Part Four: Whitsunday

Learning is nonlinear.

My intention of learning to “play the changes” in jazz style on “As the wind song in the trees” ran aground on the hard reality of Sunday morning, which arrived well before I had mastered the skill. But it is all right; I did learn from the week’s work. In some respects, it is better than all right; parts of this morning’s improvisation were indeed “playing the changes” – improvised lines over the chords of “As the wind song.” These parts were incorporated into a larger whole that made for a better piece of music than it would have been had I been strict about staying with the changes.

Here is a link to the improvisation, on SoundCloud.

Even my work on Song of the Holy Spirit bore fruit; I did not use it in the improvisation, but it made my accompaniment of the congregation’s singing more interesting than it would have otherwise been. So was “As the wind song,” when it came time for everyone to sing it.

What did sneak in was Veni, Creator Spiritus, which was not part of this service. But we had sung it at Matins upstairs in the chapel and it came to mind when it came time to begin the improvisation and seemed to make a good introduction.

And then there was Bach. At the later service, I played the two organ settings of Komm, heiliger Geist which begin the Leipzig Chorales, and both of them went pretty well – better than they would have been without all the time I have spent listening and thinking about Keith Jarrett and jazz ballads and playing the changes. I have played these chorale settings many times over the years – and never so well as I did today.

I sense that I have been stuck at about the same level with my playing for a while, both at the piano and the organ. In the past few weeks, both have been in more of a flux, and I think I am making progress. Not in a linear manner, to be sure, and with setbacks. But discernible progress: yes, I think so.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Here is the link to one of the organ settings, the soft trio version of Komm, heiliger Geist, BWV 652. I am posting this rather than the BWV 651 toccata because there are many more settings of the latter than the former on YouTube. I might as well improve the balance.