures based on hymn tunes, then expanding to three-part contrapuntal textures, and finally free (non-hymntune) improvisation. The two-part work is the most useful, and not terribly difficult. Here is a review of the Bender.

Sadly, it appears to be out of print, and if it is on Google Books, I cannot find it. Copies are available on Amazon for outrageous prices ($40 and up, for this slender volume of 71 pages. I see a copy on eBay for over $200!) Don't pay that much, not even $40 – but see if you might be able to read it via interlibrary loan. You could pick up the basic ideas in less than an hour, take careful notes, and work on your own without the book.

I see that the Dupré is expensive too: volume one is in the Organ Historical Society catalogue for $65. For the serious student, that might be worth it, more so than the Bender. The OHS catalogue also has volume two for $79; hold off on that until you have completed volume one. In fact, you can harmonize scales without Dupré; save your money and work at this skill, and when you have mastered it, order a copy of volume one for the rest of his material.



It has been a difficult week, with another funeral. This time, it was a middle-aged father who died after a tortuous nine years of cancer treatments. He was a member of the contemporary congregation, and there was much grief among them. This morning, the day after the funeral, our Youth Choir sang at that service. We had one of the plainsong Propers for the day, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, and I improvised on it for the prelude. I hope that my little bit of music-making was a beginning toward the healing of grief, and of incipient breaches in our congregational life that have resulted from it. Or I should say “our” music, not just mine, for my work was altogether a preparation for the Youth Choir's singing of the chant, and an attempt to place it in the context of the congregation's sadness and “morning after” emptiness that many felt.

It took one verse from the end of the Gospel as an Antiphon, a line that can easily be overlooked:

Tell no one about the vision that you have had this day, until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.

To this it added two verses from Psalm 97:

The Lord is King; let the earth rejoice: let the multitude of the isles be glad. Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne.

In rehearsals, we discussed this, concluding that the disciples were to be silent because people would not understand the Transfiguration without the Cross and Resurrection.

Nor can we understand the suffering and death of a person in the prime of life, and the grief of his family. Not without the Cross. And not without the Resurrection.

Here is the improvisation.