Lord, make us servants

Here is Sunday’s piano improvisation on “Gather us in” (Marty Haugen) and Hymn 593 in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982: “Lord, make us servants of your peace.” It is a paraphrase of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi by the Scottish poet and religious James Quinn, S.J. The tune is “Dickinson College” by Lee Hastings Bristol, Jr., in a 5/4 meter.

The form is one to which that I have come to gravitate: a sort of double-variation with elements of ABA and perhaps sonata form.

- First Tune, with several variations
- (2’50”) Second Tune, in contrasting key.
- (3’40”) Variations on second tune, increasingly involving the first tune as well, becoming more of a development section
- (7’03”) Return to tonic: First Tune, usually with some Second Tune mixed with it.
- (7’52”) Coda

For the first time in months, I did not improvise at the piano at all this week, not until Sunday morning in the half-hour or so before the liturgy. I wrote out the “Dickinson College” tune in the dominant key because I do not know it very well; I trusted memory on “Gather us in.” I had a vague notion of using something along the lines of the form described above. And that was it.

Improvisation is funny that way; you can sit down at the piano and just do it, creating what Mike Garson calls “Now” music entirely in the moment with little or no specific preparation. It is like magic. Or more properly, a miracle.

Obviously, it is nothing of the sort; it is the result of day after day of playing around with the tunes, getting to know them, and finding new ways to work with them. Before we changed the middle service start time, creating a need for an improvised piano prelude every Sunday and thus the discipline of a weekly deadline to make me practice instead of just wishing I could improvise decently, there is no way I could have done this.

This week, it worked pretty well. But “thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God.” If I go very long without any improvisation practice at all, the results would soon be not so good. It probably helped that I was not altogether idle; I spent plenty of hours at the organ, working mostly on the Franck Chorale for evensong. That kept my mind and spirit musically engaged, and my fingers in action.

This week, I hope to do better. But it is Wednesday noon and I haven’t made it to either piano or organ yet since Sunday. That comes next, right now until Youth Choir in about four hours.