A week with RVW

The Lord's Day: August 9

I hope to play the Vaughan Williams prelude on Bryn Calfaria next Sunday, since we are singing that tune (“Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor,” Hymn 307). With that, I have often played as postlude the setting of Hyfrydol from the same set of three preludes on Welsh tunes, but I did that not too many months ago, on a Sunday when we sang that tune. I check my handful of organ scores by RVW, and in “A Vaughan Williams Organ Album” (Oxford University Press) I light upon the “Toccata: St. David's Day.” I have wanted for many years to play it, but I had thought that I should save it for a Sunday close that Feast (March 1). But when that time comes every spring, I am unwilling to play the Toccata because it is too cheerful for Lent. I will not have many more opportunities, so now is the time. “Doesn't look too hard,” I muse. “But that metronome marking. It could be a problem.”

Since the choir room is occupied by a jazz drummer hammering away at patterns, I take the piece upstairs to the Steinway in the church and work out the fingering. That goes smoothly and is indeed not difficult at all; there is only one passage on the last page that is a head-scratcher. Next, I get out the metronome and set it at the printed marking, presumably from RVW himself: Allegro, half note equalling 112. I think through the piece at that speed; it is insane. Not only would I be unable to play it that fast, but I do not think that it would sound well. Everything would be too rushed.

So, I turn to YouTube, and find this recording by David Briggs: his tempo is half note at about 88, and is thoroughly convincing. That is good news; I am fairly confident that I can play it at that speed. But I wish I had more than one week to do it.

Tuesday: The Feast of St. Clare

I am determined to get some work done before staff meeting, and dig in on the First Workout, which I have described elsewhere. The danger with organ practice at this hour on Tuesdays is that I have to drag myself away from it for the meeting at 10 am, and sure enough, the hour finds me in the middle of things. “Just a few more minutes...” I mutter and work right up to the last moment.

I complete the first workout after the meeting. It is not going to be so easy as I had thought. No metronome work today, excepting the final playthrough at half tempo, quarter note equalling 88. I make many mistakes at what should be a tempo where I could play it cleanly after one workout.

Wednesday: The Feast of Florence Nightingale

One of my working principles is the “One Big Thing.” Each day after Matins and a second breakfast while I check email and the Net, I tackle the Big Thing, the one thing that is most important. Today it is most certainly the Toccata. I head upstairs and work at it until dinner, about three hours.

The second day's work is the time to use the metronome. I start with the half-page passage that will be the most difficult (about one page from the end), work through it with the modified rhythms. Some of this does not go well, so I work through the various rhythmic adjustments several times. Then at last, I try the half-page with the metronome: quarter note at about 120 (which would be half note at 60), then ratchet it up a click to 124, then 128. I continue playing the half-page until I reach a tempo where I cannot play it cleanly: quarter note at 152. I need 176, but it is not going to happen today. After what is always a mistake-filled playing (for, after all, I have pushed it to that point), I play it slowly to settle it in my mind: back to half tempo, quarter note at 88.

This half-page has taken a bit over one hour. I get off the bench, stretch, say a Little Office. Back to work: the next bit of music after that half page, and on to the end, working in the same manner. Each time after I have reached the stage of playing it with the metronome, I go back to that half page where I started and include it in the playthrough, adding each new section as I get to it. Once I have made it to the end, I work backwards, adding sections that come before the hard part – some of these are challenging, too. But all in all, it goes well enough for this stage in the week: I work almost all of it up to 168, just one marking short of my goal. To round off the day's work at the organ, I take my third break (with another Little Office. I love including these in my practice; why haven't I been doing this all these years?) and do the final playthrough at half tempo.

Friday: The Feast of Jonathan Daniels

He was a seminarian in the 1960's at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, attending the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Answering a call for helpers from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he went to Selma, Alabama. While entering a store with three companions, they were approached by an angry white man with a gun; it became clear that he was going to shoot one of them, a sixteen-year old black girl. Daniels pushed her to the side in the scuffle and took the blast of the twelve-gauge shotgun himself, which killed him. He was twenty-six years old.


Crunch time. I work another four hours today on the Toccata. Parts of it are still not going well, but I have learned a lesson: this week I have pushed the tempo so hard that my rhythmic variations have become spastic in places, which is precisely what I should avoid. The point of the fingering, slow practice, and rhythmic practice is to avoid that very thing. Calm, controlled playing, no matter what the tempo might be.

Four hours is enough; I must work on other music for Sunday. I start the prelude on Bryn Calfaria, which I have played many times. A first workout takes about thirty minutes. It is good that there is no more, because I am pushing my physical limits; one of my fingers is beginning to hurt and my wrists are very tired. Mental limits, too – I am frazzled.

But it is good to spend this time with Mr. Vaughan Williams. The Bryn Calfaria is going well, and parts of it are profoundly moving. Sweat and tears are pouring down my face by the time I am done.

I hardly know how to thank him for what his music has meant to me. There is the Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis, which has brought me healing many times, and the Hodie, and the symphonic music. I cannot forget his work on the English Hymnal, bringing folk tunes such as Forest Green and Kingsfold into our hymnody, to say nothing of his own tunes, Sine nomine and King's Weston and the gentle Down Ampney. And there is the anthem “Lord, thou hast been our refuge.” Working with our choristers on this has been one of the chief events of my life in music; I tried to describe it here: October 23, 2011.

These organ pieces are on a smaller scale, but they too partake of the same vision. It is akin somewhat to what I sense in J. R. R. Tolkien, for both of them were rooted in an England that is no more. With JRRT, we see it in the Shire of the Hobbits and in characters such as old Bilbo, and Frodo and Sam, and Merry and Pippin; with RVW, we hear it in "The Lark Ascending," or indeed on almost every page of his music.

Saturday: The Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin

Mary, the Mother who cared for Jesus, now cares with maternal affection and pain for this wounded world. Just as her pierced heart mourned the death of Jesus, so now she grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this world laid waste by human power. Completely transfigured, she now lives with Jesus, and all creatures sing of her fairness. She is the Woman, “clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1). Carried up into heaven, she is the Mother and Queen of all creation. In her glorified body, together with the Risen Christ, part of creation has reached the fullness of its beauty. She treasures the entire life of Jesus in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51), and now understands the meaning of all things. Hence, we can ask her to enable us to look at this world with eyes of wisdom. (Francis I: Encyclical Letter “Laudato si'”, paragraph 241)

Yesterday's work has borne fruit; the Toccata goes well this morning; ninety minutes and I am content to lay it aside for tomorrow. Bryn Calfaria is solid too, very secure after a second workout.

But there is much more: a middle service improvisation, songs and hymns. And not just any songs: tomorrow's Epistle includes the great mandate for music in the life of Holy Mother Church:

Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:17-20)

For this, we are singing Fred Pratt Green's hymn “When in our music God is glorified” with the tune Engelberg by RVW's teacher, C. V. Stanford; George Herbert's poem “Let all the world in every corner sing,” with the tune Augustine by my teacher Erik Routley; and a hymn by Thomas Troeger and Carol Doran, “With glad exuberant carolings,” which in some ways is the best of all. It is this last that I plan to use as the heart of my improvisation, paired with the Psalter tune Rendez a Dieu (“Father, we thank thee who hast planted”). I work on these tunes for a couple of hours, downstairs on the brown upright piano outside my office door.

It has been a full week, and I have neglected much else for the sake of tomorrow's music. In the middle, struggling with the rhythmic variations and metronome on the Toccata, I lost sight of why I am doing this: today's work on the hymns made it clear, and showed me why I had ended up with the Toccata in the first place, by “what some would call chance.”

How often, making music, we have found
a new dimension in the world of sound,
as worship moved us to a more profound
Alleluia!

So has the Church, in liturgy and song,
in faith and love, through centuries of wrong,
borne witness to the truth in every tongue,
Alleluia!

(Fred Pratt Green: copyright © 1972, Hope Publishing Co.)